ZZZ reference my hyper cube example , if you remove a dimension of movement from god then he is crippled this doesn’t solve any thing it makes god a cripple! Arguing for a prime mover is so silly like the argument from the prime holder :

1) The earth is flat

2) every thing is falling down

3)What is supporting the flat earth ? A turtle !

4) However what is preventing this turtle from ffalling down ? A another turtle ?

5) Then we gate a infinite line of turtles with is impossible !

6) WE must accept a prime holder to support the turtle a being so powerful it can’t be influenced by the falling down force. And this being must be god !!

 

It was taken as self evident as the premise 'time is infinite'.
As it happens, both are questionable.
What's more, if you deny that time is infinite then you also have to deny this premise that every event has a cause.

To see why, you have to look at our concept of a cause.
It is a relation between two events in time.
X caused Y means that X came before Y.
If X is the first event, the very beginning of time, then it cannot have a cause because that would mean that something came before it. If something came before it then X is not the beginning.

The cosmological argument contains the incredible contradiction that time has a beginning, that there was a first event, and then says "therefore there must have been something before this first event".
If you say that time had a beginning then this beginning is the beginning. There is no 'before' for it to 'come from', otherwise that would be the beginning instead!!

Your argument is therefore incoherent as the first premise that everything has a cause contradicts your second premise that time had a beginning.

The universe might well have a beginning, and the scientific argument might turn out to be true. However, the philosophical/mathematical argument is pure sophistry.

Premise 1 merely says if you to count an infinite amount of steps then you would never finish counting. Premise two doesn't follow. If an infinite amount of moments happened today then all that means is that if we counted back then we'd never finish counting.
Please note that between any point in time and today there is a finite amount of steps, just that for every point in time that we count back to we can count to the one before it.

Anyway, I'll be interested to hear your counter arguments.
Thanks for reading.

WTF?

Are you seriously saying that people physically stop existing in space/time when they fall asleep?

...

I'm....I'm....seriously wtf?

deludedgod, thanks for the solid input here, thanks for the challenge on causality, it's something I've knocked around a bit with friends earlier. However, I think that it is impositional to make claims about a being existing outside of time. God made time, and one member of the trinity is very noticeably contained within it. And in this vein, I think there is a coherent and important difference between being outside of time and exceeding time, specifically at once existing in every moment. Perhaps the two of these notions held together provides a constancy for God as well as a medium through which to act, God at once in and exceeding time.

'Real' and 'fantasy' are words we use to make a specific distinction between different linguistic practices.

You can apply mathematics in physical situations but the truth of mathematics is quite independent.
Mathematics can be seen a game.
You start with the rules (axioms) that determine what is true and false and the rest of it is learning to play these rules. When it comes to mathematical truth, physics is quite irrelevent.
Maybe you consider the only value of mathematical truth is how we can apply it in physical situations but that's a different claim altogether.

It has the same 'negativity' that maths has, that it is not a physical concept with physical properties. The difference is that you say that mathematics has an applications that you can relate to. That's why you have no problem with mathematics. I already agreed that mathematics means something to you in the way that concepts based on a religious practice won't, but that doesn't mean that they won't mean something to someone else who does follow that practice.

Maybe you want to criticise religious practice, saying that it is not a valuable system in the same way maths and science is. That's a fair claim, but you must remember that we are in the realm of practical reason now which means that such practices are to be judged purely by their value to a person's life.

Just to re-iterate, mathematics doesn't have a physical source.
It has physical applications but it doesn't have a 'source' as such.

This appears to be an expansion of your claim that mathematics is a worthwhile system because it has physical applications. I.e. there's a genuine value to mathematical truth.
The point I want to emphasise here that when we are judging systems, we are no long judging them as 'true' or 'false' because it's the system that decides whether something is true or false, it's a case of whether the system (with the way it judges things 'true' or 'false') is of any value.

One point I want to make is that you appear have this assumption that our description of the world 'language' game is the system that all others should reduce to. Such a claim is groundless. Our 'world description' language game is just another like all the rest. Maybe you could say that it's your favourite or the one that means the most to you in everyday life.
These different systems could all be seen as different practices or games that we might adhere to in life, and therefore they are to be judged by the value of their practice to our lives.

As it happens, the force is an exadurated form of Chi which I think can also be justified in a similar way to theism is.

