Indeductive- merely a player in language games

@paleochristcon @vincenti_verdi My view is that laws are arbitrary, that whoever is in involved in lawmaking is being arbitrary, whether the law is narrow in scope, meaning describing specific actions one might engage in, or an overarching law (one that is intended to be absolute) like 'obey the law'. Agree?

Craig's arguments for the 'Cause Of All Things' (apart from God) and Modal Realism start in Natural Theology. Even IF the Material Realm and Moral Realism were 'caused', a Philosopher wouldn't conclude with 'and therefore Jesus is the Cause of all of that, in the flesh, and you are Morally Culpable'. It just doesn't logically follow, a priori.

@sarahsalviander @Indeductive Appeal to lib- free will and counterfactuals dont answer my point: if nothing changes in the timeless will, what explanatory work is "free choice" doing beyond labeling the stopping point? You’re free to exit, but I don’t think you’re understanding the problem being raised.🤷🏼‍♂️

My FAQS for atheists. If you want to know what I believe or how I respond to the most common questions and objections to Christianity, especially as it relates to modern science and philosophy, read through this post first. You'll likely find I've already addressed it here. (Updated version) schroodle.com/p/faqs-by-athe…

"I think this conversation has reached its logical end-point." That just means you're forfeiting the debate. Invoking (any conception of) 'Freewill' isn't a Causal Theory'. Sorry. I know very well that Modal Collapse is a valid objection. The Calvinists understand it better than most other Christians. They literally double down on Theological Fatalism . Their doctrine is called Double Predestination. What you don't seem to understand is that (like Craig), your conception of 'God' does nothing to rule out every other conceivable rival hypothesis to why anything exists rather than nothing, including other Christian hypotheses inconsistent with your interpretations of the World and the texts from which you ground your Scientific Theories. Craig's 'favorite arguments' for the existence of the Triune Christian God are trapped in Probability Theory, Scientifically, no matter how you slice up Logical Possibility. Craig has had to admit his beloved Kalam Cosmological Argument does nothing to show that our Space/Time Geometry or that 'Time' itself began some finite length of time ago. It's never been more than an Intuition Pump. Craig has known this (quite possibly since researching the origins of similar Cosmological Arguments in antiquity) yet made a career out of walking around pretending he's gotten 'Atheism' on it's back foot, when he's known that no one has any evidence (or arguments for that matter) demonstrating Eternalism is less probably true than Theism, or worse, false. Even Aquinas was sympathetic to Aristotle's Eternalism views. The concept of a Prime Mover and Uncaused Cause aren't Ontologically identical. The Argument From Motion and Creatio Ex Nihilo aren't the same, conceptually. They are starkly different, especially in terms of the conceptual 'Nature' of God in Christian Special Creationism. 'Freewill' doesn't explain anything. You just don't understand the logic. If asked to account for why q rather than ~q, given p....saying 'freewill accounts for THAT' doesn't actually explain why '~q rather than q, given p'. p>q p Therefore, q is logically equivalent to the contradictory implication p>~q p Therefore, ~q Saying 'freewill' accounts for what follows from p, does NOT explain why q and not ~q. Saying 'because p felt like it' explains why p did q instead of ~q isn't actually explaining anything. We can then ask *what caused p to feel like doing p instead of ~p?* You just kick the Causal Chain of Explanations back further to another thing that needs an explanation. You're going to either run out of explanations, admit 'randomness' (arbitrariness) or some Brute Fact(s) about the World. If you're still skeptical, read Galen Strawson's arguments against the notion of 'Freewill'. In any event, NONE of what Craig has ever argued rules in the hypothesis that the World (including our Space/Time geometry) IS any sort of 'Special Creation' (either ex Materia or ex Nihilo) OR that the World is *grounded in an Immaterial Mind*, logically speaking. How do we know this for certain? Because when it comes to the soundness of his arguments, he just uses his intuitions to rule in q being more probably the case than ~q That's what his whole project bottoms out in (always). Some sort of Idealism. What seems 'more plausibly' true than not true, to him.

