Insidium Profundis:

Again, you are welcome to critique my http://www.dmitrychernikov.com/fiveways.htm

Matt, why don't you try to understand the believer's mind rather than labeling him insane. You confine too many people to the mental hospital. That just won't do.

2 + 2 = 5 is a priori false. "pouring ice cream into computers makes them work better" is false from experience. The articles of faith can neither be proved nor disproved by reason. As an atheist, you cannot say that the doctrine of the Trinity is true or false. Aquinas thought that the kalam argument was faulty (though not for the same reason why ShaunPhilly thinks it is faulty). He thought that that the universe had a finite age was an article of faith, as well.

Having faith requires a solid foundation of rational knowledge, as least for people of our temperament. As Aquinas writes, "The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected."

And this leads us to the view of faith as not contrary to reason but as knowledge that perfects, that crowns reason; faith, just like all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit, lifts man above his nature. You cannot attack the strawman that the Christian faith is contrary to reason. In order to show that, you'd have to find some self-contradiction within the articles of faith, something which atheists are certainly used to doing and which is very useful, as it allows one to better grasp all the implications of the propositions of faith by dealing with the objections.

You might argue instead that faith itself is unjustified. But that is a whole other subject.

Here' Nietzsche;

If we are to think about faith as something that "crowns" our reason, something that allows us to transcend the natural, then we see it as something unnecessary and presumptuous.

Adding to reason is, in itself, fine. We can add beauty, art, and other non-rational aspect to human experience that give us much of value. But faith adds nothing. It adds a dream, a fantasy, a phantom.

Faith asks us to accept things that, while we cannot disprove (by definition; they are presented as unfalsifiable), they also do not explain anything nor are they derived from reason itself. So in what way does faith add to reason? If anything, it tries to supplant what many people either think reason cannot deal with or things that have been defined to exist beyond reason. It's a hide-the-proposition game that projects our desires beyond the horizon in an attempt to keep them from the reach of reason. It is a game that does not teach, but rather an attempt to resurrect the metaphysical past, to keep the Platonic Ideas on life-support.

Take reason to it's limits. And where it can take you no further, allow your imagination to fly onward and dream beautiful dreams. But do not accept these dreams as reality, for the mind is easily fooled, and one may think that your dream has brought back fragments of that world past sight, and you may try to apply these strange chimeras to your world and notice that, strangely, they seem to fit. But don't make the mistake of concluding that because those objects fit, it's because they are true or real. Rather, recognize that any dream, fantasy, or phantom from a mind trained in reality will consist of real parts. It does not mean the objects dreamed of are real.

I don't object to objects of faith. These objects tell us much of human psychology; needs, dreams, and desires. I object to the idea that something that comes to us from beyond reason (or on top of reason) as being applied to the real, which is the domain of reason. I don't object to dreams, I object when they are claimed status equal to or greater than nature.

The actual world may exist before we know it, but we also add to it. The articles of faith are additions from our minds. They are projections. Thus, they hold a "truth" in the sense that they convey meaningful and important ideas, but they must be delegated to the world of dreams, not of reality. Saying that reason can't go beyond some point, and what lies beyond there is the world beyond our sight is, well, an attempt to circumvent epistemology. To claim it has been revealed is an extraordinary claim for which I see no reason to accept.

And if I did see evidence, it would have to be natural, otherwise I would not see it.

Shaun

This assumption necessarily leads to a cause 'outside of the universe', so you've begged your god into existence right here.

The reality is that your first assumption is just that, an assumption, and a groundless one at that.

I'm betting that you are confusing big bang theory for a creation event. It's not.

Therefore, the question of whether existence itself is self existing is the very question that needs to be examined....

not merely assumed, one way or the other.

Yes, it does. But the troublesome aspect for me is that it is so easy for the theist to simply assume his god into existence that it will prove difficult for him to realize it, even when it's pointed out.

LOL. Right.

It works like this:

1: where did the universe come from?
2: I don't know.
1: I know! Goddidit!
2: What's god?
1: I don't know!

So we actually never leave square zero (let alone get to square one), since "god' is just another word for 'I don't know'.

And, as we've already discussed, then there's the problem inherent in the first question itself: the question itself creates the assumption which necessarily begs the god into being...

Well said. We clearly see eye to eye.

Yes.

I think the real culprit for this bad logic is that science is taught as a body of 'answers' rather than as a method of understanding, a tool that helps us describe, explain and even control aspects of nature.

As long as one believes that science is just a set of 'answers" it makes no difference if we call a cause 'gravity' or 'god'. But when we realize that science is a method, we can plainly see that giving a problem a name does nothing to solve it.

Your article had a lot of good detail Shaun. I have seen pieces of that in several places, but you put it all together in place.

My 2 cents:

No matter how you cut it, the first cause idea is question begging. I am aware of the common theistic response that a cause and effect chain cannot go back forever because it violates logic. This is wrong. Saying that cause and effect does NOT go back forever violates logic. The sentence 'Time started.' contains an invisible clause that when revealed reads 'At this point in time, time started.' This obviously makes no sense.

I personally don't deal at all with invented, nonsensical terms like 'self-existing.'

But most of all, I don't understand why people still take the childish arguments of Aquinas seriously anymore. Kalam is recycled Aquinas the same way Dembski is recycled Paley.

I think this focus on the cosmological argument is just a temporary diversion from Paley since ID took such a beating recently.

Yet rest assured that when Aquinas is (again) pinned to the mat, it will tag Paley design back into the ring.

There is something essentially necessary...and it is Somethingness itself: EXISTENCE.

I often get the impression that a good working definition of philosophy is talking forever about the completely obvious...so I'm not going to go into the implications of what I said. As it's completely obvious, all of you (nearly) should be able to figure it out!

  Let us futhrer rebut this argument. William Lane Craig touts it as so decisive

.And Aquinas begs the question in stating that if one removes the first cause, one cannot get to the intermediate one!

*bumped for the ill-informed*

   William Lane Craig begs the question in the Kalaam by assuming a starting point. Aquinas notes that it is from day to day for eternity to occur.Aquinas begs the question in stating that if one takes away the First Cause, one takes away the intermediate ones. And he begs the question in the contingency argument by assuming Necessary being rather than first showing it.

 Taking scientist Russell Stannard's origins and creation into the argument, I make it this way: contingency or origins [ science] and Necessary Being or creation [ theology], with theists merely assuming the second of this two category classification.

  Logic is the bane of theists; they ever beg questions.