Tercel

That rather depends upon what you mean by "pure geometry". If it consists of numerous arbitrary lines, points whatever geometrical figures make up the universe, then it would seem to me complex. If you can boil it down to one obvious geometrical truth, then that's simple. I must express skepticism though that the world can be boiled down to one single formula. If I understand correctly, most of those who posit an initial unified force theory think the unified force split up arbitrarily, extremely close to the beginning of the universe.

Human minds are complicated because they are connected to a body and have emotions and senses and memories and all sorts of other things tacked on.

God, it is suggested, is only a unified awareness.

Hmm, not really. I think something is contingent if it exists and its non-existence was a logical possibility. (I like the possible worlds interpretation: If it exists in some possible worlds then it is contingent) If there are alternate universes which are logically possible then then universe is contingent.

I do not suggest God to have arbitrary human emotions, only to be a living awareness.

I do indeed.
I find this arbitrariness to be better explained as the result of a will of a non-arbitrary being.

eh

There is nothing arbitrary about the number of lines and points in a manifold. Maybe pure "space" would be a less confusing term to use, where the geometry of this space is what we see as this complex world. One could also as why the universe has the certain amount of curvature it does, instead of something else. But again, this is much simpler than an enormously complex person.

Not quite. It is believed that all forces arise from something more fundemental. This would especially be true in the case that force=geometry. At high energy levels, the forces act the same. Though they behave different at low energy levels, the underlying fundemental force remains the same.

To postulate something for which there is no evidence makes it a much less simpler explanation. We do not know of any mind existing without a brain, nor even if it is possible.

Something that cannot fail to exist by definition must exist. You can name an infinite number of possible universes perhaps, but in each one space and time would necessarily exist. Though I don't see the need for a God in any possible world.

Sorry, I thought you were a Christian. Western Gods do have silly emotions such as jealousy, anger, love, etc. and that is more abritrary than the conditions of any field in nature.

I can't see how one could possibly explain how a personal being with feelings could be considered less abritrary than a field of pure geometry. But hey, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

Angrillori

To clarify, I should have said, while it may have numerous attributes, the only attribute it MUST have is the ability to break our "everything has a cause" rule, everything else has no definition.

In other words: Anything that had no cause that could lead to anything that could lead to anything that could lead to anything that could lead to anything that could lead to anything that could lead to anything that could lead to big bang would fit.

I hope that Anything^7 left enough room in to show that the only attribute that this event must neccessaily have is "it was uncaused." It didn't need to cause itself (it could just be a spontaneous random event) it didn't need to have any neccessary ability to understand or even directly cause the big bang any more than the bum who picks up aluminum cans to recycle for pennies needs to understand the lift principles in the Boeing 747 that the aluminum is used for down the road.

Does that make sense? All we know is "it breaks the rule." It doesn't have to have meaning, or reason, or direction, it could as easily be a spontaneous random event that happens when there's no space time. This would satisfy the no cause breaking and still leave God out of the picture.

It could be the IPU who farted the universe out fully formed last Thursday. This would have meaning and reason, I guess, but they're incidental. As long as it had no cause.

But without time, there can be no causality since there can be no 'before' or 'after.' Without time, things just 'are' without cause or effect both of which neccesitate a linear timeline of events.


Before time there is no cause or effect. Therefore a universal origin in this 'no-time' would need no cause. Now, I'm not saying it discounts a God, just that it doesn't neccesitate one.

Does that make sense?


All the 'ifs' aside, ( I rarely like to enter the wild world of 'What if' but it is a good discussion tool.)
Having an origin outside of space and time doesn't discount God, as I said, but it certainly doesn't neccesitate one which is my point. Moreover, I think, as a rhetorical device, a situation with this many "if's" isn't particularly useful. We might as well just go all the way and say "Well, if there's a God, then there's a God."
So let's agree that scientists being able to make universes neither helps nor hinders either side of the cosmological argument until the point when some scientist actually makes a universe and then the cosmological argument becomes useless. (At that point it becomes as likely another scientist made our universe as God eh?)

Laws of logic? I missed that one. This premise still seems unjustified and contrary to the pace of modern science.

More importantly though, As we've discussed previously even if we assume this a 'logically unbreakable' rule then we still end up labeling as god any event which has the property 'break one logical rule.'

