It wouldn’t matter to who? You?
No, it wouldn't matter for the reason I gave in the next sentence.
Okay. But it matters to me, because then I can point and say, “That, boys and girls, is the alternative view. Take a good look. Is such an inadequate and indeed intellectually bankrupt view preferable? I think not.”
Not really sure whether I need to render an opinion on how useful you find my content to be.
Nah, the reason why you harbor such a deficient view is irrelevant.
Then under that reasoning, the reason why any Calvinist or Arminian harbor something anybody calls a "deficient" view is irrelevant. Wow, I didn't know that the vast bulk of conversation as Trinitarians disagree with each other (e.g., this is the reason why you hold that view, but your reason is faulty) constituted a big pile of irrelevancy. Methinks your trivialization of the assumptions undergirding my position (i.e., the presuppositions that drive it) isn't conduce to anything useful except correction.
It is enough to know that the alternative to our view is your deficient one. That is a contrast I can really appreciate and use as an illustration. No need to dig any deeper.
Then it is also enough for the Arminian to know that the alternative to Arminianism is a deficient one. That is a contrast they can really appreciate and use as an illustration. No need to dig any deeper.
False. You should worry about being wrong, because your obligation is measured by God’s revealed command, not his secret decree.
No, "if the Lord wills, we will do this or do that", James 4:15. So if the Lord wills, then I'll worry about being wrong. If God is as sovereign as you think, the advice in James 4:15 cannot be limited to Christians, it must apply equally well to unbelievers, since whether unbeliever or Christian, nothing can happen anyway, ever, except "if the Lord wills..." So my current apathy toward what you tell me to worry about, forces the conclusion that God must have secretly willed that I not worry about it.
Additionally, your remark fallaciously assumes something in the bible "applies to us today", but that would be off-topic. Shall I start a new OP?
Evaluating data and drawing inferences is not worldview-neutral. It presupposes an ordered and intelligible reality, the validity and reliability of rational inference, and objective norms of thought.
Granted.
Such are grounded in the triune God of Scripture,
No, they are grounded in
your interpretation of scripture, and they are grounded in
the way the triune God of scripture is described. Whether what is described reflects reality, isn't decided by your dogmatic and unqualified confident manner of expressing your viewpoints. You are not god. You
are capable of doing what other people do, and of putting faith in seriously deficient reasoning and perhaps not noticing for years where it all went wrong.
Regardless, I side with the Calvinists who warn me that presuppositionalism is unbiblical. You will say they are wrong, but that is ridiculous: you aren't going to deny their salvation solely for thei being "wrong" about presuppositionalism. So that means you allow such critics to be spiritually alive despite this type of "error" on their part. If spiritually alive people disagree with each other on some biblical manner, spiritually dead people are very reasonable to presume spiritually dead people are only going to fumble the ball worse, and to accordingly ignore it.
who is the necessary precondition of intelligibility.
Fallacy of argument by assertion. You just throw it out there as if it were no more controversial than "trees exist".
Thus, you’re already borrowing intellectual and epistemic capital from the very worldview you deny (since your own neither supplies them nor is able to account for them). Well done.
Blame it on God, who wanted me to engage in such borrowing. He's certainly happy I did so, and true Calvinism is equally as inconsistent as the biblical authors were to presume that there still some sort of room to justify caring about anything less than God's glory.
And if your God was glorified somehow by my ignorance, that's all I care about. And the fact that this is all I care about, forces the conclusion that God wanted me to be that ignorant.
Feelings are irrelevant, for the dispute is not autobiographical.
You seem to forget that fact when you fail to distinguish your viewpoint from God's viewpoint. I do not accept super-confidently asserted criticisms as somehow exempt from possible error.
Only if you held strictly and consistently to your own view. But you don’t, which is why you’re accidentally reasonable.
If my inconsistency makes God happy, I'm very confident that God cares more about what makes him happy than he cares about some "inconsistency".
That does not explain the fact of existence, but rather how long the universe has been around.
Then the fact that your god has existed eternally wouldn't preclude asking you to "explain" the "fact" of his existence.
That you can’t tell the difference is itself revealing.
If I've misunderstood, then please clarify what exactly "explain" is asking for, if it isn't asking for identification of cause. It seems to me that you have to load "explain" with special assumptions the word doesn't normally carry in normal conversation, raising the specter of special pleading.
The problem with this view is that the universe is observably expanding.
