Kalam Cosmological non-debate analysis

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_huckelberry
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Re: Kalam Cosmological non-debate analysis

Post by _huckelberry »

Stem wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 2:36 pm
I listened to part of the video now so I wanted to comment on something Craig said. But, I wanted to also add the comments in this thread to this point are very fascinating, and beyond my pay grade, so there's plenty I'm missing in all of this.

Craig suggested it's universally accepted by theists that God is not composed in parts. To bring this into the Mormon context, that is not true. For Mormons God was just like us, a materially composed spirit combined with a materially composed other body. I don't see how that really means anything eternally, but for Mormons it means everything somehow. If God is both spirit and body, then it is obviously best if we too end up both spirit and body...but the spirit is body too....ah well. If Mormons can fit reality into their religion, then before the Big Bang, if we go with that as the point of time start, then what was there besides other universes with other beings and other gods, plus us in some molecularly scattered state? If Mormonism then Craig argument which seems to be nothing more than an argument made to conclude an assumption, is simply nonsense anyway because all we have is an eternal regress of cause.

Anyway, back to his argument, he states two premises and then concludes a cause. Even if we grant the first two premises, there's no reason other than religious assumption, to think God. Of course God is such the nebulous concept, as mentioned above, that even if it were God, it hardly means Craig's Christian personal God.
Stem, I think your observation is correct that the argument points to a something, an unknown something, which may or may not be like Craig's Christian personal God. People have observed that all of the versions of cosmological arguments have that problem. One can argue that all change is happening under the control of some infinitely powerful order which is the ground of being but is that a personal God? Aquinas being an alert thinker looks to revelation at that point of the argument.

I think it is of some value to use the arguments to ask if or how ones ideas of God qualify for the word. People do use the word in different ways. Long ago some wags called the guitarist Eric Clapton god. The meaning there is more superlative than ground of being but nobody was confused. If some being is claiming to be the authority over you it makes sense to ask why. For most theist God is your creator, the creator of the order and natural laws of the universe in which you live ,completely understands you and the people around you. Considering authority over you I think it is important to add that God cares for you.

Traditionally God is the source of the order with which pieces of things work together so God cannot be made of pieces coming to gether and changing. This is a very different picture of God than Mormons use. I think if you consider it can appear that Mormon understanding God is receiving power and authority from some source which is eternal light truth etc and fits the traditional God concept except known to us only through intermediary finite person. Without that source I cannot see how Mormon conception of God would have power and authority and be viewed honestly as God.
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Re: Kalam Cosmological non-debate analysis

Post by _SteelHead »

Problem with all cosmological arguments for the necessity of god is that they ultimately rely on a special exception of something that is uncaused. A primary uncaused cause. The cosmological argument grants that exception to god, but why is that valid? If we can grant an exception for god, we can grant an exception for universes.

The obvious question is "whence came god?" or "why is god given an exception to the premise?"
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener at war.

Some of us, on the other hand, actually prefer a religion that includes some type of correlation with reality.
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_Gadianton
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Post by _Gadianton »

Physics Guy wrote:Just because we can envision both these extremes, though, why should we rule out anything in between?
That last post was a bit stream-of-conscious. I didn't imagine the two options to be on the same continuum. I guess the question is "what do we mean by God?" For individualists in the West, we gravitate toward God as one of or a combination if not conflation of a) physical necessity b) logical necessity c) anthropomorphic comfort.

My "extreme" options reflect (a) and (c). Quantum mechanics already shows that reality is nowhere near shallow, and God must be deeper than all of that in order to be the explanation for it (a). But for Mormons who are raised believing God is the ultimate male role model, they can't fathom anything other than a loving but rugged head of the family as what the very word "God" refers to (c). They are fine with the universe existing independent of God, and God being subject to "universal laws".

Of course Mormons grapple with impulses of (a) and (b). Physically, who created God? His Father! and if there is a multi-verse with bubble universes then each one has it's own God. They feel like God must be tied to ultimate causes in physics and they try to work it out, but they are confused as hell about the terms of that relationship. The answers await "in the next life". But (b) is just as important. Though Mormonism condemns philosophy and creeds, the pull of the ontological argument is at work in Mormon thinking. God's father is greater in creations than God, but not in power and knowledge. Christ is also a God, and will eventually have all the same physical power and knowledge as God. But if that's true, then isn't Christ a little better than his father since he did this huge thing of dying for the sins of the world? That won't do, and so God must have been a Christ on his home planet! The pull of logic, the ontological argument and paradoxes of infinity, get worked on ever-so slowly by moving the big crude beads around on Mormonism's abacus.