It's because whether a system is meaningful, i.e. whether its propositions and methods of evaluating are worth anything, this all depends on the value of the system to a person's life.
Our practice of using the language of physics, or mathematics, or decision making, or joking, or whatever the practice, it can only be judged in what value it has to our lives.

Modern theists tend to find importance in both physical truth and their religion, so they tend to go to lengths to make them as non-contradictory as possible. This is why the God of Gaps is possible as it gives them a God free from contradiction. So is the transcendent God as it removes all possibility of contradiction with physics.
This means that they can carry out their practice of thinking scientifically when scientific thinking is appropiate and carry out their practice of religion thinking when it is appropiate.

In the first place, I'm going to say that the "world description" language game does occupy a special place and is more important and intrinsically more valuable than other language games. Why?

1. Everyone values this language game from earliest childhood. It is the only universally observed and valued language game.

2. It is necessary for all other language games. Without the fundamental empirical facts, we can form no other thought.

3. It is necessary for life. We die if we don't play it. So the opposite of playing this game is nonexistence, which makes it rather like a logical axiom.

So the value of the world description game is life and continued existence itself, which pretty much defines ultimate value.

Given this, I would say that theists commit an inconsistency and an error when they try to use the tools of the world description game (as they must) to create alternate games that deny or conflict with the terms of the original. They are engaged in sawing off the branch they are sitting on. This is amply demonstrated when we ask theists to define transcendence and all they can do is steal from naturalism and say "Not that." They have eradicated their claim to knowledge along with their transcendent being's natural identity. Transcendence is simply an empty, incoherent refusal to play the one game that must be played in order for thought and discourse to occur.

See, I have no problem with people creating engaging fantasies for their own amusement. I do it all the time. I love science fiction, the more speculative and "out there" the better. Each sci-fi story is a language game of its own, complete with internal rules of what is possible. The difference is, I never, in any way, accept that any part of this fantasy exists anywhere except in my head.

Ultimately, no theist will accept this level of non-existence for their transcendent being. Try to put that being on the same plane with other fantasies, where it belongs, and they will balk. As Dennet said, what if a preacher got up in front of the congregation and said "OK, now what I'm going to tell you should be considered as a kind of useful fairy tale." It would never happen. Theists using the word transcedent are attempting to have their cake and eat it too by implying a connection to the natural world while simultaneously denying all the associated criteria. Maybe doing so makes them feel good, but it doesn't make the practice or the term valid in logic or discourse. 

I've read approximately half of those already, but I do not think that the recommending a list of books to one's interlocutor constitutes a fruitful continuity of any discussion, certainly not on an internet forum, also, the list is long, but for a large part, redundant, as I do know that, at least from the ones I have made, the argument put forth is, by far and large, identical (most are Cosmological argument-based. Obviously Plantinga's argument from other minds is a different class unto itself), as for Swinburne, he's most infatuated with a sort of reverse version of TAG (ie not that we need to presuppose a God in order to make inductive statements, but rather that the ability to make inductive statements proves the existence of God) in addition to the run-of-the-mill Cosmological argument.

Speaking of which, the idea of a Cosmological argument has always been slightly irritating to me, being that it has nothing to do with the academic discipline of Cosmology. Any discourse on the absolute origin of the universe, deity-wise, is called Cosmogony, and therefore it should be named as such. Actually, I'm going to start referring to it as that, ie, the "Cosmogonical argument" for reasons of linguistic accuracy.

 

It happens that I disagree with this.
I think that there other universal language games like desires/decision-making, story telling (which is similar to world description except the value is determined by entertainment rather than accuracy) and I'm sure there's plenty more. I also think that our language of desire is more important to our lives than our world description, although to be honest it's not a question I've seriously looked into.
I'm not going to dwell on this point as I think it's a tangent.

Whichever is the most important or most universal is besides the point. What I was disagreeing with was your implication that other language games had to be justified in terms of this 'main' one. Perhaps you could make an analogy between language games we play and clothes we wear.
You have your casual, your smart work clothes, pyjamas/nightware, sportswear... etc.
It might be that one of these clothes is your favourite or most important to you. However, even though one set of clothes might be more important, it doesn't mean that other clothes should be based on it. The other clothes are still designed for different situations and for that reason are better suited for these different purposes.

In the same way, the best way to see language games is different games for different purposes. It's not appropiate to judge a joke by whether it describes a true fact.

