/lit/ - Literature

>>11108700
People are convinced by these arguments because they need its consequences.

>>11108700
>Since the Universe could, under different circumstances, conceivably not exist
because I said so niggaaaa

one problem is that the assumption that the universe is contingent is inconsistent with the existence of God, as Spinoza proved (God is necessary, God's nature is necessary, and God's decision to create follows necessarily from God's nature). so the argument is incoherent; either God exists, in which case the universe is not contingent, or the universe is contingent, in which case God cannot exist

>>11108700
It's a damn good argument. Even Christopher Hitchens agreed with it, though he rejected that it proved a theistic God, only that it proved an Uncaused Cause

>>11108746
Divine simplicity kills of Spinoza's objection.

>>11108753
and essence/existence distinction

>>11108759
energy/essence distinction?

>>11108714
Aristotleian logic was developed before the idea of a monotheistic God even prevailed.

The idea here is that from what we understand to be the case with civilization: there is a certain aspect that is dualistic. With this there is chaos, with an intermediary you have order (three). In this way, the numerical system reflects reality, and even the attributes and systematic qualities inherent in the viewable world reflect discrete dualities (contradictories) and intermediaries as well (contraries). The Aristotleian view is definitely conducive to understanding many different sorts of things. It also reflects reality in obvious ways. It was the final lynchpin in Neopythagoreanism and Nicomachus' views on Arithmetic to seal the deal, so to speak, for understanding that the systems to be discovered reflect reality. This was a huge clue God would have put into reality to help you along, to make you see that the systems were reflective and symbolic of reality itself.

In this way, and no other, are God and man meant to find each other. Now when Aristotle says that the highest 'one'ness there possibly is, is numerical one-ness, hopefully you understand why.

To proceed from unity is logical. To see this mirrored in reality is also logical. From my own thoughts and principles proceed understanding and misunderstanding. The closer these thoughts and principles are to defining objectively good qualities the more that the misunderstandings become dissonance harmful to the understanding. This is because from unity proceeds chaos. Then from chaos proceeds order, once again defining this intermediary as a sort of definition between the two genera created by the misunderstanding of thought. If I can see this idea present in just simply thinking about forms or principles, surely I must then see it reflected in the physical world (although more distorted through the accidentals/conflict of wills/phenomena in the material world.

Hopefully this helps you understanding why the concept of primary being is a valid philosophical truth.

>>11108746
The argument as I understand it is that we are contingent in the sense that we don't cause ourselves to exist. We don't have existence as part of our nature, meaning we have to derive our ability to exist from something else. This 'something else' must have existence as part of its nature because it can't give something it doesn't have.

I'm not sure where to go from there so I don't really know what that tells us about God. With the argument from motion I can tie in the act/potency distinction and conclude certain "attributes" like being one, eternal, non-physical, perfect, and so on but with this argument I'm not so sure. Can we even say that the "something else" which gives existence is singular?

>>11108813
I didn't mean to reply to you but you can keep the (You) >>11108746

>>11108813
This is true, but from whence is that concept even derived? This is the complex, somewhat metaphysical point, that the detractors have a problem with.

>>11108775
this post should help you out with that argument.

>>11108748
Thats because hitchens was a fuckin pseud who never did anything more than surface level thinking about everything. Same reason he was a faggot trotskyist when he was young. All you fucktards who follow Hitchens are even bigger pseud retards than he was.

>>11108823
>This is true, but from whence is that concept even derived?

Do you mean the act/potency distinction? I never understood the problem some people have with it, I just think of it as a fancy way of describing change.

>>11108833
I do understand the problem people have with it. And if you keep defending the point by using the simple notion of 'I don't see ur prob' or 'why even worry maan like you can feel it', then we aren't going to get anywhere with these atheists.

You need to be able to comprehend Aristotle if you're going to defend God's existence, it's as simple as that.

Aristotle's metaphysical system is recursive: its four layers of 'one'ness so to speak lead back into itself once it has finished describing the material world, and then describes the basic ideas and principles of the world eventually.

>>11108830
Hitchens wasn't a philosopher, nor was he trying to be one. He was a rhetorician and an essayist, which is fine. Most of his essays were very good.

>>11108700
>What's your response to a modal argument for the existence of God?
Faith.

>>11108846
Coming from someone who believes in God, this is a requirement, not an argument.

You're stupid.

>>11108838
I wasn't simply handwaving people away when I said I don't understand the problem people have with it, I was inviting you to explain what that problem is. I don't know how in the world that could have been interpreted any differently.

>>11108848
>You're stupid.
You are an unpleasant little ingrate, aren't you?

You asked a question, I answered it. If my answer didn't help you finish your homework, try actually understanding what you're asking next time.

>>11108700
It's a decent argument, and one that's not exactly arguable, but for TA and later thinkers to bastardize it into saying 'my wizard therefore exists', is wrong.

>>11108838
What do you find so convincing in Aristotle's Unmoved Mover?

