thomaq

you are asking me "how are they irrational?" and "what good reasons do i have?". i have given all of those reasons in my original post, and it doesnt seem like you have dealt with any of them specifically. i'd like to hear how 1, 2a and 2b could be considered rational. is there a positive case that could be made to show that those options are rational?

i should also clarify that i am not necessarily skeptical of naturalism as a whole, just the naturalist explanation of the universe.

bd-from-kg

Doubting Didymus:

“Reach the present” from where? That’s precisely the point I was making. What you seem to be saying is that it would take an infinite number of moments to reach the present from the first moment. But the hypothesis here is that there was no first moment, so this is literally nonsensical. I think that if you try to restate your argument rigorously you’ll soon realize that there is no argument here.

But nowhere in an infinite universe will you find an infinite interval!

Compare this to the integers (positive and negative). There are infinitely many of them, and they form an infinitely long chain, but any two of them are a finite distance apart. You can count from any integer to any other integer. Or in other words, nowhere in the integers is there an infinite interval that needs to be “crossed”.

It seems that you’re confusing two different propositions:

(1) The set S is has indefinitely large members.
(2) The set S has an infinite member.

But (1) does not entail (2).

[By the way, the notion of an infinite interval is not incoherent. It happens that the integers and the real numbers don’t contain any infinite intervals, and this may be true of the universe as well, but that doesn’t make the concept incoherent. What does seem to be incoherent is the notion that we could distinguish between a universe containing actual infinities and one that doesn’t.]

First, you seem to have missed the point of the argument I gave in the paragraph you numbered (4). The argument was:

(i) It’s logically possible for God (if He exists) to create a universe with an infinite past,

therefore

(ii) It’s logically possible for a universe to have an infinite past.

The conclusion follows whether or not one assumes that God exists. (i) is really just a way of helping visualize or conceptualize the logical possibility of a universe with an infinite past – a point which is perfectly obvious to me without dragging God into it.

Your reply here seems to be directed more at the last section of my post (the part beginning “But there’s another problem...” Leaving aside for the moment that the second part of your response is false (an infinite past is perfectly conceivable and logically possible), my point was not so much that the “God hypothesis” has the same problems as the naturalistic hypothesis, but that your argument applies equally to any hypothesis about the nature and origin of the universe. I just used the “God hypothesis” to illustrate the point since it’s so popular.

If all conceivable hypotheses are subject to the same objections, something has to be wrong with your argument since the universe does, after all, exist.

Actually you are, when you ask how it’s possible to “reach” the present in an infinite universe. You seem to imagine that the only way such a universe could come into existence is through a process of working through all of the past times. But in fact it doesn’t even make sense to talk about how such a universe (or any universe, for that matter) could come to exist.

Many physicists today believe that time is an illusion; that the apparent “flow” of time is a fact about how we experience or conceptualize the universe rather than a fact about the universe itself. In any case, when you think about the universe, it makes more sense to think about it as a whole (past, present, and future), rather than just the present. This is especially true in view of the fact that (according to GR) there is no “absolute time”, so it doesn’t even make sense to talk about the “present” (or any specific time) in a global sense; the “present” is strictly a local concept.

And I notice that you skipped right over my first point, that the first alternative (a universe with a finite past) is obviously logically possible. You haven’t even begun to make a coherent argument about this case. To do so you’ll have to explain what you mean by “possible” in this context if you don’t mean logically possible, and then explain why a temporally finite universe is “impossible” in this sense.

By the way, Alix Nenuphar has a good point. It seems to me that the statement “if existence (the universe including time) began (big bang), then it is "logically" (not temporally) preceded by nothingness” is completely meaningless. To say that X is logically preceded by Y, if it means anything at all, means "if X, necessarily Y". or in other words, "the existence of X entails the existence of Y". But how can the existence of the universe entail the existence of nothingness? If we ignore for the moment the fact that it doesn’t even make sense to talk about “nothingness” as a thing that might or might not “exist”, it’s pretty obvious that the opposite is the case: the existence of anything entails the nonexistence of “nothingness”.

You seem to be equating “The universe is temporally finite” with “Something came from nothing”. But this is just more confusion. To say that the universe is temporally finite is not to say that it “came from” anything at all; it says nothing about its origin (if any). In fact, as several posters have pointed out, it’s not clear what “came from” could even mean in this context, since the concept “came from” intrinsically involves time, which is a feature of the very universe we’re talking about.

In short, your whole OP is a pseudo-argument, based on confused attempts to think about things that are beyond the human mind’s ability to understand.

Wyrdsmyth

And well you should be. So am I. But, naturalism does not stand or fall on the speculations about the origins of the universe. A naturalist explanation of the origins of the universe only goes so far as the facts do... In other words, it only goes as far back as the evidence will take us. If the figure of 13.7 billion years is accurate, then naturalism cannot take us beyond that. Beyond that is speculation, theory or what is merely surmised. We do not know... Is it "nothingness," or another universe, or what? Perhaps the totality of what we usually term the universe began 13.7 billion years ago, and its beginning coincided with the ending of a previous universe. Perhaps a deity gestured, and so it appeared. Who knows? And, how can science and/or naturalism ever settle this question for sure? It can't, as far as I know (but I could be wrong). The limits of naturalism are nature itself. And, here, we are asking what was the cause of nature? How did it begin? Did it come from something or nothing?

Is it rational to ask if the rationality of naturalism itself can be brought into question on the basis of speculations naturalists make about what is admittedly the very hazy frontier of their own worldview?

thomaq

1. what or who is doubting didymus?

2. here is a quote from bill the moderator which deals with this issue a little bit. let me know what you think.

Bill Snedden
Moderator
Registered: June 2000
Location: Greensboro, NC, U.S.A.
Posts: 2276
Re: Re: A stitch in time...

quote:
Perhaps I was reading too much into the argument as stated, but it seems to me that if:

P1: the universe is everything that exists at all times in all places
and
P2: the universe began to exist
then
C1: non-existence or "nothingness" is logically prior to the universe.
is necessarily true. As I see it:
P1a: if anything exists, then the universe exists (by material implication from P1).
and
P2a: there was some point before the universe existed (by material implication from P2).

It necessarily follows that at that point before the universe existed, nothing could have been in existence. Therefore, nothingness would be logically prior to the universe.
Another way to put this would be to say that if the universe is all that exists and yet has not always existed, then there must have been some point when nothing existed. "

Hawkingfan

But at the intial state of the universe, the term "always existed" is undefined. It means nothing (that is, it has no meaning, not that it means "nothing"). The only meaning it has is AFTER the BB (and it would mean: from the BB ---->event X).

Hawkingfan

thomaq,

Let's start a thread about this in Science & Skepticism. Would you like to or should I? This is really borderline between the two, but we really need the science aspect clarified by experts. Also, you did say that the reason you bring this up is because you are SKEPTICAL about naturalism. What do you say?

Hawkingfan

The initial state of the universe and the big bang are indeed confusing. The part that seems to be the most confusing to you is the state the universe was in at the bb. You know that time existed since the bb, and you know a singularity existed at the bb; but the question "how long has it existed there?" is meaningless because time does not exist in a singularity.

But it confuses me too in a lot of ways. For instance, Hawking says the singularity is "infintismally small" and "infinitely hot", but what does that really mean, exactly? How is that possible? He never expands on it. I'd love to ask him about it. In the meantime, I'll take his word for it even though it may be a fallacy to do so. Like I said, Jesse might know.

madmax2976

Hey Thomas,

Take your time in replying. There’s no rush.

More accurately, he contends that “nothing” as you offer it in your characterization of “pure nothing”, is simply incoherent. People don’t typically use the term nothing in the sense of “no thing” whatsoever, and neither do any naturalists that I am aware of, including Stenger. Thus your supposed first option, as you describe it, is not related to any actual naturalistic hypotheses of the universe “coming from nothing”.

What Stenger does discuss, is the possible characteristics of a zero energy state, lacking any particles – what he calls “the void”. In other words, he begins from what is perhaps the simplest state and proceeds from there. That simplest state being arguably the best representation of “nothing” that we can come up with while still making some sense when we talk about it. Your list of naturalist options didn’t seem to address such a possibility.

If this simplest state is not what you would term as “nothing”, then we’re just getting stuck on definitions. This is the only sense of nothing that I’ve seen physicists use and the only sense of nothing that makes any sense to me. If you demand a philosphical usage, as in “pure nothing”, then obviously this won’t be sufficient for you. My brain can’t really grasp such a concept, so I’d have a hard time discussing such an issue.

Based on the physicist view of nothing that I’ve read about, I’ve yet to see anything necessarily irrational about such a hypothesis. Based on the philosophical view of nothing that you seem to propose, I can’t find the question coherent enough to begin to address it.

Yes, I heard this idea before. William Craig offers such an idea if I recall. Problem is, I have no idea what it means for something to “logically” proceed something if it does not actually temporally proceed it. Without the latter as a frame of reference, I don’t see how one could deduce the former.

All you’re saying here is that existence exists prior (a time dependent term) to identity. Saying it is “logically prior”, devoid of a sense of time, is meaningless to me. Note also that the concepts of “existence” and “identity”, are not the same as the actual thing we call a universe. (Unless you are contending the universe is just a concept, but I haven’t gotten that impression from you)

The only frame of reference I have for designating something as having a “logical order” is the time reference. Remove that, and “preceed” looses all linguistic meaning.

Furthermore, you seem to be switching between “universe” and “existence” as though they are demonstrably interchangable, synonomous terms. This is a possibility, but it is yet to be shown. There are naturalist hypotheses of a hyperverse, which is another option that is missing from your list of options.

I don’t know. I’m not even all that certain there was a “Big Bang”. While the Big Bang may be the best working theory we have today, this does not mean we’ve actually demonstrated it is true – we’ve inferred it from the data we’ve collected and the experiments we’ve conducted and it seems to be a reasonable theory. I wouldn’t bet my life on it however.

But lets assume the Big Bang theory is correct. Was it a “beginning”? Sure. It was the beginning of the universe as we know it. In other words, whatever existed would have changed form to become the “universe”. From that point the universe developed to be what it is today. This is the only sense of “beginning” that we have experience with – that of changing form.

When you start talking about the beginning of this universe you would be talking about a changing of form – something external to this universe changing to be this universe. Thus you could not refer to the universe as the totality of existence because that very hypothesis presumes a state of existence independent of the universe. This is what I meant by a contradiction on your part. It can't be both the totality of existence and have something else exist apart from it.

On the other hand, if you are going to use “beginning” in a sense other than changing form, you’ll have to explain that and provide some examples that I can use as a reference to understand it.

I neither agree nor disagree as this is irrelevant as far as I am concerned. “Moments” are a feature of this temporal universe as far as I know. If we speculate about a timeless state of affairs independent of this universe, we would be talking about no moments at all, not an infinite amount of them.

I’ve read and reread these options and it isn’t helping to clarify your statements at all.

What do you mean by asking if the universe has “always” existed? When I read such a question I interpret it as asking whether the universe has existed for “all time”. Well, the only time I am familiar with is the time which is a feature of this universe, so based on that definition, the answer is necessarily YES, it has existed for all time or always. It couldn’t logically be otherwise.

One option I see is to interpret your question as referring to some time other than that which is feature of this universe - a time before this time. Call them time-A (the time before) and time-B (current time). So you would really be asking whether the universe has existed for all time-A, rather than time-B. The problem is that I am unfamiliar with time-A, whether there even was a time-A, or what it would be like, so its impossible for me to answer such a question.

Your analgy of the room full of people only compounds the problem by assuming an infinite amount of “people” who are all standing, thus assuming Time-A is the same as Time-B with “moments”, “infinite”, “prior” and “before” all built in. I have to ask: What is the difference between Time-A and Time-B? If there is no difference, how would we distinguish between the two or even know they aren’t the same?

Following along, another option is to say that time is not a feature of this universe. Perhaps it is a feature of some metaverse. Would the universe have existed for all this time? Obviously not, though I wouldn’t be sure of the relevance any longer in regards to the existence of our universe.

Another option would be say there was no time before this time. There was timelessness. No moments to transverse at all. We can then look to see if we can figure out why there was a shift from timelessness to time. Whether we could do so or not, any talk of transversing an infinite would be meaningless. There wouldn’t have been an infinite number of moments, there would have been no moments at all.

Not only may they be irrational, particularly as you have described them, they don’t seem to be an accurate assessment of any actual naturalistic hypotheses. Therefore they would be quite useless in evaluating the rationality of naturalism.

Which is impossible? The infinite amount of moments or the existence of the universe for an infinite amount of moments? I don’t find either one particularly comprehensible. Assessing which is “impossible”, is therefore beyond me.

So the possibilities all remain viable:

1. The universe has always existed in some form. This is perfectly plausible under the only reference of “always” that we have available and know about. Speculation of an infinite number of moments prior to the beginning of this universe is just that – speculation.

2. The universe had a beginning within a hyperverse, with features we can only speculate about. Time is not a feature of this universe alone, but that of the hyperverse. Or it has its own time, which is distinguishable from our time due to some diffferent features. Or it is timeless, with some feature that allows for the start of temporal regions within it.

3. The universe could have come from “nothing” – a void of zero energy, containing no particles and representing the simplest state of affairs we could conceive of or talk about.


In order to resolve the question, it appears we simply need more info than we currrently have. Was there time prior the existence of the universe as we know it? Could there have been a different kind of time? Does this universe constitute all of existence or is it contained within a larger hyperverse? Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic about us getting answers to these types of questions anytime soon.

thomaq

yeah this sounds like a good idea. if you'd like you can go ahead and start it. it seems like you have more scientific knowledge and could probably state the issue better than i could. i will definitely read along and contribute and be educated as well.

Alix Nenuphar

Post deleted because of system crash.