The version in your profile is specifically an expansion that William Lane Craig is is famous for falling back to, and one that he's been corrected on by philosophers and atheists alike on. It's not convincing to anybody willing to look at it critically.

You're right in what you said, for people who believe no evidence is necessary, because you won't look at the evidence critically even if it is presented. Your position is not based on evidence or reasoning so there's no reason to support it with evidence or reasoning.

TBH I didn't know about this William Lane Craig, I just simplified the Aristotle's argument. Feel free to refute then, I would like to see contrary arguments.



You are misunderstanding a hyperbole: no additional evidence is necessary, because there are too many already. I don't need any more evidence to believe that gravity exists, for example, because I have noticed this fact many times.

This post was edited by Marcelorr on Jun 13 2020 11:22am

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing, is this what we are referencing?

(I) Everything has its cause.

From (I), we can conclude that:
(i) or there is a succession of infinite causes
(ii) or there is a first cause

(i) is not possible in a finite time, so:

(II) There is a first cause.

How is this first cause?
The movement is the passage of something in potency to act by someone that is in act. Example: wood is fire in potency and fire is fire in act (duh).
When the fire gets in touch with wood, it turns into fire in act. Nobody can give what they don't have. I can't teach you how to play guitar if I don't know how to play it, doesn't it sound obvious? So:

(III) The first cause must be everything in act. Being is his very essence.

From (III), we can conclude that He must be the love itself, the intelligence itself and the beauty itself. He must be a personal entity too: how could He not have it in his essence if we, mere mortals, have?


Aristotle came to that conclusion before Christ. This matches with the God of jews and christians:

Exodus 3:14 - God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites:‘I am has sent me to you.’"


John 8:28 - So Jesus said to them, “When the Human One is lifted up, then you will know that I Am. Then you will know that I do nothing on my own, but I say just what the Father has taught me.

Yes, feel free to present your arguments.

This part is both a contradiction and is not necessary.



A first cause does not need to be "everything in act". It merely needs to be a mover. As I can give somebody a guitar, then they teach themselves how to play, a first act can merely be a first motion and everything else arises from that without taking additional things from the first act. The "essence" of things that is referred to are not actually things, but are emergent properties of the system that we have given a name to. A chair does not have "essence of chair", it is an assemblage of items that we gave a label based on its utility. So the idea that a first mover is "everything in essence" is unnecessary, and does not follow from the rest of the argument.

Additionally, if it is "everything in essence" then it is inherently contradictory. It is creation, but also destruction. It is love, but also hate, and apathy, and everything else. There is no necessity for it to be any of these things, but if it is "everything in act" then you don't get to isolate the things you like and ignore the things you don't. Therefore this "first act being everything in essence" is the essence of contradiction

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jun 14 2020 08:47am

You present two good arguments, but I imagined that you would use them, let's go.



If you give that guitar to a monkey, would it be able to compose a beautiful soil? Ofc not, because it does not have intelligence for that, while a human being could do that, because he has the necessary intelligence. However, this intelligence must have been given by someone, because nothing comes out of nowhere. I agree this is the Achilles' heel of the argument, we could go deeper in that point.



It is not true, man, because destruction and hate are manifestations of not being. Hate is absence of love, not an entity in itself, like cold is absence of heat and darkness is absence of light.

This post was edited by Marcelorr on Jun 14 2020 09:12am

There is no reason to assume intelligence is given, and good evidence it is a natural consequence of physical systems. See how we can write computer programs to solve problems.

Hate is not absence of love. Absence of feeling is apathy, hate is its own emotion with apathy in the center of the hate love axis. Sadness is not absence of happiness. As someone who has struggled with depression I can tell you that id rather feel unfathomable sadness than nothing at all. So an essence of happiness is also essence of sadness and essence of apathy.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jun 14 2020 10:07am

The logic of computer programs was provided by us. Could I say that you believe that the matter is the origin of everything, the being par excellence? If you agree, we will continue our discussion from that point.



We would have to define what is love: I don't understand it as an emotion, but to want someone's good. So hate is to want someone's evil, but evil is not an entity in itself, it is the absence of good (to want someone's evil = do not want someone's good). However, the concepts of good and evil do not make sense without God. I don't think your argument is very valid too cuz we also have the experience of feeling neither cold nor hot, but this does not imply that the cold exists nor that there is an absence of simultaneous cold and heat

This post was edited by Marcelorr on Jun 14 2020 11:35am

We actually dont give AI the logic. We build the framework and let them modify themselves and replicate. That's modern AI, basically software evolution. We dont see any evidence that our intelligence was given, and we see evidence that it evolved from lesser intelligence by natural means.

Evil is not absence of good. It is opposite of good. Hate is not the absence of love. I don't love most people, but I hate very few. Absence of any emotion is apathy. The absence of 1 is not -1, it is zero. It is lack of.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jun 14 2020 11:47am

The structure of AI was done by us and so the optimization algorithms (descending gradient). It is not magic and inteligence of it didn't come out of nowhere. But ok, then you believe that everything, including the intelligence, comes from the matter? Is that what you believe?



Like I said before, I don't understand love as an emotion, so I think we are not talking about the same thing. I understand love as to want someone's good. I could want very little for someone's good, then I could say I am apathetic about that person. When I do not want someone's good, then I hate that person.

But what is good? I understand that something is good when it fulfills the purpose for which it was created: a good pen is a pen that writes properly, that doesn't fail when I write with it. A bad pen is a pen that fails in this objetive, in other words, absence of good. We were created to be in union with God, this is the good for us, the reason why we were created. God is the supreme good for us, the evil is absence of God, not an entity by itself. That is why I said that love/hate and good/evil don't make sense to those who don't belive.