Your source of confusion seems to be my usage of the term "eternal". "Eternal" is usually used to refer to something that exists infinitely long into the past and infinitely long into the future. However, we don't really know that the past is infinite, and there are reasonable arguments against an infinite past. So even if the past is finite, we can still use the term "eternal" to refer to something that exists at all times. See definition number 4 here:Eternal (def)

Also consider the fact that William Lane Craig believes the past is finite, but still regards God as existing eternally.

A "finite past" means it's caused at some finite point, you're contradicting — SpaceDweller

Two independent problems with that:
1. Existing at all times means it never DIDN'T exist, so how do you infer it was caused? Seems a nonsequitur.
2.By definition, nothing existed prior to it, therefore no prior causes are possible.

existing at all times = eternal = infinite
correct?
if not what do you mean? — SpaceDweller

Not correct. A finite past with initial conditions entails existing at all times.

Reality didn't come into existence. — Relativist


That's exactly the question. If material reality, thermodynamic time with a 3D space, inflates into existence automatically and periodically on a TD timeless 5D quantum vacuum spacetime structure with the right shape and virtual particles... — Hillary

You are making a number of questionable assumptions and then demanding an explanation of "why". I'm a naturalist - but I don't pretend to know the fundamental nature of reality nor even the conditions that gave rise to the big bang. To ask "why are things as they are" implies that you believe there was an intelligent designer (or designers) who chose to create the world that exists, and therefore must have had a reason. Naturalism implies the world is not an intended consequence, so there's no reason for it.

Right, "IF", but what is your argument for eternal universe. — SpaceDweller

To be clear, I'd define "eternal" as existing at all times - which does not require an infinite past.

Why think the "universe" exists at all times? Because nothing comes from nothing.

Your "proof" depends on the assumption that, in the absence of a god, nothingness should be expected. Can either of you defend that assumption? — Relativist


Yes, because, nothing comes out of nothing. — SpaceDweller

Reality didn't come into existence.

If material reality is the totality of reality, then it exists uncaused, and at all times. The notion that it had to "come into existence" is incoherent, because "coming into existence" entails a time at which it didn't exist, followed by a time at which it exists.

Why is nothingness expected? — Jackson

There's no objective reason to believe nothingesss expected, but theists believe the material world is contingent - exists only because God chose to create it.

Ah, why is there something rather than nothing?
Because of God.
Awesome reason indeed!
— SpaceDweller

Yes, agree. — Jackson

Your "proof" depends on the assumption that, in the absence of a god, nothingness should be expected. Can either of you defend that assumption?

You could push away the popping into existence to an infinite past — Hillary

Doesn't require an infinite past, just initial conditions.

To say its an eternal structure makes sense only from the emergent thermodynamic, unidirectional time perspective, as experiences in the two universes emerging on it periodically (each new pair with a new beginning in time). The question is: who the fuck made that 4d structure? Answer: gods created it to run a material version of the eternal etherical heaven on. — Hillary

If indeed the arrow of time is associated with thermodynamics, this doesn't preclude a (thermodynamically) static quantum system from being the fundamental basis from which it emerges.

Something is uncreated. IMO, it's more plausible to think that intelligence emerged gradually, rather than existing uncaused in a complete form, because intelligence implies a great deal of organization.

How can dead stuff, out of which life evolved, just exist, even eternally, without a cause, or better, a reason for its existence? Letting it pop into existence by some "mindless spark", like brother — Hillary

Why can't the material world exist eternally (ie at all times, even if the past is finite)? This doesn't entail "popping into existence", it means never NOT existing.

The issue with abortion is that it shines a light on when we, as a society or as individuals, acknowledge that some life have the right to life. At what point do we as either a society, or as an individual, recognize that another life has the the right to life? — Harry Hindu

I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but How do you propose we do that as a society? You seem to accept even a late term abortion if the woman's life is in danger. Even this implies you are valuing the woman's life over the fetus. Perhaps we could do this as a society through education, rather than through legal mandates.

