Frankly I don't have it in me to knowingly disrupt someones deep rooted belief or faith in something that keeps them grounded in their daily life. Even if that faith is in faithlessness itself.

For whatever reason I sometimes find the most vocal thiests are the ones most afraid to be "proven" wrong by the world and ways they claim to be above, while the passive ones are as they are simply because they fear to place non-thiests in a position from which- by their own dogma states- there is no return. Hey, rather hear it from a friend would you not. :)

Frankly I don't have it in me to knowingly disrupt someones deep rooted belief or faith in something that keeps them grounded in their daily life. Even if that faith is in faithlessness itself. — Outlander

A fair point. It would be rude to accost a christian simply going about their daily life.

But that's not the case here. This is a philosophy forum, and there is at least a pretence to rationality. Post here and expect critique.

More as a curiosity than an argument, there's Hawking's suggestion. We can have an infinite causal chain in a finite time.

The event at time 1 is caused by the event at time ½, which in turn is caused by the event at time ¼, and so on. Every event in the causal chain has a cause, without a first cause, in a finite time, and without reaching zero.

Looking forward to the replies...

More as a curiosity than an argument, there's Hawking's suggestion. We can have an infinite causal chain in a finite time.

The event at time 1 is caused by the event at time ½, which in turn is caused by the event at time ¼, and so on. Every event in the causal chain has a cause, without a first cause, in a finite time, and without reaching zero.

Looking forward to the replies... — Banno

I'm no mathematician... obviously. But, doesn't this have the same logic as Zeno's paradox with the hare and the tortoise?

Doesn't calculus solve this?

...solve... — creativesoul

What's the problem? No need for a deity.

I think we agree on that(regarding the lack of need to invoke a deity to explain some observation or another).

I was more asking if calculus was applicable here? If not, why not? It seems to be based upon the same logic(infinite division) as Zeno's paradox.

Is the problem within Zeno's paradox somehow not one here, with your(Hawking's) suggestion?

Well, they both use limits, if that's what you are after.

All causal relationships consist of a plurality of things. First cause arguments mistakenly presuppose otherwise.

Well, they both use limits, if that's what you are after. — Banno

Not really. I think however, and perhaps you'll agree, that Zeno was using infinite divisibility in a much different way, for much different reasons. In short, I am not at all confident that I fully understand the difference between Zeno's paradox(concerning shortening distances over time by dividing a whole) and what's going on with Hawking's suggestion...

Nevermind me... I think I'm in over my head here!

:wink:

SO the answer to Zeno is found in the runner occupying an infinite number of places in a finite time; but in Hawking's example it's an infinity of causes in a finite time.

What's odd, as pointed out, is that @Devans99 invokes an uncaused cause when it suits him. So he can say

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

...apparently without seeing how convenient this argument is.

Yeah, the Aristotelian assumption is that causes are somehow discreet, individual.

What's odd, as ↪Echarmion pointed out, is that Devans99 invokes an uncaused cause when it suits him. So he can say

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

...apparently without seeing how convenient this argument is. — Banno

Ah, the convenience of leaning on an unknown realm as a logical possibility. Logical possibility alone does not warrant/justify belief... by my lights anyway.

I'll stick with the unknown... and hence, my agnosticism.

Sure. No different than say, quantum mechanics, double-slits, and other observed phenomena... . — 3017amen

Not really, there is a lot of data available for quantum weirdness....

I'll stick with the unknown... and hence, my agnosticism. — creativesoul

There's a body of literature linking an inability to deal with ambiguity to conservative political views. That may explain the reliance on half-arguments such as that in the OP. A conservative mindset needs the leap of faith.

Time is [...] — Devans99

Doesn't really address anything. You want me to start coming up with things for the occasion as well?

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. — Devans99

Start over. Try something more defensible.

Could you if you may give a real world example of what you said? A linear progression like stepping on the gas pedal of a vehicle slowly or.. ? Seeking clarification, thanks. Unfamiliar with said theory. Perhaps I should just Google it. Of course, always prefer firsthand experience. :D

I know this is an old argument that has been with us for 1000s of years. Most memorably, St Thomas Aquinas recounted it as his 2nd of 5 ways to prove the existence of God. But I feel it is worth revisiting - it is almost certainly correct.

