I believe I explained that in detail: It does not make sense to categorize something that has some particular essence or quality, by how frequently it is experienced for the reasons I already explained. So why you bring up other stuff that might be difficult to explain seems to be completely besides the point.
That’s what I’m getting at.
Actually I don’t believe you when you say this. What I wrote is not at all difficult to understand.
That looks like nothing more than a poor excuse for not wanting to do the work of responding substantively to my points. I’m actually trying to clean up this discussion and make progress, but the only way to do that is to make sure we’re communicating correctly. That means we need to use words like inference, inductive, abductive, evidence, and so on correctly.
No, that’s not what you have been saying up till this point. What you were inductively inferring was that all events must have causes.
At no point have you advanced an inductive argument that there must be a first physical event from which all other physical events originated. This is the very fist time you claim this, but it is nothing but a claim, no inference is made to support it.
And I have substantively responded to that, by explaining that we can use the same evidence to infer that the cause must be physical. And I have responded to your bad counter-argument this this too. And now you’re just making up an excuse for not wanting to respond back, but just “summarize” stuff.
If we are going to make an inductive generalization from observation, we must include all relevant evidence. In this case the evidence is that in so far as physical events have known causes, the causes are known to be physical causes. By an inductive generalization that just gets us to a physical cause for the first physical event.
But you have given no reason to think it is plausible, much less required to explain the first physical event. You also have yet to really explain what you are referring to by “the first physical event”. I explicitly asked you whether you are referring to the supposed coming into existence of the physical universe from nothing? I get the feeling you didn’t even read my post, just saw that it was a long response, and gave up reading it.
How compelling you find my objections is not a relevant factor in this discussion. What matters is that I have pointed out that your definition is incoherent, and I have explained why.
There is no one main objection. I have multiple objections, questions, and counter-arguments to various statements you have made, which all need to be answered.
I object to your definition of the supernatural as requiring a particular frequency of experience, as being nonsensical and leading to absurd conclusions. I explained why, you have not responded to those explanations you have just waved your hands.
I have explained that you seem to get the terms inductive generalization and abductive inference mixed up, and that it is important to distinguish between them.
I have explained how the inductive generalization you invoke to argue that the “first physical event” requires a cause, can be used just as effectively to argue that it requires a physical cause.
In response you asserted that the cause logically cannot be physical for the first physical event, but I have explained both that you are making a bare assertion without arguing for it, and why the assertion is false. I gave a simple example that shows your assertion does not apply.
I explained at length why, even if we suppose there was such a thing as a first physical event, that this does not imply a coming into existence, and hence no such coming into existence needs to be caused (we do not need to invoke causes for events that didn’t actually occur).
I have requested you explain what you even mean by a first physical event, and asked you to confirm whether you are referring to the supposed coming into existence of the physical universe from nothing? You have yet to respond.
Is “I don’t find these compelling” your go-to response for when you can’t be bothered to actually write a substantive response? It sure looks like it at this stage.
No, I believe the best thing to do would be for you to actually read my entire previous post in full, think about what I am saying, determine if you agree or disagree with any of it after serious consideration, and then respond substantively both to the arguments I make and the questions I ask. That would be the best thing to do if we are to make any progress here.