That's the thing - who speaks for those that cannot speak of their suffering? It seems to me that if a life attempts to flee or fight back against being killed then we don't necessarily need a language to make it known to others that some organism is suffering. This is why I think that most people agree that killing a zygote creates less suffering than killing a fetus with a brain and nervous system that reacts to an abortion doctor killing it. — Harry Hindu

Sure, nearly everyone agrees that inflicting pain on other organisms should be avoided, but this includes inflicting a lifetime of hardship on a 14 year old girl who's been date-raped. I expect you'd agree in such a case, just as you do regarding cases in which a mother's life is in danger. But what other exceptions might be you consider reasonable if you had perfect knowledge of each situation? Laws are problematic because they can't make value judgments.

Again, this isn't me imposing my view on others. It is asking about when a life without language deserves the right to life. — Harry Hindu

It's reasonable for everyone to consider this, as long as it isn't codified into law because of the inherent ambiguity. I return to my point about education.

I didn't think so until I saw women bragging about having an abortions. What would be the goal a woman is trying to achieve by bragging about it, or calling it joyful? — Harry Hindu

If a woman had a late term abortion simply because she changed her mind about having another child, that's absolutely abhorent. Legislating it is another matter, but that's apparently not what you're arguing for.

I would do what I am doing now - question the consistency of such a position when they believe that killing viruses and bacteria is a good thing. I wouldn't consider an abortion a good or evil thing - just a necessary thing from some people. In my opinion, terminating the life of a zygote isn't much different than terminating the life of a virus. Terminating the life of a fetus is approaching that area where morality begins because we cross into that gray area of a language-less organism having the right to life or not. Do only organisms that can use language and make others aware of their suffering via utterances deserve to live? — Harry Hindu

Fair enough, and I feel pretty similarly about it.

how do you interpret this lack of a strict moment of dichotomy to weigh in on the issue? — javra

It implies there is no basis for creating legal restrictions on abortion based on protection of an "individual human life".

It's interesting that the draft SCOTUS decision doesn't take a stand on the human personhood of a fetus. It merely denied a right that women should have (irrespective of whether it's constitutionally protected as a technical matter) by permitting states to create arbitrary restrictions. IOW, per SCOTUS, a woman doesn't have a right to choose, but the state does have the right to choose for her.

IMO, reason is a concept grounded in truth and meaning. A statement carries meaning, and is a bearer of truth value. Various qualifiers and connectives carry meaning that affects statement truth value in well defined ways. We reason by applying these meanings consistently. Consequently,I see no metaphysical mysteries associated with reasoning, other than the "hard problem" of consciousness.

The pivotal question to this issue remains: at which point does a bundle of human cells actually become a human being? — javra

There is no specific point: an individual human life gradually emerges during the development of that "bundle of human cells".

Consider that there is no set of necessary and sufficient properties for "human personhood". We can identify traits that most humans have, ranges of DNA, and reference to parenthood,, but it's impossible to narrow any such properties into being necessary and sufficient.

This is simple to resolve. Instead of just two categories (man vs. woman or person vs. non-person), there could be three or more. — Harry Hindu

What would be the purpose of defining such things, and what makes you think there would be a consensus? If you're just proposing that an individual do this for themselves, I'm fine with it. I'm just not fine with imposing a definition on people who may legitimately disagree.

Then the question is who suffers more and who has the power to prevent the greater suffering in using contraception instead of relying on abortion as the only option to prevent a birth? — Harry Hindu

Who decides on who is suffering, and to what degree? These judgments will necessarily be based on one's subjective beliefs because there's no objective measure of suffering and no objective identifier of what constitutes an individual human being.

I don't see anything wrong with using a morning-after pill to abort a pregnancy because I don't see a zygote as a something that can be self-aware or suffer. The longer you wait, the more it becomes an issue.

