Timeline for Using Special Pleading to invalidate first-cause argument regarding existence of God
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
31 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 20, 2018 at 1:06 | answer | added | Greg Graham | timeline score: 0 | |
| Apr 17, 2018 at 2:08 | comment | added | sdenham | Let's look at why your alien artifact example does not work. In that case, it would be understood that the attribution of the artifact to unknown aliens is a provisional and incomplete explanation. Your identification of God as the final cause, however, is, inescapably and by definition, final, and denies the validity of further questions. Therefore, it is not merely unlike the aliens explanation; the two are as opposite as they could be. | |
| Apr 14, 2018 at 23:13 | answer | added | Thorsten S. | timeline score: 0 | |
| Apr 14, 2018 at 10:58 | history | protected | Philip Klöcking♦ | ||
| Apr 14, 2018 at 5:36 | answer | added | Swami Vishwananda | timeline score: -1 | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 21:59 | comment | added | Harry Johnston | Expanding on @JackAidley's comment, this may be relevant. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 20:13 | answer | added | IsThatTrue | timeline score: 4 | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 19:19 | answer | added | JohnnyS | timeline score: 2 | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 16:38 | comment | added | dylnan | Just want to point out that it's a well accepted fact in physics that the universe is inherently nondeterministic (i.e. random). Measurement's of Bell's inequality and the similar CHSH inequality demonstrate this. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 15:41 | answer | added | CuriousThought | timeline score: 1 | |
| S Apr 13, 2018 at 15:16 | history | suggested | doppelgreener | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Fixed quote. The first line wasn't part of the quoted message; the last line is a quote inside the quoted message.
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| Apr 13, 2018 at 14:06 | comment | added | Jack Aidley | I think it's worth pointing out that scientists do not simply accept "gravity" as an answer. Many people are still hard at work figuring out how exactly gravity works, and a great many details about how gravity works are already none. It is thus entirely unlike the "God" answer in that it has genuine explanatory power. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 13:18 | comment | added | eques | Special pleading is claimed due to a failure to understand the argument for the First Cause as relying on the idea that "everything has a cause" which is not what the argument for the First Cause is. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 13:16 | comment | added | MichaelK | @StianYttervik Yeah I agree that this is the main-point of the argument: even if anyone could point to a first cause for this universe, there is no way to know if that is the only first cause. WL Craig makes the argument that there cannot be infinite regression but that is not needed... the possibility of finite regression is enough to poke a hole in the Argument From First Cause. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 13:12 | comment | added | Stian | @MichaelK I must have mistaken your scorn as an attempt to discredit or disprove. I often defend against the it's-turtles-all-the-way type arguments - we just don't know what rules apply outside the universe. My apologies in any case ;-) | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 13:06 | comment | added | MichaelK | @StianYttervik Well I never claimed that the things I said disproves the First Cause hypothesis. And it is not as if some people have not tried to answer the "What caused the first cause"... W.L. Craig have pretty much made it his career claiming he knows the answer; that the First Cause is uncaused. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 13:02 | comment | added | Stian | @MichaelK Well. We only know that causal relationships, that causes must predate the effects of the cause - is sufficient and necessary in our universe. As long as the cause of the universe is outside the universe, there is no need to assign a cause prior to that before proving that causality applies outside the universe - which can be a tough quest. Without said proof, the assumptions that either it exists or it does not exist are equally valid. I'll agree that First Cause is a hypothesis lacking rigour, but not for the reasons you imply. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 12:08 | comment | added | MichaelK | @Gordon Yes, no, and no. | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 11:07 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Apr 13, 2018 at 15:16 | |||||
| Apr 13, 2018 at 10:47 | comment | added | MichaelK | And once we from deism to theism — that is to say the claim: "There is a First Cause; that First Cause is a God; it happens to be the God of the religion of my choice; I also happen to know the mind of that god; and because of that I know that what you are doing now is a sin — then we are way beyond silliness... | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 10:10 | comment | added | MichaelK | Saying "There is a First Cause and this is it" practically invites to a bit of half-serious, half-joking teasing... because that is as banal and simple to poke a hole in as the always used (and never convincing) parental argument "Because I said so!" . | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 10:08 | comment | added | MichaelK | Short counter question: why not? Why do we have to satisfy our curiosity with the stupidly banal claim "the First Cause is the first, the only... because it just is". Not even a child's is satisfied by that kind of silliness. The question "what created the creator" is both justified (because the answer is so weak), and a little bit of fun... call it childish petulance if you will... because — intuitively — you know that the human mind is not capable of infinite regress, so sooner or later we have to say "I do not know what the cause of that is". | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 9:03 | answer | added | Flater | timeline score: 4 | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 2:21 | answer | added | Braeden Orchard | timeline score: 6 | |
| Apr 13, 2018 at 0:36 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPhilosophy/status/984591007890145280 | ||
| Apr 13, 2018 at 0:23 | answer | added | user32455 | timeline score: 12 | |
| Apr 12, 2018 at 22:15 | answer | added | Frank Hubeny | timeline score: 7 | |
| Apr 12, 2018 at 21:41 | comment | added | Conifold | Perhaps because the first cause's existence is arrived at by a special pleading in the first place, and of the same nature. In the ordinary discourse there are no first causes, we can always ask the next why. So why should the chain of why-s come to an end this one time? (Even aside from the leap from a faceless first cause to the much more specific "creator god"). In contrast, gravity and aliens are arrived at by surmise from past experience, so the analogy fails. | |
| Apr 12, 2018 at 20:24 | answer | added | Jo Wehler | timeline score: 31 | |
| Apr 12, 2018 at 19:32 | review | First posts | |||
| Apr 13, 2018 at 5:54 | |||||
| Apr 12, 2018 at 19:32 | history | asked | Rob Watts | CC BY-SA 3.0 |