if you mean proof as in a logical inference from empirical evidence, we call that ‘first cause’
Well, that doesn’t help at all. If the universe had to be caused (made by God say), you just invoke a regress by one more level. If that’s the rule, that anything that exists must have a cause, then
God is in the same boat, and we immediately ask: “Who made God? What caused God to exist?”.
If you respond with " God doesn’t need a cause, and is uncaused", then you’ve just added an unnecessary layer. If something can be uncaused (God, in your view, possibly), then we might save ourselves the trouble of a superfluous entity and say the universe itself is uncaused. If you can end the causal chain with God, why not just end it with the universe itself?
If God is uncaused, then all you’ve done is point questions back at a meta-god, That Which Created God.
the existence of a universe is all the empirical support necessary.
That would depend on the idea of physical causality being extruded back into the metaphysical plane. It’s certainly a possibility that our universe was “caused”, but we have no evidence to work with in saying what metaphysics obtain. Saying that “every effect has a cause” is a powerful statement in this universe, but it’s totally parochial. For all we know “cause” is not a functional concept beyond the context of our universe. When you push back to just before the Big Bang, all bets are off as to what rules and dynamics apply, if
any apply.
Theortetical physicist Leonard Susskind from Stanford has a good discussion of this in his book
The Cosmic Landscape and the Illusion of Intelligent Design.
i distinguish between the subjective idea of G-d and the imaginary idea of G-d based on the existence of the universe. mathematical causal probablilities, and the precision of convergent messianic prophecy.
OK, but that nets out (to me) as mistaking phyics for metaphysics (the unvierse must have a cause because everything in it has a cause), and a good dose of confirmation biasing (convergent prophecy).
If God were wholly imaginary, your position would hold in the same way it does now – as a matter of subjective preference (and possibly confusion about the difference between physics and metaphysics).
proof as in logical inference is indeed the only way we have of determining any number of non-visible phenomenon, i.e. subataomic particles, electrons, etc. we infer their existence before we have any observational evidence.
Sure. The atom was conjectured before Jesus was born. But two important features of those inferences stand out from the “God inference” you are apparently making. First, the inference is falsifiable, at least in principle. That is, if our inference is incorrect, we have some recourse to becoming aware of that, some way in principle we might reject the idea if it is, indeed, incorrect.
Second, and the more important, we are dealing with phenomena in our physical context. Dark matter, neutrinos, Higgs bosons, etc. are inferences made about phenomena
inside of our universe, where we understand through evidence and observation that physical laws
do apply. But the “First Cause” idea is wholly different, jumping out of our physical context and into the metaphysic, yet bringing along our notions of
physics, and applying them where we’ve no basis for supposing they apply, and where an infinite regress would result even if they did.
The Higgs bosons, for example, is the only particle in the Standard Model that has yet to be instrumentally detected (if I’m current with the science). It is “inference-able”, due to their context. They are supposed to operate in a physical universe according to physical law, and as such are amenable to methods of inference that have proven effective in that context.
But, if you have been following the story of the Large Hadron Collider, you know that it held out the prospect of providing just such experimental support, or rejection. It’s disappointing that logistical problems have caused big delays in these tests, but the inference made in proposing the Higgs boson is on the verge of experimental testing that can support the idea as more than inference, or possibly provide experimental evidence that the inference is incorrect.
If you can’t falsify it, even in principle, there’s not much meaning to calling it “true”, except as a tautology (e.g. “all bachelors are unmarried”). If there’s no way, in
principle to falsify the idea of a First Cause (or Susskind’s “cosmic landscape” for that matter), saying it’s “true” doesn’t mean very much beyond an expression of desire.
i dont think its reasonable to expect falsifiability of systems which must necessarily be non-physical.
That’s the disabling weakness of supernaturalism, though. It doesn’t have any way to distinguish between ‘true’ or ‘false’, ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ except as a matter of subjective preference. That’s its greatest asset, too, as it allows one to believe whatever one desires. But ‘falsifiability’ as an objective term is a non-starter for the supernatural. As soon as ‘falsifiable’ means something obejctively, you’ve made the proposition a natural one!
-TS
), but you also feel yourself competent to define what is true art and what is not on the entirely spurious criterion of what is beautiful or ugly to you. Don’t you see how ridiculous this is? The world is not always beautiful - it is sometimes ugly and art can reflect that ugliness and it serves us by doing so. Great art is frequently shocking. You might find beauty in truth, but the truth is not always beautiful. That which repels us can be true, and can be beautiful by virtue of that, but it is not inherently beautiful. This is a huge topic, so that I cannot possibly do it justice in a post, so I will just quote a few examples: