Simple question?

Quote: FrGamble

If you couldn't prove it or test it would it be any less true.

If you can't prove or test something, then you can have no idea whether it's true or not.

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However, when something is logically true in itself you can know that just by using your brain.

So you can make anything up, so long as it's logical, self-consistent, and conforms to human biases.

I thought I'd made it clear we're past that.

There's this novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle called "The Mote in God's Eye" (great book). The setting has an Imperial government, with a ruling, divine-right, hereditary monarcchy, and a nobility complete with titles, honors and privileges. Set within advanced technology, an interstellar society and eventually alien worlds, though the writers take it very seriously, it's a laughable anachronism.

When I hear Christians speak about science, logic and philosophy, today in this world, I hear late Roman Empire superstitious anachronisms trying to fit in with modern ideas of science and technology, without letting go of their outmoded beliefs. If it were fiction it would be laughable. Because it's real, it's just sad and depressing.

There may be a cause, in the Aristotelian sense, to the universe. We can't tell, yet, one way or another. There may not be a cause for the universe at all. We can't tell that either.

And that's just it: we don't know.

Let me be perfectly clear: WE DON'T FUCKING KNOW! (clear?)

But we have some clues.

Outside living beings, and not all of them, we have never, not once, observed anything that might be called purposeful action by anything.

So what observation or evidence leads you to believe if there is a cause to the universe, it must be not just sentient and purposeful, but also volitional?

Further, even if such cause was volitional, what observation or evidence leads you to claim it was the god the Hebrews made up, rather than another god made up by someone else? And what in all these mass of ignorance and superstition makes you think you have a right to dictate morality to anyone?

Quote: FrGamble

"Everything that begins to exist has a cause" ,

It's also obvious that if the world were rounded and spinning, people would fly off. You can even demonstrate how loose objects fly off a spinning ball.

Until you have proof even the so-called "obvious" may be wrong.

Quote: Nareed

If you can't prove or test something, then you can have no idea whether it's true or not.

What you've just said is nonsense; you are making a statement that you cannot prove or test and using that statement to say that the only things that can be verified as true are the those you can test or prove. Putting that aside though, your clumsy statement is kind of correct. The problem might be that you think the only way you can prove or test something is by observing it or experimenting with it. There are philosophical truths that reason alone can know outside of observation and experimentation that they are true. Likewise using just logic we can know something like you said above is false even without testing it because it is self-contradictory.

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So you can make anything up, so long as it's logical, self-consistent, and conforms to human biases.

You can make anything up, but that does not mean it is true.

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There may be a cause, in the Aristotelian sense, to the universe. We can't tell, yet, one way or another. There may not be a cause for the universe at all. We can't tell that either.

And that's just it: we don't know.

So you are saying that you want to keep your options open in case we discover a square circle? It doesn't work that way! Either the idea of the impossibility of an actual infinite regress is impossible or it is not. Non-contingent things need a cause or not. Maybe you think that just because the laws of the physical universe seem to break down the closer we get to the singularity that logic and truth must also not hold true 13.8 billion years ago. However, truth like ideas are bulletproof and Big Bang proof. Let me be perfectly clear: WE DO KNOW! (at least we know some of the truths that are just as true then as they are now)

Quote: rxwine

It's also obvious that if the world were rounded and spinning, people would fly off. You can even demonstrate how loose objects fly off a spinning ball.

Until you have proof even the so-called "obvious" may be wrong.

Yes the obvious is often wrong. It is obvious your hand and the computer you are typing on are solid masses rather than mostly space with the force of electrons interacting with each other giving us the impression of solid matter.

This is why I'm not speaking so much as the obvious as the self-evident. Things that have to be true by their very nature. They hold their truth in themselves and need not be tested or appeal to any other observation. Think of them as non-contingent truths. When someone says "I am who I am" this is true. When we look at a math problem and correctly solve it, it is true. When we say that A does not equal not-A, it is true. Certainly when we do test these things they turn out to be true, but it wasn't because we discovered them to be true, we knew they would be true before we even tried them out. The obvious may be wrong the self-evident, never.

Quote: FrGamble

What you've just said is nonsense; you are making a statement that you cannot prove or test and using that statement to say that the only things that can be verified as true are the those you can test or prove.

Do you know what logic and reason are for? Can you be sure of something you cannot prove or test?

Oh, I know you can. But we're talking about reality here.

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Putting that aside though, your clumsy statement is kind of correct.

If you can condemn something as nonsense and then say it's correct, I begin to see the root of your problem.

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Either the idea of the impossibility of an actual infinite regress is impossible or it is not.

How do you know?

Reason tells you if you cut a rock in half, the pieces will act exactly like the whole rock did if, say, you were to throw them up in the air. It also tells you if you cut the halves into half, they'll keep acting the same way. So 1) Is there an end to how many times you can cut the halves in half? and 2) Will they keep acting the same way?

1) Logic suggest that 1) No, and 2) Yes.

Observation and evidence say, not suggest, that 1) Yes and 2) No.

And I have a Planck Scale and Quantum Mechanics that says I'm right.

What have you got?

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me be perfectly clear: WE DO KNOW! (at least we know some of the truths that are just as true then as they are now)

We also know the secret identity of Batman. That doesn't means it's true or real.

Everything material came into existence with the big bang? Really? You can prove this?

Quote: Dalex64

Everything material came into existence with the big bang? Really? You can prove this?

I think that's the going theory. I trust that they have evidence to support their claim.

Quote: FrGamble

I think that's the going theory. I trust that they have evidence to support their claim.

No, it is not.

The theory is that all the matter and energy in the universe was in an infintessimally small space, a singularity of infinite density, then exploded/expanded in a big bang.

It says nothing about how it got there or what happened before it got there.

Quote: Dalex64

No, it is not.

The theory is that all the matter and energy in the universe was in an infintessimally small space, a singularity of infinite density, then exploded/expanded in a big bang.

It says nothing about how it got there or what happened before it got there.

You are correct, I misunderstood your question. I think I was confused because you are asking something that is so obvious. If all the matter and energy in the universe was in this singularity and it exploded you seem to be asking if I can prove something made it explode? If you were watching a really long set of dominoes fall over, so long and intricate that you could not see the first domino and I asked you to prove that something knocked over the very first domino, would you be able to do it? Of course you would. You couldn't tell me through observation or experiment what knocked over the first domino, but you could say with 100% certainty and without a doubt that something did.

Quote: FrGamble

You couldn't tell me through observation or experiment what knocked over the first domino, but you could say with 100% certainty and without a doubt that something did.

All you could say is (if the timeline of the Universe is represented by dominoes falling) that you can see a long line of dominoes, where you can't see what is happening beyond a certain point at either end. You can only guess.

If God is the prime mover, he has powers beyond the physics of the Universe.

But why is it not possible another unintelligent force exists beyond the physics of the Universe. Then you have neither god nor your hated infinite regression. Just another thing that is not yet discovered.

Perhaps it is something that only exists when the Universe is not around so it can never be measured.