This sounds a reasonable basis for you to decide on when you should or shouldn't get an abortion. But it's not based on objectively true standards, so how could you justify imposing your view on others?

The only reason I can see for having a late-term abortion is because the woman's life is in danger.

Who decides on the level of risk women are required to accept (e.g. "more than likely" she'll die? 50-50? 25%risk?)Is there some reason to think women are getting late term abortions for a reason that is so bad that it needs to be made illegal? I've seen no statistics on it, and my impression is that people feel it should be banned because it sounds gruesome (It IS gruesome!) without considering that there may be good reasons (such as health risks).

I think that the words of a statute prevent some people from doing evil things. — Harry Hindu

I understand, and in the abstract - it's a reasonable objective. In practice, there are problems. Louisiana was considering a law that would treat any act that causes the death of a zygote as a homicide, including a morning after pill, in-vitro fertilization, and failure to medically implant a fertilized egg in an entopic pregnancy. The legislators who favored it believe they would be preventing evil things from occurring.

I'm interested in talking to those that can do the "right" thing even when not threatened with prison.

We ALL want people to do the right thing, but there's an element of subjectivity in deciding when something is wrong and there are nearly always exceptional circumstances that make any firm legal boundaries problematic in special cases. Why isn't it "the right thing" to trust women to do what's right for themselves, and refrain from creating restrictions that limit their choices?

It's so wonderful that the abortion dicsussion is done mostly by men. And that most women who participate in it protect the interests of men. — baker

:ok:

We could consider flushing a load of wriggling sperm cells through the toilet an act of ethnic cleansing.. — Hillary

Yes, and sex is genocide, even if one of the little wrigglers is lucky enough to survive.

I don't think "the mind" is a thing; rather, its an abstraction of all the processes that we categorize as mental.

I'm trying to make it easy by starting off with traits that we know make a thing a person. In talking about extremes, you are admitting that there are easily discernable traits that make one a person vs. not a person. If not, then the use of the term, "extremes", is meaningless. — Harry Hindu

No set of traits can draw sharp boundaries that fit all analyses. E.g. if humans have 46 chromosomes, then men with XYY syndrome don't fit; evolutionary history: there's no sharp boundaries in species' emergence.

That said, for most cases of criminal law, it's not problematic- there's no confusion or disagreement, no sorties fallacy. But there IS disagreement in terms of fetal development, and the problem isn't solvable by creating a definition. But that is exactly what anti-abortion advocates try to do. It's not fair for me to insist they drop their religion-based belief that a zygote is a human being with a soul, but neither should they force their view on others - particularly on those who may suffer. We should all accept there's disagreement that is honest and sincere in terms of identifying some point in fetal development as a dividing line.

quote="Harry Hindu;694655"]Asserting that there is no objective means of defining a person opens the door for anyone to define it how they want, and then use their own definitions to then kill and enslave others that they do not define as a "person".[/quote]
That door is always open, unfortunately, and the risks aren't eliminated by pointing the evil-doers at a lexicon.

Let's say that there are 5 traits that define a thing as a person. If a thing has two or less of these traits, then that thing does not qualify as a person, three or more it does.

Let's say that instead of 5 traits, there are 6 traits. We now have an even number of traits, so it stands to reason that it is possible for some things to have three of these traits. I'm asking what that thing would look like, or if there are any examples of such a thing.

I'm aware that we would first have to agree on the traits and the number that define a thing as a person, and that would be our starting point, but for now I'm simply contemplating the possibilities. — Harry Hindu

In some legal respects, a corporation is a person. What would need defining is: individual human person., but the fundamental problem is that it's a fuzzy concept - agreement on some specific set of traits would be virtually impossible. For example, I'd argue that a zygote clearly isn't an individual human person, because a zygote is a cell that can produce more than one person (monozyogtic twins, triplets, quadrupelets...), whereas many Christians disagree (a zygote has a soul; if it divides - God tosses in another soul...). So...it seems to me, it's all a matter of opinion, and it's inappropriate to force your opinion upon others.