The other direction, from the ultimate ultimate to something that relates to people might be just as bad though. My summary thought: If God is such that relates to these "bags of mostly water" psychologically (a new one for DCP; from Star Trek) , if God is essentially the same kind of being, then why not just create a sky with a planet, and a bunch of three dimensional trees and rabbits and people? Why go through all this trouble of conjuring D-branes and quarks, and having the uncertainty principle as the pathway to get to people and the rather simplistic lives we live?
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
_DoubtingThomas
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Re: Kalam Cosmological non-debate analysis

Post by _DoubtingThomas »

Physics Guy wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:07 am
Why could there not be a God who extended well off into the unimaginable but who also understood creatures like us in detail, having orchestrated creation in part so that we might emerge? If an unimaginable transcendent being made a universe, might we not be features of the project rather than bugs?
What would make you question the existence of god? Why would a god allow suffering?
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Re: Kalam Cosmological non-debate analysis

Post by _huckelberry »

DoubtingThomas wrote:
Fri Jun 26, 2020 3:38 am
Physics Guy wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:07 am
Why could there not be a God who extended well off into the unimaginable but who also understood creatures like us in detail, having orchestrated creation in part so that we might emerge? If an unimaginable transcendent being made a universe, might we not be features of the project rather than bugs?
What would make you question the existence of god? Why would a god allow suffering?
Because I like Physics Guys statement here I am going to try the exercise of stringing my thoughts about this together.

I think suffering is closer to being a feature of the project not so much a bug. I might venture that the reality of suffering is a necessary part of life being an adventure real enough to create strong creatures capable of courage invention and love.

That summary has obvious problems. Suffering can be excessive. It is unfairly distributed and can overwhelm individuals. At some point it overwhelms us all. I think a few lines of consideration arise here which may need to be combined for any hope of seeing a possible combination of created by a God who cares and this reality. Basically I do not think it is possible for God to create humans with enough individual strength to be able to love and avoid suffering at the same time. It appears life involves suffering take it or leave it.

I think the idea that God can do anything creates confusion. I have no reason to think that God can do just anything. I am thinking with the traditional understanding that God is all powerful and is not opposed by other forces, God is the source. Traditionally it is observed that this does not mean God can do contradictions. God cannot have his cake and eat it too,neither can he provide that for us. I see a second very important step here. Creation itself starts to limit what God can do. A real existing creation has a network of cause and effect shaped by the structures given it. One could say that God being free could have structured atoms differently but once done one way Chemistry will operate under those terms not willy nilly or by whim. I think there is a third limitation. In the face of nothingness there could be limitations presented. God may have all power but still be able to do only that which is within his power. It is not scripture but I have always appreciated a story where in the afterlife people get angry with God because life was not better. They go in search of him only to find him chopping wood. To their angry questions he replied something along the lines that he worked hard the best he could. Now some people my sneer at such a God, I do not but am happy to thank God for life as it is. I will do that even if there were to be no after life, no collecting human life into a Kingdom of God where injustice and suffering is overcome.
I think considering the various ways creation blocks and tangles the smooth running of the hopes for creationg the perverseness of humans is the most difficult part. If humans were machines who operated on an inflexible program then it would be workable to make them only do good or constructive things. Instead we are flexible , capable of learning, inventing and relating to each other in creative ways. We are also capable of cheating harming and destroying order. We are capable of resentment and a desire to destroy life instead of picking up our burden to help make the best of life.

To the question how to create people who care and invent with courage and leave the destructive possibilities of those abilities behind It appears God choose to place us in a real world operating on stable natural laws which present opportunity and real danger.

I did say I am thankful for this life even if it is left brutaly unfair. It is what it is. However I do believe there is an afterlife where what good is started here finds its completion with the whole human family. There are children who have suffered disease starvation war. I believe they will share in the kingdom of God which is the kingdom of the human family.
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Re: Kalam Cosmological non-debate analysis

Post by _DoubtingThomas »

huckelberry wrote:
Fri Jun 26, 2020 8:06 pm
Basically I do not think it is possible for God to create humans with enough individual strength to be able to love and avoid suffering at the same time. It appears life involves suffering take it or leave it.

