As presuppositions go, I don't see overwhelming evidence that the world we think we know is rational or ordered. Humans impose reason and order because we are pattern seeking machines. One could just as well argue that the universe specialises in black holes and chaos and kills most of the life it spawns, often with horrendous suffering. Life on earth is one of predation - for many creatures to eat, suffering and death are required. Why would a universe be designed to produce such chaos and suffering and a natural world which wipes out incalculable numbers of lifeforms with earthquakes, fires and floods? Why would a universe of balance have within it so many meaningless accidental deaths in nature, along with endless horrendous diseases and concomitant wretchedness?
Plantinga has a brilliant mind, but his brilliance is very limited by his nescience with respect to 'the' scientific picture and naturalistic perspectives. Unfortunately Plantinga is only able to present straw men to attack with the EAAN. Admittedly the EAAN can be highly effective as an apologetic that maintains others in a state of nescience similar to that of Plantinga.
Much like the universe is not, traditionally in the West, of itself an aspect of God but instead is God's creation
That said, I think arguments like Plantinga's, if successful, do more than just show us our epistemic limits. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If your theory of the world is self-defeating, if there is a contradiction in your justification for having true beliefs, it's worth looking at how you can avoid this problem. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Death, suffering, chaos, etc. all only make sense in terms of living things so those issues seem anterior to life existing, more in the bucket of "the problem of evil." — Count Timothy von Icarus
That PSR is a far assumption for our world has no doubt be challenged, but I think those challenges still are a small minority viewpoint. And that makes sense to me, after all, we don't see pigs materialize out of thin air, second moons appear in the night sky, chop a carrot and have one half turn to dust, etc. There are law-like ways to describe the behaviors of the universe at both the macro and microscales. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'll have to think about that more. It seems to me that the "end" does not exist until it is actualized. Thus, God's desire is posterior to the existence of the end. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Not super relevant to the topic at hand, but I think it would be interesting to unpack why this strong tradition of seeing God involved in sustaining all things, filling all things, came to decline in favor of the "divine Watchmaker," or a God who mostly doesn't act in the world and only sometimes intervenes, and who always does so supernaturally. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm not sure this is correct - for evil to exist, this seems to require free choice. How can something be evil if it is the necessary requirement for existence, built into it by the creator/evolution? The notion of predation, so much a part of the natural world of animals, must then imply that the natural world is evil. Do you subscribe to this? Manichaeism holds to this view. Earthquakes, fire and floods are built into how nature functions, how can they be evil? Are black holes evil?
I'm not sure this works for me. You talk about 'law-like'. But even in using the term 'laws' this implies a lawgiver - there's a prejudice built into the language
Could not many of our accounts of the world be more about us than the world itself?
Do these say anything about a creator or about purpose?
How can death and suffering exist without life? Something has to be alive in order for it to die, right? That's all I was getting at. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Is there? When people talk about "the laws of physics," or "natural laws," I don't think they're generally presupposing any sort of "lawgiver." — Count Timothy von Icarus
My point is that this sort of argument runs into the problem of then having to explain why the multiverse only creates certain types of universes, that is, ones with "physical laws." — Count Timothy von Icarus
To be sure, there is some interesting stuff in the philosophy of religion, but it seems very rare for it to actually change people's opinions or even influence theology much. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think reason counts much in the god debates. You either buy the idea or you don't. — Tom Storm
The premises of arguments for God depend greatly on intuitions, and intuitions (key to making the arguments seem like sound arguments) tend to get reinforced on Sunday mornings. — wonderer1
What are the chances that our world should be a rational one? To put the question more concretely in the terms of physics: is it likely for a universe evolve from state to state, such that past states dictate future ones? Or, is the apparent rationality of our world evidence for a designer? — Count Timothy von Icarus
When I think of defensive, perhaps even aggressive reasoning, I tend to think of apologists. Especially the presuppositionalists. — Tom Storm
Most atheists I know (certainly those who are not in America and don't have to face fundamentalists) are complacent and don't care much about the arguments for or against god. Their atheism is often a kind of lazy cultural scientism. You know the kind of thing - 'science makes sense, god's don't.' — Tom Storm
I don't associate aggressiveness with apologetics so much as naive confidence — wonderer1
The cultural gap is just too wide. — wonderer1
WLC is skilled at presenting arguments, and conveying the sense that any reasonable person must come to the same conclusions he does — wonderer1
But I don't think the concept of god is a crossword puzzle to be solved over the weekend, with cups of tea and some hard thinking. If reason, time and space emanate from god's nature (and who is to know if this is the case?) then god presumably transcends such strictures and as such is likely unintelligible. — Tom Storm
He's definitely a very smart man but I find his style reminds me of a used car dealer, haranguing you to buy the product. For my taste he's too slick, too fast, too insinuating. — Tom Storm
When I was 16 or 17 I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and not having much in the way of exposure to philosophy, I was impressed and felt ready to argue with any atheist I had the chance to. — wonderer1
Wow. Same book and same attitude for me at the same age. I loved that dude back then. — plaque flag
How thing have changed, eh? — wonderer1
Oh yeah. I've been an atheist so long that I can enjoy theological metaphors now. — plaque flag
I fail to see how calling it something different changes the problem. Why should the uncaused and wholly unexplainable manifest in just one convenient way? Why can you have an uncaused first state but not an uncaused last state, a sudden uncaused end? — Count Timothy von Icarus
If a universe can blink into existence for no reason then it seems it can blink out of existence for no reason. In which case, maybe we should just assume the world, including ourselves and our memories, just began to exist in the past second, since that gives the universe less time to have vanished into the uncaused void from which it came? — Count Timothy von Icarus
IMO, an infinite regress seems more appealing. Such an infinite regress doesn't really require or specify the God of any existing religion either, so if I have to bite the bullet either way... — Count Timothy von Icarus
IDK what you definition of state is. I figured you were talking about states in terms of physics, since physics is relevant to the cosmological argument. In physics a state is simply a set of variables describing a system at a given moment. Systems come into being and go out of being all the time in physics. However, they are all, to some degree, arbitrarily defined. We can give systems a definitive definition because we are the arbiters of what a system is, but that subjectiveness isn't helpful here.
Anyhow, defining the problem out of existence doesn't seem compelling. "An uncaused event can occur, but only once because of how we've defined our terms." It's a weak tautology IMHO. If all events can be described by physical state changes (a core premise of physicalism) then the line between "event" and "state transition" seems weak. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The uncaused has no limits, no cause can dictate its occurrence. What principle can explain why the uncaused can only be prior to the causal? I don't think definition does it. States transition causally, but its easy to imagine unchanged state transition and even build such things in toy universes. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.