And there you go again, acting as if your statement of your viewpoint provides no less certainty of truth than if God himself had asserted it...when in fact if you know enough to debate the matter, you know perfectly well that the expanding universe model is merely a majority view, it's not incontestable dogma worthy of the unqualified way you assert it. Macro-evolution is also a mere majority-view, does that justify anybody to just blurt out "the problem with special creation is that macro-evolution is documented from transitional fossils"? Obviously not.
You know perfectly well that there is division within the YEC camp on whether the evidence shows the universe to be expanding. If spiritually
alive people cannot even agree on whether the universe is expanding, do you expect a spiritually
dead person to figure out which viewpoint is "correct"? God himself certainly doesn't.
If spacetime has a positive average expansion along a past-directed geodesic, that geodesic is past-incomplete. You can’t simply extend that kind of expansion indefinitely into the past without hitting some boundary to the description; there is a limit or edge after only a finite amount of proper time or affine length.
I don't believe time was created, and I don't believe it exists in the first place. It's a word we invented to characterize the phenomena of chronological progression, that's all. That time is not a fundamental component of the universe is conclusively proven by the fact that 3 p.m. in California isn't 3 p.m. at the same instant in New York. Time is nothing deeper than measurement. So any argument that attributes more significant to time than that, such as your argument, proceeds upon unproven premises.
And that is not to mention entropy. If the universe is eternal, why is it not already at or near thermodynamic equilibrium?
Because an eternal universe has an unlimited supply of energy. It is logically impossible for "all" of the
unlimited supply of energy to reach thermodynamic equilibrium. And you use "universe" as if the term had limitations, when in fact my model is an endless boundless universe. If you reminded yourself that I don't place limitations of size or content on the universe, you'd recognize the fallacy of wondering why it hasn't "all" reached or near-reached thermodynamic equilibrium. "all" implies a limited total. There is no more "all of the universe" than there is "all of God".
The universe still contains strong disequilibria: stars still burn, gradients still exist, structure still forms, etc. Our universe was in an extraordinarily low-entropy condition in the past.
Not under the endless boundless model.
That suggests a finite past.
only if you define "universe" to be something that is limited.
Supply the scientific evidence that matter
itself ever comes into existence.
Matter production is just energy-to-mass conversion and quite routine. We can do it ourselves, including vice-versa.
No, matter is
stuff. Energy is
stuff in motion. Energy is not some ghostly other-dimensional phenomena that is different than matter except in the sense of motion, so any argument that trades upon energy and matter having any difference beyond mere motion, is fallacious. A gasoline engine produces energy, but that hardly means when the material gasoline explodes with force, this force is something different than "matter". It's nothing at all except
matter in motion. But either way, you claim "matter production". So let's see the scientific evidence.
Therefore, by “matter” you must be referring to mass–energy as such. But that would mean your argument is fallacious (argumentum ad ignorantiam). From the fact that “we have no evidence of mass–energy coming into existence” you infer that “the universe has always existed,” which is an illicit move.
I could rebut on the merits, but that would detract from my purpose. I'm not here to prove I'm right. I'm only here to prove wrong the people who think I am "unreasonable" to hold whatever view I defend. See my bio. If you think the mere fact that a viewpoint is "wrong" suddenly forces the conclusion that it cannot possibly be reasonable, you are wrong. Some levels of error can be unreasonable, like "trees don't exist". But other levels of error involve such complexity and so many experts who disagree with each other (e.g., Calvinists who disagree with each other on the well-meant offer, i.e., CRC v. PRC) that it really isn't accurate or fair to pretend that such "errors" are unreasonable.
In the last 20 years I've gotten plenty of Christians to agree that I can be reasonable in my views despite their belief that my views are "wrong". Since they have the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9), I'm willing to take the risk that the 3rd person of the trinity, who never disagrees with the other two persons, won't be saying anything different to me on whatever Judgment Day.
You can draw an epistemic conclusion at best from that lack of empirical evidence: “Therefore, we are not in a position to say whether mass–energy came into existence.” That is very different from claiming the universe has no beginning.
Only in terms of truth and accuracy, not in reasonableness. Otherwise, you have to say that all error is inherently unreasonable. Well gee, when you meet your Calvinist friends who disagree with you on biblical eschatology, you have to believe they are "wrong" since you sincerely beleive your contrasting viewpoint is "correct"...but do you therefore tell them tha they must also be "unreasonable" to harbor the specific eschatology they do?
And I hope you never do. It provides a vivid contrast to our view, which is useful.
An Arminian could shove that same statement against the Calvinist. It's nothing but substanceless rhetoric.
