The funny thing is, I came to the forum today to see if the leaked SCOTUS opinion was being discussed. I found this thread, but didn't notice that it was started by me, two years ago, and that it confirms my powers of prophecy :-)

Bear in mind that Craig believes the past is finite. He has traditionally argued that the big bang confirms this (he may have abandoned that, by now), but nevertheless argues against an infinite past on philosophical principles (in essence: the apparent impossibility of a completed infinity)

Next, he assumes a finite past implies the universe "popped into existence". This is a problematic characterization because it implies there is an existence into-which a universe pops. A finite past merely implies there was an initial, uncaused state, which didn't "pop in", but rather existed with the potential to evolve.

I assume this will result in higher than expected turnout in the mid-term election, and this will help Dems a bit.

It is unfortunate that cancer did not kill justice Ginsburg earlier than it did. — Streetlight

It sounds like you are vehemently anti-choice, but not for religious reasons, based on the comment.

So then, wouldn't it stand to reason that if someone categorizes individual Christians it may end the same way? — whollyrolling

Despite there being plenty of deviation by individuals, if someone tells me they're Catholic, Evangelical Christian, LDS, or Jehovah's Witness, I can make some reasonable assumptions about some of their core beliefs. On the other hand, atheism is so broad, there's not much one can reasonably assume.

Relativist: "It may cloud one's understanding of individuals."

I'm saying that atheism is simple and that peripheral belief systems, much like what happens with religion outside the definition of theism, are not inherent to the labels "theist" or "atheist". — whollyrolling

No individual's belief system is "simple". Of course, you can draw some simple distinctions - like inferring that as an atheist I don't believe in "God", but the sort of inferences you can justifiably make are limited. As an example from personal experience: I've encountered many strawman arguments that "prove" atheism is false, which are pointless if they apply to almost no one.

What objective do you have in mind for drawing certain (simple?) distinctions about atheists (or clusters of atheists)?

You don’t get to dictate systems of belief or lack thereof, nor do you get to dictate how people wish to define said systems. Are you saying there is no diversity among atheistic positions? If so, provide an argument. If not, then there is diversity, thus “forms” of atheism. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

"Forms? "Systems"? Sounds like a post-hoc classification scheme.

I label myself "atheist" because I don't believe in a god of religion (I believe such a hypothetical being does not exist). I also label myself as "agnostic deist": I consider it a live possibility (and only a possibility) there exists some sort of teleological locus - a generic "deity" that establishes a direction for the evolution of the universe.

IMO, most self-labelled atheists have somewhat unique sets of beliefs, like I do. Consequently, it may not be worthwhile to categorize atheists into "forms" or "systems", like one can with religions and denominations of Christianity. It may cloud one's understanding of individuals. But if you feel compelled to categorize, I suggest identifying clusters of beliefs among people who self-identify as atheist or agnostic, while bearing in mind the beliefs of any individual are more nuanced. Perhaps there are some sociological studies that do this. But if you're grouping people based on personal observation, I question the usefulness.

a. While it is possible only one first cause happened, there is no reason that there should be any limitation on the number of first causes, or that first causes cannot happen today.

This necessarily follows from the rule that there are no limitations as to what a first cause can be.

b. Proving if a particular parcel of existence is a first cause may be impossible.

If there are no limitations on what a first cause can be, then a particle with velocity could have popped into existence. If we traced causality back to this first cause particle, we would see it had velocity at its origin. That would cause us to try to find what caused the particle to have velocity. We may very well believe it is another existence that caused the velocity of the particle, when the reality is it was uncaused. — Philosophim

A first cause didn't "happen", it just is (or was). It couldn't "pop into existence", because that implies there is an existence (experiencing time) into which it can pop - in which case, this existence is the first cause.

Velocity is relative (object A has a velocity relative to object B), not absolute - so there is nothing for a first cause object to have a velocity relative to.

I have no problem with there being a first cause, but it seems likely to have been some sort of quantum system.

I was curious how (or if) metaphysical naturalists reconcile a universe governed by only natural laws with free will. I can’t tell if this is only due to a growing skepticism around free will, or what actually seems to be an incompatibility between free will and metaphysical naturalism. I tried searching on here but didn’t see any topics on the matter. — Paulm12

Compatibilism is a view of free will that is consistent with determinism. To understand compatibilism, and how it can be considered "free will", first consider how you would make an important freely-willed choice:

You would try to think of all the consequences, some would be good some would be bad. You might weigh these against one another. You might give greater weight to long term consequences, or perhaps you'd be more inclined to receive a sure short term benefit instead of a possible long term detriment that may or may not occur. All of the factors you would consider would come from you, your mind - your knowledge of the world, your hopes, your dreams, your desires, and your worries and fears.

