Doing evil in order to achieve the good is not justified in Christianity and Islam, generally speaking. — Thorongil

EVEN if you believed that it was permissible to kill an infant to gain the benefits of heaven for the victim, you would still be held responsible for the infant's(s') death and would likely be punished severely. — Bitter Crank

Right.
And so, going by such faiths, presumably the killer ends up down below, and the infant up high.
Or something.

There is no alleged policy in the supposedly blesséd imaginary hereafter that justifies any action in the only world we actually know anything about. As far as we know, beneficial and harmful consequences for any action are limited to this present world. — Bitter Crank

:D

As an aside, euthanasia has come up in the public in recent years.
The context here is mostly the "right to die" and "assisted suicide" movements.

Let me repeat: nowhere have I claimed it permissible.

On a satirical note, here's The Onion on the topic: God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule

It is you who thinks it is permissible. — Πετροκότσυφας

I do not.
Consequences of breaching "permissible" extends to the killer alone in this case (surely not the infant).
Consequences to the infant (if the answer is "yes") is heaven and eternal bliss with God.

, you're hand-waving.
It's not about definitions, but about what people believe.
In case you answer "yes" to the question, you've affirmed the killer's goal.

Let's say that the answer is yes (whatever this thing you call "heaven" is). What does this have to do with the murder of an innocent child? — Πετροκότσυφας

As per above:

while going by said tenets, the reasoning itself is sound, and the killers accomplished the goal — jorndoe

... of which there are examples.

Note, though, it's not me calling it "heaven". It's part of the faith system. How much sense does it make?

This addresses none of my points, though. — Πετροκότσυφας

There's a simple question involved, going by said faiths:
If an innocent child is killed, then will they go to heaven?

I lean towards the views of Peter Singer. Infanticide, despite its scary-sounding verbage, is probably not morally problematic because infants aren't even capable of futural thoughts or even are conscious. To say that it is morally wrong to take the life of a young infant is, in my opinion, probably unfounded equivocation. — darthbarracuda

Going by the tenets, the argument extends somewhat beyond infant age.
Might go by some notion of innocence, or mortal sin or other passage to hell.
(It all seems rather arbitrary in any case.)

Around 200 children have been killed as collateral damage in US drone strikes on Pakistan in the last ten years. I don't recall the moral justification for this in the Founding Fathers' words of self-constitution. These are actual deaths, not imaginary ideologically-inspired deaths. — mcdoodle

As an aside, ISIS have displaced 100,000s of children. :(
The examples in the opening post are not imaginary deaths.
Anyway, children are easy victims.

• Attorney: Woman thought God told her to kill sons (CNN; Mar 2004)
• The Numbers Are Staggering: U.S. Is 'World Leader' in Child Poverty (Paul Buchheit; AlterNet; Apr 2015)

Not sure how much there is to define. The tenets are just common beliefs, like taught in Sunday school.

The creeds further maintain that Jesus bodily ascended into heaven, where he reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, and that he will return to judge the living and the dead and grant eternal life to his followers. — Christianity (Wikipedia article)

• Source: Christianity (Wikipedia article)

Muslims view heaven as a place of joy and bliss, with Qurʼanic references describing its features and the physical pleasures to come. — Islam (Wikipedia article)

• Source: Islam (Wikipedia article)

Which are the basic tenets you are referring to? — Πετροκότσυφας

Very basic... Heaven (bliss with God), hell, innocent children, eternal souls, ...
Hinduism (or some flavors thereof) is different if memory serves.

He sees no difference in kind between the biblical account of the past and how we came to be, and the scientific account. — dukkha

Ehm...

Suppose I was to proudly proclaim "there was snow on the peak of Mount Everest last Wednesday localtime". What, then, would it take for my claim to hold? Why that would be existence of snow up there back then of course, regardless of what you or I may (or may not) think.

Certainty and knowledge are not the same. (For some proposition, p, certainty that p means you'd also have to know that you know p, ad infinitum.) The hard part of epistemology is justification. And with all the problems (induction, the diallelus, biases, etc) a strong methodology/standard is required.

Science is fallible model → evidence convergence; empirical, self-critical, bias-minimizing. The convergence methodologies are commonly inductive, but deductive reasoning is of course used.

Does your relativization of science also extend to medicine (and your family doctor)?

, by all means, fill in the blanks, take a ride down the indefinite path of the diallelus.

How dare they! There ought to be an inquisition! — Wayfarer

By Jove, no. Already had some. Big mistake. :)
Apologists are busy trying to marrying science and religion; some theists are busy trying to deny evolution (and whatever else they don't like) when they find it incompatible with their theism.

You guys are like a room full of puppy's. — Punshhh

"Why, you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!" :)

It's quite simple. You see that Colin has had mental health issues, so he must be delusional. — Punshhh

No, not (necessarily) delusional; I personally know people of a whole variety of outlooks, that are just ordinary folks.
Conversely, I'm not going to lie, or encourage/reinforce any.

Arkady No, what Dawkins should do, is realise that whether God exists or not, is not a matter for science. It's really very simple. — Wayfarer

Isn't that what apologists try to do?

I think the Catholics have a much better set of arguments for natural theology. — Wayfarer

Quoting your Catholics link, underline emphasis mine:

Fr. Spitzer is a Catholic Priest in the Jesuit order (Society of Jesus) and is currently the President of the Magis Center and the Spitzer Center. Magis Center produces documentaries, books, high school curricula, adult-education curricula, and new media materials to show the close connection between faith and reason in contemporary astrophysics, philosophy, and the historical study of the New Testament. Magis Center provides rational responses to false, but popular, secular myths.

Some theologians seems to be trying to marry up science.

If you understand that 'creation mythology' is just that - mythology - then the fact that it didn't literally occur has practically zero bearing on the religious account. — Wayfarer

Sure, but it does have impact.

• ‘He had to die,’ accused mother tells police in son’s killing
• Coverage of the Kimberly Lucas case
• Pastor's wife dressed her three daughters in white 'before stabbing two so they could meet Jesus for the end of the world'
• Mom kills son believing boy would be better off in heaven

But why take the lives of innocent children?
[...]
Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives. — William Lane Craig

• Source: Slaughter of the Canaanites (Reasonable Faith; Aug 2007)

A doctrinal problem with Christianity and Islam?

1. killing an infant should give the infant safe passage to heaven
2. so the killer would be doing a major self sacrifice ("thou shall not kill"), for the sake of the infant
3. the killer did a selfless act to save someone else
4. the killer did good (we can assume the infant was at no time in pain)
5. you ought kill infants, sending them off to eternal bliss, saved (might even be a win-win)

The dark side of Pascal's Wager? You know, just a matter of being on the safe side?

And this is just one class of examples.

@Hanover, since you seem a staunch proponent of the cosmological argument, I hereby invite you to partake in the discussion:

http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/487/the-kalamcosmological-argument-pros-and-cons/

Presumably you haven't experienced God as Colin has, or you wouldn't be bothering to write this. — Punshhh

In my experience many have had epic experiences (including me). :)

I can't tell what colin's experiences were, though.

And I continue to experience them, even this afternoon at church. I was so overwhelmed by what I was experiencing I had to fight back tears throughout. — colin

This is a feeling I can't really put into words — colin

I think it's quite simply magic. — colin

Except, strongly emotional it seems.

Good to hear that you're feeling well, colin.

The expressed certainty ought to warrant some caution and some attempt to minimize bias, though; especially since what you claim implicitly applies equally to everyone (and more or less literally everything, for that matter).

Recall, purely phenomenological experiences are part of the experiencer, not something else. That's also the reason there's no such thing as telepathy, and why these "special" experiences are private.

if anything significant differentiates perception and hallucination, then it must be the perceived — Searle (paraphrased)

Personal revelations are notoriously incompatible and incoherent, yet sometimes engender making quite extraordinary (or universal) claims. Say, if someone claimed they were abducted by aliens, would you then take their word for it (you might think they were lying or being honest about their belief alike)?

We already know that some kinds of experiences can be induced by a variety of simple means. We also know that mere inwards self-examination has inherent limits. We're hardly perfect perception-organisms (and cats jump at shadows).

I suppose relevant questions might include if these experiences directly influence your decision-making and social interaction? And why you think there's a personified (extra-self) being of sorts involved? How did these experiences inform you, and of what...? (Have you honestly given other options a chance? Compared them with your current thinking? Perhaps spoken with various other people?)

A modern version of this argument is used to show the Big Bang could never have happened. If eternal Time exists (in big-T Newtonian dimensional fashion), then there would have had to have been an infinite amount of time elapsing before - suddenly, in a bright flash - our Universe got created. So therefore never enough time could pass to arrive at that point.

A better answer is that the Big Bang was the start of time, as well as space. So we can't think of the pre-Bang as a temporal dimension - except in some far simpler metaphysical sense yet to be articulated scientifically. — apokrisis

Right. I guess contemporary cosmology will have it that temporality is an aspect of the universe. So, where causation (among others) is temporal, causation is also an aspect of the universe.

Anyway, it seems to me the principle of sufficient reason is hiding somewhere. That is, if the universe has a definite age, then a sufficient reason is sought for this particular age. If the universe does not have a definite age, then it would have to be infinite or "edge-free".

I've come across a few logical/deductive arguments that the universe cannot be temporally infinite, and others that it must be. :) At closer inspection it seems none of them hold, though.

When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout! — wuliheron

:D

Will Donna Summer (1977) do?