No I mean, are all these uncaused events 'God' since they all fulfill the one attribute the cosmological argument ascribes to God: 'ability to break the rule that everything needs a cause.'

Fair enough, but for future reference, I'm going to accept:
Random+spontaneous=uncaused.

Whoah there. This suggests nothing of the sort. This just suggests that something happened once. And that at some point something didn't need a cause. That's it. Any uncaused cause occuring at least once is all it takes.

And it certainly wasn't outside our universe, since without our universe there is no 'outside our universe.' It was, and our universe was. That's all.
But then would every 'uncaused cause' BE 'God?' If these 'uncaused causes' aren't 'God' then why must the first 'uncaused cause' be 'God?'

Does that make sense?

luvluv

Angrillori:

I don't see how this would work in your worldview. You seem to have been saying that causation cannot work without time:

So if time started in this universe with the big bang, then nothing which existed prior to the big bang could have caused the big bang because time did not yet exist. So it seems to me that the very first uncaused thing must have immediately (simeltaneously?) caused the Big Bang, or else all your arguments about how the absence of time removes or eliminates the necessity of causation are forfeit. Whatever uncaused entity that existed before the Big Bang had to either IMMEDIATELY cause the Big Bang or it could have had no causal relation to the Big Bang whatsoever, time being absent. Such an entity would just exist timelessly having no causal relation to anything.

You can escape this, as I suggested, by positing the possibility that this uncaused cause existed in some other universe, or at least in some other "time" separate from ours, but if that is the case then you have no reason to believe that this entity was truly "uncaused", since that would remove the "absence of time" portion of your argument. Time in some form would have to exist in the world in which this "uncaused" entity operated in order for it to cause our universe to begin to exist. But if time exists in it's own universe, then this purportedly "uncaused" entity would now require a cause, and so on and so on ad infinitium.

Thus we would be back to an infinite regress UNLESS the universe from which the "uncaused" entity sprang was somehow ETERNAL, or somehow able to operate outside the constraints of time. It could thereby escape the need for a cause, and could be said to be a necessary entity. If infinite regress is truly impossible, then this must actually obtain. Somewhere, down the metaphysical line, there has to be a necessary existant.

Further, what would be the nature of this first thing? If matter/energy and space/time have their origin in this universe from the Big Bang, then what is the nature of this thing which exists "before" the Big Bang? It can be neither matter/energy nor space/time (at least ultimately, once you get all the way back to the Necessary Entity). Nor can it be an eternal "law" because laws are merely the recordings of the way space/time and matter/energy interact, and therefore it makes no sense to speak of a law existing in the absence of these things.

So it seems to me that the uncaused cause must be able to operate independantly of time, space, matter, and energy. It therefore must somehow be composed of something OTHER THAN time, space, matter, and energy. It must, ultimately, have an eternal, necessary existence, and it must be extremely powerful.

This sounds to me a lot like the God of theism.


Not if we limit the necessity of causation to those entities operating in time, to those entities which begin to exist, as the kalaam argument does. (I realize that Tercel is not defending the kalaam argument, so I don't want to get even further onto that topic here.)

Okay, here is the crux of our disagreement. There is some equivocation going on with the word "uncaused" and I want us to define our terms. By uncaused, I do not mean random and spontaneous rearrangments of pre-existing materials and order in pre-existing space time. I am talking about something coming from absolutely nothing with no pre-existing matter/energy or space/time at all.

Quantum fluctuations, as I understand them, do not literally entail something emerging from nothing. I was under the impression that quantum fluctuations happen because of a random surge of energy which rises to such a high level that tiny bits of matter are produced. Now while it may be true that there is no reason for the energy surges that produce the matter there is certainly a cause for the matter coming into existence: the energy surge.

When I speak of something being uncaused, I am speaking of something coming from LITERALLY nothing. No matter, no energy, no space, and no time. And we have no experience of that happening in our universe.

Now maybe you see why I have to answer that in the negative. Quantum fluctuations do not create something out of nothing, which is what God is said to have done. They simply spontaneously and randomly rearrange pre-existing energy into matter, they do not represent something being created out of sheer nothingness. So no, they would fail to be God in any sense in my view.

