First Cause Arguments for the Existence of God

[EnterTheBowser]

Let me make the natural-numbers argument more explicit, since I apparently was a little ambiguous.

1. Every element of N (N being the set of natural numbers) is even or odd
2. Therefore N is even or odd.

Now, if we look at what “even” and “odd” mean:
x is odd iff there exists some natural number n such that x=2n+1
x is even iff there exists some natural number n such that x=2n
Now, let’s ask ourselves - is N something that can meet either of these definitions? Hopefully, we all know that the answer is “No.”

Now, I don’t mean that the conclusion of every argument which argues from composition is false. I do mean that these arguments are not valid; hence it takes more than just establishing the premises and referring to composition to demonstrate the truth of the conclusion.

In other words, I definitely agree that if every little section of a ball’s surface is red, then the ball is red.

In other words, the burden is on the one making the first-cause argument to provide this extra argumentation - to show that, as you’ve said, the material universe is in whatever relevant way (I admit I am unfamiliar with mereology) similar to its constituent parts.

 

[PLP]

john doran:

1. if a thing has its being contingently, then it requires a being that has its being necessarily in order to explain its existence.
2. each material thing that exists has its being contingently.
3. therefore there must be at least one non-material necessary being to explain the existence of each material thing.
4. but the set whose members are each material thing is just “the material universe”.
5. therefore the material universe requires a necessary being to explain its existence.

Well, you’re just recasting the First Cause argument with the property of something “being explained by” or “being contingent upon” something else as the property of external relationship. Even if you could establish premise 2, you still have to import the fallacy of composition to apply the property to the Material Universe.

This argument is even weaker than traditional first cause arguments, since premise 1 is entirely unjustified, and analytically false under some interpretations of modal logic.

Deconstructing premise 1 in terms of possible world semantics gives us this:

An entity which exists in only one possible world always has a specified relationship with either another entity in that possible world or has a relationship with an entity in all possible worlds. But by definition, a “possible world” is just some world in which a non-logically-contradictory premise is true. Since the sentence “there exists an entity which does not have the specified relationship with any other object, whether necessary or possible” is not logically contradictory, there is, by definition, a possible world where that sentence is true.

but even if it did, you seem to make the unwarranted assumption that every argument proceeding by way of composition is fallacious. which is itself a false assumption. consider:

Indeed. In post 3, I say:

PLP:

Again, it’s important to understand that simply because these premises are false does not imply that if the parts have some property that the whole does not have that property, or vice versa. Their falsity merely implies that you cannot come to any definite logical conclusion about the relationship between the properties of the parts and the properties of the whole.

We cannot reason from the fallacy of composition that the Material Universe does not in fact have any property of external relationship. The rebuttal is against the argument; and does not establish that the Material Universe is indeed uncaused (or not explained by, or not contingent, or whatever).

Rather, the rebuttal aims to show that the argument that the Material Universe is indeed caused (or whatever) is unsound and does not constitute a reason to believe the conclusion.

unless, of course, you are making the further claim that “the material universe” is some kind of mereological whole distinct from the sum of its constituent members. but why should anyone believe that?

Well, it’s not logically contradictory that the universe is indeed a merelogical whole. My aim in this thread is to show that First Cause arguments do not give us a reason to reject the merelogical wholeness of the Material Universe. Obviously, to give us reason to accept the merelogical wholeness of the Material Universe requires a positive argument.

i don’t understand what you’re saying here. “necessity” just means “existing in all possible worlds”. and a necessary being is (necessarily) uncaused.

This is the definition of “necessary” under canonical Modal Logic.

i don’t follow your reasoning about going from uncaused to necessary, but i know it’s not any kind of reasoning in which i have engaged…

I’m sorry, I’m just trying to understand your argument. I welcome corrections to my misunderstanding.

contingent and necessary are terms of modal logic; “contingent” here just means “possibly not-existent”, or “non-existent in some possible world”.