I'd be interested in any objections to the objections, that hence finds this peculiar argument (deductively) sound.

time is continuous — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe.
I don't think the argument intended zero-dimensional "moments", or a particular quantification, as such.
It was given to me in a much less formal format; it's also possible my rendition remains a bit hokey. :)

A quick observation:

If we argue from Big Bang models, i.e. extrapolate to a definite earliest time, then other infinites just show up instead, infinite density and temperature.

Temperature may be a better label than time for the evolution of the universe

Perhaps time is the wrong marker.
Perhaps what we call time is merely a labeling convention, one that happens to correspond to something more fundamental.
The scale factor, which is related to the temperature of the universe, could be such a quantity.
In our standard solutions, the scale factor, and hence the temperature, is not a steady function of cosmic time.
Intervals marked by equal changes in the temperature will correspond to very different intervals of cosmic time.
In units of this temperature time, the elapsed interval, that is, the change in temperature, from recombination till the present is less than the elapsed change from the beginning to the end of the lepton epoch.
As an extreme example, if we push temperature time all the way to the big bang, the temperature goes to infinity when cosmic time goes to zero.
In temperature units, the big bang is in the infinite past!

In an open universe, the temperature drops to zero at infinite cosmic time, and temperature and cosmic time always travel in opposite directions.
In a closed universe, on the other hand, there is an infinite temperature time in the future, at some finite cosmic time.
A closed universe also has the property, not shared by the open or flat universe, of being finite in both cosmic time and in space.
In this case, the beginning and end of the universe are nothing special, just two events in the four-geometry.
Some cosmologists have argued for this picture on aesthetic grounds; but as we have seen, such a picture lacks observational support, and has no particular theoretical justification other than its pleasing symmetry.

If we are looking for clues to a physical basis for the flow of time, however, perhaps we are on the right track with temperature. — Foundations of Modern Cosmology by John F Hawley and Katherine A Holcomb

The no-boundary hypotheses do not have any of these, but are sometimes dismissed as counter-intuitive.

Here are some bad/good (nonsensical) things about it — andrewk

I apologize for any poor wording. :)

Let me try adding details, some of which go one way, others another:

1. if the universe was temporally infinite, then there was no 1st moment
2. if there was no 1st moment, but just some moment, then there was no 2nd moment
3. if there was no 2nd moment, but just some other moment, then there was no 3rd moment
4. ... and so on and so forth ...
5. if there was no 2nd last moment, then there would be no now
6. since now exists, we started out wrong, i.e. the universe is not temporally infinite

As before

• items 1,2,3 refer to non-indexical moments (1st, 2nd, 3rd), but 5 is indexical (2nd last, now), which is masked by 4
• 6 is a non sequitur because the argument only shows that, in case of an infinite past, now does not have a specific, definite number (1st, 2nd, 3rd, ..., now)

There are some extrapolating arguments from evidence that the universe was not temporally infinite (e.g. Big Bang models, entropy, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem).
These may vary a bit on the no-boundary hypotheses.

I was mostly interested in the logical argument here.
If someone shows that anything but a definite earliest time is impossible, well, then that's the most rational scientific pursuit, for example.

Personally, I think there are better arguments by intuitive appeal (I can post some if anyone's interested).
Seems to me the argument isn't sound.

these days arguments of the impossibility of an infinite past are only made by people that do not understand mathematics well — andrewk

Yep, especially for logical arguments.

Sample objections:

A more accurate conclusion (sequitur), 5,6, is that now does not have a specific (whole, positive) number.
And that would be the case if there were an infinite amount of prior moments.

You'll notice that items 1,2,3 refer to non-indexical moments (1st, 2nd, 3rd), whereas 5,6 is indexical (now).
This is masked a bit by item 4.
There are examples of indexical and non-indexical information being two classes of knowledge.

With an infinite past, the present, now, does not have any particular number, if you will.
Or, alternatively, any numbering is equally fine.
Item 5 a non sequitur.

I guess "every soul is a world apart", if you will, because self-awareness is sort of private?
I don't experience your self-awareness, you don't experience mine, we can't (unless we become the other) - we're apart (in that respect).
Self-awareness is essentially indexical, a kind of self-knowledge, and bound by ontological self-identity, like a kind of noumena.
Perhaps, by Leibniz, self-awareness is (implicitly or explicitly) integral to "soul", and thus inherently private (in part)?
As to phenomenological experiences, is your red my red, as it were?

This seems somewhat related to @Mongrel's angle #1.

, does that mean Platonism holds...?

Not a whole lot of objections to the attempt at letting abstract numbers fall back on the more concrete world. :-/

The difficulty is, though, that whatever the 'substance' is, that appears as 'mind' from some perspectives, and 'matter' from others, is neither! So, work that one out. — Wayfarer

The diallelus applies, whether you bring up mind, matter or whatever. Some apparently think that matter is simple, uninteresting, lacking, yet that's false; plenty questions in that area of inquiry.

