Kalam, Loftus & Lindsay

1) Kalam, Loftus & Lindsay · 2) Two rebuttals of Kalaam rebutted

First of all, every quote from Lindsay comes via his friend Loftus, from this blogpost:

Debunking Christianity : Infinity Is Not A Number, So The Kalam Argument Fails
By John Loftus at 3/21/2016
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2016/03/infinity-is-not-number-so-kalam.html

John Loftus

With the Kalam argument Wallace Marshall’s error is in thinking infinity is an actual number. Based on this error he says there cannot be an actual infinite number of past events. Well, of course not. That's because infinity isn’t an actual number. Since infinity is not an actual number we cannot count an infinite number of past events. The way Marshall uses infinity assumes there was a beginning an infinite time ago anyway. The truth is that an infinite timeline necessarily lies outside of our epistemic horizons. But this tells us nothing at all about whether the universe is eternal.

Me

"Outside our epistemic horizons" is not an actual possible alternative.

The argument makes the Universe as mystical as religion allows God to be. In other words, it destroys the claim that atheism frees the Universe from mysticism.

James Lindsay

Eternal cosmologies deny the existence of a beginning. Eternal means no beginning and no end. No first moment. No last moment. In an eternal cosmological model, we have to reckon time only from defined moments, and we can imagine a timeline of infinite length in both directions from any point that we choose. The way we conceive of that is not of a beginning infinitely long before or an end infinitely long after but rather as “there’s always an earlier moment than any we describe and always a later moment than any we describe.”

Me

Whether he admits so or not, it is like an actual number of infinite moments.

A beginning = a finite number of infinite moments.

No end = the finite number is always growing "into infinity", but is still always finite.

No beginning = the number is an actual infinite. Which is a mathematical paradox.

Or, the past is always growing backwards, just as much as the present is growing forwards into the future.

That is more of an ontological paradox.

Actual infinity in God poses no such paradox, since it is NOT in any way either numerical or even in the ordinary sense extensional.

God is totally simple and therefore "everything he is" at once. No past. No future. Only a present englobing all of our past and of our future. Our Time inside His Non-Time. Our Space inside His Non-Space.

Is that mystical? Yes, but leaves the Universe not so.

James Lindsay

Now the point isn’t that we know the universe is eternal. It’s that we don’t know that it isn’t. The whole point, by definition, of an eternal cosmology is that there is no first moment (i.e., no beginning).

Me

The problem with an eternal universe is that the universe is NOT everything it is at once and therefore its successive past would be numerical.

Therefore, unlike with God, the paradox does follow.

Universe not just mustical, but incoherent.

James Lindsay

The Kalam is exactly the kind of cosmology we would expect from people who hadn't yet discovered science…It would be absurd if they weren't so embarrassingly serious.

Me

This is as close, perhaps, as he comes to admitting "science" contains no actual argument against the Kalam, but is an ideological atmosphere which makes the Kalam argument look unsophisticated.

Or embarassing.

His words about "discovering science" is not about discovering it as an ideological object, but about exploring science and thus discovering it, from the inside, as your ideology.

In other words, he is not talking about science in the humdrum everyday sense of the word, he is talking about Science - or about Scientism.

Note, accepting as philosophical necessity that Universe had a beginning in timeis not strictly Thomist, but rather Scotist. However, Scotism is acceptable in the Catholic Church.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Tuesday of Holy Week
22.III.2016

PS, next day: here is a more Thomist and less Scotist version, which does not depend on time having a beginning. I am not at all denying its validity. It is just that I found it somewhat less relevant to objection raised by Loftus and Lindsay as objection was worded.

The TOF Spot : First Way, Some Background
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-background.html

The TOF Spot : First Way, Part I: A Moving Tale
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.html

The TOF Spot : First Way, Part II: Two Lemmas Make Lemma-aid
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-lemmas-make-lemma.html

The TOF Spot : First Way, Part III: The Big Kahuna
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-kahuna.html

The TOF Spot : First Way, Part IV: The Cascades
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/11/first-way-part-iv-cascades.html

Also, as it is connected to Geocentrism (see my comments under parts III and IV), the above gives an approximation for too resulute non-Geocentrics.

Answering Barbara Smoker, Part II

1) somewhere else : Answering Barbara Smoker's Path from Rome, 2) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... to Bart D. Ehrman, 3) somewhere else : Answering Barbara Smoker, Part II

Commenting on

thefreethinker : “My Path from Rome”
My Atheism
Barbara Smoker | Fri 24 Jul 2015 / Atheism
http://freethinker.co.uk/2015/07/24/my-path-from-rome/

Read the rest and am commenting on main further points now.

Barbara Smoker

In fact, all the evidence is against personal survival of death. It just doesn’t make sense. How could anything that survived the death of the body be the same person?

Hans Georg Lundahl

Because the soul which survives the body is what was the form of the living body while it lived and was constituting a person with it.

And because that body is meant to be raised with the soul, either for glory or for damnation.

