Friday, April 30, 2010  P. Z. Myer's Tacit Admission: I
Shouldn't be Taken Seriously by Philosophers  This much, at
least, can be reasonably inferred from his recent post on
Pharyngula, a response to David Hart's new essay in First
Things. Despite Myers' claim that he attacks all arguments for
the existence of God, he frankly admits that he does not
comprehend the terms employed in the cosmological proof for
God's existence: "composite", "contingent", "finite",
"temporal", "absolute plenitude of being", and so on.  These
terms are, of course, slightly technical; but they are the basic
vocabulary used in metaphysics in general, and the cosmological
argument in particular. Hart is prone to unusual verbiage, but
this is simply not the case here. Anyone who is even slightly
familiar with the cosmological argument from the original texts
knows these basic terms.  "Composite" just means a thing
composed of matter and form; two elementary concepts from
Aristotle's metaphysics. "Contingent" is simply a being that mig