Ok. And the antinomy is necessary (or necessarily false), i.e. existing (or not existing) in all possible worlds.

i continue not to understand your apparent conflation of causality and modality.

That’s how I was interpreting your argument; I apologize for misinterpreting it and I welcome your corrections.

 

[john_doran]

PLP:

I don’t know… the phrasing seems ambiguous and equivocal. I might accept that the Material Universe has an earliest moment in time. I’m not sure, though, that “began to exist” is the best way to describe having an earliest moment in time without encouraging us to use the connotations of the phrase to assume additional hidden premises.

i think that the relation goes “if x has an earliest moment in time then x began to exist”.

PLP:

Regardless, the premise establishing relation between “began to exist” (in the sense of earliest moment in time) and “had a cause or necessarily exists”, is dodgy on a couple of levels. At the very least, to apply the relation to the Material Universe (assuming, of course, that we can talk about such abstract, composite entities, contra hurst’s objections) is either a fallacy of hasty generalization, composition, or is simply asserted and can be equally simply denied.

A) why should we believe that the universe is a “composite entity”?

B) acceptance of the principle of causality is no more an example of hasty generalization than is acceptance of principles like non-contradiction, identity, or excluded middle; it is a principle, and is not accepted based (solely) on sample sets.

C) it (the KCA) is not subject to the fallacy of composition for the reasons i have already noted.

D) of course it can simply be denied - anything can simply be denied.

look, there are just no knock-down, drag-out arguments to be had about the (non-)existence of god; it comes down to plausibility and one’s ability to be compelling. i can assure you that after about 20 years of my having learned, written about, and rehearsed these and numerous other philosophical issues, you will not be able to convince me of your reasoning, even if it was immune to any obvious problems; and i’m almost positive that i am not going to be able to say anything to you to be able to make you change your mind.

so. in my experience, when it gets to the point of “well, i just don’t believe in (universality of) the principle of causality”, the discussion has run its course; at that point, there is simply nowhere left to go, since i can’t provide a demonstration of the principle by recourse to other prior and more obvious truths, and any attempt at dialectical proof runs into the same “i just don’t think that’s necessarily true” rejection.

thanks, though. it’s fun occasionally to engage in discussions like this.

 

[PLP]

john doran:

no, it’s not - the set of all material things just is every material thing. unless you are claiming that there is something extra to a set apart from the membership of its constituents. that is mereology, and is a substantive and controversial philosophical position, similar to saying that there is an entity that is me and an entity that is the ball i am holding, and a third entity that is me-holding-the-ball.

Well, if we take The Material Universe to be the set of all non-composite individual material things, then the Material Universe has one property which its members do not have: it is a composite, which none of its members have. Just this one additional property makes unsound the reasoning from properties of the parts to properties of the whole.

you’re certainly welcome to make the claim, but you can’t simply stipulate it by fiat - you’re going to have to provide a good reason for accepting it.

Again I will say this: The rebuttals to the First Cause argument do not establish that the Material Universe is, in fact, uncaused. The rebuttals show only that the argument itself is unsound, and, by itself gives us no reason to reject the idea that the Material Universe might be uncaused.

To rationally accept the idea that the Material Universe is uncaused (indeed that it is the equivalent of Everything that Exists, the position of Scientific Materialism) requires additional positive argumentation.

The conclusion argued for in this thread is only that First Cause arguments, by virtue of their unsoundness, do not provide a reason to believe the Material Universe is caused.

 

[john_doran]

EnterTheBowser:

Let me make the natural-numbers argument more explicit, since I apparently was a little ambiguous.

1. Every element of N (N being the set of natural numbers) is even or odd
2. Therefore N is even or odd.

Now, if we look at what “even” and “odd” mean:
x is odd iff there exists some natural number n such that x=2n+1
x is even iff there exists some natural number n such that x=2n
Now, let’s ask ourselves - is N something that can meet either of these definitions? Hopefully, we all know that the answer is “No.”

i know what you meant - i was trying to make my own point obliquely, which is simply that you assume that there is some N that is ontologically distinct from its membership.

what i want now is for you to make a compelling case for such an ontology.