Now suppose determinism is true. What would actually be different in the decision process? The decision still comes from within, it is still produced by deliberation with all the same factors. Your knowledge of the world would not be any different; you'd have the same hopes, dreams, desires, worries, and fears. Would you choose differently? Why? All the factors that lead to a choice are there.

Free will is generally taken to mean that you could have made a different choice than the one you actually made. Could you have chosen differently if determinism is true? Yes –if you had more (or less) knowledge, had stronger feelings, or were more (or less) willing to take risks... There are factors in any decision, even if the decision is based purely on whim.

*EDIT* I'll add that compatibilism is consistent with moral responsibility. A wrong-doer would have done good had he held different beliefs, so it is incumbent upon society to encourage morally correct belief.

Are there any truly random phenomena in the universe? That, my friend, is the million dollar question. — Agent Smith

The outcome of a quantum collapse is random (not to be confused with uniformly distributed).

Here's a white paper by a company that produces a true random number generator using quantum collapse.

I think that agnosticism is a better and more prudent position when it comes to the existence of God or a Diety then Atheism as per the above definition. The agnostic does not rule out the existence of God whereas the Atheist does. What are your thoughts ? — Deus

My thought is that an individual's beliefs are too nuanced to be fully captured by a label. In a sense, I'm an agnostic-deist - I think it's a live possibility that some sort of entity might exist that intentionally caused the universe. I also consider such an entity's existence to be irrelevant, because IMO, a God-of-religion is not a live option. It's merely logically possible.

OK, then when you said:

"is there a difference in the subjective experience of the believer who tends to believe in true beliefs, versus one who tends to believe in false beliefs?"

--are you applying this to the initial, intuitive hunch, or to a later stage in the belief formation process?

C.S. Lewis trilemma depends on the assumption that the Gospels (particularly John) accurately convey things Jesus actually said about himself. If you believe this, you're a Christian - no point complicating the matter. Seems to give Christians a false sense of security, somewhat like Habernas' minimal facts "proof" of the Resurrection.

is there a difference in the subjective experience of the believer who tends to believe in true beliefs, versus one who tends to believe in false beliefs? — Pantagruel

I don't think that's the best question to ask. It seems to me the real issue is the relative strength of epistemic justification. This filters out the lucky guesses, and doesn't depend on the unstated premise that the truth is actually available to judge whether or not the belief is false.

Unfortunately it’s a dangerous game. Such hoax-worthy lies have brought the US and Russia that much closer to war. Skepticism of the story proved not only right, but prudent. — NOS4A2

The article you linked said:
"U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue."

How do you get "hoax" out of "unproven and possibly untrue"?

It's all good.

TBH, I was surprised at NOS4A2's response. I stupidly assumed everyone would agree that girl deserved to go to prison.

Wrong. In court, Carter's defense consisted of claims that she was exercising her free speech. The Massachusets Supreme Court ruled her speech was not protected because it was, "integral to a course of criminal conduct."

The same applies to Trump's incitement. There are limits to the exercise of free speech.

Just what we need: more authoritarian pantywaists in power chilling free speech. This is a show trial in a kangaroo court — NOS4A2

Michelle Carter exercised her free speech by encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself. She didn't kill him, so why should SHE have been punished when she was just exercising her free speech?

Must we insist that explaining consciousness at a mechanistic level any easier than explaining the subjective first-person experience aspects of consciousness? My hunch is that the so-called easy problem of consciousness at a mechanistic level is equally as difficult as the so-called hard problem at the subjective level. They might even be the same problem. — Wheatley

The "easy problem" is easy because it entails describing certain mental activity as mechanisic/algorithmic processes. It's true we can't map that into neurological activity (so it's still "hard" in that sense), but it's "easy" in the sense that mechanisic/algorithmic processes are consistent with physicalism.

The "hard problem" is hard because it entails mental activity that isn't describable mechanistically. Is that fatal? I don't think so, but it does mean we need to account for these mental functions in some novel way.

Makes a lot of sense.

I think it's just a matter of accepting that some truths are time-indexed, like:

John attended Reagan Elementary school from September 1960 through May 1968.

To be true, the truthmaker (or correspondence) needs to exist somewhere in spacetime.

You have a lot of valid concerns, but what is your wish list of things for a President (your ideal of a President) to do?

Robert Mueller chose not to make a prosecutorial decision regarding Trump's Obstruction of Justice. This was based on two things: 1) the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum, which opines that a sitting President cannot be indicted. 2) Mueller's sense that it would be unfair to make a judgment that the President cannot defend outside of a courtroom.

Mueller included this quote from the OLC memorandum: "Recognizing an immunity from prosecution for a sitting President would not preclude such prosecution once the President's term is over"

Mueller lays out a case for a potential indictment for Obstruction of Justice, that over 1000 former federal prosecutors signed off on as meeting necessary legal hurdles for an indictment.

Personally, I think it would be good for the country to proceed with the indictment, once he leaves office. By going through this, it will establish once and for all that a President is not above the law.

If prosecuted, I'd like to see Biden pardon him - just to show that this was not the sort of political vendetta that Trump so long desired against Democrats.

Not true at all. Most people didn't pick Biden in the primaries because they liked him, but because they thought he was "electable" and most people picked him in the general because he wasn't Trump. They made their decision not based on what they want, but on what they thought other people want. — Mr Bee

That's absurd. ~Trump carry's with it a set of related wants: judges with a broader view of civil rights, better cooperation with international partners, immigration reform, rescuing Obamacare, commitment to rule of law, and to the Constitution. These characteristics were present for all the Democratic candidates, so it made the most sense to me to support the Democrat most likely to win. (And given the closeness if the election, this appears to have been the right choice).

Setting aside issues of infinity, the set of non life-permitting universes is vastly larger than the set of life-permitting universes, so if we were surveying the multiverse (and it contained universes where the constants were different), we would very very rarely see any universes with life. Therefore, the odds of a universe being life-permitting are not the same as the alternative, as you claim. — RogueAI

If there is a multiverse, with a universe for each possible set of values, then it is a certainty that there will be at least one that is life-permitting. Obviously, we would find ourselves in such a universe, so there's no relevant implications.

But let's suppose there is only one universe, and the parameter values are entirely due to chance. The specific set of parameters of our universe is just as (im)probable as any other set. When all possibilities are equally improbable, there are no relevant implications when one of these low probability sets "wins" the universe lottery. Someone had to win.

Yes, this universe is life-permitting. It is as also binary-star permitting, uranium permitting, black-hole permitting, ... and many, many other x-permittings. So what? With other set of parameter values, different sets of things would exist.

The firing-squad analogy isn't an argument for God. It's argument that you can, in certain situations, be surprised by discovering you're alive. — RogueAI

OK, but this is the same sort of surprise that a lottery winner has when he wins: the odds were against it, but it has no relevant implications.

Life is low probability, but low probability things happen all the time.

It's odd because most people choose the candidate that they believe will result in policies they prefer, not just because they like the person's style. Furthermore, many Republicans voted for Trump in spite of his style, and other Republicans voted against him because of his style.

So....no substantive predictions. Nothing that will have a broad impact on Americans. That seems odd.

His only way out of the despair and to try to save face, is to try to make some sham of a legal challenge sound credible. Then when it fails in a few weeks time to grudgingly acknowledge the transfer of power and claim that he will be back in four years. He will need to save face with his base. — Punshhh

Multiple court challenges are inevitable, but I'm skeptical there will be any acceptance. He will go to his grave asserting he's been robbed.

The trouble is that this route will only dig a deeper hole as the US public hates a sore looser.

I wish that were true. His supporters will continue to believe everything he says. I wouldn't br surprised if he still has rallys.

I fear more of the same, specifically the public relations politics, where an administration can get away with anything so long as it utters the fashionable bromides and ticks the right identity boxes. — NOS4A2

That's a prediction about style. What bad thing will Biden actually get away with?

I think Biden's record with race and segregation and war and corruption and lies is well enough known to predict that it won't be the best of administrations.

You will judge it "not the best" no matter what happens. Make specific dire predictions you will stand by.

Hey Nos - Make some predictions for the next 4 years. Share your worst nightmares.

If they further amplify the accusation of fraud, more and more people will believe it. — Echarmion

That's true, and it's why we should embrace their taking it to the courts, where actual evidence is needed.

What if he tries to start some international crisis? What will the military chain of command do if Trump gives them some dangerous order? Remember, the military is all about chain of command, chain of command, chain of command. Who in that chain of command is going to stand up and say, "Nope, we ain't doing that"? — Hippyhead

A military officer needn't obey an unlawful order. I think this may provide enough wiggle room to refuse to nuke another country. Plus, Trump is isolationist to the core, and he still craves the love of his minions. Finally, he has this fantasy of running again in 2024.

What kind of trouble might a humiliated narcissist cause during the transition? — Hippyhead

He's going to pardon himself, his family, and all his henchmen.

The biggest danger is that some armed right-wing groups will start some trouble, and Trump will praise and encourage them.

