eh

Tercel,

Have you consider the effect something like the no boundary proposal would have for the cosmological argument? The idea that time is nothing more than an extra spatial dimension has actually been around for a while - before Hawking. If that were the case, what we perceive as time would not be real. Instead, a 4 dimensional space would be the only thing that exists. It would be eternal, with no need for a cause.

Tercel

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments. Just to clarify where I'm coming from: I'm just thinking at the moment about the various arguments for God that there are and how, if possible, these can be merged into giving one coherent and compelling argument for the existence of God (rather than 50,000 miscellaneous prove-nothings) - I'm a Christian btw for those who didn't realise that.So I was just thinking about that Cosmological Argument here and it's place in the grand scheme of things. This was of course a draft, partially for my own thoughts, and partially for a website I hope to get up and running before the end of the year. Many of your comments I totally agree with and can see how I'll have to reword what I wrote: Thanks.

I see I managed to annoy Clutch, which probably means I'm doing something right, though unfortunately I largely agree with his comments here and so can't argue.

My thoughts which I wanted to explore here, were that the Cosmological argument seems to get tied up on irrelevant things. Causation, infinite regresses etc while all well and good and can be argued about forever, don't actually seem to me to be a necessary part of the argument. If all that is trying to be proven is that there was a first cause, then it proves nothing, as a first cause is not God. The real question and difference between atheist and theist is whether that first cause is personal. Now "first cause" is rather unfortunate terminology since it implies something about Causality and can lead to endless debates of ignorance. What I was trying to get at, with my many-names-for-the-same-thing (and here is where I would have liked some helpful comments) was that we all believe in a reality of some sort. If we believe that some things are real and others aren't, then surely we can lump the grand total of "everything that's real" together? And if some of what's in that category is superfluous as it's totally determinable based on other stuff in that category, then we can remove it. And then we're left with a category which contains everything that is necessary to define everything that is real. I suggest "ultimate reality" as a good a name for that category as any other.
Obviously this ultimate reality might be "God" or some complex mathematical equation or a collection of various principles or perhaps everything that exists.

I do not understand Alix Nenuphar's comments about the Kalam argument.

Eh, theists have typically viewed the universe as a 4d-block anyway since they believe that God is outside of time. Whether or not causality works the same outside of time, I don't know. I believe that time is not a necessary prerequisite to causality though. The problem with sticking an entire 4d-block universe in your "ultimate reality" bag is that it would seem to lose out on Occam's razor grounds to the theists bag which usually has only God in it. I think the atheist is much better off trying to stick one (yet to be discovered) mathematical grand theory of everything in their bag, or else the theists would seem to win by default on grounds of comparative simplicity.

Angrillori, I believe there are plenty of good intellectual exercises which should give you some reason to believe in God. I sincerely doubt that our current level of knowledge allows us to construct a rigorous proof, however it is still possible to examine various things and conclude that the likelihood of God existing seems very high indeed. Considerations of the nature and properties of the ultimate reality yield intriguing results. Similarly toying with the idea of "best-belief" that sits behind Pascal's Wager can be interesting.
Here are a set of "5" thought provokers:
1. What do you think it means for something to "exist"?
2. What does it mean for something to cause something else or for it to be the reason why X obtains and not Y? If we trace the causal chain backwards is it legitimate to to have an infinite chain with no final explanation but with everything depending on something else backwards ad infinitum? And if so where does the principle that it is necessary for things to have causes fit into this system? And if it is not possible to have a infinite causal regress, then if something could be said to be causally "first" then what properties might that thing have? If there is no thing which actually exists but everything potentially does so, then which potential should be actualised and why one as opposed to another similar? Call this reality A where A is everything causally connected to this moment. Why is it that A obtains and not B -some other possible series of events? Do all possible realities exist - why? And if the why involves causal connections then how has it not merely subsumed the all possible realities within A? Or is there some greater power that selects which one is to exist? And how does this not make the power part of A? Or does reality A exist necessarily - and what makes it necessary?
3. Matter appears to conform to describable "laws" of activity. eg F=MA, the Schrodinger Eqn, perhaps even one day a Grand Theory of Everything. What is the relation between matter and those laws that describe it? Is it possible to have matter without the laws? What is the likely ontological status of these laws and of matter? What ontological status do mathematical and logical truths have? Can they be said to really exist? How is it that something no material can interact with the material? Does this suggest that we should be explaining the material in terms of the non-material?
4. What is the nature of awareness/consciousness and how does this compare to matter? Is there any fundamental distinction to be made between that which is aware and that which is not? Can awareness be explained completely as an illusion or as an emergent property of matter? What propositions do you have absolute certainty are true? That you exist? That you are aware? That an external world exists? That matter exists? etc (any others?). To what extent is it reasonable to assume the existence of something non-certain that is significantly different in nature from the known certains and proceed to attempt to explain the certains in terms to the non-certain? What effect does this consideration have on the intrinsic reasonableness of naturalism and supernaturalism? Is it therefore reasonable to attempt to explain awareness in terms of matter, or would it be more reasonable to attempt to explain matter in terms of consciousness?
5. Do you agree or disagree that your actions and beliefs are determined along the lines of the idea that: what you do, you do because you see it as being the course of action that is ultimately likely to be most beneficial to you. (ie a course of action giving the highest expected value of the resultant state of affairs, judged from your point of view) Consider, especially, unprovable beliefs: such as the existence of an external world, the validity of memory etc. Is this criteria a reasonable one, or why not? If so, are there any ways of applying it to the question of God's existence or that of the supernatural?

eh

The way I see it, time=change. One can certainly believe that God would create a timeless universe, but such a 4D cosmos leaves the cosmological argument in the toilet.

Really? What is more complex, a 4D universe on it's own, or a 4D universe created by some unimaginable God? As you can see, the self sufficient universe is a much simpler explanation, and we DO actually have evidence for the existence of both time and space. The same cannot be said of God.

I must disagree. There is nothing simple or elegant about a poorly defined God concept being tacked on to the explanation of our universe. That the universe is known to exist and may be eternal, makes it a much superior choice, IMO.

Angrillori

Why is this so? A big-bang type event led to all we know and have, so all this 'rule-breaking-event' needs is the ability to big bang. It certainly doesn't need to be able to play a mean game of monopoly just because, down the road someone else invented it, just as the guy who mines aluminum ore doesn't need to understand rocket science even though some of his Aluminum might end up on the Shuttle.

But it does leave an explanation as likely as God available. You can as easily say: "If no time outside this universe," as you can say: "If God."

We're dealing in possibilities here, and as long as you leave the God possibility in, you need to leave this possibility too, don't you?
And this doesn't strike you as a prime illustration of the fallacy of ascribing 'Judeo-Christian God' to our first cause of the universe?

But it doesn't rule out the possibility either, and as such is something to keep in mind if you're attempting to prove 'God.'

Well, the expand/contract was just a figure of speech, the important bit was: Why rule out an infinite universe?

But, semantics aside, spontaneous uncaused random events are at least debatably occuring, are these uncaused causes 'God?'

luvluv

Angrillori:

I'll grant you that, but I thought you wrote that all the first cause needs to have, in terms of attributes, is the ability to be uncaused. It has to have the ability to be uncaused AND be transcendant to the universe AND have the ability to cause the universe to come into existence.

I would agree with that much but your first post on the matter seemed to suggest that the question was moot on the basis of the fact that time in this universe began with the big bang.

The fact that time in this universe began with the big bang does not remove from the universe the necessity of causation. So far as we know, everything which begins to exist has a cause.

I don't really object to leaving the possibility open, (though in all honesty in my mind a causeless origin of the UNIVERSE is simply intellectually out of court) but your previous response lead me to believe that you thought that the big bang DISQUALIFIED positing God as the cause. You seemed to suggest that since time began at the begining of the universe that this indicates that somehow the universe didn't NEED a cause, and in my opinion that is fallacious.

In point of fact, I don't really believe that scientists can actually create universes in laboratories, I only propose that as a particular breed of poison used against athiests on this website who swear by the fact that scientists are working towards being able to do precisely that. So, for me, this notion doesn't bother my belief in the cosmological argument in the least because I don't actually believe scientists can do what folks around here say they can do.

I'm simply posing this as a hypothetical. My only point was that if it were possible to create a universe totally separate from our own and totally inaccesible to us, a universe which originated via a singularity, then such a universe would have a cause outside of itself despite the fact that time in that universe would have begun at the singularity.

The possibility is somewhat self-negating since the laws of logic prevent an entity begining to exist without a cause.

I don't rule it out. At present, Big Bang cosmology rules it out.

Do you mean "is it God who causes all of these uncaused events"? Possibly. I don't know. I think Occam's Razor would give me good reason for not assuming that every quantum event is caused by a different God.

Further, I wouldn't want to hazzard a guess as to whether quantum events are truly uncaused or have causes which there is a logical barrier on us ever discovering. There is still debate on this issue amongst the experts, I am told, so I won't speculate on that until they have some agreement on the matter.

But this strikes at the heart of my first objection to your dismissal of the entire argument. It is not just the casual dependance of the Big Bang on some exterior cause that gives the cosmological argument force. It is the magnitude of the effect that the First Cause wrought, and it is the fact that the First Cause brought this effect about from OUTSIDE this universe. This suggests a power and a transcendance that has been traditionally associated with the God of theism.

Now, if I understand quantum mechanics correctly, the causes of quantum fluctuations are unpredictable, even in principle, but no one suggests that the causes are from beyond this universe. And in principle, the magnitude of what is generated via quantum fluctuations is very, very, very small. So no, I would think that even IF it turns out that quantum events are truly uncaused as opposed to simply unpredictable, they would not amount to something which could defend the existence of God.

fishbulb

First, you assume that there has to be something which exists without cause. You acknowledge that this assumption is often criticized, but you really do nothing to counter that criticism except assert that it is baseless. The fact is that we simply do not understand time and space well enough to posit when, if ever, time and space began and what, if anything, caused it. There is no reason to believe that the time and the universe is a complete system with a beginning and end. There is no reason to believe that it isn't, but also no reason to believe that it is. It is an unknown. It might not be an unknown forever, but we presently lack the tools to do anything more than speculate and fantasize about it.

Second, you not only presume the existence of a timeless uncaused entity, but you presume the existence of only one such entity. Why not two, or twelve, or an infinite number of entities which have all existed forever? You offer no principled reason why there must be a single cause to everything.

Third, "God" is only defined in these terms when making the cosmological argument. At no other time is God normally conceived of in this way. This is classic equivocation. Even if we accept that something must have existed for all time and created everything else, and even if we assume that it was only one thing and not a multiplicity of things, it is a further assumption to call this thing God. This is much akin to intelligent design folk who argue that life must have been designed by an intelligent being... of some sort or other, nudge, nudge, wink wink. No one goes to church on Sunday to worship what they think might be extraterrestrials who engineered life on Earth. Likewise, nobody goes to church on Sunday to worship what might be some vague, undefinable, possibly non-intelligent, non-sentient phenomena and his son Jesus Christ. Even if we accept the assumptions and reasoning behind the argument, it gets you almost nowhere vis a vis demonstrating that your god exists.

Clutch

No. Apart from the dubiousness of the phrase "the laws of logic", in general logic is silent on the nature of cause. What "law of logic" did you have in mind? Or was that just a way of saying that you don't agree?

Alix Nenuphar

Luvluv:

You said,
This is incorrect. Vacuum fluctuations (quantum fluctuations which generate virtual particles) have no cause. Second, as Winace pointed out somewhere else, our 'thoughts' cannot be 'causual' because that would necessarily eliminate Free Will.

Tercel

The first. The universe, unless you can hypotheticalise a single Grand Theory of Everything to explain it, contains trillions of arbitrary events: Its information content is gigantic. God on the other hand is simply one awareness. What can really be simpler than one irreducible awarenss and will? He doesn't consist of trillions of particles all moving at various speeds which all need to be described. He wins hands down against the universe on simplicity.

There is also the question of why this universe exists. Are there an infinite number of others? (Now that's believing in non-detectable entities for you) Or is this one special?

eh

It's just geometry. The complex world we perceive may be a result of pure geometry, and with the no boundary proposal that would include time as well. I don't think you get anything more simple and holistic than a universe of pure geometry.

Sorry, but I must disagree again. The only consciousness we know of is extremely complicated. There is nothing simple about it at all, and worse, the only minds we know of are contingent and brutally so.

Yes, if you take the classic atomist view of the universe, with trillions of arbitrary particles floating in the void to be correct. But in modern physics, with the holistic concept of a field, things may be very simple at a fundemental level. Hence the search for a unified field theory.

The question of "why" only applies to contingent things. Something uncreated and unable to cease to exist by defintion is non-contingent. Now you can call a consciouss person with arbitrary human emotions that non-contingent thing that exists, but I personally find space to be much less complicated and a better candidate.

There can only be one universe, when you take the word to mean all of space-time. You might find a space-time of 50 billion years or so to be arbitrary (in other words, why not a universe that is 100 billion years or more instead?) but there are many more arbitrary options for a personal God. A person with countless emotions, feelings and decisions is so much more complicated and arbitrary than an existence of pure geometry.