EnterTheBowser:

Now, I don’t mean that the conclusion of every argument which argues from composition is false. I do mean that these arguments are not valid

this, again, is false - not all compositional arguments are invalid.

EnterTheBowser:

In other words, the burden is on the one making the first-cause argument to provide this extra argumentation - to show that, as you’ve said, the material universe is in whatever relevant way (I admit I am unfamiliar with mereology) similar to its constituent parts.

not necessarily. if, as in this case, the argument is made rather that first cause arguments are wrong because there is something that is the universe which is ontologically distinct from the conjunction of the totality of its constituents, then the one raising the objection is, in fact, saddled with the burden of pushing it through. which, of course, can’t simply be done by stating it.

so. i ask again: give me good reason to believe that the material universe is a separarte entity from every material thing that exists.

 

[Anonymous_1]

ok…i am going to present the classic kalam argument which is a first cause argument similar but not identical to Aquainas’s argument from efficient causality. PLP i want you to tell me whhy this is unsound…then I will move to the next argument.

This si the kalam argument.

1.) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2.) The universe began to exist

3.) Therefore the universe had a cause.

 

[PLP]

john doran:

i think that the relation goes “if x has an earliest moment in time then x began to exist”.

I understand; you’re establishing an analytical synonym. We must be cautious, however. We’re conducting philosophy in natural language. Words in natural language have not only denotations (their explicit meanings) but also connotations; their implicit meanings. As long as we’re careful not to import the connotations of any terms into the argument without explicit justification, we’re all right. But even professional philosophers import connotations (it’s hard to tell whether by accident or design) so we must always remain vigilant.

A) why should we believe that the universe is a “composite entity”?

Because it is defined to be a composite of all simple material things.

B) acceptance of the principle of causality is no more an example of hasty generalization than is acceptance of principles like non-contradiction, identity, or excluded middle; it is a principle, and is not accepted based (solely) on sample sets.

Quite the contrary. “Causality” is not analytically or logically justified. It’s certainly empirically justified, but only with regard to individual, simple entitites.

Non-contradiction asserts the meaning of logic. The excluded middle asserts the completeness of (at least first-order) logic. Identity is (at best) just a restatement of noncontradiction. Causality, OTOH, can be affirmed or denied without violating either non-contradiction or the excluded middle. It is not a logical necessity.

C) it (the KCA) is not subject to the fallacy of composition for the reasons i have already noted.

I don’t think you’ve established that.

D) of course it can simply be denied - anything can simply be denied.

Indeed. And thus we require arguments for the acceptance or rejection of a premise. Does the assertion or denial entail a contradiction with other premises? If so, we have to reconcile them (if we are to remain rational). Does the assertion or denial entail a contradiction to observed fact? If so, we are rationally compelled to go one way or another to preserve observed fact.

But if neither of these cases obtain, then the fact that we can deny a premise without irrationality means that the argument fails to rationally compel acceptance of the premise and the conclusions which entail from it. Which is the point of this thread: Because the First Cause arguments attribute a property to the Material Universe without sound justification (their “justification” rests on the unsound premise of Composition), the premise and the conclusion can be rejected without loss of rationality.

Of course, the premise and conclusion can be accepted without loss of rationality; it is certainly not irrational to believe the Material Universe was, in fact, created. But the argument does not compel acceptance of the conclusion, and does not establish a reason to doubt Scientific Materialism.

look, there are just no knock-down, drag-out arguments to be had about the (non-)existence of god; it comes down to plausibility and one’s ability to be compelling. i can assure you that after about 20 years of my having learned, written about, and rehearsed these and numerous other philosophical issues, you will not be able to convince me of your reasoning, even if it was immune to any obvious problems…

Well, rebutting the First Cause argument should not compel belief that the Material Universe is uncaused; the rebuttal doesn’t argue that. The rebuttal should, however, convince you that First Cause arguments are not successful rational arguments.

and i’m almost positive that i am not going to be able to say anything to you to be able to make you change your mind.