>>11108919
see
>>11108775

That whole post relates to the unmoved mover.

>>11108700
>hat's your response to a modal argument for the existence of God?
my 'aggressive' response is that I don't believe modal notions reflect reality, so any argument based on modality is just symbol pushing, but my more cooperative response is that--

1. There is not and could not be any good reason to believe that our intuitions about modality are reliable, because the only empirical evidence of them is based on a sample size of one (all of our experiences only take place in *one* possible world). Goedel style modal ontological arguments make everything necessary, so the distinction between necessary and contingent truths/beings that the argument leans on no longer has any weight, arguably making the arguments conceptually contradictory

>>11108981
>I don't believe modal notions reflect reality
is this really true, though?

>>11108700
Kant has already completely eviscerated, mummified, and put on display for the edification of future generations all possible arguments (the only three) for the existence of God. The modern revival of scholasticism is a sickening denial of the truths Kant labored his entire life to uncover. I'm looking at you, Feser

>>11108998
Well, how far do you go with Kant? What is your opinion of his moral philosophy, more specifically the notion that God's existence is a presupposition of the moral dimension of our lives?

>>11108998
Kantposters really are the worst. Never an argument, always an appeal to authority.

>>11108700
>Aquinas further said: "...and this we understand to be God."
?

>>11109021
I think the Kantian conception of freedom is inadmissible. He himself admitted that his entire system of morality hinges on this (i.e. he derives the necessity of God and Immortality from the supposed necessity of freedom), and without it, would fall to the ground.

>>11109037
We do get so tired of recapitulating the same points time and again only to be met with sneering derision by the deluded Thomist.

>>11109067
interesting because this is the crux of most intelligent Christfag's adherence to philosophically inclined christfaggotry. fascinating, thank you effete sperg

>>11109067
Are you a determinist?

>>11109109
No, because absolute empirical determinism requires materialism, which I don't buy into either. I think the fundamental source of human action and knowledge is fundamentally unknowable as an object, but I also think that rationality, as a representation, is not somehow exempt from objective determination (Kant thought it was) because it is abstracted from the empirical. I'm a compatibilist

ITT: brainlets slowly figure out the world can only be apprehended mystically

Given that metaphysics is prior to physics does that mean empirical observations can never be used to disprove them?

>>11108998
Can you expand on this? Given the big difference in terminology and the fact that you dont find too many individuals who are well read in both schools Ive never seen a conclusive argument by one side.

>>11108700
>it still owes its existence to an Uncaused Cause, Aquinas further said: "...and this we understand to be God."
There's quite a lot missing between these two statements

>>11108700
>>In other words, even if the Universe has always existed, it still owes its existence to an Uncaused Cause, Aquinas further said: "...and this we understand to be God."
It's so nondescriptive though. Any apparent creator god made up would have as much claim. It doesn't relate to Christianity at all, or anything in particular. It could be best described as a physical 'trick' of reality, that relates to nothing except itself in that trick (not the consequential universe). To call that God would obviously not work, it has nothing to do with any proposed god or supernatural being/force. Of course, this argument is just grasping at justification, it is so tentative and undefined that one cannot speculate on these aspects to begin with. Making it even more useless.

>>11108700
The only argument against this is pantheism; that the universe is itself a god that can cause itself or exists necessarily. Obviously there is no room for atheism.

>>11108998
Kant's arguments take a metaphysics incompatible with a scholastic God as axiomatic. That doesn't exactly refute a different framework.

If you need more detailed response to his points, provide the relevant arguments in summary instead of just pointing to one thinker.

>>11109822
You know, if you keep reading a page or two after the 5 ways, you actually get to the part where he derives the attributes of the unmoved mover. Tying it to Christianity in particular is more of a historical point, though.

>>11108700
>What's your response to a modal argument for the existence of God
that's only if you envision existence as having a definite beginning. Parmenides understood this, and got around this by positing the universe to always have existed, without a beginning and without an ending.

>>11109037
Theist posters do this in general.
They jack off Aquinas, Aristotle, and use it to conclude how "necessary and inevitable" God's existence is, and then someone how mentally gymnastics there way from the already dubious "God is most definitely real" to "and it's my God, the one who came to this Earth and died or our sins."

>>11110435
This idea that Aquinas' arguments for God are arguing that Jesus Christ is God is something that only exists in the minds of atheists. This is not something that anyone is arguing because it's not something that can be proven philosophically. What we do find philosophically is a necessary, all powerful, eternal, non-corporeal being that is the basis for every monotheistic religion.

>>11110361
This at the very least does away with our notions of causality, which would hugely undermine typical scientific and secular paradigms.

Anyway, God isn’t something to be proved by reasoning, it’s something to be believed in with the emotions. Any philosophical argument for God is basically trying to prove what the philosopher already believes in, and will never be fully perfect because God can’t be proved without direct experience and feeling it.

>>11110473
>it’s something to be believed in with the emotions.

Protestants go home

It's the best of the purely logical arguments for God but doesn't actually prove the existence of God.

