Ray Comfort is Ridiculous

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Ray Comfort is Ridiculous

For some very odd reason, I decided to re-watch the video of Ray Comfort in the Nightline debate, and I thought to myself, “this man is so ridiculous, even his fellow apologists look good by comparison”. The central argument:

P1: All things need a creator

P2: The universe is a thing

C: The universe needs a creator

Has a “trick card” up it that is about as well hidden that one would hide an Easter egg from a child with impaired vision. The trick card is the word created, which has been fallaciously equivocated when it actually has a double-meaning. It is rather like saying:

P: I am feeling very blue today

P2: Blue is a wavelength on the EM spectrum

C: I am feeling like a wavelength on the EM spectrum

The word “created” in P1 refers to our “creations”, things that we build. Buildings, buses, parks, hotels etc. When you look at a building, it did not “build itself”, to quote the man himself. But we haven’t actually created any of these things in the sense that Comfort means in (C), all we have done is rearranged pre-existing substance and some emergent property has resulted. The argument, therefore, has a hidden conflation between property and substance. This error is so basic a five year old could spot the philosophical problem within it. It is therefore a non sequitur to derive (C) from P1 and P2, because in C, he means literally created, the substance itself (not any emergent property of said substance) has been spawned. This does not follow from P1. If we replace the meaning Comfort has given P1 with the meaning he intends in C, then we get an assertion that is not backed up by his prior assertions (ie a building could not “create itself”) because any evidence In support of that proposition would lend itself to the meaning of “created” that we just replaced because it equivocated.

This argument is neither valid nor sound. It is not valid for the reason above, it is not sound because it is not valid, and obviously, as I pointed out in my thesis, it makes the “top down” error, which I pointed out was a stolen concept fallacy (it can be reviewed here: Deluded God). Now, obviously, if we replace the meaning in P1 with the intended meaning, the argument clearly becomes a petiti principii, question begging. It sets up another example of the termination paradox, as I outlined here: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/sapient/atheist_vs_theist/11338 I am fully aware that I am taking a sledgehammer to an insect, but doesn't that make it just that little bit more fun?

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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The best time to kick

The best time to kick someone is when they are down imho. Smiling


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Quote: The best time to

Quote:

The best time to kick someone is when they are down imho. 

In my opinion, he was never "not down", so he should just be kicked on a recurring basis. 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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bump

bump

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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Just to continue

Just to continue kicking:

In syllogysm, there are only a few allowable forms for a premise:

all A is B

no A is B

some A is B

some A is not B

x is A

x is not A

x is y

x is not y

That's it.

"P1 All things need a creator"  has not been expressed as a Wff, or "well formed formula.'

I suppose he could say, "All things are in need of a creator," but that's kind of spooky because it's kind of getting the time space thing a little backwards.  If he says, "All things are created," we simply respond by pointing out that this is the conclusion he's trying to reach, and he is not allowed to use it as a premise.

 

Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin

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deludedgod wrote: The word

deludedgod wrote:

The word “created” in P1 refers to our “creations”, things that we build. Buildings, buses, parks, hotels etc. When you look at a building, it did not “build itself”, to quote the man himself. But we haven’t actually created any of these things in the sense that Comfort means in (C), all we have done is rearranged pre-existing substance and some emergent property has resulted.

This website says create means "make", "produce", "arise" or "grow". It differentiates it from "shape".

"Create" has the notion of a beginning. Before you "create" a building, it is not a building, it is the building blocks. You "shape" the building blocks, but the higher notion of "building" comes into existance at some point. And the big bang says the universe had a beginning.


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Quote:

Quote:

And the big bang says the universe had a beginning.

 The issue under consideration was Comfort's argument, which invoked the fallacy under consideration. Now, I already covered the issue you raised, whereby if we replace the meaning of created in (P1) with that in (C), Comfort sets up a paradox:

The Paradox of the Cosmological Argument Version 2.0

It doesn't matter if he replaces the meaning of P1 with that of C or that of C with that of P1. It's deadlocked. As things stand currently, he is making a fallacy of equivocation.

The issue of BB is more amusing still. All the Big Bang theory states is that the universe expanded outwards 13.7 billion years ago from a very dense, extremely low entropy prior state. Many theists miscontrue the Big Bang as ex nihilo, "out of nothing". It is not the case. There are certain models postulating pre-Big Bang occurances, the boundary condition in Hartele-Hawking, brane cosmology, etc. But the BB itself says nothing about the creation of the universe. It simply describes an expansion occurance 13.7 billion years ago from a prior state, and the model describes occrances from the Planck time onwards from this prior state, that we can describe events from the Planck Time until the end of BB nucleosynthesis.

