Then why are you contributing to the thread...out of boredom? LOL — 3017amen

I confess, pretty much. It caught my eye -- posts aren't normally so almost offensively silly to me.

Since you are not able to answer the question that speaks volumes already. If I was an atheist I wouldn't even be contributing to this thread because it would be meaningless. It seems obvious that any atheist who bothers to care, has no faith in their belief system. — 3017amen

The fact that your mind automatically goes to labeling me "atheist" is yet another reason against you. If you're a teenager or young adult, then my apologies. I assume only older people post here.

not sure that suffices to make a reasonable inference, but I think I understand what you're saying and acknowledge its persuasiveness. I would say it's more an evocation than an inference; nothing magical, but like a great work of art, poem or music. Something evokes a kind of conclusion. — Ciceronianus the White

Of course I broad-brushed the response. The classic example that directly involves abstract metaphysical/timeless truths, is the existence of mathematical genius. Mathematics are objective metaphysical, timeless truths (as far as living in this world is concerned). The nature of mathematics by implication involves many of those concepts from our conscious existence.

The one existential inference that relates to the existence of math is, the fact that we don't need the laws of gravity to dodge falling objects. There is no Darwinian biological survival value. And yet it is so effective in describing the physical universe and of course works in everydayness and/or the engineering profession, construction, etc. etc..

Point is we can abstractly describe physical objects by running calculations through the discipline of mathematics. I can run a calculation to size up a roof truss that doesn't exist yet. Similarly, I would not need to run abstract calculations in order to dodge falling objects.

And so we have this abstract existence, that metaphysical existence, that exists in our consciousness.

What is the likelihood of those features of human existence having emerged from complete chaos, nothingness, purposelessness, etc?

Same with the existence of music and music theory. And of course likewise anything that relates to intelligence beyond lower life forms; self-awareness, phenomenology (love, wonderment, sense of time, colors, ad nauseum) etc.,etc..

The good news is that we are able to make distinctions between abstracts which provide for our quality of life, whether it's buildings, engineering, cars, love, music, and so on. The bad news is, within the realm of this human condition there exists an old adage called ignorance is bliss LoL.

Again, we are trapped in this metaphysical sense of wonderment and causation.

I have not read the publication you mentioned thank you. Can you give me a synopsis?

It's just pleasing that having passed through fire and death Tully will still bandy crooked words with a witless worm.

The fact that your mind automatically goes to labeling me "atheist" is yet another reason against you. If you're a teenager or young adult, then my apologies. I assume only older people post here. — Xtrix

Likewise my apologies if that label does not fit the bill. Actually there's probably a decent amount of atheists who are in-the-closet agnostic.

But much like the far right-wing extremist/fundamentalist, the stereotypical atheist comes across as angry and bitter. But let's not derail the thread.

Don't want to put words in your mouth but I too, would rather maintain a positive spirit wherever possible... .Thanks for planting the seed... :up:

I do not believe in random — Devans99

I don't call those answers. — Devans99

Whatever you or I believe has little bearing on the truth of the matter. Our beliefs are the adjustable parts, and so we adjust our beliefs to it all, we don't adjust it all to our beliefs. No manner of repetition here can somehow compel it all to be so.

I cannot. — Devans99

And yet you've been presented with alternatives to your assertions, a few of them by now.

Indefinite Causal Order in a Quantum Switch (Goswami, Giarmatzi, Kewming, Costa, Branciard, Romero, White; APS; Aug 2018)

(also ... the Casimir effect, virtual particle pairs, quantum fluctuations, radioactive decay, spacetime foam/turbulence, the "pressure" of vacuum energy, Fomin's quantum cosmogenesis (successors), Krauss' relativistic quantum fields, ...)

And you still haven't responded to a number of other points (though you have re-re-repeated your beliefs a few times).

Finite yet unbounded. Is that some sort of joke? — Devans99

No. (FYI, the link is the earliest reference in the literature I know of.)

Supertasks are obviously logically impossible — Devans99

"obviously" is one of those words that philosophers look out for. It usually marks an assumption, often erroneous.

There is a recurrent theme of late, concerning those amongst us who have not grasped what we might loosely call the mathematics of infinity, and how this relates to fractured ceramics.

I linked to the Stanford article on supertasks, which clearly explains what they are and how they are not logically impossible. In the face of that your insistence is fractious.