Regardless, 'phenomena' means 'what appears', 'a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen'. That is a matter of definition. The idea that phenomena constitute the totality of experience is commonplace, but mistaken. — Wayfarer

You're mistaken. I suggest you go to the
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and do a search on "phenomena". Here's a couple examples:

This IEP article on Laws of Nature:
"On the other account, the Necessitarian Theory, Laws of Nature are the “principles” which govern the natural phenomena of the world. "

IEP article in explanation:"Historically, explanation has been associated with causation: to explain an event or phenomenon is to identify its cause."

But notice that 'phenomena' means 'what appears'. — Wayfarer

No. I was referring to physical phenomena, not to perception. If you choose not to trust your perceptions, that's an entirely different issue.

I agree they exist in nature, within the objects that exhibit them. I have a problem with assuming they have independent existence, because that raises more unanswered questions.

My view is, all of these primitive or basic intellectual operations such as number and logical principles underpin the process of rational thought and language. We're not conscious of them, as we see through them, and with them, they're the architecture of reason. But as our culture is overwhelmingly empiricist in outlook, then we don't consider them real, as they don't exist 'out there somewhere'. And for empiricism, what is 'out there somewhere' is the touchstone of what is real. — Wayfarer

IMO, the touchstone of what is real is the physical world and the physical stuff in it. I'm not inclined to assume non-physical things exist if the relevant phenomena can be adequately accounted for in physicalist terms. That makes it superfluous. Humans are adept at abstract reasoning, rooted in the way of abstraction, whereby we consider properties of things independently of the things. Our ability to discern redness does not imply redness existing independently of red objects. Same with numbers: there exist groups of 3 objects, but this doesn't imply "3" exists independently of the things that exhibit the "threeness" property. There are logical relations between the numeric abstractions (like 2+2=4), but again, this doesn't entail the independent existence of these numbers.

Not only do these abstractions seem superfluous, their independent existence requires accounting for how they relate to the physical world. I have 4 marbles in my hand. Does this fact depend on some obscure relation between an amorphous set of marbles and the number "4"?

I believe in the concept of 'laws of nature', but I don't believe they can be described as physical. They precede the physical, they are what first must exist in order for there to be anything physical. — Wayfarer

Where do laws of nature exist? In the mind of God? Platonic "third realm"? How do these nonphysical laws influence physical things?

I have a deep confusion about why philosophy sees this disconnection between logical necessity and physical causation — Wayfarer

They are different categories. Logic consists of correct rules of reasoning. Causation is a physical phenomenon, reflecting a physical relation.

Law realists (e.g. Armstrong, Tooley, and Sosa) solve the problem of induction by proposing that there are laws of nature, not merely relations between objects (as Hume suggested). A law is a physical relation between types of things.

With a simple majority vote (50 plus 1 from Kamala), Democrats could change the filibuster that would allow for a legislative codification of Roe v. Wade to pass with another simple majority — Maw

Republicans will eventually be in the majority, and can then easily strike down that law, not to mention the ACA

It is logically impossible for infinitely many intervals to have passed.

Points of time don't exist. Nor points of space. — Hillary

Irrelevant. We can examine the passage of time in countable, discrete intervals.

The continuum can't be broken up in the first place — Hillary

Sure it can. The real number line can be divided into discrete, equal intervals mapping to integers. There have been infinitely many temporal points of time since yesterday, but we can divide it up into 24 1-hour intervals.

This is what I was talking about when I said that language cannot express this. Creation implies a temporal event: The thing exists, and it didn't earlier, but if there's no earlier, it isn't really a creation, or a 'becoming' for that matter. — noAxioms

"God exists timelessly sans creation" refers to the counterfactual case, the non-actualized, metaphysically contingent possibility in which God did not choose to create the universe. So it doesn't entail a time before time. Craig relies on atemporal causation, which seems to entail God and the universe's initial conditions coexisting at t0. But Craig doesn't commit to this. He says that God could exist temporally prior to the universe (a time before spacetime), because he's omnipotent. So I don't think there's a logical problem.

