So, what did you put in google then?
What am I implying about you? Or, to put it another way, what am I entailing about you? That makes sense, doesn't it?

Well they do not mean the same thing at all.

Imply does not mean entail.

Infer does not mean imply

Refute does not mean deny

Raise the question does not mean beg the question

Disinterested does not mean uninterested

And so on.

Now, why would you want me to provide you with a source, when you can't even perform a simple google search? You're dishonest, no? You want me to take the time to provide you with a source for something that you could discover by a simple search (or by simply taking down the dictionary), and that you are then going to check out that source and read it, yes? That's what you want me to do - to provide you with a source that you're then going to hunt down and read, yes? You're going to do that. You can't do a google search. But you want me to provide you with a source that you're then definitely going to go away and read?

Paris is the capital of France. "Can you provide a source on that, because I think Canberra is".

Do a google search or, you know, go back to school and pay attention this time around.

That's a huge mistake. Perhaps there is some device - some searching engine, we might call it - that one could use to establish the truth of the matter

Yes, implies is weaker than entails. If something is entailed it means it is the case.

That one thing depends on another does not entail that the former existed before the latter. As I keep explaining.

So when I inferred a causal relation was responsible for the correlation between my flicking the light switch and the light coming on, that was a mistake?

Surely it implies causation, though does not entail it. On what other basis does one infer causation's presence?

Note, I am not saying that we always infer causation - we are, in our own case, directly aware of it (I am directly aware that I am causing my intentions, for example). But when it comes to the external world, we posit causal relations to explain correlations.

What do you mean by 'necessity' then? Why do you think it implies 'exists before anything else'?

Well they do not aid understanding, do they. They obscure it.

Correlation does not entail causation. But it does imply it.

To return to what you seem to be interested in, temporal precedence is implied in necessity; however, it may not be so for all. — Agent Smith

What on earth are you talking about?

So why did you use symbols?

I do have a soul. And I'm a philosopher.

I'm a philosopher.

Do you think implies means the same as entails?

And why did you use symbols and not words?

I don't know what that means - what do the arrows mean?

To A. Smith: if you think you can get Bartricks to agree with anything, then you set yourself up to a Gargantuan task. Moses could get water out of a rock for his people in the desert by simply asking, and rather convincingly. Moses himself could not squeeze an agreement out of Bartricks, in my opinion. — god must be atheist

You think a random collection of claims constitutes an argument!

Karlen: please ignore Bartricks. In my opinion he or she is nothing on this site but an angry, cantencerous, and hugely illogically thinking naysayer. His biggest and only quality contributions on this site is the word choices and phrases he uses to berate and dery his conversations partners. — god must be atheist

HOw condescending. Who do you think you are? Let other people make their own decisions. Christ.

P.s. I harbour no more ill feelings for Bartricks; I did have some difficulty dealing with him in the early days of my existence here. I do warn new users, however, and that is the only purpose of this post, to be wary of his antics. — god must be atheist

Oh yeah? SO that post was what, then? That was an expression of ill feelings. You really are a very confused person. Confident, condescending and confused. The four cs.

Correlation does imply causation.

I flick the switch. The light comes on. That keeps happening. The reasonable conclusion is that there is a causal relation between my flicking the switch and the light coming on.

Objection: but there are cases of correlation without causation.

Reply: yes, but 'imply' does not mean 'entail'. if one thing is correlated to another, then it is reasonable to suppose there is an explanation of this and that explanation will cite causes.

Then it exists necessarily a — TheGreatArcanum

No it doesn't. That's you just insisting that if a proposition has always been true, then it is true of necessity. Stop begging the question.

Now, once more: try and show how the law of non-contradiction shows how if something has always existed, it thereby exists of necessity.

You're having one of two thoughts right now - you're either thinking "shit, I am being hugely outclassed here and need to run away or have my face blown clean off by the force of this guy's reason" or you're thinking "this guy is making no sense whatsoever - he's clearly the biggest idiot here for nothing he thinks seems like anything I think. Better go - can't profit by reasoning with someone this stupid".

Which is it, punk?

ok. Is it eternally true, or did it become true in some moment of time, and if so, how long will it be true and when will it become false again? — TheGreatArcanum

I think it's always been true. But perhaps I'm wrong about that. Doesn't matter: the important point is that it is true.

Now show me how that law somehow entails that if something has always existed, then it exists of necessity.

by definition, if something exists contingently, it does not exist necessarily, and therefore had the potential to come into and out of being (which is not true of something that exists necessarily because it is eternal). — TheGreatArcanum

You don't seem to understnad what I am asking you.

Something can exist and its existence can be contingent, yes? (Not something I beleive - for I believe 'contingent' is nonesense - but it's something you believe).

So, the fact something exists is not evidence that it exists of necessity.