Modal collapse (no contingent facts, only one possible world, everything necessarily true) is a real objection, but it addresses divine simplicity where God = his essence/attributes/plan with no distinctions. I follow WLC's model, which explicitly rejects classical simplicity precisely to avoid that problem. God's free libertarian choice *is* the explanation for a temporal universe from a timeless cause. In the timeless state "sans creation," as WLC puts it, God has the power to refrain from creating or to create differently. That introduces genuine contingency and counterfactuals, like possible worlds where He doesn't create at all. No "redefining plan." The plan includes his free act of will. That's neither brute fact nor fatalistic, it's agent causation, exactly what's needed to explain why the universe exists now rather than eternally. Brute fact "it just is" assertion puts an explanatory wall up earlier and leaves the asymmetry unexplained. Free will as the terminus is the explanation. I think this conversation has reached its logical end-point. Psalm doesn't seem to get it, and I don't think I can explain it in a way that will satisfy him. You object to it, and have a problem with WLC's approach. That's fine. But I doubt I can convince someone who refers to his arguments as "tricks." In my experience, this just means he sunk your battleship. Thanks for the chat, y'all.

@sammograph @sarahsalviander I really like Sabine. She's a rebel. 😅

@Indeductive @sarahsalviander The mental gymnastics are genuinely impressive, I wonder what they’ll do if early gravitational waves end up confirming this theory: youtu.be/0xt5-FTpASM?si…

There are theories that speculate there could be some force, or forces 'outside' our local geometry than are mediating 'Gravity' in some way such that it is orders of magnitude weaker than the Weak Nuclear Force. Of course, in virtue of our local geometry being defined as 'Causally Closed', we can't 'empirically' investigate it since we can't possibly get 'Information' of anything *outside* our local geometry, so these sorts of hypotheses are (by definition) unconfirmable/unfalsifiable.

@Psalm137_9 @sarahsalviander 'Freewill' doesn't explain anything. x.com/Indeductive/st…

@sarahsalviander But God freely chose is still an assertion unless it explains why this outcome exists rather than not. If there’s no change,deliberation, or transition, then explanation still seems to terminate at God’s will. So why is that less arbitrary than an eternal necessary reality?

@Psalm137_9 @sarahsalviander x.com/Indeductive/st…

She doesn't understand what Modal Collapse is. It's where there are NO 'Contingent Facts' and there is only 1 Possible World (Counter Factual Worlds are impossible). Every 'truth' value is Necessarily True (aka: Brute Fact). If God has a 'plan' AND God is immutable/unchanging, then His 'plan' is immutable/unchanging (by Definition). This is Theological Fatalism. There is no World of Counter Factuals. Invoking this notion of 'Freewill' (possibility of doing ~q instead of q) is merely to try and re define what 'Plan' means. x.com/Indeductive/st…

She's a fan of William Lane Craig but doesn't understand all the tricks that Craig uses to try and cast the aspersion that Theists have the intellectual high ground in their Creation Scientism ideology, which is demonstrably false. Every single argument from Craig for the hypothesis that the World we are a part of *exists even though it didn't have to* is question begging and not in ANY real evidence. He is a master at intuition pumping and playing fast and loose with his terminology when his terminology must not be anything but highly technical. Like his many and multiple usages of the term 'Time'. His attempt to get a 'Personal Agent' who exists in a 'Timeless' state (Temporal Becoming doesn't exist) to become a 'Personal Agent who invents things' due to 'being endowed with the freedom of His will to become active' someway and somehow that's not described and explained in ANY way is one of the most intellectually embarrassing things I've ever heard from a PhD Philosopher. 'Freewill' doesn't explain ANYTHING, just like 'God's power to create' isn't explaining anything, either, other than to explain that you and I don't have any sort of 'power' like it. That's being Theological, sure. But it's NOT being 'Logical' (Atheological). It's just question begging after question begging after question begging. It's just turtles all the way down...🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢 x.com/Indeductive/st…

🎯💯 Yep, that is the key issue. A claim does not gain explanatory power by being compatible with every possible outcome. BUT it can FEEL like confirmation, which is why it is such an effective cognitive trap. If a claim can absorb evidence, absence of evidence, contradiction, silence, suffering, and failed expectations equally well, then it has been made functionally non-disconfirmable. Any explanation grounded in reality must risk being wrong.

A Causal Theory that can't be disconfirmed by anything isn't confirming anything. It's just a tautology, which doesn't explain anything. It merely asserts things. p>q p Therefore, q Most apologists never actually get that educated in Philosophy to realize what they're failing to do in their apologetics. And these are most often people who assert 'I can't be wrong about what I know and that is that God exists and He loves me'. Sad, but true.

