faustuz

OK, I don’t get these Cosmological Argument proponents. First they say that all actions must have a cause because we know of no action that has no cause and the concept of a causeless action is non-intuitive. Then, if somebody says “why doesn’t God need a cause” they say God doesn’t because God is outside of time and space. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I do not find something existing outside of time and space, yet causing action, to be intuitive, nor is it something I have observed. What kind of obfuscating contortionist concepts are people willing to come up with in order to maintain their silly notions?

happyboy

actually, people are willing to go to ENORMOUS lengths to maintain their personal religious delusions. science is killing the God of the bible, day by day, and yet people still believe.

happyboy

Tercel

Er, well faustuz, there are only a limited number of possibilities.
Things in general inside space-time seem to require causes: That's my experience. Is it yours too?

I would have to agree that the idea of a causeless action is non-intuitive. Don't you? You're talking about the idea of something happening for no reason here. Sounds like magic to me. Even more magically than magic: When a rabbit magically appears in a hat we all know it was caused by the magicians magic. In a causeless action you've got magic magically happening...
I think that could be fairly accused of being "unscientific" to say the least.

If we can agree that every action inside space-time needs a cause, then what can be said about space-time itself? If you sum 999 trillion things together that need causes then do you get:
A. Something that needs a cause; or
B. Something that needs no cause at all?

Well, magic could magically happen giving us option B, or option A could be true. Excluding the magic magic possibility, we get that space-time is caused by something external to it.

Anything outside space-time is going to be "eternal" and "infinite" by merit of being "outside space-time". Do things that exist everywhere and forever require causes? Maybe not. They never have to come into existence... they never need finite arbitrary boudary conditions to be placed on them... to allow them to be uncaused doesn't seem to be an appeal to magic magic since there's no need for magic magic to do anything since nothing's being done. Nothing seems to be intrinsically necessary to create something that exists eternally since it doesn't seem to need to be created. So space-time external things might need causes or they might not.

Now, what are the alternatives here? Well, either things outside space-time have been causing other things outside space-time for all eternity until one caused space-time and there is an infinite like chain stretching back forever. Or there is somewhere where the chain stops and there is a thing outside space-time that lacks an external cause.
For various reasons the idea of an infinite chain has been found unsatisfactory by a huge number of thinkers from Plato to the present. My main objection to it is that each link in the chain is only "explained" by the one before hand, the chain itself is not explained. ie the answer to the question of "why that chain and not a different one" is: Magical magic.

Thus the conclusion is that something outside space-time which was itself uncaused, indirectly or directly caused the existence of space-time and everything in it. Either that or you can believe in magical magic if you want.

What the argument in no way proves as it stands is that that this first cause was in any way an intelligent or rational being or was anything more than blind force or a "natural law".

HRG

That this is your experience shows that you draw from a very limited sample of events. Your events are restricted to a small space-time patch ( at small velocities and weak gravitational fields) and to the macroscopic length scale.

Outside those limits there seem to be lots of uncaused events, and all regularities are statistical.
Because you are not living on the quantum scale, and prejudiced by the apparent causality of macroscopic events.

A causeless action is as "non-intutive" as the Twin Paradox of relativity, or the behavior of Helium II. Yet all three seem to conform to reality - which, after all, is not bounded by what is intuitive to some of us.
By this definitions, pion decays must be magical. There is no cause for the decay products travelling in a particular direction or with a particular spin.

Let me remind you - in case you have forgotten - that rabbits are macroscopic objects.
On the contrary. It would be fairly unscientific to maintain that quantum events must be caused (in the face of Bell's inequality and its experimental verification.
Even granting your premises, if you sum an unbounded number of things which need a cause, you cannot conclude that there is a common uncaused cause of all. There is no logical nor physical contradiction in an infinite regress.

And that never observed event (existence of something external to space-time) would not be magical ?
What is the cause of the event "The universe is being caused" ? Events need causes, not things.
You haven't argued yet that "existence outside space-time" is more than a concatenation of 4 English words and does actually make sense.
[quote]
They never have to come into existence... they never need finite arbitrary boudary conditions to be placed on them... to allow them to be uncaused doesn't seem to be an appeal to magic magic since there's no need for magic magic to do anything since nothing's being done.
[quote]
But they are doing something: creating the universe. What is the cause of this action ?
Whether they need causes or not, their existence need to be explained, if they are supposed to be an explanation for the existence of the universe.
But without a chain you haven't even explained the existence of the first being. "X is uncaused" is not an explanation for the existence, properties and actions of X
And the answer to the questions "Why exactly that being and not a different one" and "Why did that being create our universe and not a different one" is not rooted in magical magic ?

Of course, any creation by a disembodied mind (a never observed mechanism) is itself magical magic, by definition.

regards,
HRG.