You've be a total fucking spanner if you reasoned 'X exists....therefore X exists of necessity" yes? FOr then everything that exists exists of necessity -which, I take it, is not something you think?

So, does anything stop a thing that exists at one moment from existing at all others? No.

So, imagine that thing - the thing that is existing contingently now - existing at all monents.

Does it now magically exist of necessity? No. You: yes. You're wrong.

it is logically impossible for an entity to exist eternally and not exist necessarily. — TheGreatArcanum

No, that's just you asserting what you're mistaken about. Say it as often as you like, it's not going to be true.

Again: X exists contingently. Now imagine X existing at every moment in time. Now it exists eternally. But it still exists contingently.

You're just confused matey.

this follows necessarily from the law of non contradiction. if you do not make the distinction between necessary and contingent beings, you cannot make a distinction, conceptually, between eternal and non-eternal beings (or relations), and you cannot simply presume that non-eternal beings do not exist without proof (which I presume is what you’re going to do next). — TheGreatArcanum

What?

Show your working. You don't seem to know what important words mean. So, the law of non-contradiction says that if a proposition is true, it is not also false. Yes?

I think that's true.

Now, show me how you get from that law to the conclusion that if something exists eternally, it exists of necessity.

Presumably you realize that if something exists contingently, then that can be consistent with it actually existing? Or do you not understand that?

So, if object X exists contingently, then that's consistent with it actually existing.

Now imagine that object x exists at every moment in time.

It's still existing contingently, isn't it? Or are you now going to deny this becasue you now can't accept that you were wrong to confuse 'exists of necessity' with 'exists eternally'?

Of course, if you are just using the word 'necessary' to mean 'eternally' (and 'contingent' to mean 'not eternal') then I do think that there are necessary and contingent existences!

they are not different. — TheGreatArcanum

Oh, ok then. Jesus.

And no, if something exists eternally it does not therefore exist of necessity. Bloody hell. This is basic.

If something exists of necessity, then it exists eternally. The reverse does not hold. You know, because 'eternal' doesn't mean 'necessary'.

Look, if you're using the word 'necessity' to mean 'eternally' then you're misusing a word. Not my fault. Yours.

what you mean to say is that “there are no necessary or contingent truths except for the truth that “there are no necessary or contingent truths,” and this is a self-contradiction. — TheGreatArcanum

No, I know better than you do what I mean to say.

I said it is true that time exists.

I say it is nonsense to say that time exists 'of necessity' and nonsense to say 'time exists contingently'. Just as it is nonsene to say 'time exists hoitily' or to say 'time exists of toitily'.

And I say that it is 'true' that there are no necessary truths or contingent truths. I do not say that is necessarily true, for that would be to speak nonsense.

Take anything that exists now. Can you imagine it existing yesterday? And the day before. Keep doing that until you get to the first moment. Now you're imagining it existing eternally. And yet it exists 'contingently' not of necessity, yes?

These are different notions, then. Which is just as well, for eternal existence makes sense, whereas 'necessary' existence is nonsense.

how can it be possible for something to exist eternally and exist not necessarily, but contingently. this is another logically impossible state of relations here… — TheGreatArcanum

Can't you see that 'eternal' and 'necessity' are different?

when you say that “logical necessity is logically impossible,” you cannot do so without contradicting yourself, for the proposition is either necessary or it is not necessary and therefore contingent, and if it is contingent, it is true sometimes and not at others, and also, necessarily continent and not possibly contingent. do you see how your using the category of necessity to deny the possibility of necessity here? — TheGreatArcanum

You're begging the question. Remember: I deny the reality of necessity and contingency.

Look, do you deny that there are any hoity truths?

Are you also prepared to deny that fact that the present logically follows from the past and that the past and present do not exist simultaneously? — TheGreatArcanum

No, I do not deny that. Why would you think I would deny that?

You cannot deny the existence of the categories of necessity and contingency without denying the existence of time. — TheGreatArcanum

Yes I can. There are no necessary truths or contingent truths. But it is true that time exists. There.

secondly, it contains contradictions, for the first like part of the statement says that both floors are eternal and the second part says that the second is it eternal. if they both exist eternally, they are both exist necessarily. — TheGreatArcanum

No, you're conflating 'exists of necessity' with 'exists eternally'. They're different. The first entails the latter, the latter does not entail the first. You're affirming the consequent.

irstly, this is a logically impossible hypothetical scenario, so there’s no point of even trying to use it as a mental experiment. — TheGreatArcanum

No it isn't. That's question begging. Explain how it is logically impossible. (It's from Kant)

Imagine that for all time there has been a two storey building. Imagine the first storey exists of necessity, but the second does not. The second depends on the first. but the first did not exist before the second. One exists of necessity and the other, though it depends on the first, does not. But the second was not temporally prior to the first.