>>11110473
>This at the very least does away with our notions of causality,
sorry about killing your idyllic understanding kiddo
good luck trying to "directly experience" your God
he's left you here, no reaching him until judgement day
that is, if you are truly one of his elect

>>11109822
>Any apparent creator god made up would have as much claim.
Not only that but his reasoning doesn't even imply a generic "creator god". Just something that causes the universe to exist.

>>11109129
>absolute empirical determinism requires materialism
Why can't spirits be absolutely deterministic?

>>11110544
It's almost as if the argument shouldn't be taken in isolation since it is only trying to show that a necessary being with existence as part of its nature must exist.

>>11110473
Causality is not a product of time dummy.

>>11110565
If you're talking about spirits themselves then free will becomes a talking point

>>11110565
Brainlets can't fathom the notion of non-material things acting according to non-material laws that are as strict as the laws of physics are for physical things, hence why both determinist and libertarians insist that you need to believe in something non-physical if you say that free will exists.

>>11108838
I think if you look at divine simplicity, that would clarify why everything is meant to end in the first cause. If pure act is all good, men, by their intellect(and by grace), will tend towards good, then through grace be in communion with the first cause. That's why God is the Alpha and the Omega; He is the beginning in which where we end.

Why exactly the universe couldn't exist by necessity? Why God can but the universe couldn't?

>>11110846
Without God the universe must exist necessarily. This is a problem though because if the universe were eternal with existence as its nature then there would have been enough time for every potential to actualize, and this would include the possible death of everything. Once the universe dies it can't come back into existence because out of nothing comes nothing. The only way to really explain the state of the universe as it actually exists right now is that God exists.

>>11111086
>if the universe were eternal with existence as its nature then there would have been enough time for every potential to actualize

Eternity and time are two different things don't you think?

>>11111086
>The only way to really explain the state of the universe as it actually exists right now is that God exists.

This is probably clumsy language so I should rephrase it. The only way to really explain the state of the universe as it actually exists right now is that the universe is deriving its existence from something else which necessarily exists.

>>11111123
It can be but if we're talking about the universe by itself then no. Saying an eternal universe is the same thing as saying there's an infinite amount of time because time is space.

>>11108981

>my 'aggressive' response is that I don't believe modal notions reflect reality, so any argument based on modality is just symbol pushing, but my more cooperative response is that--

This, this good anon knows whats up. Modal arguments posit necessity, but by definition the number 1 and the number 2 don't necessarily follow one another, otherwise you would be collapsing the difference between the two. But numbers on their own don't have symbolic necessity, they are just code, symbolic "doubles" of reality.

We have had a similar kind of thread again on /lit/, but I am still convinced Spinoza solved all of that shit by collapsing contingency and necessity through natura naturans.

>>11108700
>>>/x/

*unsheates critique of pure reason*
heh... notin personell... thomists

>>11108700

> there must be something to explain why the Universe exists

We can't conceive that something exists without an explanation, true. We also can't conceive of something that absolutely explains itself. This is a dilemma that we invite when we try to violate our own finite mental abilities, seduced by the idea that if we can seek explanations for natural objects then we can also seek an explanation for nature *itself.*

All of the terminology used to supposedly conceive of a self-explaining being is taken from our understanding of the natural universe. But this can't at all teach us about what is supposedly independent of the universe; whether by negation or analogy, the result is empty. This parasitism upon the terminology of the natural universe should indicate that the domain of explanations is the domain of nature, and when we attempt to leave nature behind and explore some other domain of being, we are thereby attempting to leave explanation behind, and thus we would have no tools to explore with.

Instead, if we continue with the laws of explanation used for nature, our explanations will always be continuous with the natural world, our inferences will never take us to some domain apart from the universe. We can't have it both ways.

> the Universe could, under different circumstances, conceivably not exist

I don't see why nothingness is a viable alternative. What are you conceiving of when you conceive of non-existence? Can it be described?

If a mental procedure yields a non-understandable result, then this should indicate that the procedure is flawed.

Note the similar results when we try to conceive of nothingness and when we try to conceive of a self-explaining being. In each case, what are we thinking of?

>>11111792
Why can't we conceive of something that explains itself?

>>11108700
scholastic is a fucking publisher retard, lmao. jesus christ you are a card

>>11110565
On what basis are they determined?

>>11110800
What laws are these?

>>11111817

*Why* we can't seems like the same question as "why can we conceive of something that explains something other than itself?" - in other words, these are aspects of the question "why can we explain anything at all?" And I don't think we can answer this question (or, rather, I'm not sure it's a coherent question, although it may masquerade as one) because we don't know everything about ourselves. How could we explain the possibility of explanations, without utilizing the very process of explanation that we're trying to pin down? We would be fallaciously assuming the very thing we're trying to understand. We can't take an outsider perspective on the possibility of explanation, and we can't take an outsider perspective on the universe, for the same reason - the concept of being "outside" or in any way independent from these domains is unintelligible.

*That* we can't was argued here:

> All of the terminology used to supposedly conceive of a self-explaining being is taken from our understanding of the natural universe. But this can't at all teach us about what is supposedly independent of the universe; whether by negation or analogy, the result is empty. This parasitism upon the terminology of the natural universe should indicate that the domain of explanations is the domain of nature, and when we attempt to leave nature behind and explore some other domain of being, we are thereby attempting to leave explanation behind, and thus we would have no tools to explore with.

>Instead, if we continue with the laws of explanation used for nature, our explanations will always be continuous with the natural world, our inferences will never take us to some domain apart from the universe. We can't have it both ways.

>>11111792
We can't conceive of multiple perspectives so I guess we solipsists now, also can't conceive of death and sleep unless negations of our present state so these are incoherent concepts too right.

>>11112416

>We can't conceive of multiple perspectives

I don't know what you mean by this. Are you saying I can't conceive of what it's like to be a different person? Because I don't agree.

> also can't conceive of death and sleep unless negations of our present state so these are incoherent concepts too right.

Nope, because those concepts involve, respectively, the continued existence of the rest of the universe and of my sleeping body. Same for the concept of the world before your own birth. Those concepts do not require the attempt to think of the negation of absolutely everything. And, maybe more importantly, they are ordinary features of natural experience; if we were instead intelligent organisms with no examples of unconsciousness (though such organisms don't seem biologically possible) then the intelligibility of the concept might seem very suspicious, and we might have no reason to accept it. In that case, we would be incorrect about the concept's coherence, owing to proper epistemic caution that is, nonetheless, more often reliable than not.

"Something has to exist."
This is the first rule, not god.

>>11111875
>What laws are these?
I never said such laws definitely existed, nor do I claim to know them, I'm only saying that non-material does not imply non-determinstic

>>11112721
I guess I don't know what "non-material things" you are referring to. Something like logic, and "abstract" human consciousness? I agree that these are determined just as necessarily as particular, physical objects.

I guess I assumed that when he said "determinism" he was referring to materialistic determinism, which is the most common type, which is why I referred to it as "absolute empirical determinism." A spiritualist determinism would still require that these "spirits" be phenomena subordinated to the laws of causality, so it strikes me as less consistent than materialistic determinism because it literally conjures extraneous spirits to explain forces of nature, which are themselves groundless anyway. But I agree that there is no reason that such a perspective is inconceivable, you're right.

Can we become gods?

>>11112789
Can we become gods? I do believe the universe is more likely to have come about from its own necessity. I also believe we can achieve technological godhood—what then? Will we be our own creation? Are we the universe making itself, or are we God making the universe?

>>11112686
How is that a rule? We can say "something exists" but why should existence be necessary?

>>11112854
Nothing can't exist.
Everything and nothing can't co-exist, this would give nothing "boundary", limit, depth, and so make nothing into something.
Something has to be (self-evidently, it already is, and nothing can't).

>>11108876
>>11108846

THIS

>>11112877
The only way for something to have not come about, is for there to have been nothing (nothing includes no rules). Then that means there would never be anything. But we know there's everything, so it has to have be.
The most fundamental rule, has to be "something has to be". Otherwise no other laws or rules could be.

>>11110336
I'm mostly talking about the sections of CPR entitled "On the Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God" and "On the Impossibility of a Cosmological Proof of the Existence of God."

>>11110846
god is not a physically material being.

why does god have to be a concious entity

>>11111883
Where is your pic from? The Mutter? good posts btw.

>>11112942
Because the point of all this sophistry is to have a cosmic father figure.

>>11108998
>Kant

>>11108775
thank you for this

>>11112970
and the point of sophistry of denial is nothing more than finding a reason not to leave house to go to church and help community... who am I kidding, just a reason to not go out and spit parents too.

>>11112960

Not sure. I visited the Mutter years ago, but I don't remember seeing one like it - though they apparently do have pic related.

Appreciated!

>>11112827
>I also believe we can achieve technological godhood
just like people believed perpetual motion was possible

>>11113179
easy bro.

>>11113120
Yeh I don't remember seeing it either but I went years ago, on a date with a crazy girl. Take her easy Mutterbro.

>>11113179
*technological* godhood, mate. in the Arthur C Clarke sense. Not apotheosis in the theological sense.

>>11110464
You don't even find that. Christians still asert it anyways though.

>>11113021
Christians always assume atheists are angry at their parents. My family have been atheists for at least 3 generations. Every time I come across a Christian they're always far more dysfunctional and hateful than everyone the neighborhood I grew up in, who were all atheists.

>>11113237
Nice anecdotal evidence. Thought that was off the tables here, otherwise I KNOW God exists.

>>11113209
>*technological* godhood, mate. in the Arthur C Clarke sense. Not apotheosis in the theological sense.
i know precisely what you meant, and it's no more likely to happen than theological apotheosis

>>11108775
very good post anon

>>11108700
>godel's ontological proof
>explaining

get real

>>11113217
I can but it will take a little explaining.

