Why Do people use the infinity cop-out?

[PaulAndrew83]

Isambard :

There is no reason to assume a conscience first cause, or even a first cause as we may think of it. Everything could simply be infinitely sequential.

This is simply a regurgitation of Dawkins and whomever else he regurgitated it from.

Causality is the derivative of the principle of Sufficient reason.

Consider.

Say you have a car. In the car you have a wheels connected to the engine by the means of the gears. Say you have an infinite amount of gears. Does the infinity of the gears provide the sufficient reason for the cars motion just by reason of the fact that the gears are in an infinite series? The fact is that that car will not move without the engine.[edit: or some other cause like a few guys or gals pushing it ]

Causality when applied to things from the point of view of their existence is exactly the same type of argument. An infinite series of caused[contingent] things does not gain the sufficient reason for its existence simply by virtue of the series being infinite any more than the car mentioned above could move.

Hence infinite series of contingent things as well as finite series still require a cause which is non-contingent which humanity calls God or Supreme Being or whatever other names people call God.

While the concept of God is mind-boggling at times it is still amazing that people think that an infinite series confers existence by reason of the series being infinite.

God Bless

Paul

 

[Sideline]

This is simply a regurgitation of Dawkins and whomever else he regurgitated it from.

Causality is the derivative of the principle of Sufficient reason.

I loved the movie Good Will Hunting, but I will never forgive whomever it was that put in the scene where Will Hunting criticized the grad student for regurgitating the ideas of others. Since that time I have heard so many people regurgitating that same old argument as if they themselves were coming up with something originial.

Tell me, PaulAndrew83, did you come up with the Principle of Sufficient Reason on your own? (I’m thinking not, unless you are the oldest person alive by a few centuries.)

Say you have a car. In the car you have a wheels connected to the engine by the means of the gears. Say you have an infinite amount of gears. Does the infinity of the gears provide the sufficient reason for the cars motion just by reason of the fact that the gears are in an infinite series? The fact is that that car will not move without the engine.[edit: or some other cause like a few guys or gals pushing it ]

Although you are right that an infinite series is not itself a cause, this doesn’t in anyway prove that the cause was in anyway divine.

 

[PaulAndrew83]

When I regurgitate the proof of Pythagoras’s theorem for right angled triangles thats fine since the theorem is true. I will probably never discover something true about reality that nobody else has ever come up with before.

Regurgitating Dawkins when his ideas are quite simply wrong is rather silly when it proves you haven’t thought things true just like Dawkins clearly hasn’t either.

Of course I am correct when an infinite series is not of itself a cause this is basic reasoning.

So from reason we do absolutely know that there was a Creator that is in and of Itself uncreated. I will simply regurgitate that this Being is called a non-contingent Being.

Thats something Divine is it not or do you want to play semantics and say that just because our Creator is non-contingent that doesn’t mean It is Divine.

Paul

 

[Sideline]

When I regurgitate the proof of Pythagoras’s theorem for right angled triangles thats fine since the theorem is true. I will probably never discover something true about reality that nobody else has ever come up with before.

Regurgitating Dawkins when his ideas are quite simply wrong is rather silly when it proves you haven’t thought things true just like Dawkins clearly hasn’t either.

Right. Double standard, got it.

So from reason we do absolutely know that there was a Creator that is in and of Itself uncreated. I will simply regurgitate that this Being is called a non-contingent Being.

No we don’t. We know there is a cause. They aren’t in anyway the same statement. All you can say for sure is that something was the first cause.

Thats something Divine is it not or do you want to play semantics and say that just because our Creator is non-contingent that doesn’t mean It is Divine.

Words have meaning, and the two words you are using are in no way equivalent. The cause need not in anyway be supernatural.

 

[Nickkname]

Originally Posted by Isambard
There is no reason to assume a conscience first cause, or even a first cause as we may think of it. Everything could simply be infinitely sequential.

There are three problems with this statement:

1. It assumes assumption.
2. It disregards the belief that God is the One Who revealed Himself to man. Man did not find God, nor did he make up God: God, the Creator, revealed Himself to the creature. This is faith.
3. It goes against what science and philosophy teach. Science teaches that everything in the Universe has a cause and philosophy teaches that everything in the Universe is finite. So the Universe cannot simply be infinitely sequential.

