So make guesses...but don't suppose they are anything more than guesses — Frank Apisa

We cannot even prove that we are not brains in vats... thanks to Rene Descartes. So we must resort to probability on questions like this. I believe the probability of God's existence is high, but technically I must remain agnostic forever.

What is your view (biocentric/ecocentric)? Cosmologically, do you have a theory about what was happening before the Big Bang ( a timeless first-cause)? — 3017amen

I've mentioned one in every post, yes! It'd be most fraudulent to say it was mine though. I am agnostic on it too.

It is a fallacy that I can reject a silly theory only if I have a good one. It isn't true. I can reject a silly theory and not know. "I don't know, let's find out!" is what science is all about.

If so, what is your theory about how self-awareness evolved from a piece of wood? — 3017amen

My theory is that self-awareness did not evolve from a piece of wood. For a start, a piece of wood cannot procreate.

Meaning, I believe you have the burden of precluding conscious existence from the human condition/equation, no? — 3017amen

No, this is also a fallacy. "I conceive of conscious existence as a divine soul, created by God, breathed into us at birth/conception/day after I'm okay with abortion until. If you do not believe in God, you must disbelieve in conscious existence!" That's the gist of it, right?

Why hasn't this shite been consigned to the fairy-story section (or philosophy of religion, as it's optimistically called)? I usually have this stuff turned off so that I can pretend the site is a more serious one than it really is.

The inflation field must have a start. — Devans99

Why? If it is infinite and expanding, then in the past it was still infinite and expanding. No start required.

Supernovas and pulsars are a result of gravity which is a absolute requirement form life. — Devans99

Gravity is a requirement for life, true. However this value of gravity is not essential to pulsars and supernovas. Is it your feeling that pulsars are perhaps an incidental symptom of the laws of physics, and that the universe was not created for them? That is good, because it means you get the idea that just because something exists in nature, it does not mean the universe had it in mind.

How would you (imagine yourself as God) go about creating life? Design or brute force? — Devans99

Good question! I actually do this sort of thing for a living. I would create an optimisation algorithm, one that would reward features that minimise some kind of cost function in their environment and punish ones that maximise it. You can solve the Schrodinger equation this way, or find the minimum of a curve. Let me think it through a little more...

1. I don't want to just be stuck with the initial test answer I put in. It would be good, if I have two semi-decent candidates, if I could merge them somehow and try different combinations of different features of both. I shall call this inheritance.

2. We need some measure of saying this thing is better than that for a given environment, and some way of killing off candidate features that don't cut the mustard. It would be best if the environment itself dealt with the fitness measure, then we could just get rid of the chaff every now and then. I'll call this competition.

3. I don't want to be stuck with my initial feature space. I'm not very thorough and algorithms like this can be so sensitive to starting conditions if you're not careful. I'll need to add some noise into equation, so that new features I didn't think of can be evaluated. I'll call this mutation.

So God had no choice but to evolve rather than design us. So we are not perfect beings... we are the product of evolution ... which was God's doing. — Devans99

He seems kind of unnecessary then. I don't want to get the guy fired or anything, but he's not really pulling his weight.

The astronomers can't even agree on the speed of the expansion of the universe, and the speed has changed in the past - so it could change - contract - in future. — Devans99

Well, the rate was unknown in the past, and now it is known. Different hypotheses for the speed were put forward, some leading to big crunches, some to steady-state, some to eternal expansion. Not knowing and finding out is not the same thing as changing.

Why? If it is infinite and expanding, then in the past it was still infinite and expanding. No start required. — Kenosha Kid

The past can't be infinite - do you believe the past is longer than a finite number of days long?

Gravity is a requirement for life, true. However this value of gravity is not essential to pulsars and supernovas. Is it your feeling that pulsars are perhaps an incidental symptom of the laws of physics, and that the universe was not created for them? That is good, because it means you get the idea that just because something exists in nature, it does not mean the universe had it in mind. — Kenosha Kid

Pulsars and supernovas are side effects of gravity, which was required to support any form of life. Designs of complex systems are not perfect - instead optimal is strived for. We needed gravity for life and unfortunately that also means pulsars and supernovas are part of the product.

Good question! I actually do this sort of thing for a living. I would create an optimisation algorithm, one that would reward features that minimise some kind of cost function in their environment and punish ones that maximise it. You can solve the Schrodinger equation this way, or find the minimum of a curve. Let me think it through a little more... — Kenosha Kid

But surely you would wish to maximise the informational content (=interest) of the universe? Else it would be sort of dull?

Why hasn't this shite been consigned to the fairy-story section (or philosophy of religion, as it's optimistically called)? I usually have this stuff turned off so that I can pretend the site is a more serious one than it really is. — Isaac

What a cogent argument!

You are a moron!

