[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Donald Schneider

If we cannot, for example, agree that you and I would not be here today had it not for been for the reproductive acts of our respective parents, then I suggest this entire forum degenerates into a theater of the absurd and is pointless of and in itself.

I agree with that fact, but I don't agree with your cause and effect relationship, which in the PHYSICAL world is completely incoherent. Divide the reproductive act down further and further and further and further, because we can -- and we get into the physical entry of the spermatozoal DNA into the oocyte, the signal transduction mechanism by which the spermatozoa recognize the oocyte, the mitochondtrial activity in the flagella of the spermatozoa, etc -- all these events are NECESSARY for reproduction to occur. They can therefore be conceived of as CAUSES by your scheme. The reproductive act of two adult humans can be broken down into an infinite number of biological and ultimately physical constituents. At a certain level of resolution they are two humans copulating -- at a different and totally legitimate level of resolution they are physical processes. Ultimately the act of reproduction that you simplify as cause and effect is NOT a single act with a cause and effect, it's a near infinitude of potentiating conditions.

And again, as I implied in my previous post, you cannot solve a problem in the physical world through logic alone. It's irrational to attempt to do so, and it's impossible -- because the second someone finds some observable phenomenon that refutes your logic, then your entire logical superstructure crumbles as irrelevant to the actual world. So with all due respect to your efforts and thoughts, you don't get the latitude to claim a proof that a creator is necessary unless you've got a complete and comprehensive understanding of physics -- whether or not you've bounced an idea off of a physicist. Otherwise your argument is devoid of any relationship to the physical world, and is thus a proof only of its internal rhetorical coherence.

You say, for example, "that we live and perceive must have been sequentially created". You use the word "created", which implies external agency, which means that you're already using your thesis and conclusion as evidence, which is circular, and it denies the intrinsic physical phenomena that allow things to change without an external agent. You state the necessity of sequence, as if things are simply added rather than changing over time. You use the words "live" and "perceive" as if they are unambiguous phenomena, whereas in a sense even a virus and certainly all prokaryotes and eukaryotes are living and perceiving. How do we perceive an odor? Because a chemical interacts with receptors in our nose. How do we perceive a sound? How do we perceive our position in space? All can be broken down into simpler and simpler phenomena, not some grandiose idea of "perceive". After all, the HIV virus can recognize the CD4 molecule on T cells, and the influenza virus can recognize sialic acid on airway cells, etc -- is this not perception? And if so is perception not just a physical phenomenon?

In the end your argument is only cosmetically different than Aristotle's 2300 year old arguments about cause and effect with ultimate regression to an unmoved mover. Fine, it makes logical sense when you take certain terms for granted. But logic is only logic. Aristotle's unmoved mover is now understood in terms of forces and mass/energy in space-time, and they're understood as intrinsic. Do you have some sort of evidence other than logic that there is an external agent?

Plato presents (as a parodied syllogism) a logical proof that your dog is your father, and the proof is completely 100% logically unassailable. So why should anyone believe that a logical proof actually means something outside the boundaries of your argument?