Empirically, you’re probably correct. In principle, though, I could change my mind.

so. in my experience, when it gets to the point of “well, i just don’t believe in (universality of) the principle of causality”, the discussion has run its course; at that point, there is simply nowhere left to go, since i can’t provide a demonstration of the principle by recourse to other prior and more obvious truths, and any attempt at dialectical proof runs into the same “i just don’t think that’s necessarily true” rejection.

Hence acceptance of universal causality is, at best, optional; it cannot be the foundation of a rational argument. It is, I suppose, a matter of unprovable faith.

thanks, though. it’s fun occasionally to engage in discussions like this.

It is indeed!

 

[john_doran]

PLP:

Well, you’re just recasting the First Cause argument with the property of something “being explained by” or “being contingent upon” something else as the property of external relationship. Even if you could establish premise 2, you still have to import the fallacy of composition to apply the property to the Material Universe.

no, i wouldn’t.

but whatever - as i have asked Bowser, please provide me with adequate proof that the Material Universe is an entity distinct from every material existent.

PLP:

This argument is even weaker than traditional first cause arguments, since premise 1 is entirely unjustified, and analytically false under some interpretations of modal logic.

Deconstructing premise 1 in terms of possible world semantics gives us this:

An entity which exists in only one possible world always has a specified relationship with either another entity in that possible world or has a relationship with an entity in all possible worlds. But by definition, a “possible world” is just some world in which a non-logically-contradictory premise is true. Since the sentence “there exists an entity which does not have the specified relationship with any other object, whether necessary or possible” is not logically contradictory, there is, by definition, a possible world where that sentence is true.

i can’t say i follow this, but a couple of comments:

A) even if you’re right about this, you are appealing to a different objection than the compositional fallacy. which was my original point: not all cosmological arguments make that particular mistake.

B) the argument isn’t a reductio. it goes like this: if there exist only contingent beings, then there is a possible world that contains nothing. but if that’s true, then we need an explanation as to why this world is the actual world rather than that one. it is basically a restatement of the first question of philosophy: why is there something rather than nothing?

this should also be sufficient to show that the argument does not fall afoul of the fallacy of composition. which, i’ll say it again, has been my point all along: that there are cosmological arguments that do not commit the informal fallacy of composition, whether or not they succeed or fail on other grounds.

 

[EnterTheBowser]

john doran:

i know what you meant - i was trying to make my own point obliquely, which is simply that you assume that there is some N that is ontologically distinct from its membership.

what i want now is for you to make a compelling case for such an ontology.

Is there such thing as a set? Yes, there is such thing as a set, at least mathematically speaking. Correct me if I’m wrong, but mathematically speaking, everying is a set.

That aside, perhaps what you don’t like about N is that it’s an infinite set. But it’s not difficult to recast the argument in terms of a finite set. Our set can be all the natural numbers from 0 to 4. Each one of these numbers is even or odd. Is the set {0, 1, 2, 3, 4} even or odd? Again: no. The basic point remains the same: that what follows is not a valid argument.
For every a that is an element of A, a has property P
Therefore A has property P
It’s not a valid argument. There might indeed be times when every element a has property P and A has P as well (for example, if A={{1}}, where both every element of A and A are sets with one element). But it takes something more than just the above argument.

this, again, is false - not all compositional arguments are invalid.

What does it mean to say that an argument is invalid? It means that the conclusion does not follow from the premises; not that the conclusion is false. In the case of the arguments you brought up, there is some hidden premise which makes the argument valid.

not necessarily. if, as in this case, the argument is made rather that first cause arguments are wrong because there is something that is the universe which is ontologically distinct from the conjunction of the totality of its constituents, then the one raising the objection is, in fact, saddled with the burden of pushing it through. which, of course, can’t simply be done by stating it.

so. i ask again: give me good reason to believe that the material universe is a separarte entity from every material thing that exists.

I’ll let PLP field this one; again, I am not familiar with mereology.