I have to say that this is just plain wrong.
To play a language games you just play the rules.
It's theoretical possible that someone will go throughout life playing language games and interacting people, but never having to come across the idea of a fact.
It would never happen in real life, but you know what I'm pointing out here.

The obvious example is maths.
You can lay down all the rules of mathematics without mentioning a single empirical fact. What's more, the rules of world description themselves obviously don't require empirical facts!!

I more or less agree with this...
Remember, I'm not trying to deny the importance of world description. My aims are as follows:
1) World description language suits some purposes but not all. There are situations in life where it's just not appropiate.
2) World description is obviously of great importance to our lives, and I'd agree that a practice that damaged our ability to do this would be detrimental. But if there isn't a clash, then the importance of worldview has no impact on the value of games that don't impact on it.

So the fact that the world description language game has great importance doesn't mean that other games should be defined in terms with it or necessarily trying to compete with it.
Just because your dining suit is your favourite, most useful clothing then that doesn't mean you don't also need sportswear.

You need to justify the bit in bold.
I can't possibly see how this is the case.
Language games can be based on others, but many are irreducible. They grow out of a practice of themselves. Even if 'world description' was the first like you say, that clearly didn't require 'world description' rule to come about - why would other language games?

Again, I disagree.
Think of how we use negative definition in other ways.
When we say "It's not that", we do so to narrow it down to something it is. Theists rule out everything in the 'world description' language games. This has brought out the complaint "But doesn't that rule out everything?"
If the world description language game was the only one then yes.
But it's not, so the theist does allow for other possibilities.

As it happens, it's a common question to theists:
"If God can't be touched, seen, smelt or heard, then what can you know of God?"
The believer will then usually say something about faith, or ask to meet him, or something else. Whatever variation they say, it will ultimately be saying "If you join our religious practice you will see for yourself."
The God concept is something that means something in the context of religious practice. Is the religious practice a worthwhile language game like others? Well, we judge others by whether they are of value to our lives, so a religious system would be judgeable in the same way. I think theists recognise this on a subconscious level.

Sure, some theists try to argue for God in scientific terms, but that's just to play to a scientific crowd. I have never ever heard of a theist who was genuinely convinced by a theological argument. Rather they are attracted to the lifestyle of the religious practice.
Every conversion story I have ever read always harps on about the way Jesus transformed their lives for the better, that the religious way of thinking made a number of improvements on their life. You justify religion the same way you justify hobbies like playing music and sports.

It can be. If the theist is supposed to be talking in terms of world description then.
e.g. say we were discussing the cause of a physical event then bringing in a transcendent being would commit the error you talk of.

However, since world description isn't the only form of rational discourse then

Religion is different to fantasy.
It plays a different part in a person's life to fantasy.
However, that doesn't mean that it is necessarily treated as fact.
What I'm about to say here is difficult so read carefully.

There are characteristics about facts, what we use them for and why they are useful for us. We need them to be accurate as that's what their purpose demands of us.
We use them to make predictions in real life and manipulate objects in the physical world around us. Science has often been closely linked with technology, science's main application.
Although some theists have tried to make technology out of religious belief, they tend to be fringe and extremists. Most theists see something wrong with that. Most theologies are filled with clauses on why you shouldn't use them to make predictions about the natural world. e.g. "Thou shalt not put the lord to the test"
This is why theistic 'beliefs', although they might sometimes sound similar to normal beliefs, they actually serve a different purpose so are to be evaluated by different rules.
That's why Christians tend to see belief in the ressurection as a moral question with moral implications rather than a historical one. Even the ones with the 'historical fact' arguments are trying to appease rationalists rather than share what persuaded them.

My claim is that a theist could 'believe' without treating it as a fact.
It is that 'normal belief' is a different concept to 'religious belief'.
I don't agree that religious belief can be reduced to 'belief in belief', but Dennet's 'belief in belief' idea is clear example of observation in the differences between 'factual belief' and 'religious belief'.

I don't think that they necessarily do make this implication.
And many of the theists that do don't necessarily believe in transcendence.

Right... this topic has branched out quite a bit and several questions are being addressed at once. I think that trying to debate them all at the same time will spread the focus thin. What I'd like to do now is pick out one at a time, starting with the one I feel to be the most important.

To start with I think we need to address this disagreement over language games as the rest of my argument depends upon this.

