Home Forum Advantage like i said. You can tell it is HFA when a KC mentions two expansion models that are BOTH just highly speculatative than anything that i said, yet no one calls him out on that, but are quick to call me out on my so called "assumptions". It is a big double standard. But thats ok tho. I know that not only am i making my case for the kalam but i am also refuting his. I dont care that you cheerleaders are on here rooting for KC. You people are making it seem as if KC is making the BOMB case against the Kalam, im sorry but i just dont see it. But whatever lol. The guy can make all the assumptions in the world in his argument, and no one says a damn thing about it. But when i make the slightest one, ohhhhh my goodness Majesty has a argument full of assumptions!!!! What kind of CRAP is that?? But its ok people, it's all good.
But yeah...GetMeThere.......i accept......pm me whenever you are ready man. LETS GOOO
Maybe this is the given/new problem. Many people here are aware that brane cosmology is speculative. However, you're wrong in stating that kcrady is
assuming that brane cosmology (or any other speculative hypothesis concerning an underlying reality) is true. He has explicitly stated that we don't know if they're true or not. That's not the issue at stake, however; all that kcrady needs to do is blow apart the false dichotomy inherent in the KCA, to whit:
The underlying reality that engendered our Cosmos is either
1. entirely in accordance with the generalizations and principles that govern the Cosmos itself (time, conservation of mass/energy, increasing entropy, etc.); or
2. magic.
You have asserted with certainty that it's not 1, therefore it must be 2. The notion of an option 3 (an underlying reality that operates according to a somewhat
different set of principles than those we can readily observe in our four-dimensional space-time) you apparently discount for no discernible reason at all.
Sure, it's speculative, but kcrady never claimed otherwise; what you don't seem to realise or accept is that it is no more speculative than 2. Your apparent basis for summarily discounting it is that science cannot observe anything before the Big Bang, therefore, option 3
cannot exist. Which is clearly a canard; you don't get to claim that things "cannot exist" merely because you can't observe them; you must provide arguments
that militate against the possibility of their existence, and merely saying "there are problems with them" (e.g. our inability to observe them) does not, on its own, militate against the possibility of brane cosmology.
You thereby assert 2 as a certainty (without even showing that it is plausible, which is a serious flaw, given that things like brane cosmology are at least sufficiently plausible that they are tentatively accepted by many cosmologists). Double standards? Not really. Kcrady doesn't make the mistake of asserting brane cosmology as a certainty. Can you see the difference?
Unfortunately, you've shored up option 2 with a BIG whopping assumption that is fatal to your argument - namely the concept of a "disembodied mind". Everything we know about the mind, to date, illustrates that what we call the "mind", a rather fuzzy abstract concept in itself, is contingent upon a physical brain. Evidence for this is the profound changes of personality undergone by brain-damaged patients, the loss of "mental" faculties caused by brain damage, and "split personalities" caused by the severing of the corpus callosum - as well as demonstrations that the decision-making process can be
observed in the lab seconds before the subject is consciously aware of making a decision.
So far, it's:
"Mind" is contingent on physical structure: 10000
"Mind" is immaterial and independent of physical structure: 0
This large, and growing, body of evidence militates against the notion of "disembodied minds". Yet you assert as a CERTAINTY that an immaterial mind can even exist. It's pure wishful thinking. And on this and this alone, the KCA falls flat, though it may serve to gull credulous fantasists into falling for it (people
want to believe in an immaterial mind, as they can't readily face the fact that their
own mind won't survive the physical 'death' of their own brain).
Further, you don't seem to understand the terms of the argument. kcrady doesn't need to show that the KCA is wrong (though he has shown, your denials notwithstanding, that the proposed characteristics of your "disembodied mind" are internally contradictory and thereby self-refuting). He merely needs to show that it isn't the only conclusion or inference one can derive from the current state of affairs. Which he has done.
