Rumraket wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Rumraket wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Hereditary genomics anyone? Sure your education and environmental experiences might be different but you're not completely independant from your ancestors.

I don't think he claims that, he's merely saying that his continued existence isn't dependent on the continued existence and influence of his father. His father could go out of existence and, presumably, Mick wouldn't be effected other than psychologically.

But then he isn't talking about changes, like he claims, but survival dependency. A rather different topic.

Well he could have picked a better example, he was just trying to distinguish between causes. For example, the sun is the continous cause of the path of the orbits of the planets around it. But this is different from noncontinous causes, like the firing of a gun is the cause of the motion of the bullet.

The argument from first cause, for example, does not engage in special pleading as many detractors mistakenly think, for it is not rooted in a modus ponens or a categorical syllogism. “Either there is an infinite regress of causes (splayed out or looped) or there must be some uncaused cause at the heart of it;this regress cannot be; therefore, there is an uncaused cause.” (Disjunctive Syllogism)

Michael66 wrote:Can anyone elucidate on the difference between the first cause and the unmoved mover? I've never been clear on that.

Michael66 wrote:Thanks Thomas! I see now - 'mover' carries a slightly different meaning than 'cause'. There's an inherent identity of a 'something' more than just a 'somehow'. If I understand right.

For example, a locomotive train moves only inasmuch as the locomotive empowers it, because neither one of the carts nor any collection of them has that causal power on its own. There cannot be an infinite regress in an essential causal series.

Rumraket wrote:For example, the sun is the continous cause of the path of the orbits of the planets around it.

lobawad wrote:Cosmological arguments come in many shapes but are all at the heart based on a disjunctive syllogism.
Either this or that must be true; it is not this, so it must be that.

The argument from first cause, for example, does not engage in special pleading as many detractors mistakenly think, for it is not rooted in a modus ponens or a categorical syllogism. “Either there is an infinite regress of causes (splayed out or looped) or there must be some uncaused cause at the heart of it;this regress cannot be; therefore, there is an uncaused cause.” (Disjunctive Syllogism)

If we accept this argument, we can conclude that the world of cause and caused we observe is simply “made of something that causes”. The same holds true for arguments from first mover, first existent, and so on. Not only is there no need to add a deity to this conclusion, but strapping on some unobserved being makes a mockery of any premise we use in which we depend on “intuitively obvious” assumptions from observation. A wholesome exercise of cosmological arguments does not permit us to shove yet more ontological distinction into our original disjunction.

Mick wrote:Anything that is pure act does not owe its sustenance to any other thing, for it does not have the potential to be any other way. After all, there is no potency to act upon or fail to actualize. Thus, it can neither perish nor diminish. We know that the laws of nature are sustained by this changer, and that they could be different. Thence, the changer is neither governed by such laws nor does this changer fall within their scope (that is, this changer is supernatural or supranatural). We also know that this changer is neither of matter, energy, nor any physical thing, since they are capable of change. Thus, it is amaterial or immaterial; and if space is capable of change, it is spaceless. We also know that it is responsible for all change; and hence it is causal and extremely powerful.

Bribase wrote:

For example, a locomotive train moves only inasmuch as the locomotive empowers it, because neither one of the carts nor any collection of them has that causal power on its own. There cannot be an infinite regress in an essential causal series.

Can we move to strike any referrence to general relativity and big bang cosmology from Mick's arguments please? On the grounds that he doesn't understand classical physics established in the 17th century?

Rumraket wrote:The universe is not a train. Premise also 4 begs the question.

Mick wrote:Therefore, if virtual particles can come from nothing or by nothing, then there seems to be no reason why zebras are excluded from this. (2)

Technically they aren't, it's just that it's very unlikely to happen.

Spinozasgalt wrote:I've wanted for a while to know Mick's preferred reply to the process theist on the question of divine knowledge of contingent beings.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:He hasn't even established that the universe had a beginning.
All he can offer to counter that is his personal discomfort with that possibility.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:I'm definitely backing Mick as the outsider here. The topic is vague enough for him to make a successful case imo.

If the topic had been "for all practical purposes god doesn't exist", i think he'd have a much harder time. But with no limits to the relevance of this deity to reality there are a million angles for Mick to come from.