, you said otherwise earlier:
Craig says the past is finite (his KCA depends on it), and God chose to create spacetime
— Relativist
so I assume that was said in error. God created or fired-up time, and then created a 3D universe (space, not spacetime) in that time. — noAxioms

No, not an error. Although spacetime is a package deal, omnipotence means he can behave temporally without the full package. So he's not going against general relativity, just saying God's not constrained by it. The assumption of omnipotence is quite a convenience when constructing a metaphysical account.

mostly arguments from incredulity — noAxioms

That is his Forte.

So you can't count infinity to yesterday.

But (thermodynamic) time can naturally emerge from a state without time yet. So it doesn't need God to be created. — Hillary

I pretty much agree, except for the phrasing "without time yet"- this sounds like there's a point prior to time. My view is that there is an initial point OF time (t0). IMO, there could be multiple thermodynamic arrows of time emerging from initial conditions, each causally independent of each other, but retrospectively converging at t0. This is a hypothesis of Sean Carroll. (I don't know if it's true, but it seems as reasonable as anything).

if God created spacetime, that's a structure of which time is a part, not a structure in time — noAxioms

Well, Craig also says that by creating time, became a temporal being. One of his slogans is, "God exists timelessly sans the universe, and temorally with it". So he does not consider time to merely be a dimension of spacetime, and he absolutely rejects block-time.

to propose the creation of a spacetime structure, one has to posit a 2nd kind of time that is entirely separate from the time that is part of the structure.

Not necessarily. Craig is a presentist: only the present exists and it is universal (includes God). In terms of special relativity, God has a privileged point of view.

IMO, Craig's views are coherent, albeit that they depend on some questionable metaphysical assumptions.

I honestly don't think there's a single correct answer. One can only draw boundaries and apply them consistently, but you may draw the boundaries differently than I.

Personally, I draw the boundaries as beginning when the rudimentary mind emerges during gestation, and terminating when that mind ceases to exist at death. Of course, both boundaries are fuzzy (there is not some instant of time at which a mind begins to exist), but that's true of many things (at what precise length must whiskers be, to be a beard?)

Some believe in haeccity, the theory that identity is something irreducible, but just IS. Your haeccity could inhabit your body, Taylor Swift's body, a cockroach body, or no body at all. I reject it, but it's a means to "solve" the problem of identity.

Why needs time to be created? — Hillary

Because (according to Craig) everything is created, except for God).

Aleph0 is countable. — Hillary

Yes, the set of integers is a countable set (unlike the real numbers). But the problem I'm referring to is that a temporal counting process would never end - it cannot reach infinity.

Time proceeds in countable increments
— Relativist

What do you mean here? — Hillary

This:

Well, aleph0 is countable. — Hillary

There is a successor function that "counts" from one transfinite to the next, but you can't count integers (corresponding to a day, for example) and eventually reach aleph-0.

If the first big bang started infinite big bangs ago, then the serie is created infinite time ago. — Hillary

You're treating "infinite" as a number, and transfinite math doesn't solve the problem. Time proceeds in countable increments, and you can't count from aleph-0 to today.

Bear in mind that Craig believes the past is finite.
— Relativist
He says that? Then God didn't create time? How unomnipotent of him. — noAxioms

Yes, Craig says the past is finite (his KCA depends on it), and God chose to create spacetime, and to become temporal himself.

If you go fast enough you can reach billions of lightyears in 80 years. Only the CMBR poses a velocity limit. — Hillary

Even removing the speed of light limitation, you still need to accelerate to some maximum velocity halfway there, and then decelerate for the second half. Acceleration potential would be limited by the amount of G force humans can sustain for a long period. Need a large (or renewable) energy source. Dillithium crystals are in short supply. I wish you luck on your journey!