Comments on: The Case for a Creator: This Time It's Personal

By: cl

cl — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:25:44 +0000

Sorry to delay. I didn't feel like dancing around Ebon's silly thought / comment moderation rules, so I wrote a post elaborating my position - as well as answering questions from XPK, Paul S., Snoof, paradoctor, Stephen and Yahzi - here. The only person I didn't address there is Eshu, so..

..I went to the trouble of explaining this to you (or someone sharing your pseudonym) and you didn't respond. I presumed (perhaps naively) that you had understood my argument. Now it you're using the same arguments against other atheists, it seems you're clearly not listening to what we're saying. Are we wasting our time on you?

No, I understood your argument just fine. I didn't agree with it, and I still don't. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because somebody wasn't persuaded by a particular argument of yours, that they're "not listening."

By: XPK

XPK — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:15:06 +0000

@Eshu - thank you for that link.
@cl - are you arguing in favor of a conscious unmoved mover because it makes just as much logical sense as an unconscious one? If so, aren't you assuming that consciousness can survive outside of a physical brain as some sort of disembodied soul?

By: Modusoperandi

Modusoperandi — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:11:24 +0000

Eshu: Gesundheit.

By: Eshu

Eshu — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:04:43 +0000

cl said,

It DOES NOT multiply entities beyond necessity to simply posit a conscious unmoved mover, any more than it would to posit an unconscious one, because a series of transitions from potency to act requires an unmoved mover whether it's conscious or not.

cl, I went to the trouble of explaining this to you (or someone sharing your pseudonym) and you didn't respond. I presumed (perhaps naively) that you had understood my argument. Now it you're using the same arguments against other atheists, it seems you're clearly not listening to what we're saying. Are we wasting our time on you?

By: Paul S.

Paul S. — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:45:28 +0000

cl said

the universe - represented as a series of transitions from potency to act - requires an unmoved mover (which I think most of us would agree to).

Maybe cl can help me figure out why the universe requires an "unmoved" mover. Why does the mover have to be "unmoved"?

By: Snoof

Snoof — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:31:57 +0000

Why would a first cause necessarily be chaotic? And what's so bad about chaos, anyway? Lots of things are chaotic. Star formation. Protein assembly. Neural networks.

By: paradoctor

paradoctor — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:11:47 +0000

Any attempted explanation of cosmic origin, theistic or not, runs afoul of the paradox of the first cause. What caused the first cause? Either it was uncaused - and hence chaotic, as are all consequences of it - or it is caused by something other than itself - and hence not the first - or it caused itself - and hence is deductively empty. Neither theism nor atheism has any bearing on this problem, which is ultimately a problem in logic, solved by admitting uncertainty.

By: RBH

RBH — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:04:12 +0000

Ebon wrote

If the universe is the product of intelligent design, it would seem that there are conflicting designs, which would imply the existence of multiple creators in a parsimonious way.

Multiple Designers Theory.

By: Snoof

Snoof — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:01:59 +0000

We have two types of objects in nature: those that can initiate a series of transitions from potency to act, and those that cannot. Humans can. Animals can. Rocks cannot.

Really? How about ants? Plants? Bacteria? Viruses? Prions? Enzymes? Where do you define the line between "objects which can initiate a series of transitions from potency to act" and objects merely obeying the laws of physics and chemistry?

By: Modusoperandi

Modusoperandi — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:00:02 +0000

...so did Hitchens.

By: paul

paul — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:20:42 +0000

"In this little paragraph, Craig has smuggled in a whole theology textbook's worth of Christian presuppositions."
Indeed, my friend, you have nailed it here. I saw about 50 minutes of a hitchens vs. craig debate, and the amount of bullshit presuppositions this guy can pull out his ass was too much for me too keep up with. I now trully understand what hitchens means when he says all these people speak is white noise.
After the fifty minutes of the 170 minutes or so debate I simply gave up.....

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:29:51 +0000

Ebon smugly calls it "shooting fish in a barrel," but Ebon is simply wrong here. Unless Ebon (or anyone) can show infinite regress or creation ex nihilo to be logically superior, the universe - represented as a series of transitions from potency to act - requires an unmoved mover (which I think most of us would agree to). It DOES NOT multiply entities beyond necessity to simply posit a conscious unmoved mover, ...

No, cl, this is nonsense. A universe exists. One can postulate 0, 1, 2, 3 ... prior entities to the universe. Unless and until someone can provide evidence for a prior entity, the only sensible number to assume is 0. The only conscious entities we know of are highly complex beings with a long evolutionary history, which can only survive in a complex ecosystem. To postulate such a being spontaneously arising, without evidence, and then assert that it "DOES NOT multiply entities beyond necessity" is utterly absurd and flagrantly disregards the evidence available to us.

The question becomes which is more in accord with the evidence.

Exactly. Exactly. It is unfortunate that you sometimes do not seem to be able to understand your own writing, as your previous sentences blatantly contradict this one. Philosophical posturing is not evidence.

We have two types of objects in nature: those that can initiate a series of transitions from potency to act, and those that cannot. Humans can. Animals can. Rocks cannot.

Oh dear. Try reading up on planetary formation sometime. Or plate tectonics. Or vulcanism.