Perhaps, then, a more interesting question is whether both sides of these apparent dualisms can be accounted for. Not necessarily derive one side from the other, just account for both coherently, contextualize sufficiently (without multiplying entities to no end).


Aristotle was right about mathematics after all; James Franklin; Aeon Essays; Apr 2014

I know of Ramanujan. Studied some of his mathematics many years ago. One of my (several) heroes. There are many known (child) prodigies in all kinds of areas. Ramanujan was surely one of them.

directed towards providing a naturalistic account of numbers — Wayfarer

In the opening post I suggested one more concrete account of abstract numbers, which is somewhat different. Whether or not this account holds up, was one of the intended discussion points.

It seems some of the posters find some sort of dualism inevitable...?

If there were an infinite amount of sand, storing it might be problematical, because there wouldn't be room for anything else..... — Wayfarer

Hilbert's Hotel says differently. ;)
It's called a paradox, but it's not actually contradictory, it just has counter-intuitive implications.

Well, you cant account for numbers that way. — tom

One of the intended discussion points.
Where does it go awry?

I suppose a conundrum is that I (or whomever, doesn't matter) take abstract numbers just as serious as not taking Platonism serious.
Is measuring quantities, counting or physics examples of instantiating abstract numbers? (If yes, then it seems a kind of Platonism.)

This paper, for example, is about t=0 and it has 487 citations!

http://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.27.2848 — tom

Indeed, there isn't anything stopping us from doing serious research.
Why would there be?
Such research may even be fruitful, who knows.

I'm not you, you're not me, the two of us may chat about the number 2.

numbers are ideas — Punshhh

With the opening post I tried to account for abstract numbers by falling back on the concrete world.

If we speak of just 3, the abstract number, then it becomes more concrete when we speak of 3 Hollywood celebrities, 3 meters across the yard, ...
Kind of analogous to speaking of hypotheticals, if you will.

If my attempt (at falling back on concretes) works, then we could perhaps remove such numbers from Platonism?
(That was an intended discussion point. Where's Nagase?)

I don't think anyone disputes that axiomatic set theory is abstract.
I suppose there's a question of unwarranted ontologization involved somewhere as well.

It seems @apokrisis, we have a situation where you could just pretend to be me, and have at it. :D Please go ahead. You mentioned something about realism (not I)?

(I'm not sure where your sudden demand for personal confessions came from, but feel free to jump ahead.)

In the lack of a reply on the question of how you ontologise quality. The first rule of naive realism is explaining is losing, so just deflect. — apokrisis

?

Where do you see naïve realism, @apokrisis?

(I'd ask the cows, but they always chase me off the field, and don't carry a cellphone.)

What is inflation, expansion? — Metaphysician Undercover

A fictional law firm.


Err... The terms just refer to epochs and changes over time as per the model. Lots of technicalities. Many years ago things were much denser.

Big Bang; Wikipedia article

Reminds me a bit of 1984:

How many fingers, Winston? — O'Brien

···



— How many cows, Thinker?

The quantity of cows seems real enough to me. Surely there are 3 cows regardless of anyone walking around counting them. Remove the cows, and just "3" (supposedly) remains? Well, not really, but perhaps it's surprising (to some), that there are some structural consistencies among such quantities, regardless of the subjects?

Quoting Philosophy 103 (cheatsheet) at Lander University, just for the usual technicalities:

The quantity of a categorical proposition is determined by whether or not it refers to all members of its subject class (i.e., universal or particular). The question "How many?" is asking for quantity.

The quantity of a standard form categorical proposition determines the distribution of the subject (such that if the quantity is universal, the subject is distributed and if the quantity is particular, the subject is undistributed), and ...

There being Euclidiean geometry and non-Euclidean geometry doesn't create a Paradox. These belief that all geometry is Euclidiean is just false. — ssu

Right. I tend to agree. Seems @Wayfarer does as well.

If it weren't, you would want to check your change very carefully. X-) — Wayfarer

But maybe @Barry Etheridge doesn't?

As it is not always true in this world I would have thought it perfectly obvious that it is not. — Barry Etheridge

I take it you're not a Platonist @Barry Etheridge?

Dealing with numbers as things in themselves is the door to madness. — Barry Etheridge

Personally, I'm not much of a Platonist. Yet we do this sort of thing all the time. See the 3 cows over there?



We identify, differentiate and predicate them, coming up with a set (or just "those cows over there"), which, in turn, has a property, a cardinality which is 3. If the set both had 3 members, and not 3 members, then the law of identity (or the law of non-contradiction) would be violated, and something similar could be said of each of the 3 cows individually.