---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>, <anartaxius@...>
<mailto:anartaxius@...> wrote :
'Everything that exists has no cause' is not the equivalent
of 'everything that begins to exist has no cause'. No
beginning is stated or implied. I said nothing about
'begins'. I was talking about existence without time. The
eternity of space and things but no time. Like a still
photograph, frozen being. Have you ever heard the Zen koan
'show me your original face before your parents were born'?
As far as my experience is concerned, I have always existed.
The body that gives me eyes seems to have had prior causes.
The raw components of the body were fashioned in the hearts
of collapsing starts billions of years ago. The protons in
my body, if science is correct, are 13.5 billion years old.
I certainly feel that old sometimes. So every aspect of my
sense of 'self' is old or timeless, older than my parents as
you appear to imaging them.
Presumably you have heard various statements on FFL about
pure being, transcendental consciousness, and eternity, you
know, beyond life and death. Even though such statements are
a bit shy of the truth, they are representative of certain
kinds of experiences people have when they practice
meditation many times a day for long periods of time. One
has experiences that subjectively are timeless.
The idea of eternity comes from these kinds of experiences.
But if the mind is not really clear about these sorts of
experiences it interprets eternity as endless time. If we
take a scientific perspective, there is no timelessness in
observing the world, though we think we know that if you
travel at the speed of light, there would be timelessness.
However only photons travel at the speed of light in a
vacuum, other particles and hence all other matter cannot be
accelerated to the velocity of light because it would take
an infinite amount of energy.
You still have not really made any significant mention of
the Kalam argument. I think Curtis is right that you do not
grasp these things very well. Among statements about the
world and life I have my favourites, but I do not regard
them as true. I particularly do not regard the Kalam
argument as true.
Curtis already demolished your position and you have not
responded to him. You are out of your league with Curtis, as
I think I would be. Here is part of an argument by Dan
Barker about the Kalam, what do you think?
Of course, if you live "outside of time," whatever
that means, then you don't need a beginning in time.
A transcendent being, living Theists regularly talk
about a place "beyond" the universe, a transcendent
realm where God exists "outside of time."
". . . the universe has a cause. This conclusion
ought to stagger us, to fill us with awe, for it
means that the universe was brought into existence
by something which is greater than and beyond it."
Of course, if you live "outside of time," whatever
that means, then you don't need a beginning in time.
A transcendent being, living "beyond" nature, is
conveniently exempt from the limitations of natural
law, and all complaints that God himself must have
had a cause or a designer (using the same natural
reasoning that tries to call for his existence) can
be dismissed by theists who insist that God is
outside the loop, unaffected by natural causality,
beyond time.
Yet theists continue to describe this "timeless"
being in temporal terms. Phrases such as "God
decided to create the universe" are taken by us mere
mortals to be analogous to such natural phrases as
"Annie Laurie decided to bake a pie." If such
phrases are not equal or analogous to normal human
language, and if they are not redefined coherently,
then they are useless. We may as well say "God
blopwaddled to scrumpwitch the universe."
The word "create" is a transitive verb. We have no
experience of transitive verbs operating outside of
time (how could we?), so when we hear such a word,
we must picture it the only way we can: a subject
acts on an object. Considering the point at which an
action is committed, there must be an antecedent
state "during" which the action is not committed,
and this would be true either in or out of time.
To say that "God created time" is not comprehensible
to us. But if he did it anyway, in spite of our lack
of imagination, then it couldn't have happened
"after" the decision to commit it, because there was
no "before." However, we might still imagine the act
of creation as "following" the decision to create.
Or, to avoid temporal terms, the creating succeeds
the deciding in the logical order. (In logic we say
that a conclusion "follows," though we do not mean
this happens in space or time. Craig writes that
"the origin of the universe is causally prior to the
Big Bang, though not temporally prior to the Big Bang."
Either in or out of time, the decision of a personal
agency to commit an action happens antecedent to the
action itself. Even if the deciding and the acting
happened simultaneously, it would still not be true
that the acting was antecedent to the deciding.
Imagine God saying, "Oh, look! I just created a
universe. Now I'd better decide to do it."
This means that there must exist a series of
antecedent causal events in the mind of a
time-transcendent creator, if such a being exists.
Since the Kalam argument claims that "an actual
infinity cannot exist in reality," it shoots itself
in the foot: although Kalam deals with temporal
succession, the same logic applies to non-temporal
antecedent events, if such things are a part of
reality. If the series were infinite, then God never
could have traversed the totality of his own
antecedent mental causes to arrive at his decision
to say "Let there be light." Therefore, sticking
with Kalam, there must have been a "first
antecedent" in the mind of an actual God, which
means that God "began" to exist.
I believe you are evading the very argument you brought
us here; you have assumed it is true, but you do not
seem to be able to elaborate on it, only repeat it in
its simplest form, which only states the universe has a
cause, it does not say anything about what that cause
might be. It could be Fred the janitor who began to
exist the universe, and then he entered his own creation
to sweep the floors, you know, to keep it tidy because
of us humans.
At any rate, what do you have to say about Barker's
criticism of the Kalam (and that is only part of his
criticism)?
As for me, I still do not know what 'begins to exist'
means in this context. In terms of refashioning matter
into a new form, I think I probably have an idea, but
that is not begining to exist in an essential sense. I
think of things existing or not, but not beginning to
exist. I tend to think of forms being fashioned from
other forms, so an auto-mobile for example, is simply a
rehash of auto-mobile parts, which are then a rehash of
raw materials such as aluminium and iron and plastic
(which is a rehash of oil). So your explanation could be
illuminating. I have been waiting with bated breath for
your explanation, but I do not have an infinite
attention span, and so far I do not think you know what
you are talking about.
===========================
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>, <jr_esq@...>
<mailto:jr_esq@...> wrote :
Xeno,
After a long introduction to your reasoning, you state
that: "I tend to prefer 'everything that exists has no
cause'. Everything is just there. That is my position."
IMO, you're statement is the same as saying "everything
that begins to exist has no cause". But, in either
case, your statement becomes problematic. Essentially,
you're saying that you came into existence in this world
without the involvement of your mother and father. That
is contrary to the natural way human beings are born.
How is that possible?
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>, <anartaxius@...>
<mailto:anartaxius@...> wrote :
I don't know what it means, explain it to me, as you
seem to know what it means. That NASA sent Curiosity to
Mars is not logically connected to your statement that
'it appears that humans know can understand the meaning
of "begins to exist". You may have connected it in your
mind, but not in the post.
In the link I provided, there are some criticisms of the
Kalam argument, but you have still not read them apparently.
For me some things exist. Other things do not. 'Begins
to exist' seems redundant. How does that work? What are
the steps between non-existence and existence? I have no
clue. I suspect you do not either, but I am willing to
hear you out on this. You need to explain your position.
My position is this:
