Posted: Apr 13, 2011 7:09 am
Working through Craig's arguments is like wrestling with a jelly monster. They look solid enough at first, but once you try to come to grips with it they become all squishy and hard to pin down.
Is it? I'm quite happy to say that the universe exists "by the necessity of its own nature", not least because the phrase "necessity of its own nature" is wooly enough to be re-defined in answer to any objections.
I find this a peculiar objection from the man who wrote:
I'm guessing Craig is happy to make up possibilities here because this allows him to "refute" them. Dummy up a few bogus alternatives, find the flaws, and conclude "if they're wrong I must be right".
Why would each and every quark need to exist necessarily for the universe to exist necessarily?
This is just muddled, and it requires a bit of guesswork to work out what he's trying to say.
He creates an incoherent position (matter is made of quarks, which are composed of matter), and then "demolishes" it. Impressive.
If h'e's trying to argue that the universe must take the form it actually has then this contradicts his earlier point that stars, galaxies, etc could have "failed to exist" (although I'm sure he'd wibble over "necessity in its own nature" vs other types of necessity). If they could have failed to exist than configurations could have been different, contradicting the point he seems to be making here.
Craig appears to see the universe is essentially just a finite collection of discrete objects made up of quarks, with the odd non-material bit such as radiation. So when he asks "how did all these things create themselves?" it seems absurd.
But it's by no means clear that the observable universe is "all there is", and there are plenty of candidates for how the observable universe came into being without needing to poof itself into existence, such as the ekpyrotic model of the universe.
Craig: creating confusion for Christ since 1979.
Teuton wrote:Shrunk wrote:
I don't follow why it is not permissable to state the the universe exists "by the necessity of its own nature", but it is permissable to claim this about God.
"…The atheist has one alternative open to him at this point. He can retrace his steps, withdraw his objection to premise 1, and say instead that, yes, the universe does have an explanation of its existence. But that explanation is: the universe exists by a necessity of its own nature. For the atheist, the universe could serve as a sort of God-substitute which exists necessarily.
Now this would be a very radical step for the atheist to take, and I can’t think of any contemporary atheist who has in fact adopted this line
Is it? I'm quite happy to say that the universe exists "by the necessity of its own nature", not least because the phrase "necessity of its own nature" is wooly enough to be re-defined in answer to any objections.
The reason atheists are not eager to embrace this alternative is clear. As we look about the universe, none of the things that make it up, whether stars, planets, galaxies, dust, radiation, or what have you, seems to exist necessarily. They could all fail to exist; indeed, at some point in the past, when the universe was very dense, none of them did exist.
I find this a peculiar objection from the man who wrote:
The bottom line is: physics doesn’t deal in possibilities. Possibilities come cheap. What we want to know is where the evidence points.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=8662
and
In order to show that an argument is no good, it is not enough for the sceptic to show that it’s possible that a premiss is false. Possibilities come cheap. I’m puzzled that so many laymen seem to think that merely stating another possibility is sufficient to defeat a premiss.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=8533
I'm guessing Craig is happy to make up possibilities here because this allows him to "refute" them. Dummy up a few bogus alternatives, find the flaws, and conclude "if they're wrong I must be right".
But, you might say, what about the matter out of which these things are made? Maybe the matter exists necessarily, and all these things are just different contingent configurations of matter... The universe is just the collection of all these quarks arranged in different ways. But now the question arises: couldn’t a different collection of quarks have existed instead of this one? Does each and every one of these quarks exist necessarily?
Why would each and every quark need to exist necessarily for the universe to exist necessarily?
Notice what the atheist cannot say at this point. He cannot say that the quarks are just configurations of matter which could have been different, even though the matter of which the quarks are composed exists necessarily. He can’t say this because quarks aren’t composed of anything! They just are the basic units of matter. So if a quark doesn’t exist, the matter doesn’t exist.
This is just muddled, and it requires a bit of guesswork to work out what he's trying to say.
He creates an incoherent position (matter is made of quarks, which are composed of matter), and then "demolishes" it. Impressive.
If h'e's trying to argue that the universe must take the form it actually has then this contradicts his earlier point that stars, galaxies, etc could have "failed to exist" (although I'm sure he'd wibble over "necessity in its own nature" vs other types of necessity). If they could have failed to exist than configurations could have been different, contradicting the point he seems to be making here.
Now it seems obvious that a different collection of quarks could have existed instead of the collection that does exist. But if that were the case, then a different universe would have existed...
Similarly, a universe made up of different quarks, even if identically arranged as in this universe, would be a different universe. It follows, then, that the universe does not exist by a necessity of its own nature."[/url])
Craig appears to see the universe is essentially just a finite collection of discrete objects made up of quarks, with the odd non-material bit such as radiation. So when he asks "how did all these things create themselves?" it seems absurd.
But it's by no means clear that the observable universe is "all there is", and there are plenty of candidates for how the observable universe came into being without needing to poof itself into existence, such as the ekpyrotic model of the universe.
Craig: creating confusion for Christ since 1979.