The Argument from Causality by N. Fakhr - HTML preview
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Contents
Week One: The Argument from Design 10
Is It Honorable to Teach Religion to Children? 10
The Argument from Design Begins 14
Week Two: The Question of the Soul 22
Are Emotions Evidence for the Existence of a Soul? 22
Are Sleep and Dreams Evidence for the Existence of a Soul? 22
An Argument for the Existence of the Soul 23
Quantum Physics and Why God Is Not Needed to Explain the Creation of Consciousness 28
Week Three: The Beginning of the Argument from Causality — Existence and Nonexistence 41
The Concept of Nonexistence 43
Week Four: Continuing the Argument from Causality — The Concept of a Phenomenon 45
How Does a Phenomenon Come into Existence? 47
Week Five: Continuing the Causal Argument; Does the Chain of Phenomena Have a Beginning? 50
Refuting an Infinite Regress 51
Proving a Beginning for the Chain of Phenomena 55
A New Argument Against Infinite Regress 55
The First Cause and Some of Its Characteristics 57
Can the Necessary Existent Be Temporal and Subject to Change? 58
Can the Necessary Existent Have Any Deficiency? 58
Proving That the Necessary Existent Is Unbounded 65
Week Eight: The Necessary Existent Is One Thing—The God of Religion Is Another! 74
Is It Justifiable to Be Lenient in Accepting Irrational Attributes for the Necessary Existent? 81
Week Nine: The Argument from Causality and the Rejection of the Existence of Heaven and Hell 84
In What Ways Is Creation Possible? 85
Week Ten: Free Will and Determinism; A Critique of Free Will 90
Can Any Mechanism Account for Free Will? 90
If Causality Does Not Hold, Does That Solve the Problem of the Day of Judgment? 94
Should the Judicial and Punitive System in Our World Be Abolished? 95
Week Eleven: Free Will and Determinism; What Does Determinism Mean? What Does Free Will Mean? 97
Week Twelve: Determinism and Free Will—Does Quantum Physics Offer a Way Out of Determinism? 105
Predestination, Deterministic Necessity, and Quasi-Predestination 108
Is There Something Between Complete Determinism and Complete Free Will? 114
Could the Necessary Existent Have Granted Us the Freedom to Choose? 115
Week Thirteen: Evil, Too, Is the Work of the Necessary Existent 118
Week Fourteen: What Is the Quran—A Miracle or Something Sacred? 123