If you want me to demonstrate this exactly using mathematics, ask.

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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nedbrek wrote: deludedgod

nedbrek wrote:
deludedgod wrote:

The word “created” in P1 refers to our “creations”, things that we build. Buildings, buses, parks, hotels etc. When you look at a building, it did not “build itself”, to quote the man himself. But we haven’t actually created any of these things in the sense that Comfort means in (C), all we have done is rearranged pre-existing substance and some emergent property has resulted.

This website says create means "make", "produce", "arise" or "grow". It differentiates it from "shape".

"Create" has the notion of a beginning. Before you "create" a building, it is not a building, it is the building blocks. You "shape" the building blocks, but the higher notion of "building" comes into existance at some point. And the big bang says the universe had a beginning.

What?!  I don't understand.  'Create' has been equivocated by Ray Comfort.  'Create' carries numerous definitions (you do not even cover all of them), but that hardly changes the fact that Comfort is obviously using the term in two different ways and coming to a conclusion that it supposed to be the result of his premises.  I fail to see how the use can be questioned. 

All things need a creator./All things created need a creator.  The universe is a thing.  The universe needs a creator.

 The universe is not something created by humans, it does not necessitate a creator.  Something created by humans does.  You can't equivocate the universe with something humanmade.

Also, by your example, we could not have the idea of a 'building in progress' or an 'unfinished building' or a 'design of a building'.  What you've written is inane.  Creation has nothing to do with beginning, it has to do with creation.  Necessarily for something to have been created it must have had a beginning, but to restate the point, you can't equivocate the universe (or any naturally occurring thing) with a human 'creation' beginning or not!

BigUniverse wrote,

"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."


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Thomathy wrote: The

Thomathy wrote:

The universe is not something created by humans, it does not necessitate a creator. Something created by humans does. You can't equivocate the universe with something humanmade.

The use of the word is the same. Before the "creation event" you do not have X, afterward you do have X. The actor doing the creation is irrelevant. We create from existing matter, while God creates from nothing. Those are inputs to the creation event.

Thomathy wrote:
Also, by your example, we could not have the idea of a 'building in progress' or an 'unfinished building' or a 'design of a building'.

You can use fuzzy logic to represent these ideas. A pile of bricks is a 0.0 building (or 0.0001, since 0 sometimes causes problems). A half-finished building might be 0.5. A building without interior finishing might be 0.7. etc. A design of a building is another thing entirely. It might be an input into the creation of the building, or resemble it or be comparable to it, etc.


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deludedgod wrote: The issue

deludedgod wrote:
The issue of BB is more amusing still.

It's my understanding that the laws of physics (as we understand them) break down as you approach the earliest state of the universe. The question is what caused these conditions to come about? If the matter in the universe has always existed, what caused it to expand ~15 billion years ago? If time did not exist then, why did it suddenly start?

It's also my understanding that string theory (which drives the notion of branes) is untestable in this regards to this matter.


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nedbrek wrote:

nedbrek wrote:
Thomathy wrote:

The universe is not something created by humans, it does not necessitate a creator. Something created by humans does. You can't equivocate the universe with something humanmade.

The use of the word is the same. Before the "creation event" you do not have X, afterward you do have X. The actor doing the creation is irrelevant. We create from existing matter, while God creates from nothing. Those are inputs to the creation event.

The use of the term is not the same. That's the entire point.

The universe was created. This building was created.

Can you tell me what the difference between those two sentences is other than the noun?

Invoking god as the answer is intellectually dishonest at this point; the universe was not created from nothing, nor was it 'created' in the sense of a human creation. That's equivocating!

nedbrek wrote:

Thomathy wrote:
Also, by your example, we could not have the idea of a 'building in progress' or an 'unfinished building' or a 'design of a building'.

You can use fuzzy logic to represent these ideas. A pile of bricks is a 0.0 building (or 0.0001, since 0 sometimes causes problems). A half-finished building might be 0.5. A building without interior finishing might be 0.7. etc. A design of a building is another thing entirely. It might be an input into the creation of the building, or resemble it or be comparable to it, etc.

... what exactly is your point? You wrote:

Quote:

"Create" has the notion of a beginning. Before you "create" a building, it is not a building, it is the building blocks. You "shape" the building blocks, but the higher notion of "building" comes into existance at some point. And the big bang says the universe had a beginning

A building is a building whether it is a completed building or a half completed building. It is a building in conception. Are you just making an excuse for the fact that that you believe a building isn't a building until some point at which it becomes a building? What exactly is that point? Stop backpedaling; stop being dishonest.