 

[PLP]

john doran:

what i want now is for you to make a compelling case for such an ontology.

That will require a separate thread. This thread is about the soundness of the First Cause argument.

this, again, is false - not all compositional arguments are invalid.

Most compositional arguments are valid, that is they use correct logic to derive the premises from the conclusions. All compositional arguments are unsound: They contain a false premise (All composite entities have all the properties of their parts). We cannot conclude that the conclusion of an unsound argument is therefore false; we can conclude only that the argument fails to rationally justify the conclusion. Which is the purpose of this thread: To demonstrate that First Cause arguments fail to rationally justify the conclusion that the Material Universe is, in fact, externally caused.

so. i ask again: give me good reason to believe that the material universe is a separarte entity from every material thing that exists.

It isn’t “separate”; it’s distinct: It has at least one property by definition not shared by its parts: The property of being a composite.

 

[EnterTheBowser]

john doran:

…

B) the argument isn’t a reductio. it goes like this: if there exist only contingent beings, then there is a possible world that contains nothing. but if that’s true, then we need an explanation as to why this world is the actual world rather than that one. it is basically a restatement of the first question of philosophy: why is there something rather than nothing?

…

I think that there is a bit of a problem here, but I’m not sure. The question I have is: is there some possible world where God does not exist? Is such a world logically contradictory? It seems that you have already admitted it’s not (and furthermore I see no reason to suppose it is) with your comment about an entirely empty world. If that’s the case, then even God is a contingent entity, in the modal sense. So I sense a problem.

 

[Anonymous_1]

PLP:

Right. That’s one answer; the other answer is that there are not things outside (or other than, if we want to be picky about specifying spacial relationships only within the Material Universe). And, of course, the epistemological question is: If there are things other than the Material Universe, can we have any knowledge at all about them? Is belief in things other than the Material Universe rationally justifiable?

Of course it is reasonable to believe in things that exist outside of this Universe of matter, space and time. This is precisley what the arguments from effiecient causality shows. Not only is it possible, it is necesary. From nothings comes nothing.

And yes it is possible for us to have knowledge about that which exists outside of the material universe; it is called revelation.

 

[john_doran]

PLP:

Because it is defined to be a composite of all simple material things.

not by me, it’s not.

PLP:

Quite the contrary. “Causality” is not analytically or logically justified. It’s certainly empirically justified, but only with regard to individual, simple entitites.

i think it’s self-evident (per se nota, if you prefer), of which (certain) analytically true statements are a sub-class.

the only individuals i know who dispute this are either firmly in the grip of some (recondite) philosophy, or furiously back-peddling from some conclusion they want at all costs to avoid.

PLP:

I don’t think you’ve established that.

of course not.

look, the premise “the universe began to exist” is just that: a premise. it is not the conclusion of any kind of discursion in the KCA, whether about parts and wholes or otherwise. there is a sub-argument that can be stated in support of it, but it relies on the impossibility of the existence of an actual infinite, and not on part-whole relationships.

PLP:

Of course, the premise and conclusion can be accepted without loss of rationality; it is certainly not irrational to believe the Material Universe was, in fact, created. But the argument does not compel acceptance of the conclusion, and does not establish a reason to doubt Scientific Materialism.

there are no arguments that compel belief. cartesian certainty is a chimera.

PLP:

Well, rebutting the First Cause argument should not compel belief that the Material Universe is uncaused; the rebuttal doesn’t argue that. The rebuttal should, however, convince you that First Cause arguments are not successful rational arguments.

i’ll let you know when i read a good rebuttal.

PLP:

Hence acceptance of universal causality is, at best, optional; it cannot be the foundation of a rational argument. It is, I suppose, a matter of unprovable faith.

acceptance of any premise or principle is optional. that, however, does not impugn the possibility of rational argument. you just have to accept that deductive, intractable arguments are not possible to make, and that epistemology is ultimately about being as reasonable as you can in your belief-formation, and not about adherence to some set of exhaustively determinative rational laws, the careful application of which will lead to complete indubitability.

 

[john_doran]

PLP:

That will require a separate thread. This thread is about the soundness of the First Cause argument.

which you declare as unsound based on your belief in a controversial ontology…

PLP:

Most compositional arguments are valid, that is they use correct logic to derive the premises from the conclusions. All compositional arguments are unsound: They contain a false premise (All composite entities have all the properties of their parts).

i don’t know what to tell you here except that you’re wrong; wherever you got this idea, it’s certainly not good logic.

PLP:

It isn’t “separate”; it’s distinct: It has at least one property by definition not shared by its parts: The property of being a composite.

you’re begging the question: “it” can’t have a property if it doesn’t have independent existence.

you can’t prove the existence of something by saying it has some property - what has a property? i might as well try and tell you that god exists because he has the property of being omniscient.

 

[PLP]

john doran:

nbut whatever - as i have asked Bowser, please provide me with adequate proof that the Material Universe is an entity distinct from every material existent.

That will require an additional thread. This thread shows only that First Cause arguments fail to prove the universe is not merelogical.

A) even if you’re right about this, you are appealing to a different objection than the compositional fallacy. which was my original point: not all cosmological arguments make that particular mistake.

To justify any assumption about the Material Universe, we must infer it from properties of the parts. We can, of course, simply assume the property, but then we are simply begging the question.

B) the argument isn’t a reductio. it goes like this: if there exist only contingent beings, then there is a possible world that contains nothing.

I don’t see how this consequent follows from the antecedent. For instance, all non-empty finite sets of natural numbers contain numbers which do not appear in all other sets.

but if that’s true, then we need an explanation as to why this world is the actual world rather than that one.

We’re already in such metaphysical quicksand with regard to the ontology of possible worlds that this objection seems like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. Even if we grant real existence to possible worlds, all existent beings must find themselves to be in exactly one possible world; this actual world is just the world we happen to find ourselves in.

it is basically a restatement of the first question of philosophy: why is there something rather than nothing?

Which is, in my opinion, unanswerable. The second question (why this world, and not some other) is probably answerable only trivially (it has to be something). The third question, what is this world, what distinguishes it from the alternatives, is, IMHO, more productive.

this should also be sufficient to show that the argument does not fall afoul of the fallacy of composition.

Perhaps not. It’s a different class of argument, then, and deserves its own rebuttal. Perhaps you could start a thread and state the argument in more rigorous terms, and we’ll have a go.

which, i’ll say it again, has been my point all along: that there are cosmological arguments that do not commit the informal fallacy of composition, whether or not they succeed or fail on other grounds.

Well, there are certainly arguments for the existence of God which do not fail on compositional grounds and deserve their own rebuttal. I’ve eliminated a class of arguments on this objection, but I’ve certainly not eliminated them all. There’s still, for instance, Pascal’s Wager, Anselm’s and Godel’s ontological arguments, Plantinga’s modal ontological argument, and your version of the ontological argument which I don’t yet quite understand. It is true: none of these arguments fail on compositional grounds, and they thus derserve their own rebuttal.

 

[PLP]

you’re begging the question: “it” [presumably the Material Universe] can’t have a property if it doesn’t have independent existence.

If the Material Universe is not an entity, then there is no entity to have the property of being caused, and the First Cause argument collapses into incoherence. This is not the most charitable interpretation of the First Cause argument, but yet another reason for its failure doesn’t argue against the conclusion that it does indeed fail.

 

[john_doran]

EnterTheBowser:

I think that there is a bit of a problem here, but I’m not sure. The question I have is: is there some possible world where God does not exist? Is such a world logically contradictory? It seems that you have already admitted it’s not (and furthermore I see no reason to suppose it is) with your comment about an entirely empty world. If that’s the case, then even God is a contingent entity, in the modal sense. So I sense a problem.

if god exists necessarily, then he exists in every possible world, and it is impossible that there be a world that contains nothing. in other words, if the proposition “god exists” is necessarily true, then the proposition “nothing exists” is necessarily false.