Everything that changes is changed by something else. This chain of changer and changed cannot go on forever because if it did there would be no first changer, and consequently no other changers as well. just as a stick does not change anything except when changed by a hand. So a first changer which is itself unchanged by anything else is necessary to explain change.

Note that the sort of causal chain that I'm talking about is hierarchical or essential and not linear or accidental. The difference is that an essential causal chain happens simultaneously or "in the now" in which all of the causes and effects are necessarily linked while an accidental series would be one that stretches back in time in which the causes and effects aren't necessarily linked. An example of an accidental series would be like if I set up a hundred dominoes. I could cause the whole series of dominoes to fall by knocking over either the first or the fiftieth while if the series was essential they would all fall down together.

To get a better understanding of the sort of causal series I'm talking about, imagine we drive up to a railroad crossing and find a train passing by. We see boxcar after boxcar, first dozens of them and then hundreds of them. W arrived as the train was already in motion so we never saw the engine. But we must infer that the train has an engine: because, if you see a train in motion, you know something is moving it. An engine is pulling it. Each boxcar is deriving its movement from another car up the line and this chain of movement must terminate in an engine that has the ability to give the other cars movement.

Part 1 of 2 since 4chan sucks dick.

>>11113638
A thing can only move or change if it has the potential for that movement or change. A rock with the potential to move can't move itself, it has to derive that movement from something else. In other words, something else has to actualize the rocks potential movement. Since every series or chain of moved and mover is contingent on the first mover, the first mover couldn't have any potential. It would have to be pure act.

There are certain necessary implications of what it means to be pure act and this is where things start to get interesting for the monotheist. Pure actual must be omnipotent, because to not be able to do something would be unrealized potential. Pure act would have to be omniscient, because to not know anything would be an unrealized potential. It can't not exist since nonexistence is pure potential, so pure act must be eternal. Pure act must be non corporeal because physical things can change which is unrealized potential. An imperfection of any kind would be unrealized potential so pure act must be perfect. There can only be one pure act because the only way to tell the difference between two things is if one had something the other didn't, but pure act can't lack anything as that would be an unrealized potential.

So here we have a thing that is omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, non corporeal, perfect, and singular.

>>11113638
>>11113645
The secondary Kantian objection to this is that this is an improper application of causality because it transcends experience, and extends the causal chain to an unconditioned entity (inadmissible phenomenally).

>>11113658
Why is it improper to extend causality to the transcendental? It seems like you're rigging the game by saying only purely material proofs can be considered admissible since you're not giving a proper justification for this anti-transcendental bias.

>>11113702
Causality is what you get when you put time and space together. In other words, it only has meaning in relation to the content that fills time and space, matter. This is because an effect following from a cause involves a temporal change in a permanent substance, this latter being matter. It's certainly possible to have consequences following from reasons in an abstract sense, but this only relates to the ground of knowledge of a judgment, not to the actual causal regress. And if you start from concepts that aren't related directly to perception in order to prove that something exists or has agency in the perceptible world, you're merely playing with abstractions, because concepts divested of their reference to perception are sterilized. So in either case there can be no transcendent proof.

>>11113638
>>11113645

Very well articulated, and it might be true, but I don't think it is.

> if we continue with the laws of explanation used for nature, our explanations will always be continuous with the natural world, our inferences will never take us to some domain apart from the universe.

An infinite regress is inconceivable. A being of pure act is also inconceivable.

> This is a dilemma that we invite when we try to violate our own finite mental abilities, seduced by the idea that if we can seek explanations for natural objects then we can also seek an explanation for nature *itself.*

> whether by negation or analogy, the result is empty.

>>11111792

>>11113765
I'm still not understanding why causality can only exist in a temporal sense. All I'm getting from you is the assertion that linear or accidental causality is the only type of causality therefore I'm wrong. I can't say I'm convinced.

>>11113800
Even if the chain is hierarchical, i.e. the cause follows from the effect instantaneously, this still takes place in time. I don't understand how one hundred dominoes falling one after another is any less necessary than all the dominoes "falling together," and I don't understand how this latter is even possible.

>>11113765
Time and space come before causality? Sounds more like you are just positing matter as a primer mover. Matter, and even submatter which science will continue to breakdown, has extension. Extension means that it has parts which must be distinguishable or they would obviously not be parts, but more importantly these parts have extension themselves. Were these not facts, then we would imagine a void with extension which is simply absurd.

Anyways, the prime mover is begotten of its relationship of parts and is not a prime mover at all.

>>11113390
>i know precisely what you meant, and it's no more likely to happen

>relative omniscience thanks drudgereport twitter and pol
>even cheap beer in 2018 is supreme quality and available in endless quantities
>innumerable 2d women offering me their butts with zero danger of pregnancy
>literally impossible to starve thanks to food pantries and government aid and restaurant dumpsters
>personal library of the greatest works of mankind, with access to everything by internet
>literally own a self-driving chariot

and you are implying I don't live exactly like an Olympian?