BigUniverse wrote,

"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."


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Quote:

Quote:

The question is what caused these conditions to come about? It's my understanding that the laws of physics (as we understand them) break down as you approach the earliest state of the universe.

The laws of General Relativity break down as you approach the prior entropy state, until Planck Time. According to BB theory, nothing can be known about the pre-Planck Time existence, all we know is that the universe expanded outwards from some prior very low entropy state when presumably the symmetry in the four disngaged fources were unified. There was no matter, it would have been too excited and broken down, due to Planck's Constant. This system was extremely unstable and collapsed into our present system. Remember, when you speak of "time" you are speaking of time as a progression. I am referring to the Lorentz Manifold, the causal structure. This applies to Minkowski and Non-Minkowski space. So, it is unhelpful to say that time "did not exist" before BB.

There are theories to choose from, but BB does not make any proposition about ex nihilo. The creation of a true vacuum is in accordance with basic free energy decay mechanics in entropy. The Casimir effect shows that such virtual quantum particles can destroy the vacuum, and they exist plentifully where nothing else does, but only for periods of time on the order of the Planck length. This does not violate Thermodynamics since it is an extremely short lived and extremely tiny quantum effect allowed under Heisenberg uncertainty. Virtual particles exist in nothing, the vacuum, the void, and they would act as the trigger to destroy the negative energy vacuum, from which the true vacuum and hence matter and energy may spring forth (matter would no longer be too excited to form). Guth’s original problem was solved by Linde, where the false vacuum fluctuations would generate many different inflating regions of space time called “bubbles”. The problem is that the theory necessitates the nucleation of the bubbles (imagine it as analogous to heating water on a stove). While the collapse of a false vacuum would dictate that the expansion of the space between the bubbles would multiply logarithmically faster than the actual bubbles themselves. The universe would expand extremely rapidly, but it would never stop in Guth’s model. Inflation necessitated an extremely fast, but extremely short burst. Guth’s model had no way to wind down the inflation. Linde’s solution was that the expansion which triggered the universe was originally very slow, and accelerated in a scalar-field to become competitively fast compared to actual expansion of space time, and when it does, inflation stops, so the bubbles nucleate and thus the universe heats. For the purpose of this exercise, it becomes necessary to merge inflation with quantum cosmology. The original symmetry would have been broken as a trigger to inflation, and the negative energy associated with the vacuum would have been cancelled by the collapse (Since it is mechanistically so unstable. This means that energy, hence matter, may arise).
Note this is not an explanation of the philosophical problem of why the universe exists, since we have to include things existing before the unvirse, the inflaton, the scalar field, etc

Anyway, the gist is that all the BB says is that the universe expanded from a symettrical low entropy state which may have been a false vacuum which inflated, via which the force disengagement could have been created and matter could form since it is no longer too excited below Planck temperature. This circumvents SLOT because the system in question was lower entropy than the current one. 

Quote:

If the matter in the universe has always existed

This is gibberish. According to this formula: Tp=mpc^2/k=r(hr)c^5/Gk^2, matter breaks down at the Planck Temperature, 10^32K. It is nonsense to speak of matter being "hotter" since temperature is a measure of particle kinetics. In the low-entropy state, there wasn't any matter, it becomes interchangeable with energy.

Quote:

what caused it to expand ~15 billion years ago?

Again, gibberish. These are scalar units. They cannot "Expand". Only space-time "expands". It makes no sense to speak of "matter" expanding. There are numerous theories for why this occurs, 50 in total, I believe, albeit that we have to wait for several more instruments to come online in 2010.

Quote:

If time did not exist then

Huh? BB makes no such prediction. All it says (for the fourth time in a row) is that the universe expanded from a low entropy state 13.7 billion years ago. THere is no such thing as "time" anyway, in the Lorentz Metric, only space-time. That is according to this formula: g=dx2(1)+dx2(p)+dx2(p+1P+dx2(p+q). The laws of General Relativity break down at the Planck level, but the quantum laws which describe space and time (Planck Length and Planck time) hold.

The gist is, the Big Bang does not speak of the "creation" of the universe, the "creation" of space-time (that notion is considered gibberish in physics). It speaks of the "creation" of matter only in the sense that the breaking of the low entropy state made the exication states necessary for matter possible. It does not speak to the sens that Comfort means in (C), which is ex nihilo. BB is not ex nihilo.