The past can't be infinite - do you believe the past is longer than a finite number of days long? — Devans99

Actually even without inflationary theory that's fine. Good old-fashioned "where did that come from?" Big Bang gives you an infinite past, from a point of view. (An older, simpler BB model is just a black hole in reverse. When you fall into a black hole, from an outside perspective you approach the event horizon and vanish. But from your point of view you freefall forever. Except for the dying bit anyway. This is because gravity warps space-time so much. Chuck a minus sign on that, and you've got a BB that's both finite in time from our perspective and infinite from the perspective of something emerging from it.)

Pulsars and supernovas are side effects of gravity — Devans99

Awesome. So you're happy in principle with the idea that a feature of the universe does not necessitate a purpose. Just keep applying that and you're golden.

But surely you would wish to maximise the informational content (=interest) of the universe? Else it would be sort of dull? — Devans99

Oh yeah, it's dull until the answer pops out, that bit's fun. Maximising is difficult. Even if you did want to maximise something, it's easier to, say, divide one by it and minimise that. In this case, I want to maximise fitness, but that's the same as minimising unfitness, which is an easier number to deal with. I haven't entirely sorted the details of the cost function, a lot of environmental factors, but I've got until Monday before I need to kick this stuff off. Hopefully should finish by the following Saturday then the rest of the week's my own.

Actually even without inflationary theory that's fine. Good old-fashioned "where did that come from?" Big Bang gives you an infinite past, from a point of view. (An older, simpler BB model is just a black hole in reverse. When you fall into a black hole, from an outside perspective you approach the event horizon and vanish. But from your point of view you freefall forever. Except for the dying bit anyway. This is because gravity warps space-time so much. Chuck a minus sign on that, and you've got a BB that's both finite in time from our perspective and infinite from the perspective of something emerging from it.) — Kenosha Kid

Nothing can go on forever - especially in the past - how possibly could the days of the past number more than finite?

Awesome. So you're happy in principle with the idea that a feature of the universe does not necessitate a purpose. Just keep applying that and you're golden. — Kenosha Kid

The coincidence of so many features - parameters that are fine tuned for life in the universe - that all effect a single purpose - the support of life - is noteworthy - the likelihood that it could have happened by chance is vanishingly small.

I usually have this stuff turned off so that I can pretend the site is a more serious one than it really is. — Isaac

2.4k posts? You must be the Great Pretender. Turn if off again.

So if the assumption that cause and effect holds universally is correct, we have the result that there must be a first cause and that the first cause itself must be uncaused — Devans99

Well, even a universal law of causality exists it doesnt exclude the "self-causing". Consider the point at which time has not started, in this singularity cause and effect cannot apply. Because there is no time progression. If time and causality begin from the same source you only need that one phenomenon to exist in order to produce a universe that has duration.

I like to think this source is energy itself. Considering it travels at the speed limit and cannot be created nor destroyed. A universe without time doesnt destroy energy because energy is the potential to do work. Potential does not require time. Only the results of potential require time and if time itself is one of the results than you can see how energy can result in causality. Energy is the cause and the effect simultaneously....because it is always conserved.

Whether you believe pure energy is God or not I dont think matters. It could well be. Not for me to decide but in either case it's still a remarkable and awesome characteristic if the universe

Well, even a universal law of causality exists it doesnt exclude the "self-causing" — Benj96

I am not sure that anything self causing can exist. Its a tricky question as causality and time go together hand in hand in our experience, and the cause always comes before the effect - so self-causing would require some sort of backwards time travel - impossible. Outside of time, self causing seems also logically circular. So I personally favour a timeless, causeless, first cause rather than anything self causing.

You can't have something timeless going about doing stuff. It's nonsense. Start over.

Isn't this more or less a repeat of earlier posts of yours, ? :)

You can't have something timeless going about doing stuff. It's nonsense. Start over. — jorndoe

We are only familiar with change that occurs within time. That does not prove that change cannot occur without time.

Everything in time is transitory, yet there must be something permanent else nothing would logically exist - you cannot get something from nothing - so something must have existed always - IE if there was ever a time that nothing existed, then nothing would exist now. Hence something must have existed always - which is impossible within time.

That thing is the timeless first cause. This is Aquinas's 3rd of 5 ways.

We are only familiar with [...] — Devans99

Instead of such creative special pleading, shouldn't you try something a bit more defensible?

Instead of such creative special pleading, shouldn't you try something a bit more defensible? — jorndoe

Time is sequential in nature and therefore enables change. We can imagine some sort of non-sequential structure such as a binary tree, or a map, that allows change outside of the sequential structure of time. All change would be happening 'simultaneously' in the 'eternal now'.

I fail to see any other alternatives to timelessness: FACT - time has a start. FACT: the start of time was caused by something external to time. FACT: change can somehow take place outside of time.

↪A Seagull Do you have any opposing theories to anthropomorphic... ? — 3017amen

It is one of the great mysteries of life.

