Wiploc

Why should god be exempt if the rest of the universe isn't? If we can have an unbegun god, why can't we have an unbegun rest of the universe?


It's one of the two possibilities. And if we can't have an infinite regress, then we can hardly have an unbegun god. You can't have it both ways.
crc

lpetrich

Inspired by the subject of rabbit ears and which way they are pointed, I checked out the subject of fox ears. They are pointed forward, which also has an adaptive explanation -- as a fox approaches a rabbit in order to catch and eat it, that rabbit will be in front of the fox, and the fox's ears will be pointed in the right direction to hear that rabbit if it makes any sounds.

So this is a case of cross purposes; foxes are adapted for catching rabbits, and rabbits are adapted for avoiding foxes. Which looks like more than one designer at work.

And Darwin himself recognized that such cross-purpose sets of adaptations are a natural consequence of his mechanism of natural selection.

HRG

Yes, I do. Would you mind explaining what is inconsistent about an infinite regress, IYO ? For instance, it is the only way to escape the special pleading "everything needs a cause, only God needs no cause".

Note that in an infinite regress, every finite set of elements has a common predecessor (you might call it a "common ultimate cause").


For the record, I don't think that everything needs a cause.

regards,
HRG.

Tercel

I'm curious about how proposers of an infinite regress would answer the following...

Let the set of all events causally connected to the present event be A.
Let a second, non-equivalent set of hypothetical causally connected events be called B.

Why does A obtain and not B?
(or are all such B impossible?)

SRB

It would be a brute fact. So the answer to your question would be, "There is no explanation: that's just the way it is."

I am only a "proposer of an infinite regress" insofar as I see no reason to doubt the coherence of a beginningless past.

SRB

Wiploc

Are you asking us to explain why every event in history turned out the way it did? If so, why; what does that have to do with the subject at hand?


I'm not necessarily a proponent of infinite regress. But things either need causes or they don't. If they do, then you are going to get infinite regress. I not, then the rest of the universe can spontaniously generate as easily as god can.
crc

luvluv

wiploc:

Only because everything we know about the universe suggests that it had a begining, and part of the definition of God has always been that He is eternal.

It isn't in the nature of matter to exist without a cause, so far as we know. That doesn't prove that God exists, but it does suggest that the physical universe is not a canidate for an uncaused existence. There is no reason to suspect the universe as a whole has a property which no aspect of the universe has.

How is this having it both ways?

We cannot have an infinite regress because cause/effect interactions require time, and we know the universe has not existed for an infinite amount of time. There cannot have been an infinite regress of real events in time because time is not infinite.

I don't know what it would mean for there to be "events" before the universe came into existence. I don't know what an infinte regress of events in a plane with no space, nor matter would be like.

HRG:

Well, again, the kalaam argument states that everything which begins to exist needs a cause, so by definition God would not need a cause. This is not special pleading in the case of the kalaam argument.

I would agree that this does not establish that God exists, there could be another entity or law which did not begin to exist which caused the universe. However, it would be difficult for this thing not to have some of the qualities of God.

I think an infinite regress runs into logical absurdities if you are talking about actual events. There is Craig's argument about the impossibility of forming an infinity by successive addition. Then there is the argument that if we are involved in a truly infinite chain of events, in order for the present to arrive it will have to have traversed infinity, and this is impossible. That would require us to have to regard this present moment as the end of infinity, and that is a contradiction. It also leads to mathematical absurdities. We would have to assume, in an infinite regress, that there are as many odd numbered events as there are total events. That seems absurd when you are talking about actual events. Heck, if we were to push the analogy, there would be as many billion, billion, billionth events as there would be total events.

A necessary existent, of some kind, makes more sense to me than this.

eh

Hang on a minute, luvluv. I just want to add something here.

True, matter does not exist without a cause, but matter is just a form of energy. While matter can be destroyed, it is merely converted into energy that cannot be destroyed. Since energy cannot be destroyed or created, it follows that the physical universe is eternal. So it isn't accurate to say that everything in the universe is contingent.

Wiploc

crc:
Everything in the universe that I've ever noticed had precursors.


I can define the rest of the universe as eternal as easily as you can define god as eternal.


I believe this is the exact opposite of what quantum mechanics tells us. I believe that every time matter is has been seen to come into existance, it has done so without cause.


Since quantum-sized events happen without cause, and since the universe was once quantum-sized, I have to agree with you that the whole universe may be like parts of the universe, but uncaused rather than caused.


You are saying both that things don't need causes and that they do.

You've even got me doing the same thing.

Take either position, but not both. If everything needs a cause, then god needs one too, right? (And don't think you can make a mystic gesture and declare that you have "defined" god as unbegun.) If god doesn't need a cause, then the nothing else should either. Unless you make a significant distinction between god and the rest of the universe, you can't arbitrarily assign one rule to one part and the another rule to the another part.


*If* that's your position, then why do you say god is unbegun?


Why do you bring that up? Are you proposing that god somehow involves an infinite regression without time? And that it would be wrong for the rest of the universe to do what is unimaginable, but it is okay for god to do the unimaginable since we can't imagine him anyway? If that's not your point, and I don't really suppose that it is, then I don't understand your point.


If time began, then everything else did to. If there is an earliest point, a point before which nothing existed, then all is begun.


If that's your position, then why say god is unbegun?


You absolutely cannot form an infinity by successive addition ---unless you have an infinity of time to do it in. That's all that he proves, and he cain't prove no more.


It is impossible to do in less than infinity, that's all.


No it wouldn't. Infinity is like outdoors. Infinity plus ten is still infinity in the same sense that if you go outdoors, and then ten feet farther, you are still outdoors.

If you've come all the way outdoors, that doesn't mean you are at the end of outdoors.


I find your math unconvincing, but I guess that's beside the point. Maybe things do need beginnings. *If* that's your position, then why do you say god doesn't need one? Why can't you pick one position and stick with it?

crc

luvluv

I said things which BEGIN TO EXIST need a cause.

That's all I've ever said.

God, if He exists, by definition did not begin to exist.

The universe did.