(btw I don't know how random QF's are since the conform to statistical probability. But at any rate...)

eh

In some models, the universe literally springs into existence from no pre-existing space or energy. These silly models say the laws of physics could exist without the universe, but they do propose a creation ex-nihilo.

fishbulb

The principle of Occam's Razor states that one should not posit the existence of entities unecessarily. It means that if we can explain the existence of the universe without positing the existence of an extra entity: a god, then we ought not consider the possibility of a god.

For example, if I find my car keys somewhere other than where I usually leave them, I could posit that key faeries moved them in the night. But I could just as easily explain the situation by assuming that I set them down somewhere and then forgot to put them where I usually keep them. Since I know that I exist and I know that I sometimes leave things where they don't belong, and since I have no evidence to corroborate the existence of key faeries, I should prefer the absent-minded me hypothesis over the key faerie hypothesis, even though I can't prove that key faeries don't exist.

Likewise, people often get feelings of deja vu or premonitions of things that come to pass. You could explain these abilities in terms of clairvoyance, but you could also explain them as the result of the way the brain works: people have unrelated thoughts and memories which they, post hoc, connect to later events which happen to be similar in nature. The natural brain explanation is actually more complex than the psychic powers explanation, but it works based solely on what we already know exists, whereas the psychic explanation requires that we assume the existance of extra powers that we don't understand. Since we can explain these phenomena in terms of processes we know to exist, we ought not propose the existence of purely hypothetical psychic powers to explain them.

Occam's Razor is a principle for choosing among complete and consistent explanations for phenomena. It isn't a law: sometimes, things are, in fact, caused by entities we are not at the time aware of. It also doesn't say that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. (And what could be simpler than "well, there's an all powerful God who simply wills things to be the way they are?") It says that we shouldn't invent beings or forces or entities to explain what can be equally well-explained without them. The fact that a universe without God might be more complicated than one without doesn't change the fact that it is more parsimonious.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by luvluv :

I don't understand why not. I may have joined the thread too late to have seen something, however.

Meh. There could be a law that recorded the way "Other Stuff" acted too.

Why must it be necessary? It seems like it could just exist for a moment and then cease to exist. Then it wouldn't depend on anything, and everything would indeed depend on it, but it wouldn't be necessary.

And the decision to say it's extremely powerful doesn't really strike me as warranted yet. Maybe it has the power to start a chain of events that will result in a universe forming, but that's not a common measure of a person being powerful. When persons are powerful, they can bring about a large number of states of affairs -- but this being seemingly can only bring about one, or one is all we're entitled to conclude.

luvluv

Thomas Metcalf:

If it created matter, space, energy, and time; then how can it be matter, space, energy, and/or time?

And what if that "other stuff" was nothingness, as naturalism presumes?

By necessary I just meant that it required no cause. Are you asking why must it be eternal? If time is required for causation, and if time is dependant on matter/energy and space/time, as has been suggested in this thread, then an entity must be capable of somehow operating outside of the constraints of time in order to cause an initial event.

I only raise this against the piece-meal approach of Angrillori. Since time was not created until the big bang, the big bang could not have been caused incrementally. Whatever entities which could exist before time (if that even makes any sense) could not cause anything at all unless they simeltaneously created space-time and matter/energy. But that is just a description of the Big Bang itself. So it seems to me that the initial entity must have caused the entirety of the Big Bang, which means it was extremely powerful.

Frankly, that sounds a little absurd to me. If it turns out there is a God, are you honestly going to say to Him "Well, THIS universe is pretty good, but I won't believe you are powerful until I see some of your other work." ???

I think the physical universe and everything in it is plenty to warrant the conclusion that whatever the first cause was was extremely powerful.

Alix Nenuphar

Luvluv:

Could you define powerful? Perhaps you mean it differently that I am used to seeing it. After all, the single pebble that starts an avalanche, or the simple equation that generates the fractal are not 'powerful', but they can give rise to extraordinary effects.

luvluv

Well, the pebble has the benefit of the existing material which will become the avalanche and also the benefit of the laws of nature to produce the avalanche. By comparison, the first uncaused event would have had to produce ALL matter/energy and space-time, AND determine the laws which govern them. And it would have to have done so out of NOTHING, if we believe that space-time and matter/energy are all that exist.

I don't have a working definition, per se, of what constitutes an entity being powerful. But I'd say creating all matter, energy, space, time, and physical laws of the known universe would probably count.