: First off, when I wrote: : "It can be proved or disproved," I meant to write "cannot" not "can."I did wonder.
: I am not starting with the axiom, "God exists;" I am starting with the axiom, "Something cannot come from nothing." At this point, you may ask, why not?
:Indeed, I could be wrong, but this seems, forgive me, a logical principle.
No. It's an assumption. Causality is something we all take for granted; the law of cause and effect, but it's by no means a given.
It's like saying "grass is green"; most people wouldn't disagree with you, but there's nothing that defines grass as green; merely our experience of the physical world; and our experience of the physical world comes to us through physical filters.
In actual fact, grass doesn't have a colour as such; it just absorbs every colour of light apart from green; it reflects incident green light; and thus our physical senses perceive it as "green". In the absolute sense of things, grass isn't green.
(To a bee, a marigold is bright blue; because their eyes pick up UV light; it's a matter of the physical filters that shape our view of the world.)
When you say "there has to be a First Cause", you are assuming that there must be a First Cause; it is not a logical conclusion; merely an assumption; however understandable it might be...
: If my initial axiom is false, then everything I'm about to say falls apart, but assuming it's not:
Assuming it's not. That is the key phrase. You are starting not from first principles, but from a helpful assumption. As with any computer program (or any other bit of formal logic) if you start with an incorrect assumption, you will arrive at a totally logical and utterly incorrect answer.
: You chide me for my claiming to use logical deduction and the process of elimination to produce what I agree with you is only a belief, viz, that God made the universe (BTW, thanks for reminding me of the word, "viz"). Now, you say that what I have here is a "conclusion," i.e., a reasoned judgment, and not a "deduction," i.e., a conclusion derived from reasoning. If there is a distinction between those two terms, it's lost on me. Onward.
A conclusion is something you arrive at; a decision; it doesn't have to be based on anything more logical than a feeling.
A deduction is something based on the process of deducing; i.e. examining all of the available data from first principles. A deduction is a conclusion reached via a strict application of formal logic.
: I have a mystery before me: where did it all come from? I've tried to reason, by working backwards, where it came from, and as I've written before, I always come to that brick wall behind which is nothing, and so I conclude, the answer is God.
But you are basing your conclusion on causality; a logical construct. You assume that cause implies effect because you have been taught that cause implies effect; but there is nothing inherently logical in this. You run up against the brick wall; something that logic cannot address; and yet use the logical construct of causality to try and explain it.
Allow me to ask you a causal question along the same logical lines as you are using; if you believe that God caused the Universe, then what caused God?
You see the problem? If you assume causality all the way back beyond the beginning of the Universe, you run slap into the acausal; either 'nothing caused God, because God is eternal'; thus causality breaks down or 'something caused God', in which case God is not eternal or omnipresent.
You have to assume that God created itself; which is no more ridiculous than assuming that the Universe created itself; except that the Universe is a purely physical phenomenon; and thus measurable by purely physical instruments; whereas God is non-physical; and thus cannot be measured the same way.
: Now, Gideon, tell me please if our detective used logic to derive his theory, or some other process (and if so, what would you call that process?).
The detective used initial assumptions (like the guy being dead) and tried to come up with the simplest theory that adequately explained all the observed facts. It's as logical as he could be, but if it was based on incorrect initial assumptions, it's just plain wrong.
: I'm not trying to argue with you so much as understand why you insist my method is not a logical one.
I'm not saying your method is an illogical one; rather that your initial assumption is not logically derivable; and thus any conclusion you derive is flawed as a logical conclusion; in that it cannot be either derived from first principles or falsified.
If you do not start from first principles when using logic, then your conclusion derives entirely from your initial assumptions; even if you've been scrupulously careful about following a logical analysis. And a faulty first assumption will result in a faulty conclusion.
In this case, your initial assumption is unprovable; thus your conclusion is unprovable and cannot stand up as a logical proof; merely as an argument.
Gideon.
