Shadowy Man

Actually sound can travel in space. Space is not empty, you know.

Ever seen a picture of a supernova remnant. Nice shock wave going on.

Granted you would need a gigantic microphone to ever actually pick up sound vibrations, but they are still there.

Shadowy Man

That is true for the heavier elements, but hydrogen, helium, deuterium, lithium and trace amounts of a couple of the other lighter elements can be created in big bang nucleosynthesis.

Hawkingfan

Thanks SM. But it cannot be heard right? Or did god have a gigantic microphone?

Normal

I heard there was some discrepancy about the existence of boron synthesizing near the start of the big bang as well, do you know if this was resolved?

Hawkingfan

Do you have a problem doing homework?

Shadowy Man

I don't know exactly to what you are referring. It's not my area of expertise.

...a quick web search...

It looks like cosmic ray spellation may create Boron, so that can seriously affect the determination of the primordial Boron abundance, which would be necessary for comparisons to BBN theory.

Wyz_sub10

Hawkingfan,

You seem to be responding with a little hostility to some posts.

I would have given you the courtesy of a PM, but you've posted several pot-shots here.

This comment:

is uncalled for, given that the comment you are responding to was a legitimate question.

Please cool your jets a little and let's keep the discussion civil.

Wyz_sub10,
EoG Moderator

mattdamore

Yo fishbulb!

No, nothing that I said hinted towards what you were saying being support for the existence of God; just the opposite! But it doesn't matter, because I believe I've misinterpreted what you said anyway.

How about the following:

The following logical implications are made on the assumption that the finite nature of the universe has been established. Once this assumption becomes an actuality, then I believe that these logical implications are equally real. But just because the logical implications are explicated without sure knowledge of the true-value of the finite nature of the universe, doesn't mean that the logical implications don't carry any true value. For logical relationships can exist apart from existing things.

If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a cause. This is based on the premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause. For the purposes of my argument, just assume to the true-value of that principle. I realize that you have provided reasons for rejecting the universal applicability of this principle to the entire universe. Since you say that this universal extention commits the fallacy of composition of some kind. This objection I shall deal with below. For now, just assume the principle to be true for the purposes of my argument in showing the validity of the various logical implications I plan on establishing.

If it's the case that the universe is finite, and that because whatever begins to exist has a cause, then the conceptual analysis enables us to recover a number of striking properties that must be possessed by such an ultramundane being. For as the cause of space and time, this entity must transcend space and time and therefore exist atemporally and nonspatually, at least without the universe. This transcendent cause must therefore be changless and immaterial, since timelessness entails changelessness and changelessness implies immateriality. Such a cause must be beginningless and uncaused, at least in the sense of lacking any antecedent causal conditions. This entity must be uminaginably powerful, since it created the universe without any material cause. Other reasons can be offered for this cause to be personal, but I find this superfluous.

The above, I think, establishes the possibility of God existing with being created, since the properties of being changless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, etc . .. are properties of beings which are not created.

This platitude is not just being stated as a physical law or fact, like the law of gravity of thermodynamics. This is a metaphysical principle: being cannot come from non-being; something cannot come into existence uncaused from nothing. The principle therefore applies to all of reality, and it is thus metaphysically absurd that the universe should pop into being uncaused out of nothing.

Name them, and we can start our discussion.

Same as above. Since it is a metaphysical pricniple, it therefore applies to all of reality. It would only being the fallacy of composition if the principle were something like a physical law, which is possibly, when proven, only applicable to certain things in the universe.

I wasn't speaking of existence as something that can mean something other than that which applies to reality. I agree that in this sense existence can only mean this. I was speaking of the qualities surrounding God, if in fact it is true that He exists. If He exists then the environment in which God exists would be different for us time-bound, finite creatures.

I don't believe such a concept is meaningless. Draw a circle on a piece of paper. Label the circle "space-time." Now draw a dot on the outside of the circle. That dot exists "outside" of the "space-time" circle. There's nothing noncognitive about that even if such a view turns out to be false (note: only meaningful statements can be false).

Mike

A newborn worm finds itself dropped from the leaf of an overhanging tree in the middle of an intersection from which a few passing cars are receding in various directions. He slowly rotates, observing the cars from various perspectives, using various instruments and analyses until having 100 corresponding pieces of evidence he concludes that the cars are in fact receding from a central point from which they (mentally reversing them back to their points of apparent origin) must have all originated. Being a logical worm, but rather short lived he concludes just before he dies that the cars all must have popped into existence from a central point and will either continue to recede indefinetely, eventually slow down and stop, or reverse course and eventually collide and be obliterated back into nothingness. And from the worm's perspective, these are the only possible options since of course he is the only known agent in his "universe" and the cars are obviously inanimate. Nevermind that the cars existed for "eons" minding someone elses business before the worm came to his present awareness, and that they will continue to mind someone elses business for "eons" after the worm has moved to his next state of awareness. Perhaps by then future worms will have evolved thumbs and hitched a ride on a clue...I know, a mere assertion, unsupported by facts, but then no less so than the worm's...welcome back.

fishbulb

These are assumptions. I will discuss this at the end. (I call the first an assumption because I think that it is for the way we are conceptualizing the Universe. We know that what we call the Universe is finite in size and has existed for a finite period of time, but that is a matter of convention: we reckon time from the Big Bang, and we have no concept of what, if anything, happened "before" that. For example, the universe may run in an endless cycle of big bang, expansion, contraction, big crunch, repeat, but the laws of physics prevent us from examining the state of the Universe or measuring time prior to the last big bang.)

There are more unstated assumptions here. If we assume that an entity can "exist" without requiring time to exist in, then why should we assume that it cannot also "change" without requiring time to change over? Both qualities are equally contradictory to our understanding of what it means to exist, so if one can be violated, why not both?

I don't see how you can draw these conclusions from your assumptions above. Once you allow for something that "exists" without time, all temporal references become meaningless. And perhaps this entity is just a one-trick pony: maybe all it can do is create the universe and nothing more. Perhaps other timeless entities are doing far more interesting and powerful things. In comparison to other timeless entities, it might be feeble and weak. Even in comparison to we mortals, if we can think and feel and love and hate and create all sorts of things, and all it can do is create a superdense ball of hydrogen, and even then only once, is it really more powerful than we?

And here we reach the crux of the matter. Arguing that something is possible is not at all the same as arguing that something is plausible or likely. The argument you outline above is based on a number of assumptions which, if true, might lead one to certain conclusions. But we don't have any evidence to even suggest (nevermind prove) that the premises are true.

A lot of things are possible. If you accept the possibility that leprachauns are real, then you must also accept the possibility that a sneaky leprachaun is stalking me, trying to get at me Lucky Charms. Niether you nor anyone else can prove that leprachauns don't exist, so you have to allow for that possibility, but I have absolutely no evidence that leprachauns do exist, so I cannot make a credible argument that one is trying to steal my cereal. All I can do is assert that this is true. Assertions are not arguments.

The exact same thing applies to creator god assertions. If we accept the assumption that the Universe had a finite beginning, and if we accept the assumption that all things that have a beginning must have been caused by some other force (and astronomers have observed what appears to be the spontaneous creation of protons and antiprotons on a regular basis, suggesting that this is not true), and if we assume that an entity can, for lack of a better word, exist outside of the confines of the universe, and if we assume that this entity is, for lack of a better word, eternal, or else immune from the universal requirement that all things that come to exist must be created, and if we assume that such an entity has the power to create physical temporal things such as the Universe, then we could conclude that it is possible that such an entity in fact does exist and that it created the universe. But that is a lot if if's, and we have no reason to believe that any of those premises are likely or even plausible. It is therefore meaningless to draw any conclusions from them, as we cannot state with any confidence whatsoever that any of the premises, let alone all of them, have a reasonable likelihood of being true.

When creator god proponents advance the first cause argument, they implicitly assume that these sorts of permises are indisputably true and, based on that, conclude that god must exist. Even when we accept the premises, the conclusions do not automatically follow, but the real problem is that the premises themselves are arbitrary. One might as well go ahead and just assume the existence of god as well.