I think the idea that God can do anything creates confusion. I have no reason to think that God can do just anything. I am thinking with the traditional understanding that God is all powerful and is not opposed by other forces, God is the source. Traditionally it is observed that this does not mean God can do contradictions. God cannot have his cake and eat it too,neither can he provide that for us. I see a second very important step here. Creation itself starts to limit what God can do. A real existing creation has a network of cause and effect shaped by the structures given it. One could say that God being free could have structured atoms differently but once done one way Chemistry will operate under those terms not willy nilly or by whim. I think there is a third limitation. In the face of nothingness there could be limitations presented. God may have all power but still be able to do only that which is within his power.
Interesting. Do you believe god created matter out of nothing?
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Re: Kalam Cosmological non-debate analysis

Post by _huckelberry »

DoubtingThomas wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:59 am


Interesting. Do you believe god created matter out of nothing?
I was trying to keep my thoughts linked to the world of experience that I can observe and try to understand. Creation from nothing is a bit over the horizon from that. In a sense I do not know but yes I accept the traditional view of creation as from nothing. It is a logical starting point avoiding useless ambiguity. Creation from something sounds like an unspecified condition after the initial start. I suppose one could think about what if there is eternally God and some sort of not God. That is pretty vague to think about. Can matter exist without form? Is it different than nothing? If matter did not come from God how does God have any influence over it?

I do not see the ambiguities of a creation from some eternal something instead of nothing would change my observations about how the interconnected system of reality limits choices.
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Re:

Post by _Physics Guy »

Gadianton wrote:
Fri Jun 26, 2020 3:09 am
If God is such that relates to these "bags of mostly water" psychologically ... if God is essentially the same kind of being, then why not just create a sky with a planet, and a bunch of three dimensional trees and rabbits and people? Why go through all this trouble of conjuring D-branes and quarks, and having the uncertainty principle as the pathway to get to people and the rather simplistic lives we live?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by God relating to us "psychologically" or being "essentially the same kind of being". If your point is that Mormon theology makes God out to be like this, then okay, first of all you'd know better than I would about this, and secondly for what it's worth I think I agree.

My own idea is not that God is really a being like us. At least in one important sense I figure that we are not to God as the characters in a novel are to the author, and that we are not even to God as a semicolon is to the author, but that we are to God as a semicolon is to God. We're in a radically different category as beings. That line about semicolons is a provocative way to put it, though, and maybe it overstates the case. I figure that God invented us, so there is some kind of subset or aspect of God that can relate to us and to whom we can relate, in some way.

It's a question that I ask myself often, though, why the universe has to be as complex as it is. I realize that Aristotle had physics all wrong as a matter of fact, but I don't really see that Aristotle's simpler view of things was logically impossible. Why not just have everything made of continuous blobs of stuff? Why couldn't reality have no more internal structure than a potato, and everything just be itself, with wood made of Wood and stone made of Stone and that's it? Why couldn't the world be like Minecraft, in fact, in just a bit higher res? Instead it's completely absurd how many layers upon layers of complex microscopic machinery are behind even the seemingly simplest of things.

That question has a sort of mirror twin that goes in the opposite direction. Why is the universe so absurdly big? Why all those bazillions of empty light years? Haldane quipped that what Nature most reveals about God is an inordinate fondness for beetles, but if prevalence in Nature is a sign of God's fondness then what God must like best of all is cold vacuum. And surely one little Middle-Earth of a world would have been big enough to be the stage for all our human stories. Even a Star Trek only visits a few dozen worlds. What need for billions of stars in each of billions of galaxies?

In Pascal's day we had no idea just how big or small Nature was, but it was already clear that there were much smaller microscopic details and a much larger frame than the human mind could well handle. Pascal wrote of large and small as two infinities that were each alone sufficient to dwarf us. As I recall he didn't really try to go anywhere with that thought, but just left it there. I can't think of anything to do with it, either. The universe is a strange place.
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Re: Kalam Cosmological non-debate analysis

Post by _Gadianton »

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean by God relating to us "psychologically" or being "essentially the same kind of being". If your point is that Mormon theology makes God out to be like this, then okay, first of all you'd know better than I would about this,"

Well, I think I relate to people "psychologically", within reason, and also my dog. I may have empathy to a degree for wasps and alligators; I relate to them in terms of pain, at least, such as I wouldn't cause them more harm than I need to. But I wouldn't say I relate psychologically to a wasp or alligator. That could be even more true with alien forms of life, even advanced ones, or computational life should computers one day reach the "singularity". If we admit computers could be conscious, then being the same kind of being isn't a question about hardware, it's about cognition.

Does God relate to wasps psychologically? How about bats?
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
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