I am not sure what you mean by “skeptic about necessity?” — TheGreatArcanum

I mean that I do not believe it makes sense as a concept. And nor does 'contingent' either. So I do not believe that reality contains 'necessary' and 'contingent' existences. There's just what exists. Nothing that exists exists of necessity or contingently, for those are empty terms. They say nothing about what exists. And no truths are necessary or contingent for the same reason.

If one tries to define a necessary truth, one will have to make mention of contingency and so one's definition will be 'a necessary truth is not a contingent truth'. And if one tries to define a contingent truth, one will be able to do no better than 'not a necessary truth'.

And so necessary truths and contingent truths are no different from hoity truths and toity truths, where a hoity truth is not a toity truth and a toity truth is not a hoity truth.

So, my claim that necessity is unreal is just true, I would say, and is neither necessarily true nor contingently true, but just true.

I don't understand your response to L'elephant.

I am a sceptic about necessity. But putting that aside, if A exists of necessity and B depends on A, A and B can nevertheless exist simultaneously. That is, in the beginning A and B can exist. Yet A exists of necessity and B contingently. Not that 'necessary' and 'contingent' mean anything, of course.

Your MO is to find a thread I have started and then not bother reading the OP but instead to make an inane comment and then post a crying with laughter face and then make a witless remark. It's tedious. :vomit: At no point do you say anything remotely philosophical or even mildly amusing. You're not adding value.

Now, again: read the OP and say something relevant to it or go away.

This thread is not about the coherence of theism. So pointing out that, in your view, the divine attributes contradict, is neither here nor there. It's false - there's no contradiction involved - but more importantly, it is not what this thread is about. You consistently fail to focus on what threads are about.

This is about the coherence and plausiblity of Christianity.

And what I am arguing is that there is no reason for a Christian to make a certain claim - a claim that they almost invariably do make. And that claim is that the world is God's creation.

I don't want a psychological or historical explanation of why Christians typically make that claim.

THis is a philosophy thread. So I am only interested in philosophical reasons.

There are three broad philosophical reasons why CHristians might think they need to make the claim. First, that it is made in the bible and they are committed to the view that the bible is a source of insight into how things are.

So I pointed out that it is not in the bible. The claims made in the bible do not explicitly refer to this place and could plausibly - much more plausibly, given their content -be about somewhere else.

Another reason is because it may be thought to be implied by the divine attributes. I explained why that is not so.

The third reason, is that certain arguments for God - such as the first-cause and design arguments - posit God as the cause of all else. But those are bad arguments and anyway a CHristian is not logically compelled to endorse them.

Note: I would never, ever, read anything you have said twice.

So, read the OP - you clearly didn't, or you lack the understanding necessary to appreciate what it said - and then realize how your previous post made no sense whatsoever.

Do that. Or go away. Or post little crying with laughter faces. That's the only form these interactions between us take, for you have nothing to say, right?

Read the OP.

If you read the OP you'll realize that I am talking about the God of Abraham and pointing out that nothing in the bible commits one to supposing he created the world.

These points are, of course, too subtle for the likes of you.

But standards of rationality change. Slavery was an accepted institution in ancient Greece. The slave Epictetus was a Stoic, which makes sense. But then so was Marcus Aurelius. So rejection of an argument at a social level could be the institution of a new rational standard — Pantagruel

I don't understand what you're saying. My claim is that to be rational is to be reason-responsive. that is, it is to recognize and respond to reasons to do things and reasons to believe things.

But you have said something quite different and that does not challenge what I have said, whether it is true or not.

Let's say that the character of Reason has changed over time such that, other things being equal, what we have reason to do today in circumstances S we would not have had reason to do 1,000 years ago in exactly the same circumstances.

How does that challenge the idea that being rational involves being reason-responsive? A highly rational person today would get the impression, today, that they have reason to do X in circumstances S. But if they had been around 1000 years ago in identical circumstances they would have had the impression that they have reason to do Y in circumstances S.

So it seems to me that you are mixing two quite different topics. There is the question of how stable the rational aspect to reality is (the aspect that 'being rational' involves recognizing and responding to). And then there is what it is to be rational.

For an analogy: imagine you had asked 'what is it to see things?' And someone offers an answer. It is no response to say "but things people saw 1,000 years ago they do not see today".

That's totally fine. Based on how you use the term - I disagree. — Benj96

With what?

I don't think a person can be omnipotent (they can't create stars, levitate or teleport), they can't be omnipresent — Benj96

Read the OP and try and focus on what it is about.

The writer of Genesis employed the term 'day'. If I say 'day' you interpret me to mean a 24 hour period or thereabouts. That is the reasonable interpretation of the term.

Now, if you want you can insist that every single word in Genesis - hell, every single word anywhere - means something different. But that'd be unbelievably stupid and unjustified, yes?