>>11113823
I did a sloppy job with the dominoes analogy so let me try to fix that. If I were the first mover in a linear causal chain I could start causing the series of dominoes to fall by knocking over the first, which would then cause all of the other dominoes to knock each other over down the line, or I could start by knocking over the fiftieth domino which would leave the first fifty standing. This is because the chain of dominoes isn't contingently linked.

Now if I was the first mover in a hierarchical series where the dominoes are contingently linked, they would all fall down regardless of whatever domino I start with since everything derives movement from me. My only intention with this analogy is to contrast the simultaneous and contingent nature of the hierarchical series with the linear series that is temporal and non contingent. Since pure act would sustain everything, including time, it can't be something that's restricted by time.

>>11113891
I'm positing no such thing. Time and space must come before causality because causality requires both of these to be intelligible conceptually. Matter is the substratum of causality, the basis of the content which is this or that particular change in a particular determination of matter. The idea of matter anteceding time and space, as if we somehow receive the ideas of time and space from perceptible matter, is thoroughly ridiculous.

>>11113938
>>11113891

You each seem to be talking past each other in crucial ways. Except in a very long and painstaking thread, written by anons deeply versed in each system, I’ve come to think this is bound to happen.

As this anon said: >>11109217

>>11113638
>This chain of changer and changed cannot go on forever because if it did there would be no first changer, and consequently no other changers as well.
But doesn't this rely on the universe being linear? A, B, C, and so on?

I don't think this has to be the case. And I don't think you need parallelism (i.e. more than one thing happens at once) for it to work.

Try to picture the universe as not only A to B being valid, but B back to A being just as valid -- not valid in the same way, but still valid. What would result is that "time" would stop existing as a past event is no less the cause than the future one is the effect -- that is, effects are not subordinate to causes, but both are mutually dependent.

Only this might not account for why we perceive things linearly. But then that we perceive them as such might simply be built in as another feature; that we don't perceive all things at all time might simply be how consciousness is like... I'm finding it hard to explain it, really.

I'm sorry, I know this might come off as specious, but I would like a refutation or some thoughts on it.

>>11112669
Let me put it this way, we can not directly comprehend existence exterior to the point of conscious perspective. Sure you can conceive of the world which you perceive to hypothetically exist without what is exactly you, but the cessation of conscious perspective in any way is in fact a negation of everything that we can conceive and becomes out of the question just as God is.

And what I meant by my first point is that you can only conceive of perspective as singular, there can be no phenomenological conception of multiple perspectives at once. I would go further and say that you can't even directly comprehend this singular point of perspective, the origin point of your phenomenology so to speak. You are locked in a tight little box of things you can speak about and it seems that this world view can't even account for itself.

>>11114710
I think this is getting tangly because we're trying to use language in ways it didn't evolve to. Like, comprehend this point of perspective by whom and to what purpose or with what intention? Can't account to whom or in what manner?

I'm not trying to say language is incapable of describing reality, though, but it needs its proper context to work. Otherwise you might end up rowing a boat with a hammer.

>>11108714
People reject these arguments because they need its consequences (permission for their hedonism, namely)

>>11114817
>comprehend this point of perspective by whom and to what purpose or with what intention?
>Can't account to whom or in what manner?
My point is that if we can only address with concrete certainty that which is directly phenomenologically observed and comprehended by us, the point of phenomenological observation itself is excluded. Witnessing doesn't witness the witnesser. This results in the system not being able to account for itself.

>>11114628
There is a hierarchy of causality and contingency that is simply nonsensical to invert. One example that I would give is the relationship between math and logic. Logic causes math to be possible, math is contingent on the existence of logic. To say that math could switch places with logic in this relationship is absurd.

>>11114914
*fucks little boys*
Those fucking atheist hedonists know no shame.

>>11114948
But to what degree can we say that's descriptive of reality?

>>11114990
On what do you base that logic or math are absolute realities?

>>11115005
>checkmate christfags!

immorality among christians isnt even relevant to the point he's making.

>>11115119
>But to what degree can we say that's descriptive of reality?
Can you explain a little more precisely what your objection to this is? Because I'm saying it is entirely descriptive of reality.

>On what do you base that logic or math are absolute realities?
You're going down a dead end road there fella. If you don't believe that logic can reach absolute truth then you might as well stop asking questions and thinking.

>>11115212
>Can you explain a little more precisely what your objection to this is?
I mean to what degree can we say that this aligns with our sense perceptions ("reality" was here a bad choice of words, I admit). Mind you, I'm not saying that this isn't dicursively valid, but I don't think you would or could arrive at this understanding purely through sense perception. You would need some other point of reference to get there. Because then we're trying to explain sense perception through something which isn't it, which wasn't really built to describe it in this way (not that you couldn't develop something better for that task, maybe), and then we're trying to found our understanding of this thing which isn't quite what raw sensation is, and so back and forth. So if you tackle solipsism, it's just impossible to come to a conclusion because the "premises" of sense perception might align with solipsism in that it covers all experience, but those of thought and language, which always refer to something outside themselves, do not.