After an absence of around five months - early release? - Devans99 is back with us. Welcome back!

I recommend to anyone tempted to engage with Devans99 that they first review some of his posting history.

is a fallacy that I can reject a silly theory only if I have a good one. It isn't true. I can reject a silly theory — Kenosha Kid

Interesting, so you can easily reject two plus two equals five, because you know that two plus two equals four. So please tell us then, where is your two plus two equals four in this context?

what science is all about. — Kenosha Kid

And what does physical science say?

theory is that self-awareness did not evolve from a piece of wood. For a start, a piece of wood cannot procreate. — Kenosha Kid

What caused consciousness then (what theory do you have)?

If you do not believe in God, you must disbelieve in conscious existence!" That's the gist of it, right — Kenosha Kid

No; you clearly seem to be saying you don't believe in causation and therefore causation doesn't exist. So you seem to be saying something is silly for no reason. In other words, you don't have any theory to support your disbelief.

The logical structure of causal chains.
One simply cannot prove that every event has a cause, since doing so would require one to list every event and its corresponding cause. There are too many of 'em to list.

But further, one cannot disprove that every event has a cause. Given some event, disproving that it has a cause would involve disproving every possible cause. Again, there's too many of 'em. The cause for this event might not be obvious, but that does not prove that it does not exist.

The best we can do, given some event, is to look for its cause; but if we do not find it, we cannot conclude that it is not there. We have no guarantee that it exists.

Can we contemplate uncaused events without the universe ceasing to be rationally describable? It seems so, since physicist do this when considering quantum events in which talk of causation is replaced by talk of wave functions and probability.

Causal chains, then, are neither provable nor disprovable, nor are they essential to our description of how things are.

The Psychology of causal chains
Those who have the greatest adherence to causal chains are those who use them for another purpose.

@Devans99 is a case in point. He claims

it is almost certainly correct. — Devans99

Devans is certain that god exists, but not so sure that the argument works - hence the faltering use of "almost..."

On being shown that argument is unconvincing, Devans will resort to auxiliary hypotheses in its defence. Examples can be seen in his reply to @Echarmion:

I imagine a wider universe somehow containing spacetime. Causality as we know it, dominates spacetime, but in the wider universe, causality as we know it may not apply, so an uncaused cause would be possible. — Devans99

Another example is his reply to @Ciceronianus the White

So an 'uncaused cause' would clearly have to be external to time. For an uncaused cause, there is no 'before' or 'after', there is just IS - it is external to time. Something that exists permanently - outside of time - and so was never caused. — Devans99

So Causation is necessary everywhere except were Devans doesn't want it, in order that he preserve his god.

Notable, too, that the authority mentioned, Aquinas, made use of Aristotelian physics. Anything more recent will not support Devan's certainty.

The OP is not about rationally exploring the way things are. It's about defending Devans' pre-exisiting certainty.

Hence, the cogent and revealing:

You are a moron! — Devans99

Then we have the alternate strategy of changing the topic, exemplified here:

The coincidence of so many features - parameters that are fine tuned for life in the universe - that all effect a single purpose - the support of life - is noteworthy — Devans99

But they're not fine-tuned for life. That's just arrogance. The universe doesn't care that you exist. The fact that something can exist in the universe doesn't give it a teleology.

No; you clearly seem to be saying you don't believe in causation and therefore causation doesn't exist. — 3017amen

That's a variant of the same fallacious argument: "God caused everything, you don't believe in God, therefore you don't believe in causation."

The universe doesn't care that you exist. — Kenosha Kid

You will not get anywhere with this, of course, since Devans is certain that the universe, as instantiated in his imaginary friend, does care for him.

That's a variant of the same fallacious argument: "God caused everything, you don't believe in God, therefore you don't believe in causation." — Kenosha Kid

Okay. Here's your argument: " God did not cause everything and I don't believe in God therefore I don't believe in causation". Is that logic correct?

"God caused everything.., — Kenosha Kid

Indeed; theology should be banned from the forums, because it explains everything. All questions - philosophical and otherwise - can be answered with "because god says"; and hence, that is a useless explanation.

Here's your argument: — 3017amen

That's not his argument, At least pretend to some intellectual honesty.

Does that include atheism, as a religion?
LOL

You have changed the subject - again. Go back to the OP and address that.

At least pretend to some intellectual honesty. — Banno

What does " intellectual honesty " mean? How do you know I'm being dishonest?

Surely you're not trolling this thread are you? Now that I think about it, that might be a good definition of intellectual dishonesty LoL.

YOu have changed the subject - again. Go back to the OP and address that. — Banno

We're talking about causation, numbnuts LoL

How do you know I'm being dishonest? — 3017amen

The evidence is your failure to address the OP and subsequent repudiations. This is, nominally, a thread about causation. You are not addressing the topic.