Infinite regresses come up when discussing the origin of the universe in terms of cause and effect - chains of cause and effect stretch backwards in time (a cause causes an effect and the effect in turn causes another effect and so on), the question is do these chains of cause and effect stretch back forever or is there an initial first cause?

If the chains of cause and effect stretch back forever, then there cannot be a first cause. The first cause would cause the 2nd cause - without the first cause, the second cause cannot be. Likewise, the nth cause would cause the nth+1 cause, so by mathematical induction, causality cannot exist at all if there is no first cause. But causality does exist, so there must be a first cause.

Illustrating this proof with an example from pool: The cue hits the white ball. The white ball hits the black ball. The black goes in the pocket. Would the black ball go in the pocket if the cue did not hit the white? No - we have removed the first element in a time ordered regress and found that the rest of the regress disappears. So the first element (in time order) is key - it defines the whole of the rest of a regress. If it is absent as in the case of an infinite regress, then the regress cannot exist - infinite regresses are impossible.

Obviously this argument makes the assumption that the law of cause and effect holds universally. Causality is best explained as matter interacting with matter - either by collision or gravitational interaction. Newton's third law of motion is that whenever two objects interact, they exert equal and opposite forces on each other - this law governs causality (for matter collisions). The other main law governing causality is Newton’s second law - the mass of bodies causes a force on other bodies remotely via the force of gravity. So the often mentioned claim that causality is somehow an unscientific concept does not seem justifiable.

We also live our lives according to the law of cause and effect - so we have all consciously or sub-consciously accepted the axiom of causality.

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. Causality appears to be a feature of time - everything in time appears to have a cause - so for something to be uncaused, it seems it would have to be external to time. — Devans99

I would argue this is a strong argument that there always was and always will be movement and heat in the universe. I think the universe was predestined (scientific determinism or determinism) to have feeling/awareness but i don't want to get entirely off topic.

What many people don't understand is if there is gravity then there is definitely matter and heat and movement. Many Physicists agree with your OP and many don't. Many assume all Physicists agree.

In short i agree with you.

It doesn't lend itself readily to a real world example, apart from the Big Bang - which it denies happened.

Moving south might serve as a metaphor. @Devans99 might be seen as asserting that, from observation of his surrounds, he can conclude that every point on the Earth has a point to its south. This is analogous to the claim that every event has a cause. Hawking's point would be seen as asking what is south of the South Pole.

Just as the notion of moving south loses meaning at the south pole, the notion that every event has a cause might lose meaning as one proceeds back in time.

You might enjoy Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning.

Hawking's article is at p.563, here. The version I gave above is a gross oversimplification, which i think is in one of his popular books.

:clap: :lol:

"Inventing a religion" can be a far cry from enabling an open society centered around the idea of a Creator.

One could not speak of why people got sick in unsanitary restrooms so, in that age, one invented (presumably) the idea of a Japanese bathroom demon that made even the laziest tidy up and society healthier as a result. One could not speak of why the same occurred in old houses with stagnant or hazardous air so they invented "miasma" or "bad air" as a result. Compare religion to an unproven theory for a moment. What is your prerogative against it?

The Cause of space-time is "first" in the sense of "ultimate", not merely the first of a series. Logically, the Creator of our evolving universe must be prior-to the big-bang emergence of space-time, hence Eternal, and external to the Physical universe, hence Metaphysical. Prior, not in time, but in logical order.

Ultimate : a final or fundamental fact or principle
Prior : existing or coming before in time, order, or importance — Gnomon

This nevertheless means that cause and effect isn't universal. I was really just pointing out that logical contradiction.

In short i agree with you. — christian2017

Then better not to read any of the criticisms that follow, lest your belief be challenged. Especially witht hat name of yours.

Zeno Strikes Back; the Revenge of the Eleatics!