I think that one thing that make my point clearer is to make a distinction between 'rational dependence' and 'causal dependence'.
You are claiming that as humans start with 'world description' that it is necessary for the construction of further language games.
This is a causal dependence about the devellopment of language.
I.e. if Person A hadn't develloped their 'world description' language then they would never have develloped their mathematical language.
Although I disagree with you here it's beside the point.
What I am trying to defend here is that other language games don't have a 'logical dependence' on the world description language.

So what do I mean by 'logical dependence'?
Mathematics is logically independent to world description because when finding the truth of a mathematical statement you appeal purely to the rules of mathematics and the rules of world description is irrelevent.
So even if mathematics is causally dependent on 'world description', i.e. the rules of mathematics would never have develloped without the rules of 'world description' in place, once the rules of mathematics are in place they have no logical dependence on the rules of 'world description'.

So whether a mathematical statement is true of false has absolutely no dependence on physical fact. We have the rules in place for the game we call 'mathematics' and from there the game is self-contained.
So we have two different language games, each with their own set of rules on how to determine whether something is 'true' or 'false'.
So which set of rules do we use to evaluate a truth claim with?
It's quite obvious really - we evaluate mathematical claims with mathematical rules and 'world fact' claims with the rules of world description.
So all these alternative language games, even if the world description game was necessary for the construction in the real world (which I still disagree with but that's off topic! ) then they still wouldn't have logical dependence on it.

This is how mathematical fact transcends the physical world.
2 + 3 = 5 no matter what the physical facts are, because 2 + 3 = 5 is evaluated to be true by the rules of mathematics and physical facts play no part in the evaluation.
In the same way, God can transcend the physical world if 'God' is a concept that has meaning in a religious language game that is logically independent from 'world description'.

You made a several more points worth answering in the post above.
My claims beg for questions like:
"If religion isn't world fact and isn't fantasy then what is left for it to be?"
"How can a religious language not clash with 'world description' language?"
"What worth is a religious practice to anyone? Sounds to me like it just causes confusion!"
All will need to be answered at some point, but I need to stick to one question at a time in order to give it the depth and attention it needs for a good answer.
If you agree with my distinction between logical dependence and causal dependence and therefore the evaluation of a religious belief can be totally independent of physical fact then we can carry on with another one.

http://www.ithoughtthatthepagewastoothinsoimadethisbiglinktostretchit.org Ignore the link - it's just some unorthodox formatting!

Yeh, but what if God is within everything? Then he exists in all times.  And humans can't even get our heads arround the speed of light. And most of us use just 10% of our brains. Yep, I use 1%.

Ok Straf, I took a walk this morning and decided that we are both right. Wasn't that nice of me?

My concern with transcendence has gotten tangled up with my objections to religion. I understand what you are trying to say: if you take religion on its own (flawed) terms, transcendence has significant meaning as an important distinction between two concepts of God. It is a religious word, useful to religious people. The fact that I find it devoid of content points to the vacuous nature of religion and all religious discourse, not to a particular problem with the word itself.

Religious people have taken the a priori step of of discarding Occam's Razor and subscribing to the idea that what we feel in our hearts to be true points to a greater truth than that revealed by reason. I reject this claim and point to the fact that even knowledge of our hearts' desires can only be revealed through reason. However, given the a priori assumptions of religion, the idea of transcendence does have some currency. I just happen to think that it is the devalued currency of a failed state where a loaf of bread costs a million units.

On to the more general point about the justification for a religious language game...

IMO, at the most basic level, logical and casual dependance are the same thing. I don't think a logic that justifies nonexistence is worth anything to anyone. But in order to avoid nonexistence, there are several basic axioms of logic and principles of reason that have to be observed, a priori. Things like the law of identity, Occam's Razor and acceptance of empirical evidence, to name a few. These are basic necessities for thought and therefore physical existence. They are also basic necessities for logic and existence of something called truth. If we wish to embrace thought, we must embrace basic principles. And the whole edifice of modern science and reason rests on nothing more than those principles.

But theists frequently violate these principles, with concepts like "transcendence" among others. In order to justify their language game, they go back to a place well before language games, casually and logically, and make up new rules. But they have no replacement for those fundamental axioms and they violate them willy nilly. Have we ever seen a comprehensive framework for logic or thought that is built on a theistic platform? I haven't.

 

 

Now I feel like a bastard for not reciprocating!!
Just because my position has 'peace-making' consequences with moderates, that doesn't mean I'm not hitting for hard truth here.
You still don't get where I'm coming from, which isn't a dig at you because my position is pretty counter-intuitive on a lot of levels. This is why I was willing to take it through the necessary steps to prove my point to you.

Then I didn't make the distinction clear enough.
Causal dependence is purely explanatory.
Logical dependence is justificatory.

E.g. "I believe in God because I was brought up to" explains the causes as to why someone believes, but I'm sure you agree that it doesn't justify it.
To justify the belief you'd have to construct an argument to back up the belief, and that argument would be the logical dependence of the belief - the foundations that the justification of the belief stands upon.

My point about language games is that even if 'world description' comes before them in the casual chain, that merely explains how they came about and bears absolutely no relevence to their justification. Their justification is completely separate to their cause.
You were making that the claim that the 'world description' language came first and therefore other languages are justified by it and pointed out the difference between explanation and justification to show that this argument was based on an equivocation between the two.

You're still missing what I'm trying to point at here.
I've agreed that science depends on principles that are perfectly suited to world description. And yes, when theists try to use religious rules to come to 'world description' they fail miserably. The thing is, you assume that religion is only valid if it can give word description facts. Story telling and joking don't give world description facts either.
I know that religion isn't the same as story telling and joking, it's a practice in it's own right.
The point that I am trying to get across is that In the same way that story telling is a different practice to world description, so therefore has a different purpose, and therefore has different rules to fullfill this purpose, religion also has different purpose and rules. This works when a person recognises and keeps religion out of where it doesn't belong (e.g. Gould's separation) and causes problems when someone tries to apply religious rules where they don't apply. (Fundamentalism and their interferences with education)

You might still dispute whether religion is a valuable practice, but we should have these points in place by now:
1) If religion is a different practice to 'world description' with a different purpose, in that case it will also have different rules to evaluate by. This doesn't necessarily make it less rational, it just means that the rules of reason are different.
2) Such practices are justified or condemned by the effects that they have on our lives. You are right that we need our world description practice and that certain religious practices can interfer with it in a harmful way. However, those are the extreme practices. For the most part, people can keep them both in harmony. (e.g. Goulds separation)

Maybe we have drifted off topic a bit.
As it happens, transcendence isn't unique to religion.
I think that it has a similar use in morality that you might be able to relate to.
Todangst has an essay that compares Ghandi to God. (Guess who wins! )
Half way down the page there's a bit on Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg and his 8 stages of morality.
Morality starts in terms of selfish pleasure/pain, relying purely on reward/punishment to justify actions.
This selfishness requires the person to become better at morality where they devellop to the next stage with a social conscience. Going through stages like this they eventually come out at the end where their selfish desires are no longer relevent to their moral practice. Their morality has transcended the selfishness that brought them there in the first place. That is, their morality has risen above and fully disconnected itself from the selfish desires that used to justify it and has become a 'thing' in itself.

This is similar to how transcendence is in religion.
It's more than a distinction between two theological positions, it's an event of religious maturity. Normal people/lay theists tend to have the anthropomorphics conceptions of God where God is a literal being in time who literally causes things to happen. As the faith becomes more mature, as they go through the stages, God transcends this literalism. This is why I've yet to come across a proffessional theologian who subscribes to anthropomorphic conceptions of God.

The easiest form of religious transcendence to understand is Buddhist enlightenment. They start with their worldly reasoning, a natural law of karma that distributes right and wrong that they should come to master by thinking the right thoughts and doing the right actions. As they progress through the stages, they get less caught up in 'playing the karma game' and gradually transcend worldly cares to find a state of happiness/enlightenment.
When the Buddhist reaches nirvanna, they have programmed their mind to react positively to whatever the physical world throws at it. Their values have transcendended the physical world that was beyond their control and they have mastered their experience of the world.

All religions have similar stages.
The start with literalistic physical consequences behind their decision making (e.g. Christians with their "God will punish you!") which gradually evolves into an enlightened look at the world.
As it happens, this also sums up my defense of religious practice.
It is a practice that has develloped our of mankind struggling with his human nature and the physical world it has been placed in.
Religious traditions have often been built up by people who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to this struggle and have therefore made progress to pass onto others, just the same way as great fighters have perfected particular styles of martial arts to pass onto their followers.
This is how religious tradition can be helpful.
It has been designed to help people with the struggle that everyone faces in their lives and can be very good at it.