Feathered T-Rex

[scottielvr]

If you can exempt a creator, you can, in principle, exempt the universe. (You cannot, however, under any circumstances, exempt salamanders.)

[Joseph E. Smith]

Scottielvr beat me to the guffaw.

[scottielvr]

How to survive your tour of the Triassic

Try not to pet
spiny Stegosaurus;
Keep quiet and calm so
Allosaurs ignore us.

Plumigerous or scaly,
Pterosaurs don’t sing;
Do not try to cage one,
They dine on the wing.

Old crabby Triceratops
needs whole lots of space;
You’d better not try
To get in his face.

And children, be certain--
I know, it’s a bore --
But don’t ever tease
A Tyrannosaur.

[It's just a bit of nonsense to help me get to sleep. Please, please don't bust me on the paleontology. ]

[jim stone]

Here comes Tyrannosaurus Rex.
It''ll eat you sure as hell.
Don't pause to contemplate its sex,
Assume it's male and then make tracks.
She'll eat you just as well.

[Jack]

You can't maintain the supposed condition that everything must have a beginning just by shifting eternal existence from the universe to a creator.

Yes I can.

[jim stone]

Here is an argument for a Creator. It isn't meant to be decisive,
but to lend some support to the idea, and it works (if it does)
even if the Universe existed eternally.

Consider kangaroos. Each kangaroo exists either by accident
orbecause it is the product of the agency of other things, e.g. other
kangaroos. So Kangaroos are Contingent Beings, that is, things that
need not have been. Even if there is an infinite series of
kangaroos going back forever, each generation hatching the next,
still, there needn't have been any kangaroos at all.
So the question remains: Why are there some kangaroos
rather than none at all?

Now if I try to explain why there are some kangaroos rather than
none at all by appealing somehow to KANGAROOS, I must fail.
For to appeal in any way to kangaroos is to appeal to the fact that
there are some kangaroos, and I can't say: 'There are some kangaroos rather than none at all BECAUSE there
are some kangaroos rather than none at all.'
That's circular, it explains nothing.

Therefore to explain why there are some kangaroos rather than
none at all I must appeal to something other than kangaroos.

Of course you and I, the planet, all the material things around us
are also Contingent Beings. We needn't have been. We exist
either by accident or due to the agency of other things. Even if
there is an infinite series of Contingent Beings going back forever,
there needn't have been any Contingent Beings. So the
question remains: Why are there some Contingent Beings
rather than none at all--for there needn't have been any.

And once again, I cannot appeal to Contingent Beings to answer it,
because to appeal to a Contingent Being is to appeal to the
fact that there are some Contingent Beings rather than none
at all, and this yields a circular, non-explanation: There are
some Contingent Beings rather than none at all BECAUSE
there are some Contingent Beings rather than none at all.

Therefore to explain why there are some Contingent Beings
rather than none at all, I must appeal to something other
than a Contingent Being. If this fact has an explanation,
there must be something in reality that isn't a Contingent
Being, something that could not have failed to be,
which exists neither by chance nor by the agency
of other things. Philosophers have called such things
Necessary Beings, or Self-Existent Beings.

Therefore if there is an explanation for why there are
Contingent Beings when there needn't have been
any, there must be a Necessary or a Self-Existent
Being. A Creator.

Of course the fact that there are some Contingent Beings
rather than none at all may have no explanation. It may
just be an accident that there is a material universe. But if
there is an explanation, there is a Necessary Being, for
nothing else could explain it. And the fact that there is
a material universe does seem to cry out for explanation,
and so there is some reaon to believe in a Creator,
though they/he/she/it/ still don't strike me as
particularly nice.

This, for those who recall, is a somewhat weaker version
of what is known as the Cosmological Argument, which
is found in Leibniz.

[emmline]

And the fact that there is
a material universe does seem to cry out for explanation,
and so there is some reaon to believe in a Creator,
though they/he/she/it/ still don't strike me as
particularly nice.

Interesting philosophical mind game Jim.
Possibly compelling.
I would argue that categorizing things as "nice" or "not nice" is doomed to be a flawed effort due to inability to see the big picture.

[jim stone]

This is sometimes called 'abductive reasoning' or
'inference to the best explanation.' The idea is
that we are entitled to suppose that the best
explanation of a phenomenon that wants
explaining may well be true. In this case
the only explanation of the fact that there
are Contingent Beings
is a Self-Existent Being, so it's got to be the
best explanation; so there may very
well be a Self-Existent Being.

As to niceness, remember Darwin's wasp?
He wrote about a wasp that lays its eggs
in the flesh of a caterpillar; when the
larva hatch, they eat the caterpillar alive.

Or how evolution works: infants of a species are
hatched or born in far larger numbers than the
enviroment can support, so they are pitted against
each other in a struggle to survive that most
of them must lose. Here's an instance: birds that
nest on beaches hatch eggs in larger numbers
than can fit in the nest. The stronger fledglings
force the weaker ones out of the nest where
the helpless birds are eaten alive by crabs
smaller than they are. Imagine this for hundreds
of millions of years--evolution runs on pain, terror,
and death of infant creatures.

On the face of things, the creator of all this, if there is
one, did not care very much about the welfare of
the animals he/she/it/ they created, nor was the
creator particularly interested in sparing them
pain, terror and death. That is certainly
how it appears, anyhow. Generally in science we
are entitled to suppose that things are likely to be as
they appear. So it's reasonable to think it likely
that the creator, if there was one, was not particularly
interested in sparing animals pain, terror, and death.
Of course we don't KNOW this, but, in the absence of
a reason to think otherwise, it's more likely than not.

[emmline]

yep. I dunno.
(sorry, I run out of philosophical steam pretty easily!)

[dubhlinn]

yep. I dunno.
(sorry, I run out of philosophical steam pretty easily!)

That makes two of us Emm.
Ive been struggling to get my little Dublin brain around all this stuff but I admire your courage in taking on these philosophers at their own game.
Think I'll sit this one out.

Slan,
D.

[Bloomfield]

On the face of things, the creator of all this, if there is
one, did not care very much about the welfare of
the animals he/she/it/ they created, nor was the
creator particularly interested in sparing them
pain, terror and death. That is certainly
how it appears, anyhow.

Several adequate readers on hermeneutics and epistemology are available at your local library.

Generally in science we
are entitled to suppose that things are likely to be as
they appear.

Entitled? What does that mean? (Science by the way doesn't much care whether creation was benevolent or not; theology doesn't deal in likelihood and appearance)

So it's reasonable to think it likely
that the creator, if there was one, was not particularly
interested in sparing animals pain, terror, and death.

What is this category of reasonableness? Are you trying to build a car or understand the world? If you seek understanding, then reasonableness of assumption doesn't make sense as a category.

Of course we don't KNOW this, but, in the absence of
a reason to think otherwise, it's more likely than not.

You yourself are aware of a slew of reasons to think otherwise. You have rejected them. Don't equate your rejection of an argument with the absence of an argument when you are dealing with probablities ("more likely than not"). (Or at any other time either, for that matter.)

[emmline]

For a better effect, both Jim Stone and Bloomfield should be wearing himations:




As for me...the hemlock soy latte please.

[Darwin]

Of course the fact that there are some Contingent Beings rather than none at all may have no explanation. It may just be an accident that there is a material universe.

Aye.

But if there is an explanation, there is a Necessary Being, for
nothing else could explain it. And the fact that there is a material universe does seem to cry out for explanation, and so there is some reaon to believe in a Creator,...

The existence of a Creator doesn't really resolve the question of where everything comes from, so it isn't an explanation, either. All this particular argument does is to clothe the fact that there is no explanation in the fancy duds of a "necessary or self-existent" being. That's no explanation, that's just an avoidance of the issue that is made more palatable by naming it.

Humans are very prone to feeling that something has been explained once a name has been provided for it. I catch myself doing it all the time. But a true explanation involves learning the details and the causal connections among them. It seems obvious that "something ... which exists neither by chance nor by the agency of other things" is not something that we can learn the details of.

The existence of a Creator apart from all the contingent content of the universe doesn't provide any details about how the Creator managed to produce all that stuff, either.

In the end, appealing to the existence of such an entity is just a way of saying that there is no ultimate explanation--and of pinning a name on that fact. It is not an actual "explanation" by any meaningful definition of that word.

This is just an argument against the appeal of this idea as a solution to our craving for an ultimate explanation. It does not, in any way, disprove the existence of a such an entity as Creator. That's a whole different question.

[Bloomfield]

For those of you who don't know: The babel fish (when inserted into your ear) feeds on brainwaves and instantly translates anything that is said to you in any language. It is so useful that it could not have evolved by chance. The existence of the babel fish also conclusively proves the non-existance of God:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof defies faith and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says man, "the bable fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist. Therefore, by your own argument, you don't. QED."

"Oh," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"That was easy," says man, goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

(from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (and from memory))

[Darwin]

On the face of things, the creator of all this, if there is
one, did not care very much about the welfare of the animals he/she/it/ they created, nor was the creator particularly interested in sparing them pain, terror and death. That is certainly how it appears, anyhow. Generally in science we are entitled to suppose that things are likely to be as they appear. So it's reasonable to think it likely that the creator, if there was one, was not particularly interested in sparing animals pain, terror, and death. Of course we don't KNOW this, but, in the absence of a reason to think otherwise, it's more likely than not.

I don't know anything about philosophy (just here to learn by exposing my ignorance), but it seems that this could be put more simply:

If there is a creator that is the source of all that exists, and if there is suffering (as there appears to be), then the ultimate source of suffering must be that creator.

It's not clear to me that the personification of this creator in human terms is automatically justifiable. Of course, that is what is done in many religions, so I presume that this is the approach we're taking here.

The real question seems to be one of the coexistence of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. If we assume a creator who (1) can do literally anything--a creator who creates not just objects, but the causal relations among those objects, including, perhaps, the law of cause and effect, itself, and who, (2) having a perfect understanding, knows all the consequences of his decisions, then the question is why decisions should be made that entail suffering for elements of the creation, and how this can be made to jibe with the idea of benevolence in human terms.