Barbara Smoker

As for the idea that the universe was deliberately created, which is intended to explain existence, it manifestly fails to do so – for one is still left with the question of God’s existence. It is less complicated to suppose that particles of matter and waves of energy have always existed than to suppose they were made out of nothing by a resourceful being that has always existed.

Hans Georg Lundahl

It might be if there was no such thing as a mind or even sentience.

That minds or even sentience should arise as by products of particles of matter and waves of energy is manifestly absurd.

Also, atheists are usually also science believers, Barbara's argument is for a steady state eternal materialistic universe, and this is not what scientific (or so called such) recostructions about "history of the universe" usually offer - but maybe she isn't quite into these? I don't know.

Barbara Smoker

Besides, the idea of deliberate creation raises the moral problem of all the suffering there is in life, for so many people – and also for animals. I am ashamed, in retrospect, that I ever found it possible to worship the supposed creator of over-reproduction, sentient food, disease, and natural disasters. If I still believed in an omnipotent creator, I would have to heap curses on him – or her, or it. But if there is one thing to be said for this creator-god, it is his evidence non-existence.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Let us take the problems one by one. She is ashamed, in retrospect, that she ever found it possible to worship the supposed creator of ...

Barbara Smoker

over-reproduction

Hans Georg Lundahl

which is a myth. Perhaps it would not be if there were no monks or nuns. So, Barbara Smoker might reconsider her attitude to Story of a Soul.

Barbara Smoker

sentient food

Hans Georg Lundahl

Sentient, but not endowed with a real mind.

Also, this only happened after the fall. It is meant to punish man. Loving as he is to livestock (usually!), it is heartwrenching to slaughter the beasts one has cherished. To the beasts themselves, the "tragedy" is usually a brief trauma and nothing after a few minutes.

Barbara Smoker

disease, and natural disasters.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Evils of a physical nature and therefore less evil than the moral evils in man they help to punish.

Of course, I am here presuming "modern science" is wrong on universe and even life on earth being millions of years older than man. But that is a question for my Creationist blog. I am also exploring on my Philological blog the consequences of YEC view of Carbon 14 buildup (my scenario is not quite the standard one) for archaeology.

Answering Barbara Smoker's Path from Rome

1) somewhere else : Answering Barbara Smoker's Path from Rome, 2) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... to Bart D. Ehrman, 3) somewhere else : Answering Barbara Smoker, Part II

Commenting on

thefreethinker : “My Path from Rome”
My Atheism
Barbara Smoker | Fri 24 Jul 2015 / Atheism
http://freethinker.co.uk/2015/07/24/my-path-from-rome/

Read up to where I comment.

Barbara Smoker

In my last year at school I was awarded the religious knowledge medal by the diocesan inspector because, when he unexpectedly departed from the set catechism questions and asked for a proof of Christ’s divinity, I was the only pupil ready with an answer.

Hans Georg

And she gave the same as I give to that one.

Btw, is she sure this one was OUTSIDE the Catechism? I think it is in it.

Barbara Smoker

To me it was obvious that God would not otherwise have given Jesus the power to perform miracles, since this would mislead people as to his divine claims.

Hans Georg

Correct. Especially the Resurrection.

Since it came after a claim of Him resurrecting Himself ("I will tear down this temple and in three days build it up again").

Barbara Smoker

It did not occur to me at the time that it was an unproved assumption that the gospel stories were true. And no one pointed this out.

Hans Georg

Well, it is a PREVIOUS assumption, but not an UNPROVEN one.

It is proven by the testimony of the Church, and its testimony is proven both by miracles (proven by further testimonies within the Church, distinct from the first ones about Jesus, and going on down to our days) and by the impossibility of either lie or mistake.

• Mistake being impossible, since if the story was not a lie, the circumstances are such that mistake was impossible to original witnesses.
  
  
• Lie being impossible, because those claiming to be original witnesses were laying down their lives by martyrdom. Not a quick death in battle, but slow martyrdom.

And if we assume she were to say these stories "are not proven", the answer is, it is very difficult for any community existing in public (as Christian Church did in the time of Nero, in Rome, vide Tacitum) to be mistaken about who started it.

Let us assume St Linus started the Church from Rome. How would he go about saying St Peter and St Paul had been there before him?

He could only say that if St Peter had really been there before him, with St Paul.

Or, assuming Sts Peter and Paul were really there before him, did really initiate St Linus to Christianity which St Linus accepted in good faith, while Sts Peter and Paul were crooks, who never intended to die as martyrs, and in fact didn't, how could they arrange their death so it became believable to St Linus?

Especially as St Linus was taking care of their relics.

Or assuming the first Christians came only after the times of St Linus, and that he never existed, how did anyone in the time of St Irenaeus convince anyone else, not just that people like St Linus and St Peter and St Paul had existed, but that they were newcomers to a community which had already tens or hundreds of thousands of adepts and some hundreds or thousands of martyrs?

Obviously, the further back and closer to Jesus we get, the less possible it becomes to be mistaken about His miracles and resurrection - and the further on and further away from Jesus we put the first CHristians, the more impossible it becomes they should believe in being the thousand and first recruits to a faith of which they were only the first ones.

Hence, either way, the Gospel stories are proven.