(And your remix of the classic Witt line is perfectly apt!)

In all seriousness, you would think theists and apologists would learn from their history: tethering the truth of your religious/theological views to an unresolved factual/scientific question is a bad idea, because despite your faith and a priori assumption, you don't actually know what the answer to that scientific question will be. And so it is here. We don't know whether the universe is past-eternal or not: the science on the matter is decidedly NOT settled, and for all their admirable efforts theistic apologists (like Craig) have still yet to derive a logical contradiction from a past-infinite sequence of cases, or a past-eternal universe; the best they've been able to do is deduce counter-intuitive results, not genuine contradictions. But then, that's probably what one would expect even if infinite causal sequences are real- when your experience is exclusively of finite sequences, then infinite ones will inevitably run counter to your intuitions. So all they have on this crucial question is all they ever have: faith, and simply assuming or stipulating what they want to be true (and thus arguments whose conclusions are more or less indistinguishable from their founding assumption).

So as far as both logic and empirical scientific evidence is concerned, past-infinite causal sequences and cyclical and past-eternal universes remain very much on the table, even in light of the accelerating expansion of space/dark energy: you have eternal inflation, Penrose's conformal cyclical cosmology, the bouncing universe of loop quantum gravity/loop quantum cosmology, and so on. All viable models. You even have viable models that exclude a past-eternal universe, but remain unamenable to theistic interpretation, like Hawking/Hartle's "no boundary" proposal where the universe is in some sense past-finite but nevertheless lacking a beginning or start (and therefore lacking any causal role for a creator, at least in any horizontal or sequential sense). And this is all in addition the fact that our efforts to model the earliest stages of the universe are likely futile because gravity would be significant enough to dominate on the quantum scale, and so our lack of a quantum theory of gravity likely makes most of our efforts moot (indeed it would be sort of a miracle if we managed to stumble on a correct description of the early universe, despite lacking any viable theoretical framework for this period).

So despite Devans and others religious conviction on this matter, there is nothing even "almost" certain about any of this... other than the fact that their arguments are patently unsound and even somewhat arbitrary.

"For god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten bacillus..."

What advantage is there in positing a creator, not found in enabling an open society?

The devil is in the detail. Christianity in particular, with its incumbent sexual perversion, misogyny, homophobia... need I go on?

The God of the Gaps is doomed to shrink, it seems, as we learn more.

The Hawking example I provided is not intended as an answer, as, perhaps, are the other explanations you list. What they show is the simple lack of imagination, the intellectual self-limiting, that occurs in an argument such as this. We don't need an alternate answer to show the poverty of the OP.

Physics has moved on since Aristotle. Some of our religious brethren have moved along with it, but not, it seems, present company.

That's great and all but until you can explain the Big Bang and the Singularity or for that matter can- right now- grab scientific instruments (doesn't matter if they're available easily or not) and prove to a group of skeptics, convincing the majority, of the facts you claim to know by in person irrefutable evidence.. the question of who relies on blind faith more you or the thiest is a moot one.

Indeed- the god of the gaps is always destined to disappear. So its just not a very good theological strategy- firmer ground is advisable, if one must posit gods.

And its not that either Hawking's or any past-eternal model is clearly correct, the point is of course that the question remains unsettled and all these various alternatives remain viable, and so the theists stubborn preference for the one cosmological model consistent with and conducive to their religious views seems to always be explained by ideology and a priori commitment (come what may) rather than evidence or any defensible line of reasoning (which is no doubt why the arguments rarely hold up to the slightest critical scrutiny- they were ad hoc to begin with).

Making no positive claim is a valid epistemological position. Saying "we don't know yet" isn't the same as saying "and therefore, God".

What facts do I claim to know? I'm merely pointing out that the scientific/factual question of whether the universe is past-eternal or not remains open, and so arguments whose premises take a strong position on this (such as the causal/cosmological arguments for the existence of God) are not very good arguments. If you don't know whether the premises of your argument are actually true or not, its not a particularly useful argument. Which is exactly the problem here.