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Author | Topic: The Ultimate Question - Why is there something rather than nothing? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Why is there something rather than nothing?
Some initial thoughts: * God would not constitute an explanation, since God counts as something. * Indeed, if anything constituted an explanation then the existence of everything was contingent on that thing, then that thing would stand in need of an explanation, and so wouldn't be the answer we were looking for. * This last consideration makes the question look unanswerable. To explain my thinking, consider that a question beginning "Why ..." invites an answer describing some thing which is an antecedent cause, or at least something with a sort of family resemblance to an antecedent cause. * Any attempt to prove a priori that there should be something rather than nothing would necessarily involve proving that a state of affairs in which nothing existed would be self-inconsistent. Which it isn't. My own opinion is that the question is unanswerable, and indeed can only be asked because the English language allows us to talk nonsense. This view does not satisfy me in the slightest, but as I am in the habit of saying, being hungry does not prove that we have bread. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Add the "- Why is there something rather than nothing?" to topic title.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I'll repeat here what I said in the other thread. "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Because there is/was a creative intelligence as a prime mover. That would count as something. You don't answer the question by postulating one thing which explains everything else.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Does consciousness count as something? Does intelligence or wisdom count as something? Would a state of affairs in which there was consciousness, wisdom, and intelligence be the same as a state of affairs in which there was nothing?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
The big problem is that "nothing" is simply a place-holder for *undefined*. No. Perhaps you could clarify your reasoning on this point.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I was responding to Dr A's initial thought because it was faulty. One doesn't need an explanation of the explanation for it to be the best explantion. Therefore, God answers the question why there is something rather than nothing. You seem very muddled. W.L.C. correctly points out that you could in principle infer God without being able to explain God. This would be an apposite answer to someone who refused to infer God solely because he couldn't explain him. I, on the other had, asked you to explain why there was something rather than nothing. As God (if he exists) is something, then in order to answer my question, you have to explain God (if he exists). Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
there is no reasoning, i'm simply stating a fact. Or perhaps you have a definition of "nothing" of which I am unaware? There would be nothing if there were no things.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
The thing gets easier if one thinks positive and negative, and that both these are post-universe factors. Once there was no light or darkness; hard to imagine, but hey - once there was no imagination either. The buck stops at the second alphabet when we backtrack; the A is barred and elusive and represents the forbidden apple metaphor. There is nothing wrong with the human brain, except its wiring is limited. We cannot even fathom a new color. I'm glad we sorted that out. Some people might have thought that the buck stopped at the third alphabet, but now everything's clear.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Why not? That's the route I'd take... Well, give it a go. You need to find two sentences that describe such a state of affairs one of which is the negation of the other. But where are the sentences to be about?
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I was more interested in your reason for saying it isn't. Well, the absence of things for there to be mutually inconsistent statements about.
I was more interested in your reason for saying it isn't. But here you go: 'No-thing' is indicating a lack of a subject. The verb "to be" is indicating the presence of a subject. Nothing cannot be. Can there be a complete absence of unicorns in my back yard? By your reasoning, no. "Complete absence", you would tell us, "indicates a lack of a subject", and "be", you say "indicates the presence of a subject" ... so an absence of unicorns cannot be. Well then, where are the unicorns? You're just confusing yourself with grammar. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Huh? That didn't make any sense. Can you phrase that differently? Yes. Look, what we need for a contradiction is a thing X and a predicate P such that P(X) & ~P(X). But if there is no X, then there is no X that fits that condition. For example, we could rule out a universe in which the following propositions were true: (1) Apples and oranges exist.(2) Citrus fruit do not exist. ... since from these propositions, plus the definition of an orange as a citrus fruit, we can logically deduce the existence of at least one entity that is a citrus fruit and is not a citrus fruit. How are we going to do that sort of thing when the nonexistence of things is our premise?
There are not any unicorns being in your backyard. But 'an absense of unicorns' doesn't exist in your backyard. That's nonsensical, imho. Well, it's English. There is a complete absence of unicorns = There are not any unicorns. And in the same way: There is a complete absence of things = There are not any things. The grammatical structure of the phrase in English doesn't really cast any light on its meaning or its possibility.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
The list is not direct quotes, Craig never claims that they are. All he did was replace "crane so far" with "explanation". This doesn't compromise the meaning of the sentence, it simply makes it more understandable. It conceals Dawkins' meaning; and it conceals that Craig is snipping random pieces out of Dawkins' argument and pretending that he is summarizing Dawkins' argument. Dawkins distinguishes between two types of explanation for things, which he calls "cranes" and "skyhooks". He argues that "cranes" are probable and "skyhooks" are improbable; and he argues that God is a "skyhook". Craig rips out this aspect of Dawkins' argument, changes "crane" to "explanation" so that you can't tell that there's a massive chunk of argument missing, and then complains that "the atheistic conclusion [...] seems to come suddenly out of left field" and that "that conclusion doesn't follow from the six previous statements" and goes on to refer to "the six steps of Dawkins' argument" as though Dawkins' argument did in fact consist of the six "steps" ripped out of context and re-written by Craig. This seems to me to be dishonesty, but it could merely be idiocy. Or maybe a bit of both. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Craig is not obligated to quote whole paragraphs based on what you feel he should inlude and not include. If he just wanted to say: "Here are six things Dawkins said that are wrong for the following reasons ..." he would not be obligated to summarize Dawkins' entire argument. But instead, he pretends that these six things are Dawkins' entire argument and then complains that the conclusion doesn't follow from them. I think he is kinda not obligated to do this. And then he has the gall to write this:
A more charitable interpretation would be to take these six statements, not as premises, but as summary statements of six steps in Dawkins' cumulative argument for his conclusion that God does not exist. So it would be "charitable" would it, to "assume" that these are "summary statements"? No assumption is necessary. Craig knows damn well that they are a summary. They are a summary written by William Lane Craig. Unless ... it has just struck me ... maybe Craig, instead of bothering to actually read the book, read this "summary" of Dawkins' argument written by another dumbass Christian apologist and didn't realize that what he was reading was not in fact written by Dawkins. That would also explain his behavior.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
If I answer: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" with: "Because nothing, by definition, cannot be." Is there anything wrong with my answer? Yes. See posts #147 and #149.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
There can certainly be an absence of anything specific in your backyard. So where can the absence of everything be, other than nowhere? Everywhere? Like the absence of unicorns? Of course, if there was no space, then everywhere and nowhere would be synonymous.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 315 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Space (and any place) is something. So: Only nowhere can there be an absence of everything. Time is something, so, even better: Only nowhere and never can there be an absence of everything. And if there was, it would be true to say: "Everywhere and at all times there is an absence of everything." The fact that these superficially look like opposites is that you are used to a situation in which space and time do exist, and your use of language reflects that. (Consider the fact that in logic it is correct to say both that all unicorns are pink and that no unicorns are pink --- so long as unicorns don't exist.) Like Catholic Scientist, you are tacitly taking the syntax and semantics of the English language to be significant to the question. But it really isn't. It would not in fact be self-contradictory for there to be no time or no space. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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