@sarahsalviander The issue isn’t whether you have arguments. The issue is whether your belief is governed by any standard capable of correcting it. And your ‘updated version’, still fails to address that. So, what standard, applied consistently, could tell you Christianity is wrong?

That's a whole bunch of 'production' (events/eventuation/activity) going on. All that stuff allegedly invented by a 'Atemporal/Timeless Living Personal Agent' in a Timeless Realm (absolute absence of events). Who knew that there could be that much activity and Physical products being produced *ex nihilo* and *in no time whatsoever* ?!

The atheists that actually care about evidence end up becoming Christians.

"Person P chooses q instead of ~q" presupposes Time. Defining Person S as 'Timeless' isn't a valid move. Doing 'Logic' in that fashion is like playing tennis without the net and without any boundaries on the grass. Even Craig acknowledges that there existed a sequence of events 'sans Creation'. He does it in his typical weasel words fashion by saying 'mental events are sufficient for Time', whatever THAT proposition is supposed to mean. Craig KNOWS he's equivocating in his arguments for an expansion from a Singularity. Einstein unified Space/Time into a Physical Entity/Manifold (Geometry Of Space/Time). Tracing theoretical Geodesics 'paths' back to a Singularity does NOT entail 'Time no longer exists at the Singularity'. Which Physicist or Philosopher wants to demonstrate that the Singularity MEANS 'all Physical Activity no longer existed'?

I thought you already read it. In any case, I think you're still not grasping libertarian free will. The fixed-will objection treats God's volition as if it were an impersonal condition that automatically cranks out the universe. But on the theistic model it's a free personal choice, the very thing the Kalam argument shows we need to explain a temporal universe from a timeless cause. Free choices don't require further causal explanation; they are the explanation. The alternative, the universe as brute fact, leaves us with no cause at all.

🚨 BREAKING: Pressure is surging on the Florida House of Representatives to IMPEACH leftist Judge Tiffany Baker, who RELEASED a known s*x offender only to kill a 5-year-old girl, Missy Mogle FOLLOW THROUGH! Remove the judges, set the national standard! 🇺🇸 DESANTIS: "Man, can't we all agree you gotta do what it takes to protect the public?! That was NEGLICENCE! That was NEGLECT OF DUTY! I'm gonna say the truth. It doesn't prejudice ANYBODY, I don't think anybody disagrees with me." "The judge RELEASED him and then this TRAGEDY happened. This was AVOIDABLE. This was PREVENTABLE." "These are the types of convicts that need to be held accountable." "I STAND BY everything I said 100%. I'd like to see accountability for how this BREAKDOWN happened. Because you have a 5-year-old girl who's DEAD who should STILL BE ALIVE." @AGJamesUthmeier: "It’s been 385 days since Tallahassee Judge Tiffany Baker let a convicted sex offender walk out of the courtroom instead of into a prison cell, and he subsequently murdered 5-year-old Missy Mogle. The Florida House still hasn’t impeached Judge Baker. There’s no excuse."

Alleged Palisades arsonist became 'fixated' with Luigi Mangione, started blaze 'out of resentment of the rich': prosecutors trib.al/nLHwEsr

Remember when they tried to blame this on “climate change”? It was left wing terrorism. Again.

Ron Johnson says what many Americans have been waiting years to hear from a sitting senator. The COVID “vaccine” isn’t a vaccine. “I call it an injection.” “Because it’s not a vaccine.” “It’s a platform that turns your body into every cell in your body into a manufacturing site of the spike protein.” “Which is the most toxic part of the coronavirus.” @SenRonJohnson

Thanks to @FoxNews & conservative media for defending me when trans activists banned my first book: foxnews.com/media/bill-mah…

BREAKING: prominent LGBT Pride org founder, Jake Tucker, convicted of seven counts of sex trafficking

@BrianAtlas A good side kick would let him know that hitting the pavement skull first isn't worth the thrill he's getting doing this

🚨 WARNING: BLOOD BOILING. This HAS to be a crime right? If you pull your fist back and extend it to just an inch away from someone’s face, that’s still an assault. Why don’t the cops/DA charge these guys? They post it all to IG.

Exactly... x.com/AdamS_113/stat…

Another female s3x predator. And the Feminists keep ignoring reality...