JGL53

Historically, the major (alleged) scientific or logical 'proofs' of the necessity, or perhaps the probability, of a god to 'explain' the existence of our observed universe has been the first cause, the design, and, more recently, the 'fine-tuned' arguments. The mutiverse theory solves all these problems, and does it without violating Occam's Razor.

reference:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?cha...A5809EC5880000

A god, as I understand the theory, is allegedly an unknown, possibly unknowable, immaterial, invisible, eternal or timeless, consciously-acting, most powerful, all-existing super-person or super-mind. Postulating such an 'X' factor would multiply entities beyond necessity - as opposed to a multiverse, which would just be a naturalistic brute fact, similar in type to our observable universe.

Ergo, I will go with the simpliest theory that suffices. Most, however seem to perversely prefer the 'god' theory. One wonders why - I suppose because it's just so durn 'sexy'.

joedad

The laws of the universe are inseparable from the universe as I see it. Agree? To conclude otherwise is akin to saying, "I don't agree with my observations." You cannot talk about the laws of the universe as if they exist separately, and I agree that to do so is nonsensical.We agree that it appears everything has a cause, as Bill explained, so how does observing that everything has a cause yield the conclusion that there must be something that is uncaused? Once again you are saying that you disagree with your observations.

joe

Soma

The problem of infinite regress must be reconciled, and the logical conclusion is that there is something which is uncaused that caused existence. Either a thing is caused by something else, or a thing is uncaused, as both are logically possible; but a thing cannot be the cause of itself, because that is logically absurd.

Wyz_sub10

Perhaps the are hundreds, millions of uncaused causes. There need not be a single thing that addresses infinite regress.

Philosoft

Why is "uncaused cause" any more logically acceptable than "infinite series of causes"?

Soma

Because an infinite series of causes would preclude the existence of everything.

There can be an infinite series of potential causes -- which one can regard abstractions such as the number line to be -- but not an infinite series of actualized causes. If there were such a scenario, then this very moment in time should never have occured because there would be an infinite number of causes yet to be actualized; yet it did occur, so there isn't an infinite number of causes.

Soma

Perhaps, but one could also argue, by virtue of the implication of the Big Bang theory and how it was derived, that all causality points back to a single cause...

fishbulb

That doesn't matter. When you leave the Universe, you leave all of its laws, and logic, behind. It is illogical to talk about things happening outside of a physical and temporal millieu, but that is exactly what you are doing when you speculate about how time and space came to be in the first place. What is absurd is to think that we can speak with any sort of authority or coherence about what happens outside of our physical reality. The truth is we simply don't know and, I suspect, never can.

Besides, there is nothing inherently illogical about something causing itself. Causality loops are a staple of science fiction; the whole Star Trek franchise depends on it. While the writers certainly play fast and loose with the laws of physics and concepts like time travel, the storylines (usually) proceed quite logically.

fishbulb

The Big Bang theory posits that at one point (which we reckon as the beginning of time) all of the matter/energy in the universe was condensed into a tiny point. It says nothing about whether the Universe didn't exist prior to that. (For example, it might have been condensed into that point from a much larger space which at one time contained galaxies and stars and planets and life.) It also says nothing about whether there could be other universes separate from ours, embedded in a common "space" (other dimension), or whether that hypothetical "universe of universes" was a singular item or whether it was just one of many collections of universes embedded in a still higher plane. Indeed, the Universe may be as anonymous and insignificant an entity in its context as our planet is in the context of the Universe. No one can say. All we can say is what our Universe looked like 15 billion years or so ago, and what has happened to it since. We can only speculate idly about the context in which our Universe exists, if it is even right to talk about it existing in a context.

Soma

The logic of the first cause argument makes no appeal or reference to things outside of the universe. The argument etablishes, through pure logic, that causality is not infinite prior to the present.

Quote:

Besides, there is nothing inherently illogical about something causing itself. Causality loops are a staple of science fiction; the whole Star Trek franchise depends on it. While the writers certainly play fast and loose with the laws of physics and concepts like time travel, the storylines (usually) proceed quite logically.

Bad writing on B&B's part!