The values of a bunch of physical constants are "balanced" on a knife-edge for life to exist in the universe. If they had been just a little bit different, the universe would have failed in some spectacular way. — RogueAI

Failed at what? Was the universe required to produce life?

If we assume those fundamental constants could have differed, then this universe (which happens to be life permitting) is low probability - but the exact same low probability as every alternative. Each of the n possible universes had a 1/n chance of winning, so it was a certainty that the winner would be that low 1/n probability.

Every lottery winner is surprised when he wins, but it's not the sort of surprise that should lead anyone to think the lottery was rigged for that outcome.

Suppose you are to be executed by a firing squad of 100 trained marksmen — RogueAI

The problem with the firing squad analogy is that it treats life as a target. So if you assume God wanted to create life, it implies he had to finely tune the constants to meet that goal. So as an argument for God's existence, it's circular.

Solipsism has been a wound on my mind, mostly because it's unproveable and unrefutable. Some people say it's true, some believe it, some say it's the default position and that the solipsist doesn't need evidence but the realist does. I'm not sure who to believe to be honest and I'm rather weak on this matter. — Darkneos

Contrary to your assertion, I don't think anyone believes solipsism is true. It's a hypothetical viewpoint, and it teaches us something.

Why is no one a solipsist? Because we have a innate way of perceiving the world, and it includes recognition that there is a world external to ourselves, and there are other beings. This constitutes a belief that solipsism is false.

Consider what it takes to change a belief. Usually, it's because we encounter contrary evidence. Occasionally, it's because we decide the basis for our belief is suspect (the latter is what leads some theists to atheism). But there's no evidence for solipsism, and the basis is innate - which is consistent with evolution.

Clinging to a belief doesn't prove the belief is true, but the mere possibility that it's false is not a good reason to drop it. Face it: you really do perceive an external world. If you'd never heard of solipsism, you'd never have entertained it.

Since solipsism can't be disproved, you should accept that it is logically possible, but this ought not to concern you. Let it be a lesson that we have beliefs that can neither prove nor disprove, and be OK with it.

n any case of course they're trying to shame you into (theoretically) voting Biden her — BitconnectCarlos

Is that really true? Is anyone really trying to NOS4A2 to vote for Biden?

I'm not. I just try to understand why he (and others) supports Trump, and to assess whether or not his judgments are principled or thoroughly partisan.

My impression is that many people use the term "fascist" inappropriately. What they're trying to convey is someone is conveying a point of view that is similar to that of the guy who wrote these words:

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction.
The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes.

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are.

Once understood how necessary it is for propaganda in be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:
It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance.

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.

Trump is horrible at bringing people together, but the Dems are no better — Hanover

I agree with much of the sentiment in your post, but have a problem with this part.

When Trump gets criticized for some nastiness, his supporters cry out, "yeah, but look what leftest person X said. " But Trump is one guy, who says this crap constantly. No single person on the left is like that. Nearly everyone says something inappropriate at times, but no single person is a firehose of constant divisive bullshit. This is Trump's claim to fame, or flame. If he loses, it will be a message that we won't tolerate this behavior. If he wins, it encourages more of the same.

No one can deny that the apostles believed Jesus resurrected, but that begs the question on what basis do they have this belief? It is either the case that Jesus physically resurrected or that an alternative explanation must be true. — Josh Vasquez

False dichotomy. We don't really know exactly what the disciples believed. There is a poem that asserts Jesus "appeared" to various people, but the most likely explanation is that some of them sensed his presence - which is a common experience of people who have lost a loved one.

Regarding martyrdom, there's no good evidence of anyone dying for insisting they'd seen a resurrected Jesus.

Your entire argument is boilerplate apologetics that Christians tell each other, and accept uncritically, that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

do you think Hunter's involvement with Burisma had nothing to do with his dad being VP and his dad having made prior efforts to clean the place up? — Hanover

It certainly had everything to do with his dad being VP. I would prefer that people not capitalize on their parent's position (are you reading this Ivanka and Jarred?)

Do you really think Joe got zero financial benefit from that or that he had no idea what his little boy was up to?

There's no evidence of it, and fanciful speculation ought not to be reported as fact.

Do you think there is no story here at all and that it ought not be reported by any news outlet other than Fox and that Facebook and Twitter should block it?

I'm fine with reporting facts, and the facts include the murky means by which these emails became available. They also include the content of those emails, along with their dubious authenticity.

I'm not fine with reporting that the facts constitute "smoking gun" evidence that a crime was committed, because they don't in the least. If the emails are accurate, it suggests Biden agreed to meet with someone. Shall we list the people Trump has met with that seem somewhat suspicious?