Tercel

Ah, the glory of the Cosmological argument! <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Well, not quite... but still I don't think the Cosmological argument is quite as awful and flawed as some here make out. It may not be conclusive but it should hopefully make the reader pause and wonder for a moment.

Well, given the number of theists in existence over the millennia, it seems pretty obvious that at least some theist somewhere will have claimed exactly this.
However the author's point that this oft-heard objection is really a straw-man, is -I think- reasonable.

While this might indeed be true, it has never stopped the over-imaginative imagination from thinking up ways to get around it: Random energy popping into existence etc.
Of course, of interest here, perhaps, are the number of ad hoc explanations that must be pulled out of the bag to diminish the force of the theist's argument.

An interesting argument. I am not entirely sure whether it's valid or not. (Personally I'm happy to assume the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress, but that's neither here nor there) Perhaps the most interesting version of this argument, is something like as follows:
Assume there is an infinite temporal regress.
Let the current event be 0. And past events be -1, -2, -3,... (lim -&gt; -inf)
Note that there is a one-to-one correspondence between any two sequential events. ie After -1 comes 0 and before 0 comes -1.
For the current event to occur, all events prior to the current event must have already occured.
For all events prior to the current event to have occured, the entire sequence -inf -&gt; -1 must have been transversed.
Is it ever possible to transverse the entire sequence backwards? (Starting at the current event, if we go backward in time, do we ever reach a beginning?) Answer: No. Otherwise it wouldn't be infinite, would it?
Given the 1 to 1 correspondence, the sequence is exactly the same size whether it's tranversed forward or backward.
Since the sequence can never be transerved backwards, it can never be transerved forwards.
If the sequence cannot be transerved forwards then the current event can never occur.
Leaving us with a contradiction and hence the falsity of our assumption.

Tercel

Tercel

"Ontological" necessity then, if you prefer. There presumably had to exist something as the "first" thing. Why not God? To posit a infinite single self-awareness as the first thing would seem to me to be hugely more parsimonious that to suggest something finite, arbitrary, and material like the phyical universe as a "necessity".

It was my understanding that fairly standard Christian doctrine holds God and unchanging, eternal and immutable.

Why are these "temporal" acts necessarily?

Tercel

Doesn't that rather depend on your definition of "causality"? For example the Law of Non-Contradiction is a law, and from this it seems we can reasonably deduce the principle of sufficient reason, since if we have two possible but exclusive states of affairs A and B, then clearly they cannot both obtain and there must be some sort of deciding principle as to which obtains. And sufficient reason would appear to imply causality of some description or another, would it not?

However, as it has been pointed out before, every event in the chain can be given an explanation in terms of it's predecessors: But if the chain is infinite then no event in the chain can ever be given a completeexplanation. If an event truly requires a full explanation then it would seem the existence of the chain itself requires an explanation.

You say:
"By explaining the existence of every event in the chain is to explain the existence in the chain."
I'm inclined to disagree. By "explaining" every event in terms of earlier parts of the chain, it seems to me that your "explanations" simply clapse when it comes to explaining the existence of the chain itself.

This sentence is rather confusing/ambiguous. What exactly are you saying here?

Skepticwithachainsaw

Umm, they involve change and change is synonymous with space and time, without space and time there can be no change.

That’s the point, if God doesn’t change how can he respond, think or act?

[quote]Originally posted by Tercel:
Why not God? Well I hate to answer questions with other questions but “Why God?” What makes God any more of a better answer than the universe? He seems just as arbitrary. No one has ever explained to me why exactly he can be a “necessary” while the universe isn’t.
Indeed the whole idea of a necessary being is self refuting, because it is based one the idea that there are laws that require God to exist, in which case where did these requiring laws originate from? It’s a vicious circle (or a psychotic sphere if you so prefer ).
Maybe the idea of necessary as we conceive it is simply plain wrong.

And the self-awareness thing… How could God have developed it without anything else to refer to? If he had nothing to compare himself with and determine that he was different he could not develop the idea of his individuality without some prior knowledge, which leads back to my “Mind of God” point.
And doesn’t self-awareness imply at least some form of mechanism, and if so how can this exist without any form of spatial-temporal reference? And to claim otherwise is like saying that empty space (and something even less than that…) is self-aware…

GunnerJ

Good post, Ender, but...

What does this mean? I can't understand it, nor do I see how it follows from the segment you were replying to...

Theli

No matter how long we trace events backwards we will eventually reach a point where no prior events or set values exists.
Doesn't this imply that order can and must have come from complete chaos?

The big question, I think is - can an event occur without any prior existance?

Tercel...


There is a contradiction in your theory.
First you claim that an infinite conscious being (an infinite consciousness, if you like) existed prior to big bang.

And then you say that an infinite (without begining) sequence is not possible since it would be impossible to pinpoint and trace a single event. The event would never occur.

Now, how can a being be conscious and static at the same time?
If god had a thought, then that would count as an event within his own existence.
If god had a "first thought" then what triggered it?

We get this sequence (pretty rough).

Nothing, God is static (no events) -&gt;
A random thought occurs in god's "mind" (first event) -&gt;
The random thought evolves into a design based on possible (X) attributes-&gt;
The big bang is created out of zero energy caused by the random thought -&gt;
The energy forms based on the "design" to the universe we know today.

or this sequence (also rough).

Nothing (no events) -&gt;
A random event occur -&gt;
The big bang is created out of zero energy caused by the random event. -&gt;
The energy from the big bang evolves based on possible (Y) attributes into the universe we know today.

Now, is there any difference between X and Y? and if so, why?

This is probably all wrong, I would like for someone to perhaps elaborate it.

Datheron

Tercel,

An interesting, ironic statement that you put:

I find it ironic simply because God is the ultimate ad hoc explanation. I don't need to tell you that God's existence is often rationalized after the conclusion has been reached - even your argument the "greatest" being a necessity is an ad hoc rationalization (and one we have had a history of, I might add). Very ironic, indeed.

eh

Thanks Datheron, now I don't have to post what you just wrote.

Clutch

There is no problem with the idea that the past is infinite. Supposing the series of past events to be structured like the natural numbers, this is just the view that, before each event, there was exactly one immediately preceding event. (We can individuate events to make this so; it isn't a thesis about the discreteness of time.)

Here's the important thing about this series of past events/instants: Every member of the series is at most finitely distant from the present. So the thesis that the past is infinite does not entail a completed infinity of events before the present. No element of the series is more than a finite number of instants from now; hence the past contains no instant -- no instant -- such that traversing the "distance" between that event and the present requires completing an infinity.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Clutch ]</p>

Ron Singh

This is infinite regression, no? What's this strawman business you speak of? I hear of it a lot in these atheist messageboards. Nevertheless, time is a byproduct of the existence, or movement of the universe.

I will propose to you my hypothesis I just cooked up. Time is dependant on the universe. God existed before the universe. God is uncaused and has existed forever.