Obviously, you still have the paradox in question to reckon with:

The Paradox of the Cosmological Argument Version 2.0

Quote:

It's also my understanding that string theory (which drives the notion of branes) is untestable in this regards to this matter.

That is why we call it a hypothesis.

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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Thomathy wrote: The use of

Thomathy wrote:

The use of the term is not the same. That's the entire point.

The universe was created. This building was created.

Can you tell me what the difference between those two sentences is other than the noun?

The only difference is the replacement of the word "universe" with the word "building" (and adjustment of the filler words). Other meaning cannot be ascribed without context.

Thomathy wrote:
Invoking god as the answer is intellectually dishonest at this point; the universe was not created from nothing, nor was it 'created' in the sense of a human creation. That's equivocating!

... what exactly is your point?

Either the universe was created from nothing, the universe was created from something (which would make that the start of the universe, and we recurse), or the universe has always existed. Early forms of atheism required an eternal universe. The big bang disabused this notion. Whatever created the universe is God. It is not "invoking God". It logically follows.

Thomathy wrote:
A building is a building whether it is a completed building or a half completed building. It is a building in conception. Are you just making an excuse for the fact that that you believe a building isn't a building until some point at which it becomes a building? What exactly is that point? Stop backpedaling; stop being dishonest.

But "building" is not a boolean value. It is not simply "true" or "false". The word "building" might have different connotations in different contexts. If you say, "Come with me into this building", and there is a half finished building and a completed building, I will likely assume you mean the whole building. Unless we are building inspectors, then I would assume the opposite.

We might argue when the creation of the building ended (when we receive the CO or when we finish labor). But no one could argue that we did not create it.


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The building fulfills the

The building fulfills the limited properties of an artificial concept (i.e. general shape and color, while individual grains of sand are left to find their orientation in the grout). We established the idea of a building and endowed natural materials with the emergent properties fulfilling this idea. Our concept of nature is shaped by our discovery of its properties, not the other way around, so we have no basis to say that it fulfills a concept to be created.

So on the one hand, we can 'create' the 'building' -- to meet a limited set of parameters -- but not its most fundamental constituents. The creation referred to by Comfort is exactly the latter if we're talking about creation ex nihilo.


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Quote: The only difference

Quote:

The only difference is the replacement of the word "universe" with the word "building" (and adjustment of the filler words). Other meaning cannot be ascribed without context.

Thank you for demonstrating you did not read the OP. 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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Quote:   Either the

Quote:

 

Either the universe was created from nothing, the universe was created from something (which would make that the start of the universe, and we recurse), or the universe has always existed. Early forms of atheism required an eternal universe. The big bang disabused this notion. Whatever created the universe is God. It is not "invoking God". It logically follows.

The Paradox of the Cosmological Argument Version 2.0

The Causal structure of the Lorentz Manifold does not support this proposition.  

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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nedbrek wrote: Either the

nedbrek wrote:
Either the universe was created from nothing, the universe was created from something (which would make that the start of the universe, and we recurse), or the universe has always existed. Early forms of atheism required an eternal universe. The big bang disabused this notion. Whatever created the universe is God. It is not “invoking God“. It logically follows.

This is either a gross abuse of the word 'creation' or the word 'god,' in addition to being bifurcation. Regardless of whether anything could precede the universe, it doesn't follow that it was created by any agency; so you're either creating a non-sequitur, or extending the word 'god' to mean any hypothetical causal event.


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deludedgod

deludedgod wrote:

Quote:

The only difference is the replacement of the word "universe" with the word "building" (and adjustment of the filler words). Other meaning cannot be ascribed without context.

Thank you for demonstrating you did not read the OP.

Thank you.  I didn't want to have to explain it to him again.  I think twice is enough and by two different people in two different ways.  Oh, and then there was Hambydammit's syllogism 'kicking'.  how else can we make the equivocation clear?

BigUniverse wrote,

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Uh, guys... You're trying

Uh, guys...

You're trying to explain a concept to someone who worships three separate, distinct (man-made) beings but insists that it's just one "God". 

"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
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Teh bump.

Teh bump.


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Instead all of this

Instead all of this discussion about equivocation, isn't it easier to point out that if all things need a creator, and god is a thing, then god needs a creator?


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wavefreak wrote: Instead

wavefreak wrote:
Instead all of this discussion about equivocation, isn't it easier to point out that if all things need a creator, and god is a thing, then god needs a creator?

It's been tried - it just doesn't sink in for the people who buy Ray's bull. 

"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin