Kenny

I’m not sure if it is appropriate for me to say this, seeing how I am posting as a Christian on an atheist board, but I have been around a while so, “Welcome.”

Recall Einstein’s maxim (my paraphrase) “Things should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

You may have an overly broad definition of “fundy” as this is the position of classical theism, not just Christian fundamentalists.

As for the rest of your post, I have all ready addressed the issues raised.

Anyway, I have to go for now. Seeing how it is just after midnight, it is now my birthday and when I wake up in the morning, I am going to go spend it with my girlfriend. The next day, I’m driving to my parents home in Kansas City for winter break (they have a computer though). In other words, I may not be posting for a couple of days. Until then...

God Bless,
Kenny

Kenny

I could If it seems like I am being evasive on this particular point, it is because I am. I have learned the hard way in the past that discussions such as these can easily spiral into unmanagible complexity if I do not limit the scope of what I am talking about and that makes me reluctant to address issues that are not of direct relevance to the present concern. Nevertheless, to give you a clue about where I am coming from, I am something of a presuppositionalist (though not necessarily the same as the Van Til variety) in that I believe that Christianity is properly taken as a basic philosophical starting point and not as the conclusion of a chain of arguments. As we are dealing with basic worldview issues here which inevitably color how one views every aspect of reality, I do not believe that there is any neutral ground upon which to argue for one worldview over another. We can step inside other worldviews and seek to deconstruct them from within, however. In the end, I believe that only the Christian worldview can maintain a consistent outlook that encompasses reality as we experience it and that all other worldviews cave in on themselves in one way or another. This is a whole other long debate, however, and I do not wish to carry it out here.

Why not? I fail to see anything murky about it. As I pointed out, when we speak of things being caused we are usually implying that there is some sort of logical dependence involved and that one thing finds its explanation in another. When we say A causes B, we mean (as a first approximation) that B obtains because A obtains. To speak of A being ontologically prior than B (in a causal sense), then, is simply to state the B finds its explanation in A rather than A finding its explanation in B. The interesting thing is that chains of explanation are generally not thought of as being temporal; they simply “are.” If that is so, and causal chains reduce to explanatory chains, then there is no reason whatsoever to maintain that causality can only exist within the context of time.

That might be a good operational way to speak of causation within the context of doing mathematical physics, but if we are going to do sound philosophy we’ll need to do better than that. In a philosophical sense, I believe that causation has to do with chains of explanation. Now, obviously, in order for event A to be a candidate for being an explanation for event B, event A must have had some way of being involved in the occurrence of event B. In Relativity, the capacity for one event in space time to physically influence other events is limited by the fact that information between events cannot be exchanged faster than the speed of light. Hence, the backwards light cone of an event, in Relativity, defines the limits within which one can seek a physical explanation for that event as well as encompassing all of the events that influenced it, but it does not define what those explanations are and hence does not fully capture the notion of causality in a philosophical sense.

More precisely, its explanation is not to be found in prior physical events as there are none which could have been involved in its occurrence (on the standard model). Does the BB still require some sort of explanation however? Well, that is a question for another debate.

Agreed. Like I said, if I were going to do the cosmological argument, it would not be the first-cause version, but the contingency version. I would argue that the existence of the universe is such that it could have been different than it is; hence, (invoking the principle of sufficient reason) there must be some sort of explanation for why it is the way it is which lies outside itself. I am not making the cosmological argument, however, and I have no intention of doing so in this thread.

Actually, no, it can’t be boiled down to that. The initial question in this thread was one that supposedly posed a problem from within Christian theism – how can we conceive of God eternally existing prior to the creation of the universe? This led me to put forward the view that God is not bound by time. The burden I have taken up in the rest of this thread is to uphold the notion that it is coherent to conceive of God (in the Christian sense of the term – as a personal, causally active being, Who is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and Who is involved in human affairs, etc.) in this way. Of course, one of the things that fell out of that discussion is my assertion that it is meaningful to think of God as having caused the universe in extratemporal sense (given that it is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity that God freely created the universe). The discussion is larger than that, however, as evidenced by the concerns raised over whether God (conceived as transcending time) can have thoughts, be involved in temporal sequences, whether this negates freewill, etc. – all issues that are raised because it is Christian theism which is being discussed, not just some abstract notion of extratemporal causation.

I honestly fail to see why once we understand that causation reduces to explanatory chains.

Actually, there is a sense in which I think all causation is “extratemporal” given that I see causation as being fundamentally a matter of logical relationships and time, in my view, as simply being an artifact of those relationships.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ December 20, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Apikorus

Kenny, you objected to my characterization of your argument, It is not logically inconsistent to hold that the Universe had a cause, although causation in this context must be understood in a extratemporal sense. Your response was that God, the notional "creator of the Universe" is "not bound by time". That seems pretty much the same to me.

As for God sustaining the Universe and being actively involved in his creation, communicating with humans, etc., there seems to be no compelling evidence for this whatsoever.

The "chains of explanation" view of causation seems rather classical and might not be such a good one given that the Universe is apparently very well-described at small length scales by quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. What is the "cause" of a 2p to 1s transition in a hydrogen atom?

Even at the classical level, causation is through trees (or a cone - the backward light cone) and not via "chains". There is no unique identifiable "cause" to the period at the end of this sentence. Rather, it resulted owing to a confluence of different world lines in space-time.

Indeed every event in space-time lies at the confluence of an uncountable infinity of world lines. Why then should we expect the cause of the Universe be unique? And, retaining the "chain" analogy for the moment, could the ultimate "cause of the Universe" A have been ontologically preceded by A', A'', A''', ad infinitum? Christian apologists like William Craig are fond of insisting (arbitrarily) that "there are no actual infinities" (in order that they might avoid the unpleasantness of a Universe in which time had no beginning), but why not an infinite "ontological" chain?

Regarding the "explanation" of the BB, my views are more intrumentalist, so I'm not necessarily bothered by the lack of explanation for a singular event such as the creation of the universe. One might hold that the Universe was its own cause, or identify God with Physical Law, or perhaps conclude that there are a continuous infinity of causally disconnected universes, and that there is nothing special about our BB.

Cheers, and Merry Christmas.

Ethan

[ December 20, 2001: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

Awful lot of assertions on your part Kenny.

Then he is within time, aka, limited to linear time as I pointed out in my original post.

In what way? It's exceedingly easy to just say such a thing and pretend that because you said it, it is true and/or makes some kind of sense, but the truth is, it does not. "God acts in every moment." What does that mean?

I don't want the poetry behind it, I want the practical breakdown of what that poetry means. How does god act in every moment? There are almost an infinite amount of moments occurring throughout the spacetime continuum, so exactly what does your god do in this regard? Orchestrate? Physically moves every single particle from one "moment" to the next "moment"?

Or does he act within every moment in some manner, meaning that he is time-dependent, too?

You say you've already addressed this, but you have not. You've simply painted broad, nebulous strokes of poetry that ultimately says absolutely nothing at all about the application of such poetry to reality.

Case in point:
Again, that's a pretty word picture that has absolutely no practical application. How does it "relate fully?" Of what is he "fully aware"? Infinity? All spacetime simultaneously experienced? If there is no "subjective passing of time from the Divine perspective," then how can god "act" within every moment?

Bullshit! A hummingbird's metabolism is so fast that, supposedly, it sees humans as stationary objects; to a hummingbird's perspective we are like trees. Likewise, to us, trees (for all intents and purposes) are stationary objects. On a planetary scale, all of humanity has been little more than a cough; a celestial blink of the eye, if you will. These are "temporal perspectives."

So, without poetry or nebulous, grandiose hyperbole that says nothing, explain how it is that god "acts" within every moment so that a hummingbird perceives what they perceive and trees what they perceive and humans what we perceive, etc., etc., etc., because you're not just discussing poetry here, you're stating that god is not subjectively involved in time, yet "acts" in every moment so that all of these radically different perspectives are supported entirely by god.

Once you're done with that, would you care to then explain what kind of a being is this? The bible states that god is a recognizable being of some fashion that looks just like us and has a face (that no one has seen). What you're talking about is a necessarily non-corporeal being that somehow "acts" within the infinite amount of "moments" throughout the entirety of spacetime, which would necessarily mean that god is at least as large as the complete volume of matter in the universe, which means that we could not possibly have been made "in his image."

So, you've painted some pretty pictures and sung to the choir invisible, but it's time to qualify your grandiose claims and describe exactly how these declarations translate into our reality.

You've made the declarations without authority, so don't try to pull any, "Who am I?" bullshit, yes? If you're knowledgeable enough to proclaim, "As the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, God acts in every moment," without any support, then I'll grant that you're knowledgeable enough to proclaim exactly how god performs this nebulous action.

Koyaanisqatsi

Yes, well, I wasn't refering to the apologetics found in the bible, Terc, I was refering to the linear time constraints of the kingdom of god being "nigh" and that Jesus would return within "this" generation and blah, blah, blah., buy thanks for the pointlessness.

Kenny

I did not object to the above as a “characterization” so much as I objected to the statement that my argument “boils down” to that. I just wanted to be sure and point out the broader context in which this discussion is situated; that it is about more than just the notion of extratemporal causation.

I disagree, but that is not a discussion for this thread.

QM indeterminism does not mean that there is not a sufficient reason for every event which occurs. At best, all we can say is that QM may suggests that there are certain events which do not find their (full) explanations in physical causes. Of course, as a Christian theist, that is something I believe anyway. I reject the notion that there are events which occur for no reason whatsoever (i.e. are uncaused), however. I do not believe in metaphysical chance.

I see no problem in the notion that an event might owe its full explanation to a confluence of multiple causal chains. I would point out, however, that all the world lines in the universe do trace themselves back to a single point of origin.

Well, if we are asking about the universe as a whole, then, as I have pointed out, space-time (and hence the notion of “world lines,&#8221 is only meaningful from within the context of the universe and does not apply to the universe as a whole). Consequently, it would seem to be a category mistake to ask what world lines the universe itself is a confluence of. Does this mean that the universe itself can be thought of as simply an uncaused whole or is the universe contingent such that it still requires some sort of explanation? I opt for the latter option, but, as I said, I am not interested in defending the cosmological argument at the moment.

The problem I have with infinitely long causal chains (not a confluence of infinitely many finite chains that trace themselves back to a single origin, mind you) is that this would mean that there would be an infinite regress of explanations, but, ultimately, no sufficient reason for any point along that regress.

Well, I don’t think its fair to them to say that they are insisting this “arbitrarily.” They do provide arguments for such views. I disagree with those arguments, however, and I believe that actual infinities really do exist (since I am a Platonist with regard to abstractions, for instance, I believe that the entire set of real numbers resides within the mind of God). I do have problems with infinite regressions in explanatory chains, but not infinite sets in general.

I’m not an instrumentalist. In the end, I want to know, as much as possible, what is actually “going on” in the world, but now we are dragging things into more basic epistemological concerns which are beyond the scope of this discussion given that I am simply defending Christianity from an internal critique and not arguing for its truthfulness.

And the same to you.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ December 20, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Apikorus

Kenny, could you take a crack at defining the word "reason" in the context of the phrase "reason for an event to occur"?

Kenny

I can take a crack:

1.) P is a sufficient reason for Q if and only if ((P -&gt;Q) & (~Q -&gt; (P-&gt;Q))).

2.) p is a reason for Q if and only if it is part of a set of propositions which, when conjoined with one another, minimally entail a sufficient reason for Q

This is just a tentative suggestion on my part as my experience with philosophy has taught me that it is often very difficult to provide both necessary and sufficient conditions for something (and I pretty much just pulled this from the top of my head). It would not surprise me if counter-examples to this definition could be provided and there were refinements that needed to be made, but I think it provides a good starting point. The intuition that I am trying to capture here, of course, is that explanation involves some sort of logical entailment between propositions. The (~Q -&gt; (P-&gt;Q)) part of the definition is a relevance condition, given that any true proposition is trivially entailed by all other propositions and, it would seem that one would want the type of entailment involved in something being a reason for something else to be stronger than that.

Admittedly, philosophy of causation and philosophy of explanation are areas that I have yet to thoroughly explore and I'm sure there's literature with much more sophisticated attempts at a definition of what it means for something to be a reason for something else than the one given above. I think all of us have certain basic intuitions concerning these issues, however, that serve as starting points for a discussion about them.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ December 20, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Apikorus

Kenny, my question has more to do with reason as applied to the physical world. What then are P and Q?

Let's take my example of a 2p --&gt; 1s transition in Hydrogen. If you like that can be Q. What then is P? What sort of thing could it be?

[ December 20, 2001: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

Kenny

Well, that depends on what particular instance of causal relationships you are talking about. One example: Q might be a particular path that a particle takes. p might be the potential in which that particle finds itself. p is a reason for Q, then, because p is part of a set of propositions which, when conjoined together, logically entail Q.

*Added after editing:

Looks like we’re crossing posts here seeing how I just saw you edited this sentence in after I responded to your first draft. In this case, p (note: p is a reason whereas P is a sufficient reason – I’m not sure if it is ever within our abilities to fully characterize P for any event but we can recognize instances of p). In this instance, p might be a set of non-local hidden variables (seeing how Bell’s Theorem violations only rule out local hidden variable theories) or, perhaps, some non-physical aspect of the world, such as the volition of God or some creature (as a mind/body dualist; I believe that mental events causally influence physical reality – perhaps influencing the outcome of particular QM events while still keeping things consistent with QM statistics on a large scale is a means through which this interaction occurs). Regardless, I do believe that QM events have reasons for their occurrence. I do not believe they are uncaused or genuine instances of chance.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ December 20, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>