All effects have causes. A primal-cause is not an effect.Zero said:
Let's get serious Zero. Stop playing games.
It is the things in our awareness, constituting material-perception, to which the argument applies that all such things, being effects, must have a primal-cause.
Re: Re: Re: Quantum waffle.
The universe itself can meet the requirements of your "definitive default". You are assuming, without any justification, that the universe itself must have external needs or influences.
This is not a logical argument, but dogma. You have not provided any sort of logical support for your claim that the universe itself cannot be a primal cause. As I predicted, you resorted instead to categorical assertions without logical support.
lifegazer said:
The universe itself can meet the requirements of your "definitive default". You are assuming, without any justification, that the universe itself must have external needs or influences.
This is not a logical argument, but dogma. You have not provided any sort of logical support for your claim that the universe itself cannot be a primal cause. As I predicted, you resorted instead to categorical assertions without logical support.
lifegazer said:
It has been repeatedly argued that 1) the universe could be its own primal cause, or 2) The universe may expand and contract cyclically and have no beginning, hence no cause
Your response to both is essentially that neither fits into your worldview, therefore they are false.
El Greco
Summer worshipper
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According to the bible, when doubting Thomas questioned the resurrection Jesus himself appeared to make him believe. He didn't believe by listening to the masturbosophies of other Apostles.
If God appears before me the way he allegedly appeared before Thomas, then I will believe too.
If God appears before me the way he allegedly appeared before Thomas, then I will believe too.
How is it that everything we know of is an 'effect', so you assume that there is something that is not an 'effect'? It is time for YOU to get serious. Your position is illogical, and anyone can show you why, if you would just open your eyes. How would you prove that your 'primal cause' doesn't have a cause of itsown, except by definition? I can define my left boot as your God-creator-primal cause, but making that the definition doesn't make it so.lifegazer said:
DarkMagician
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Hey, doesn't anyone want to play my game and try to win.DarkMagician said:
If I can show that an effect can come without a cause, then the point that everything needs a cause is null and void.
If effects can come without causes, then there is NO need for a primal-cause that has no cause and is in effect Special Pleading.
In short, go "sleep with" yourselves.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Quantum waffle.
The energy of such a primal-cause is shown to be free energy, since it is free from any external influences or internal obligations. The cause itself is shown to exhibit free will in the creation of the proceeding effects of time. It's rationally impossible to argue a case for the existence of a primal-cause that does not have free will. Hence, it's rationally impossible to argue for the existence of an entity which has free will, but lacks self-awareness and purpose.
It's very very easy to show why a primal-cause must = God.
Before anyone mentions Cantor, please note that those infinities are contained within sets with an origin and an end." [page 4]
I've already addressed this issue. If a primal-cause exists amongst "the universe itself", then the universe is God. I shall more, again, in a mo...Flatworm said:
"A primal-cause is, by definitive default, the only determining factor of existence. Such a cause has no external needs or influences in the creation of effects occuring within it. If we apply reason to the term "primal cause", it soon becomes apparent that we are in fact talking about God itself." [original post, page 1]
The energy of such a primal-cause is shown to be free energy, since it is free from any external influences or internal obligations. The cause itself is shown to exhibit free will in the creation of the proceeding effects of time. It's rationally impossible to argue a case for the existence of a primal-cause that does not have free will. Hence, it's rationally impossible to argue for the existence of an entity which has free will, but lacks self-awareness and purpose.
It's very very easy to show why a primal-cause must = God.
Then it is God.
"There can be no yield or effect that is dependent upon the culmination of an infinite number of other effects that have no origin. This post, for example, cannot be the yield of an infinite number of past effects without an origin. Something must have instigated the primal-act of events which culminated with this post. Therefore, there is a primal-cause.
Before anyone mentions Cantor, please note that those infinities are contained within sets with an origin and an end." [page 4]
My response is that number(1) = God and that number(2) is irrational.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Quantum waffle.
Can you accept that the universe shows no signs of consciousness? Can you accept a mindless God?
Gobbledygook. You must not be talking about energy in the physical sense, because "obligations" mean nothing to a mindless physical property.
How is that so? Let's say time is a property of the universe. There would therefore be no "before the universe" and no cause for the universe. There is also no need to invoke free will.
Then by all means, just go ahead and show it. Give us a sound logical argument, with premises (that don't presuppose your conclusions) and conclusions that inevitably follow from them.
You are essentially asserting, without a shred of logical support, that the universe could not have existed for an infinite time in the past. I have no reason to accept your assertion as axiomatic.
If can accept that a primal cause needn't have consciousness, then feel free to call the universe itself "god". You have yet to provide any reason for rejecting #2 aside from an unsupported assertion that it cannot be.
lifegazer said:
Can you accept that the universe shows no signs of consciousness? Can you accept a mindless God?
Gobbledygook. You must not be talking about energy in the physical sense, because "obligations" mean nothing to a mindless physical property.
How is that so? Let's say time is a property of the universe. There would therefore be no "before the universe" and no cause for the universe. There is also no need to invoke free will.
Then by all means, just go ahead and show it. Give us a sound logical argument, with premises (that don't presuppose your conclusions) and conclusions that inevitably follow from them.
You are essentially asserting, without a shred of logical support, that the universe could not have existed for an infinite time in the past. I have no reason to accept your assertion as axiomatic.
