Who or what is the Watchmaker's Watchmaker...?

No. He grows a beard.
Yes, he only shaves those that do not shave themselves.

 

Did he? Gives us Hume's devastating refutation, oh wise one, or whatever you think it to be. Let's see how it flies.

 

Nobody can grow a beard. It says that everyone who does not shave himself is shaved by the barber, so we have to assume that everyone is shaved by someone.
He doesn't say that the barber shaves only those who do not shave themselves, so we could suppose that some of them shave themselves sometimes, and are sometimes shaved by the barber, unless you know something about the shaving habits of the people of the village that Aleksander doesn't know.

 

I'm not going to do your homework for you. Think of it as a self-improvement project.

In the meantime it's clear that you are unaware of Hume's position on this argument. The bubble you live in seems shockingly small.

 

What example of pre-existing matter do we have?

 

I'm very familiar with Hume's work, fishm, thank you though. He added nothing of value to cosmological arguments, and nothing at all to contemporary cosmology which is what you would need to hang with someone who knows what he's talking about when it comes to the second premise. Perhaps you were thinking of Kant. Or, perhaps, you were thinking of Hume's "contribution" to our understanding of causality by way of an attack on induction, which, if we took seriously, would destroy science. I'll tell you what, though, since you seem to fancy yourself a little philosopher, why not go ahead and engage me, someone who needs to do his homework, in a debate over Kalam? Since I'm so inept, and you're so experienced, it should be a lot of fun.

 

Everything. The whole lot. Unless you were privy to an event I didn't get invited to, all this stuff was lying about when you turned up, wasn't it?

 

Why would you ask me to summarize his work on causality if you were already familiar with it? Were you trying to Socrates a lesson into me? I'm on to you.

I never claimed to fancy myself a philosopher of any size. I was just shocked that a grownup exists who is convinced by this argument. Considering what I've learned about how you think and operate from just these few posts I think I'll pass on digging up Kalam with you. That would be only slightly less tedious than having to endure hearing Pascal's Wager.

What do you think would happen? Do you have a special way of explaining the same thing we've all heard a million times that will suddenly make it convincing? Maybe if you explain it in a squeaky voice, or in a costume, I might be swayed? All that would happen is I would have to endure yet another description of something we've all heard a million times before. I find it very hard to believe you have some groundbreaking new insight into an argument that was old and tired long before Craig dug it up, doused it in cheap cologne, and hoped we wouldn't notice the crow's feet and prison tats.

 

I must tell you, I like that response. Since neither of us were privy to an event, then its very possible God was involved.

 

That's a nice cop out. So because you have not figured out a way to produce tangiable examples of omnipotence, it must inherently be fictitious? Are you aware that everything created by humankind begins as a product of the mind? Thus it stands to reason that God could essentially be the genesis of all thought.

Would you like to prove how God is fictitious? You just made an absolute claim in the positive. So I assume you're ready to back it up.

 

It is an unproven and unrealistic claim. Those who believe in it have failed to demonstrate that it is real, or indeed even realistic. I don't have to prove an unproven concept fictitious, since it is already by definition fictitious.

 

Anything is possible. Including species from another place.

 

Being unproven does not make something fictitious or unrealistic. But claiming that it does is an absolute statement requiring verification. Thus by making such a claim and refusing to back it up, are you not doing the very thing you just accused the theist argument of? Resting your whole argument on belief and circular reasoning? Something can't be fictitious by definition if you haven't proven that unproven equates to fictitious. You're operating on a fallacy here.

 

Speaking of fallacies, you're demanding that I prove a negative statement. Sorry, but the negative position is where we should all start from as skeptics. Until a god has been shown to exist, it is an claim without merit and should be rejected. When I say that people's gods are fiction, I am simply stating that they do not actually exist.

 

It wouldn't be to convince you of anything. It would be for the benefit of any other sensible person who may read it. I don't know of any philosopher who dealt with Ghazali's cosmological argument directly, and every time I hear it described that way, it turns out to be by someone who doesn't know what he's talking about. I suspect that that's the case with you as well. The point of a debate would be to show anyone else who reads it that you don't know what you're talking about.

 

I honestly don't have the energy to dive into Kalam or any of the other usual suspects - feel free to engage someone else if you want to debate, but I've lost interest in them. The claim I was trying to make was that this argument doesn't get brought up much anymore among the people whose job it is to argue about such things. You certainly see it come up in YouTube videos or whenever Craig rolls into town, both instances where it's possible people have never heard the argument before. I can see why someone might want to use it in circumstances such as these - even the Cosmological Argument seems to make sense when you first hear it (although it has one obvious issue everybody eventually notices, but Kalam patched that bug.)

Anyway, I'll stand by my claim. I don't know of any serious scholars who even bring it up. I think it's because it's vulnerable from so many different angles, primarily via Hume, but I'll concede that there may be other reasons I'm unaware of. Whatever the reason, people seem to have moved on. And in my opinion they have more interesting things to say. I'm struggling through Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, edited by Plantinga, as well as his own Warrant and Proper Function, and it's safe to say that both of these texts address the issue of god in a far richer and nuanced way than the parameters of Kalam allow for.

