Before God??

[wanstronian]

What has caused the thing that doesn’t exist??? Are you doing it again already?

Calm down and read my question. “For a given effect, how do you know what’s caused it?”

Not, “For a given absence of effect…”

I am trying to qualify your statement of non-effect by establishing the relationship between an actual effect and its cause. It’s easy to say, “X has no effect” but surely in order to say that, you need to be able to define what an effect is, and how you would derive its cause? Without a frame of reference for things that do have an effect, how do you make a statement of no effect?

 

[James_S_Saint]

“Affect” is defined by the “ability to cause change” or technically, “to possess force/inertia”.

To affect is to cause effect or change.

How you would decide what has caused the effect is through detection/perception and deductive isolation. You must let the affector affect something that you can perceive.

{you changed subjects if you are not still referring to the hypothetical thing that had no actual effect}

 

[wanstronian]

“Affect” is defined by the “ability to cause change” or technically, “to possess force/inertia”.

To affect is to cause effect or change.

I understand the definition of effect, the second part of my question (repeated from my previous post) was how would you derive the cause of an effect?

{you changed subjects if you are not still referring to the hypothetical thing that had no actual effect}

I haven’t changed subjects. You originally said, "If something were said to exist yet have no effect at all…" - I am asking how you would ascertain that the particular thing had no effect. Presumably by a form of falsification - if the ‘experiment’ failed, you would observe an effect, but then how would you show conclusively that the effect was due to the thing in question?

In order to be able to state that thing X has no effect, you must have a process for determining when Y does have an effect. What is that process? Presumably it starts at an observation of the perceived effect. What next?

 

[James_S_Saint]

I understand the definition of effect, the second part of my question (repeated from my previous post) was how would you derive the cause of an effect?
I haven’t changed subjects. You originally said, "If something were said to exist yet have no effect at all…" - I am asking how you would ascertain that the particular thing had no effect. Presumably by a form of falsification - if the ‘experiment’ failed, you would observe an effect, but then how would you show conclusively that the effect was due to the thing in question?

In order to be able to state that thing X has no effect, you must have a process for determining when Y does have an effect. What is that process? Presumably it starts at an observation of the perceived effect. What next?

Perhaps, I edited my post to include the “how to” after you had already gotten it -read it again.

The bolded part of your post above is answered by my original reply…“by its (the objects) definition”. The object was defined as an object that has no effect.

 

[wanstronian]

Perhaps, I edited my post to include the “how to” after you had already gotten it -read it again.

You didn’t edit your post… which means I just somehow missed that part.

The bolded part of your post above is answered by my original reply…“by its (the objects) definition”. The object was defined as an object that has no effect.

Okay. I was interested in your premise that consideration of something which has no effect is a waste of time. It makes perfect sense, but I was curious specifically in how you would determine the non-effect of something. It seems to me that in order to prove that an effect had a specific cause you would need strong evidence. In the absence of evidence that a specific thing causes an observed effect AND in the presence of a claim that such a thing exists regardless, you are left with the situation where, “something [is] said to exist yet [has] no effect at all” with the conclusion being, “by what incentive would anyone care if it existed?”

And I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the rest.

 

[James_S_Saint]

Sidbrown,

How long did God ponder before deciding to create time?

 

[Cristian_B]

I can only give you an advice: be a good Christian and when you’ll resurrect ask Him yourself. He will be able to explain it to you a lot better than any human. Am I wrong?

 

[James_S_Saint]

I can only give you an advice: be a good Christian and when you’ll resurrect ask Him yourself. He will be able to explain it to you a lot better than any human. Am I wrong?

He’s already “explained” it to me. It is just that when people get a misunderstadning in their mind, they have a hard time getting it back out.