Posted: Apr 07, 2011 5:07 pm
I've been thinking about this lately and would like to check this for consistency.
In this post, Hackenslash points out that we do not witness things coming into existence at all, only different states of pre-existing matter and energy. Hack is right on a macro level of course, but we have good reason to say that on the sub-atomic level things genuinely do pop into existence as a product of stochasticity.
So if we take Scar's point upthread and run with it we can construct a syllogism (although only as logically sound as WLC's) based on our observations.
1. All things that have been oberved to come into existence do so uncaused.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe is uncaused
Of course it would be very stupid to employ this kind of argument since one point does not follow from the next in Kalam nor my own syllogism, it is only really useful to employ WLC's own appeal to intuition (Which is essentially what Kalam is) against him. Kalam makes about as much sense as the syllogism:
1. All men have a mother
2. Therefore, mankind has a mother.
What do you reckon?
In this post, Hackenslash points out that we do not witness things coming into existence at all, only different states of pre-existing matter and energy. Hack is right on a macro level of course, but we have good reason to say that on the sub-atomic level things genuinely do pop into existence as a product of stochasticity.
So if we take Scar's point upthread and run with it we can construct a syllogism (although only as logically sound as WLC's) based on our observations.
1. All things that have been oberved to come into existence do so uncaused.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe is uncaused
Of course it would be very stupid to employ this kind of argument since one point does not follow from the next in Kalam nor my own syllogism, it is only really useful to employ WLC's own appeal to intuition (Which is essentially what Kalam is) against him. Kalam makes about as much sense as the syllogism:
1. All men have a mother
2. Therefore, mankind has a mother.
What do you reckon?