It's a tough slog, and nothing has really changed to two big things that occur to me whenever I think about christians' faith (i. I can't believe people are willing to believe in so much with so little evidence and ii. leaving aside whether or not god is real and just taking in the pitch, the god as described in the bible and by christians seems deeply flawed and nothing close to my idea of something worth following). But Plantinga is such a clear minded thinker I can't summarily dismiss his views like I've learned to with Craig. He always manages to surprise me by following the precise implications of a lot of things both sides take for granted. I would be happy to get into something about some of his work except I need to digest it all first.

 

A lot of things are possible, but that's different from there being any evidence to suport this claim. Don't get me wrong - there certainly could be a god out there. He might even be the christian god, although that's far less likely. But the only thing we can conclude from the fact that all the matter and energy around us seems to have been sitting around in one state or another since what appears to have been a big bang about 14 billion years ago is that, well, all the matter and energy around us seems to have been sitting around in one state or another since what appears to have been a big bang about 14 billion years go.

I don't see where you get "very possible" from. I know you want it to be true but how are you calculating the odds to get "very"? It seems like we have zero information for or against a proposal like "God set everything up, tweaked it all to work exactly how he wanted, and then turned on the power supply. And then there was a bang." Sure, it's possible, but so is just about anything else you could formulate by replacing the word "god" with a series of random nouns.

 

Eh, okay. You know Plantinga doesn't like arguments for the existence of God, right, that he doesn't think that arguments are how people come to believe in God, and that he makes a case for the existence of God as properly basic? He also doesn't feel the same way you do about Craig and his arguments. I really don't know what you mean when you say that nobody who gets paid to argue about these things brings it up any more. There are philosophy professors all over the place who find these arguments fascinating. Plantinga specializes in epistemology, so we should expect him to defend something like his ontological argument and his argument against Naturalism. Craig has always been more interested in science, so we should expect him to defend something like Kalam. Anyway, I didn't want to debate either. It is tedious and draining. It's just that you floated an argument from authority, and the best way I can think of to deal with that is to say "well, let's just put it on the table then".

 

Fair enough. I'll cop to that, and I should have been clearer about my thoughts on the matter.

I just got through Plantinga's piece on Evolution and how it precludes naturalism. I'm not sure what to think yet. Not fully. At first blush his argument is very convincing.

 

I like the post, I may disagree with your conclusion, but your honesty is refreshing.

 

I will address these two issues. The spontaneous creation of matter via quantum foam is not analogous to the spontaneous creation of the universe because there is a ubiquitous zero point energy throughout the universe that presumably did not predate it. Since energy can be converted to matter, particle creation from quantum foam is not "something from nothing", but rather energy converted to matter. As for the idea of a cyclical universe (i.e. big bounce theory), the discovery that the universe is expanding at an excelerating rate pretty much refutes that. For a cyclical universe to occur, the outward velocity of the big bang would have to slowly be negated, then reversed, by gravity. Since the universe is still accelerating it's expansion, it is clear that gravity will in no way do this. The universe will end in a big freeze, not a big crunch.

 

Thanks.

Did I draw a conclusion? I didn't mean to. Unless you mean the tautology, which was meant as a joke. Since you disagree with it, do you feel like you have enough information to conclude anything substantial?

 

I don't think I have anything substantial to offer that you haven't already heard. I have nothing to tell you that will change your mind, however your honesty, and non-antagonistic rapport has been appreciated. If only more people could be like that, atheist, agnostic, christian, diest, and muslim alike. Belittling someones position doesn't lend credibility, to ones position, it only further fractionalizes the chasm that currently exists. Which makes me wonder if people are really seeking the truth, trying to understand the other view, or just trying to mask their own deficit in self-esteem.

 

And this is the problem. This last sentence contradicts the sentence before it. You're falling back on the age old fallacy that if it has not been proven at the present moment, then it does not exist. Which is obviously ridiculous. Since things like germs and radiation did not suddenly pop into existence when we found a way to see them. They were always there. Thus the claim that they did not exist because they had not been proven was not one of healthy and curious skepticism but merely one of hardened and closed-minded cynicism. Agnosticism makes logical sense. Because it is always open to the possibility of change. Atheism, by contrast, makes an absolute statement in the negative; committing to something it cannot prove. Thus making it purely belief and not rooted in logic, fact, or empirical data. In essence, as uncomfortable as you might be hearing this word, it is essentially faith. It is no different than a blind belief in God. It is only the exact same act in the other direction.

My original position was also based on a theoretical. As it was a response to the theoretical question in the OP. Something that's important to point out.

 

Atheism and agnosticism aren't black and white, either-or propositions. Of course I am open to being convinced of any claim, including a god claim, but it must be properly demonstrated as true. Until then, I say it's fiction, just as I say unicorns are fiction. Technically, I suppose I'm going out on a limb by making a definitive statement like that. However, it is one I feel confident in making based on both evidence and my assessment of the likelihood of the claim being true, and this applies to the god claims as well as one about unicorns, Russell's Teapot or the FSM.