 

[john_doran]

PLP:

If the Material Universe is not an entity, then there is no entity to have the property of being caused, and the First Cause argument collapses into incoherence. This is not the most charitable interpretation of the First Cause argument, but yet another reason for its failure doesn’t argue against the conclusion that it does indeed fail.

again you beg the question - even if there is no entity that is the Material Universe, each material thing still needs a cause.

but you are at any rate conflating my argument from contingency with your (mis)description of first cause arguments. my argument goes through even in this limited form:

1. if something is contingent, it needs a necessary being to explain its existence.
2. i am contingent.
3. therefore i need a necessary being to explain my existence.
4. each material thing that exists is contingent.
5. therefore i depend for my existence on some non-material necessary being.

 

[PLP]

Before I go, I want to make my position crystal clear.

My position on First Cause arguments is not that the Material Universe definitely has the property of being uncaused. Rather, my position is that First Cause arguments do not establish that the Material Universe definitely has the property of being caused. These are distinct positions.

To conclude that the Material Universe definitely has the property of being caused, one must employ the unsound premise of Composition: That all composite entities have all the properties of their parts. The falsity of this premise does not entail that no composite entities have none of the properties of their parts (this is a logical fallacy of misapplying the distributive property of the NOT operator), but rather that some composite entities lack some properties of their parts, which can be established by example.

It is a fallacy to conclude from an unsound argument the falsity of its conclusion. The best you can conclude is that the conclusion is not proven by the argument.

 

[john_doran]

PLP:

That will require an additional thread. This thread shows only that First Cause arguments fail to prove the universe is not merelogical.

sigh. no - this thread is about how all first cause arguments allegedly fail by making the informal fallacy of composition.

but the only support you have for that conclusion is your claim that “the Material Universe” is a(n extensionally?) mereological whole.

if you wanted to support this new statement of yours, then you would have had to have said something like this at the very beginning of the thread: “some first cause arguments appeal to composition. appeals to composition are often fallacious. what could make appeals to composition in a cosmological argument fallacious would be the truth of the proposition ‘the Material Universe is a distinct entity from every material existent’. the truth of such a proposition is highly contentious in the philosophical literature, as is the whole of contemporary mereology. still, it might be true, in which case some cosmological arguments would be invalid.”

but that’s distinctly not what you said: you said “the Material Universe is an entuty”. period.

PLP:

I don’t see how this consequent follows from the antecedent. For instance, all non-empty finite sets of natural numbers contain numbers which do not appear in all other sets.

i’m not sure how to be more clear about this. if the only things that there are, are possible beings, then possibly, there are no beings.

if the proposition “nothing exists necessarily” is true, then so is the proposition “possibly, nothing exists”.

if there is nothing that exists in every possible world, then there is some possible world with nothing.

PLP:

Which is, in my opinion, unanswerable.

“because god made it”. there. that’s an answer. preferable to “just because”, if you ask me.

PLP:

The second question (why this world, and not some other) is probably answerable only trivially (it has to be something).

that’s not even a trivial answer - it’s just wrong.

PLP:

Perhaps not. It’s a different class of argument, then, and deserves its own rebuttal. Perhaps you could start a thread and state the argument in more rigorous terms, and we’ll have a go.

thanks, but no thanks. i’m pretty much out of gas here, and any new efforts i might make in this regard will inevitably be as fruitless as my old ones…

PLP:

Well, there are certainly arguments for the existence of God which do not fail on compositional grounds and deserve their own rebuttal. I’ve eliminated a class of arguments on this objection, but I’ve certainly not eliminated them all. There’s still, for instance, Pascal’s Wager, Anselm’s and Godel’s ontological arguments, Plantinga’s modal ontological argument, and your version of the ontological argument which I don’t yet quite understand. It is true: none of these arguments fail on compositional grounds, and they thus derserve their own rebuttal.

don’t forget this one:

A) either (1+1=3) or (god exists)
B) ~(1+1=3)
C) therefore god exists