I guess I'm approaching body/mind dualism here though, but maybe it's just that one needs to grasp different things through different mean?

>If you don't believe that logic can reach absolute truth then you might as well stop asking questions and thinking.
Well, that's what I'm debating myself over. I overall tend to align with Buddhism when it comes to absolute truth* since it stikes me as the least convoluted and makes the most sense to me, but then I also haven't found the time to read Hegel and Kant properly...

*https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7b8d/3ca63f676e2306ba33dc4350a9d659c3ec6b.pdf

>For Western philosophers it is very tempting to adopt a Kantian understanding of Nagarjuna (as is offered, e.g., in Murti 1955). Identify conventional reality with the phenomenal realm, and ultimate reality with the noumenal, and there you have it. But this is not Nagarjuna’s view. The emptiness of emptiness means that ultimate reality cannot be thought of as a Kantian noumenal realm. For ultimate reality is just as empty as conventional reality. Ultimate reality is hence only conventionally real! The distinct realities are therefore identical. As the Vimalakirtinirdesa-sutra puts it, ‘To say this is conventional and this is ultimate is dualistic. To realize that there is no difference between the conventional and the ultimate is to enter the Dharma-door of nonduality,’’ or, as the Heart Sutra puts it more famously, ‘‘Form is empty; emptiness is form; form is not different from emptiness; emptiness is not different from form.’’ The identity of the two truths has profound soteriological implications for Nagarjuna, such as the identity of nirvana and samsara.

>>11116398
I think that through sense perception you arrive at the conclusion that there can not exist only sense perception. Logical and continuous comprehension of sense perception is an implication of more than sense perception is it not? How would you go about arguing against that? How does a reality purely composed of perceptions account for the order and continuity of these perceptions? You will never get off the ground if your presupposition is that we are restricted like this. I completely agree with you when you say we arrive at these ideas through the reference of something exterior to pure sense, because every thought we have presupposes more than it.

I don't know much about Buddhism in regards to this topic so I can't speak on it, but I'll just say that if you deny the ability to objectively state truth your own denial of this must be an objectively true statement, it's self refuting.

>>11116826
>I think that through sense perception you arrive at the conclusion that there can not exist only sense perception.
I'm not saying there's only sense perception.

>Logical and continuous comprehension of sense perception is an implication of more than sense perception is it not?
Yes, if we're talking about sense perception as our basic waking sense experience.

However
>How does a reality purely composed of perceptions account for the order and continuity of these perceptions?
If you're implying there's a distinct realm of existence which is need for our reality function, call it God if you would, I don't think it's necessarily the case.

Think of a road with holes in it: would you say the holes are due to a different, non-material reality? Or is it the structure of the road itself, that is unfolding in a different way? I think this simile is applicable not only to space, but to time and consciousness as well. It's not that other consciousnesses don't exist but rather you're on the highest (or lowest) point of a consciousness curve of sorts. When consciousnesses go out, it's not unlike flames or waves disappearing; I don't think you need to propose a second, imperceptible reality to explain consciousness satisfactorily. It's all a matter of the patterns and structure of existence.

That's also why I'm not saying there's only sense perception or there's only thought, nor that those are completely separate and easily discriminable. You eventually arrive at a point in which things are pure pattern, regardless of whether it's thought or sense, there's no basic atom that you can "cling to" and work from without the rest of the universe, like a heart is a useless collection of muscle without a body.

Of course, I have some doubts on this positions, but this post is already pretty long.

>if you deny the ability to objectively state truth your own denial of this must be an objectively true statement, it's self refuting.
Check out the article I posted then, it's dealing with that and pretty interesting.

>>11114914

So you admit that it is people's pre-conceived emotional notions that inform their stance on this argument? In that case, we can hardly call the argument rooted in a discussion about objective reality at all, but a clash between ideologies and preferred ways of life. Namely: we should not use this argument to affirm the existence of an entity in objective reality. So, it appears that your concession (in the desperate attempt of a 'tu quoque') invalidates the entire point of the original argument.

>>11111086
>then there would have been enough time for every potential to actualize
What if it's repeating a cycle that doesn't include the death of everything?

>>11117586
Then every potential wouldn't be actualized since death is a potential.

>>11117627
Right. I'm saying it's not necessarily true that an eternal universe leads to the actualization of every potential.

>>11117670
Why wouldn't it? A universe contracting and then expanding to reshape the universe isn't the actualization of every potential since complete death or nothingness is pure potential.

>>11117689
Refrase what you just said but this time as if you're talking to a retard thanks.

>>11117748
If the universe exists at all in any form then every potential hasn't been actualized.

>>11108700
I think apologetics undermines the entire concept of faith.

>>11117796
>setting a Heroic standard of faith for everyone
well good luck with your church surviving or whatever

Question for smart anons itt:

Even if time and space are finite (using whichever scientific model you prefer), doesn't causality itself prove an infinite God? That is, the universe isn't finished yet because the agency we call God is Being and Being isn't finished yet and never will be?

>>11117902
Even if time and space are infinite, the big bang requires an infinitely compressed singularity to work.

So much ITT

>>11118666
>666
confirmed.

We have always known God to be all powerful and if the universe is still growing then its still a consequence from God creating it.

>>11108840
>rhetoric
>good

Kill yourself

>the big bang is about how the universe came into existence.
How to spot a pseud who just regurgitates info without actually having studied it.

>>11117902
How would causality prove anything? The reason infinity is invalid as a descriptor of anything physical, including time, is because there is infinite regress. Other posters commented on this already. Infinity cannot exist in any observable form, because it is an Aristotelian accidental, something that is observable only through concrete physical things, and only analogically. If I wanted to represent infinity, I can do so infinitesimally, or reciprocally, infinitely. But I need to use other, prior terms, to understand it. I’m certainly not understanding infinity numerically, therefore I must use some form of shape to understand it. Thus, much like Pi, Infinity is only observable in connection with some material factor/observation. I would need to cut a cone with a plane, and then describe some asymtptotes around the hyperbola, for instance, to “observe” infinity in any conceivable way.

This is why Aristotle raises the possibility of the first mover, I.e. everything being finite. Infinity, like zero, is only observable through the relations of forms/figures.

>>11113270
Dude all the Christians have against atheists are anecdotes about some dorky ones. Think of how many times any given christlarpers has posted the same 4-5 images of fat guys in fedoras whenever somebody asks them a question about their busted ass theology.

>>11118798
Infinity isn't an issue unless you're a brainlet.
A chain of events constitute a problem if there are some events that are left unexplained. In an infinite chain of events nothing is left unexplained: each event is explained by the previous one and the whole set of events is logically implied by the existence of the events. So each event and the chain of events have an explanation.
No problem whatsoever.

>>11118960
We all know how infinity works.

That’s not the issue with infinity. I’m saying it’s not materially possible. And it’s not either, time is observably and analogically finite. Time to stop being a retard and understand Aristotle.

>>11118970
>I’m saying it’s not materially possible
Wrong.

>>11118970
Also it's quite ironic you say "understand aristotle" when aristotle believed the universe to be infinitely old.

>>11119043
Absolutely not. Read Metaphysics. In book Lambda he posits the notion that Infinity can not be present materially.

Infinity doesn’t exist period. Read Hawking or something . You are a pseud, you don’t read things correctly and you don’t have your facts straight. Now, I’m going to bed because unlike you I have a job to wake up to tomorrow. I hope this was unpleasant for you, I don’t like people not reading Aristotle and then thinking they understand his philosophy

>>11119099
>Absolutely not
Absolutely yes. This is hilarious, every single person on this site that accuses others of being a pseud, always, inevitably, reveals himself to be one. Artistotle repeatedly argued for the world being eternal. He literally said that matter itself is eternal.
>Infinity doesn’t exist period. Read Hawking or something
lol

>>11119116
I want to apologize in the previous post it was book Kappa I was referring to.

Finally eternal does not equal infinite.

And also, double final, time is finite.

>>11119143
>Finally eternal
...

aquinas is a kike faggot

>>11110498
It's not a purely logical argument.

>>11118987
>Wrong.
Brainlet.

>>11117395
>I'm not saying there's only sense perception.
Okay but the objection you gave was that my position could not be reached purely through sense perception.
>If we're talking about sense perception as our basic waking sense experience.
That is what sense perception is.
>If you're implying there's a distinct realm of existence which is needed for our reality to function, call it God if you would, I don't think it's necessarily the case.
Something more along the lines of a "distinct realm of existence" that is hierarchically prime and that our existence is entirely dependent on. I think this is necessarily the case.
>It's all a matter of the patterns and structure of existence.
Do you think this structure is objective?
>Check out the article I posted then, it's dealing with that and pretty interesting.
Thanks I will.

>>11119556
I wish I were as woke as you

>>11119143
>eternal does not equal infinite.

>>11120418
>the objection you gave was that my position could not be reached purely through sense perception.
Right. I'm just wondering if this method can explain absolutely everything.

>a "distinct realm of existence" that is hierarchically prime and that our existence is entirely dependent on
Well, like I said, a non-dualistic prespective makes more sense to me, i.e. existence is neither of the more or less elementary realities but their relationship.

>Do you think this structure is objective?
Yes, but it includes subjective perception as part of it.

>>11120669
He's right, though. Eternal does not equal infinite, it could in a specific situation, but it's not always =

>>11120832
Aristotle literally believed that matter was never created, it's eternal, which means it has existed for an infinite amount of time in the past.
Aristotle simply believed that you could have both an infinite past AND a primus movens.

>>11120669
>permanent, lasting, perpetual
None of that implies infinity.

>>11108714
Le expert psychologist has arrived