If can accept that a primal cause needn't have consciousness, then feel free to call the universe itself "god". You have yet to provide any reason for rejecting #2 aside from an unsupported assertion that it cannot be.
DarkMagician
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Let's list the unsupported assertions.
1. You say there must be an acausal cause, even though I have brought up a case where there isn't one neede.
2. You claim that this acausal cause must be God, even to the extent of calling any acausal cause God (in my example, the Pointcare Recurrence is acausal; therefore, by your logic, it must be God.)
3. The universe can't be infinite, as it wouldn't let you sleep peacefully at night.
1. You say there must be an acausal cause, even though I have brought up a case where there isn't one neede.
2. You claim that this acausal cause must be God, even to the extent of calling any acausal cause God (in my example, the Pointcare Recurrence is acausal; therefore, by your logic, it must be God.)
3. The universe can't be infinite, as it wouldn't let you sleep peacefully at night.
If that's the case, why does the universe proceed towards localised order through particles; atoms; stars; molecules/compounds; planets; galaxies; life itself? If the amount of entropy in a system always increases, then such progressive order should be impossible. Hence, can somebody explain to me how that statement of yours can be absolutely true. I'm not a physicist, so perhaps there's something I'm unaware of. But rationally-speaking, a universe which proceeds towards yielding localised order on a vast scale is not a universe which is always progressing towards maximum entropy.DarkMagician said:
Translated = the only way to increase the order in a system is to have a cause or force to effect that order. Is that what you mean?
http://www.math.umd.edu/~lvrmr/History/Recurrence.html
snippet:
"If you play bridge long enough you will eventually be dealt any grand-slam hand, not once but several times. A similar thing is true for mechanical systems governed by Newton's laws, as the French mathematician Henri Poincare (1854-1912) showed with his recurrence theorem in 1890: if the system has a fixed total energy that restricts its dynamics to bounded subsets of its phase space, the system will eventually return as closely as you like to any given initial set of molecular positions and velocities. If the entropy is determined by these variables, then it must also return to its original value, so if it increases during one period of time it must decrease during another."
Note the highlighted parts. The theorem relates, apparently, to perceived matter with definite position in space and time.
So here's the first problem for you to address: it is known that no thing possesses absolutely definite form in spacetime. So, things that possess no definite form in spacetime will have a difficult time returning to their past states, since no such state actually existed, except within our perception. This realisation alone brings down your house of cards.
What are you talking about? Are you implying that the changing order of a system occurs without a cause or force(s)?
This "game" you played took you into an offside position.
A primal-cause exhibits free-will. It has to, otherwise it cannot be the primal-cause of the effects it produces. Think about it.Flatworm said:
An entity which possesses free-will, must be self-aware and intelligent. An entity possessing absolute free-will cannot exhibit this freedom of will without self-awareness and intelligence.
Reason forces me to accept the existence of a primal-cause. And reason further forces me to accept that this cause possesses free-will and intelligence/knowledge. Not to mention omnipresence and omnipotence.
We're discussing the [potential] energy of a primal-cause here. The flow of this energy (the yields of this energy), are determined by the primal-cause itself (being the sole cause of the effects). Hence, the primal-cause has free-will, meaning that it has free (indeterminable) energy to act however it likes.
My post headed "quantum waffle", posted earlier today, explains how philosophy could have predicted the essential indeterminism of nature's energy/being long before science ever did. The existence of a God would necessitate that this be true.
Quantum mechanics is actually a proof that the energy of existence proceeds from a source with absolute free-will. Really, it is.
If you take away free-will from a primal-cause, then what else causes it to produce the effects it creates? Without free-will, you automatically transfer responsibility for the creation of the effects from the primal-cause to something else beyond its control. Reason cannot accept that something can be a primal-cause if it doesn't have absolute sovereignity over the effects that it produces. Taking away free-will takes away that sovereignity.
Time = change. Something can exist before change (time) is
effected. Indeed, clearly, this must be the case: for change to occur, something must exist from whence it can occur.
I already did it in a manner which should suffice:
"A primal-cause is, by definitive default, the only determining factor of existence. Such a cause has no external needs or influences in the creation of effects occuring within it. If we apply reason to the term "primal cause", it soon becomes apparent that we are in fact talking about God itself." [original post, page 1]
It's just a matter of deduction. A primal-cause has no external needs = no external abode = is not finite in nature = is essentially boundless. A primal-cause creates everything within it... thus we have an omnipresent cause. Being the sole cause of all effects, a primal-cause is also omnipotent.
And I've already discussed free-will and intelligence.
"There can be no yield or effect that is dependent upon the culmination of an infinite number of other effects that have no origin. This post, for example, cannot be the yield of an infinite number of past effects without an origin. Something must have instigated the primal-act of events which culminated with this post. Therefore, there is a primal-cause.
Before anyone mentions Cantor, please note that those infinities are contained within sets with an origin and an end." [page 4]
Please counter.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Iacchus said:
As they say in math class, show your work. I say there are no absolutes for two reasons, one we only approxiamate reality with our thoughts, reality has no observable absolute. I am saying there are no absolutes because i am a nihilist.
When you meet the immaterial mind of god be sure to have them write me a postcard!
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Iacchus said:
Pure surmise and speculation as at this time they are unobservable.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
GhostWriter said:
