The Cosmological Argument (in any form) is risible

Thanks Pro for submitting his 4th Round. Preface: - I should remind the voters that the BOP is on Pro to establish how the CA is risible in all its forms. - Pro has ignored my entire case & dropped all my arguments, thus they all stand & extend to this round too. Nevertheless, I'll try to respond to Pro's contentions, it would be rude otherwise. - Conclusion in next round. Rebuttals: I'm going to ignore the vast majority of incorrectly attributed calls of “fallacy". => Bare assertion fallacy. I think we need a name for falsely playing the "straw man" card. Whatever fallacy that is, Con is guilty of it. - Pro has not provided any reason to believe his accusations are sound, thus making his claim: a bare assertion, red herring, ad hominem fallacy. A straw man is when, for the sake of show, one tackles an argument that was not made. I am tackling the arguments that *have* been made. I am rewording them, sure, but not in a dishonest way that changes the meaning... I am simply pointing out the glaring flaws. - “A straw man is a common reference argument and is an informal fallacy based on false representation of an opponent's argument.” Which is what Pro has been doing so far (arguing against a false representation of the CA & for a false representation of the resolution is, by definition, a straw man). - Pro straw-maned the straw-man fallacy itself. => Strawmanception fallacy. :) The fact that people have debated the CA for hundreds or thousands of years just makes the whole debacle funnier! - An argument that survived philosophical discourse for that long is most certainly formidable, otherwise it would’ve been tossed aside long ago by the philosophers community, as so many others have been! - This is the KCA: Everything that begins to exist has a cause; The universe began to exist; Therefore: The universe has a cause. - The rest is an implication of the KCA proposed by WLC, not necessarily inferred by it. => To verify if WLC’s postulates based on the KCA are sound or not, we have to check his whole reasoning, which is entirely irrelevant to our topic at hand. If you're not laughing at this point, you should be! It's the most laughably stupid thing I've ever seen issue from an intelligent mind. It's nonsense. It's like the Emperor's New Clothes. Look at it and trust yourself and you'll see the corpulent naked form of the Emperor... he's naked! - Pro resorts over & over again to his primary method which constitutes of an appeal to ridicule fallacy. 1. Everything in the Natural World that exists has a cause of its existence. 2. Therefore we must resort to Supernatural causation. 3. It is not necessary to inquire too far into what causes Supernatural things. - Pro is again grossly misrepresenting the CA! "Everything that begins to exist" - what cunning sophistry is this? Who uses phrases like that!? - Philosophers. ;) "An uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists" - AHEM, what? You do who? Come again! Seriously, is the gentle reader not having a bit of a chortle (as I indeed am, right now)? AN UNCAUSED PERSONAL CREATOR? How is that not funny? - These are conclusions WLC deduced from the KCA, disproving them, or even proving that they are risible does not make the KCA itself risible. - The KCA is a logical argument which postulates that every thing either has a cause, otherwise it’s uncaused. The uncaused ‘thing’ is henceforth identified, generally, though not necessarily, with God. - Questioning the validity of the KCA or its soundness does not help the case of it allegedly being the object of laughter. => Straw man. "Everything has a cause except my imaginary friend, who is so amazingly amazing that he does not need a cause. Ner ner-ne ner ner, I'm going to go and play with my toy cars with my imaginary friend now!" - Pro jumps from “cause” to “supernatural” & now to “imaginary friends”! => This is a complex straw man fallacy, one straw man over the other! That is simply not a straw man, gentle reader; it's a lampoon and it accurately highlights what's wrong with every version of the CA. - If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a freaking duck! - Pro’s denial of his argument being straw man doesn’t make him right. Pro falsely represented: > the CA, as established previously. > his false representation of the CA, as he did just above. > the resolution, as established previously . > & the straw man argument itself. => This is becoming more like Strawman City. :P I hope that I won't offend if I change the presentation of argument given slightly (whilst retaining all of the meaning): 1. A contingent being exists. * 2. This contingent being has a cause (not itself). 3. This cause must be a being, either contingent or not. ** 4. An infinite string of contingent beings is ludicrous. 5. Therefore there must be a non-contingent (necessary) being. *** - Here Pro confesses to falsely representing the CA! => Straw man (Intentionally)! This is not exactly what Avicenna said (which I will address next round) - We’ll wait till next round then. :) No point in arguing a false representation anyways! * I ask, in all seriousness, what does it mean to say that something exists such that if it exists it could have not existed? - It means, it is subjunctively possible, thus may be conceived to exist & may be conceived to not exist. - Pro seems to be utterly unfamiliar with basic philosophical terminology & concepts, which renders his contention all the more questionable, as on what basis does Pro judge concepts such as he can not conceive of! And if you believe in a deterministic Universe, the proposition is impossible. - Avicenna did believe in a deterministic Universe [2], as do Muslims in general. - A deterministic Universe would not affect the proposition, for the latter is inferring a metaphysical possibility, as opposed to a, epistemic possibility [1]. - If Pro can not distinguish between these two concepts, then he is in no position to argue anything any further concerning the CA. Also, many theists believe that all of our souls are eternal; this would rule out this argument. - Coincidently, so did Avicenna [3], yet, he came up with that ‘argument’. In fact, Avicenna believed the Universe itself to be eternal [4], a postulate which does not affect the argument either. Can a being be contingent? (determinism says “no”) - Metaphysically, yes. (false, it doesn’t). Can a being be non-contingent? (reason says “no") - Metaphysically, yes. (false, it doesn’t). My chicken is clearing it's throat; it's hard to hold it back much more! It's psyching itself up to deafen me with an enormous and insistent SQUAWK. - What do you expect, it’s a chicken, it can’t possibly comprehend basic logic! And there's the punchline! "My imaginary friend is so amazingly amazing that he does not need a cause”. - Non sequitur, or, straw man. It's interesting to note that this argument is merely going back to abiogenesis - most forms of the CA go back further to the beginning of ALL things (not just “beings”). - Pro jumps from premises to conclusions in a rather fallacious fashion, where is the reasoning? & what does this have to do with the resolution?! => Bare assertion & red herring fallacy. The universal fact of every version of the CA is that it separates all things into two categories: those things that have a cause and those things that don't have a cause. - Which is equivalent to the law of the excluded middle. => “Everything must either be or not be” [5] = Everything must either have a cause or not have a cause. This is what that looks like tabulated in rows: Things that have a cause : EVERYTHING (except my imaginary friend) Things that have no cause: my imaginary friend. - Pro’s abuse of straw man has reached a critical degree here! - As for the ‘tabulation’, that’s called -deductive- proof by exhaustion [6], which Pro seems to be, unsurprisingly, unfamiliar with. This again puts a huge question mark on Pro’s logical proficiency, & thus on his elementary understating of the CA to begin with! How can one’s judgement on something be expected to be sound if one does not conceive of it or even comprehend it! - Here is how proof by exhaustion (a type of case analysis) works: P. A or not-A => B. C. Therefore, B. - This is a deductive proof, which means, if P is valid, then the conclusion is necessarily True. In our case it reads: P. either beings are contingent, or beings are necessary => necessary beings exist. (Avicenna’s proof). C. Therefore, necessary beings exist. Well done, all you great thinkers... what you have done is technically known as "special pleading" [2][3][4] - Pro confuses special pleading with proof by exhaustion, the former being a logical fallacy, & the latter being quite literally the opposite: a logical proof. - Moreover, & ironically, Pro commits himself the special pleading fallacy in assuming that proof by exhaustion -thus deductive reasoning- always works except in this particular instance of the CA!! atheists have not sought to split things into two categories without reasonable justification. - Pro seems to be ignorant of the most fundamental elements of Logic itself: “the principle of identity (1st law of thought) intellectually partitions the Universe into exactly two parts: "self" and "other", it creates a dichotomy wherein the two parts are "mutually exclusive" and "jointly exhaustive”. => Everything is, by definition, split into two categories: Itself, & not-Itself (i.e. its opposite). => In our case, whatever thing is either caused, or not-caused. Here's a brief (and incomplete) history of the key players who helped dress this well-heeled fallacy: - Beside the fact that the timeline & its content are grossly inaccurate, I fail to see the point of it all. Sources: [1] http://goo.gl... [2] http://goo.gl... [3] http://goo.gl... [4] http://goo.gl... [5] http://goo.gl... [6] http://goo.gl...