I’d like Mario Bros. to argue my third point:

In Mario Bros., there is an item called Starman which gives you the power to be invincible for a short time. You are not invincible without the item, nor can you be invincible when the power runs out. This is like the Universe: there is a cause that caused the Universe to be and the Universe will eventually run out of gas.

 

[Sideline]

There are three problems with this statement:

1. It assumes assumption.

Perhaps you are missing a word in there somewhere? Maybe you should make your argument in plain English first.

1. It disregards the belief that God is the One Who revealed Himself to man. Man did not find God, nor did he make up God: God, the Creator, revealed Himself to the creature. This is faith.

Yes, it does. Most good arguments ignore taking things on faith. It is almost the definition of a good argument. The less you need to chalk up to faith, the stronger your argument.

1. It goes against what science and philosophy teach. Science teaches that everything in the Universe has a cause and philosophy teaches that everything in the Universe is finite. So the Universe cannot simply be infinitely sequential.

Well, no. This just isn’t correct. Science is a method. It’s a way of looking at the world in order to better understand it. You can talk about scientific discoveries, and scientific theories, but in no way does science teach us that there has to be a creator. Science isn’t an axiom with which we can compare theological premises.

Science ***assumes ***a cause for everything, but it in no way can test that. There is no way to test every event to discover if it was caused. It is beyond the scope of inductive enquiry.

It is an axiom, that you are in fact, challenging with the notion of an uncaused creator. You are saying that there can exist something which is uncaused. You are claiming that you even know this is a being, because it has revealed itself to you. That’s great, but your revelation isn’t a solid argument anymore than my suggesting that I have received a message from the research and development team on the universe who says that this is merely a prototype of a series of universes they have in the works. If it successful, the universe line of toys will make them all rich.

I have as much reason to believe your revelations as you do to believe mine. Unless we can agree on a test of revelations, that is.

 

[PaulAndrew83]

No we don’t. We know there is a cause. They aren’t in anyway the same statement. All you can say for sure is that something was the first cause.

Once you know something was the first cause you will see quite clearly that this being has of necessity to be “uncaused”. This is what we call non-contingent.

I will ask you a question which there is only one answer to. Was there ever a circumstance when “nothing” existed. I say “nothing” in the strict sense of nothing and not the quantum concept of nothing where the probability of something existing is normalized at zero.

The answer is that if there was a circumstance where nothing existed there would never be a circumstance where there was something.

Hence we know for a fact that the “first cause” is uncaused, or uncreated. This means that our first cause is immortal.

Sideline:

Words have meaning, and the two words you are using are in no way equivalent. The cause need not in anyway be supernatural.

Doesn’t really matter what words you use. We know absolutely from unaided reason that there is a first cause which is of its very nature is uncaused. All people hold that this being is God. Now if you want to have an argument about Gods “Attributes” go ahead, but don’t try and hold the position that the existence of God is an open question.

This is the very reason I started thread, because too many people use the "INFINITY COPOUT"

Paul

 

[PaulAndrew83]

Science ***assumes ***a cause for everything, but it in no way can test that. There is no way to test every event to discover if it was caused. It is beyond the scope of inductive enquiry.

If you assume that everything in the universe had a cause then you very quickly arrive at the fact that this universe could not exist. This is because such a universe has not sufficient reason for existing.

It is an axiom, that you are in fact, challenging with the notion of an uncaused creator. You are saying that there can exist something which is uncaused.

Sorry to Nick but this is only a problem of understanding or expression. If you start of assuming that everything is caused you will arrive at the conclusion that there has to be a cause which of itself in uncaused to provide the actual cause for existence.

Sideline:

You are claiming that you even know this is a being, because it has revealed itself to you. That’s great, but your revelation isn’t a solid argument anymore than my suggesting that I have received a message from the research and development team on the universe who says that this is merely a prototype of a series of universes they have in the works. If it successful, the universe line of toys will make them all rich.

I have as much reason to believe your revelations as you do to believe mine. Unless we can agree on a test of revelations, that is.

This question is moving off topic.

The only point I have made is that “We know absolutely from unaided reason that there is a first cause which is of its very nature is uncaused.”

If you want to argue about the attributes of such a being or whether it has revealed itself that is a completely different argument that belongs in another discussion.

Paul