Likewise my apologies if that label does not fit the bill. Actually there's probably a decent amount of atheists who are in-the-closet agnostic. — 3017amen

I'm neither -- just as I'm neither about ectoplasm. Until someone explains what it is, I can't be for it, against it, or agnostic about it.

But much like the far right-wing extremist/fundamentalist, the stereotypical atheist comes across as angry and bitter. But let's not derail the thread. — 3017amen

Fair enough.

Causation is matter/energy acting on matter/energy. So causation is just Newton's laws of motion. — Devans99

Well, no. "Every action has a cause" is not one of Newton's laws, nor is it implied by them.

Indeed, the argument in the OP takes cause as read, ignoring the considerable philosophical discussion around this topic. This ought be addresses, if you are going to carry your argument.

I'm neither -- just as I'm neither about ectoplasm. Until someone explains what it is, I can't be for it, against it, or agnostic about it. — Xtrix

Interesting.

Think about the nature of your own existence. If someone doesn't explain to you the nature of your own existence, what would be the purpose of same ( your own existence)?

In the alternative, if someone does happen to explain to you the nature of your existence, what position should you take, and on what basis, using logic or some other method/phenomenal experience (?).

Believe it or not, those questions relate to causation.

1. Causation is matter acting on matter via Newton's laws of motion.
2. All action takes place subject to the speed of light limit, so the cause precedes the effect
3. All empirical evidence indicates that every effect has a cause (at least at macro level, probably at micro level too - I already explained how there is a cause for radioactive decay for example).
4. A cause can cause multiple effects. Each effect in its turn can cause multiple follow on effects
5. So by [4], causation must form a pyramid shape in time, the first cause being at the tip of the pyramid
6. Entropy increasing with time reenforces this view - as causes and effects multiply, things become less organised so entropy increases. — Devans99

Lies-to-children might be worthy of its own thread. The Wiki article is surprisingly good, and even references my favourite philosopher Terry Pratchett (of loving memory).

The simplification of a complex issue is an effective teaching method. The presumption is that the child - or adult - will eventually come to see the oversimplification.

However this does not always happen, and sometimes folk will attempt deductions and predictions based on lies-to-children; that is what has happened here.

If you look at the picture of the universe: — Devans99

You can see that it takes on the pyramid shape I was referring to - with the Big Bang - likely the start of time - being the first cause.

Well, no, that's not a pyramid. Indeed, this very diagram is often used to show how space-time may approach t=0 asymptotically. Amusingly, it is even used in the wiki article explaining Hawking's view

edit: oh, and take a look at the text on the extreme left... what's that say? What happens to causation in QM?

Lets cut to the chase though. Do you think that the Big Bang has a cause or was uncaused? — Devans99

Neither. This is a loaded question.

Have you stoped beating your wife?

Nothing in science or philosophy is ultimately either falsifiable nor provable - all our deductions are based on axioms - and those axioms maybe true or false - so we can prove results only subject to our axioms being correct. — Devans99

@Enai De A Lukal mentioned whatabutism earlier. Further examples were not needed.

I believe that the axiom: 'Everything in time has a cause' is a very strong axiom, one which we live our everyday lives according to. Hence I have a strong conviction that there is a timeless first cause, as this is deducible from the axiom. — Devans99

This is a description of your personal psychological state.

While it may explain why you cannot see the multifarious flaws in your argument, it is pretty much irrelevant to the rest of us deciding if you argument is cogent.

Certainly seems that information is fundamental. A key question is that is information transitory, permanent or a mixture of both? For anything to exist at all in the universe, it seems there must be permanent information associated with it - the first cause is permanent. What about spacetime though? Does it contain permanent information (eternalism) or transitory information (presentism)? It could also be something in-between like growing block theory - information is permanent once created. — Devans99

As I understand it, Information can be both permanent (eternal) and temporal (transitory). I illustrate that BothAnd notion by looking at Shannon's boiled-down basic Information, containing no specific meaning. It's defined as a string of 1s and 0s, something or nothing. I imagine that static dichotomy set in motion as an oscillation of spacetime (waveform) varying between [1] (maximum, and [-1] (minimum, with an average baseline of (0) no signal. Reality though, is a complex waveform, that contains the kind of Information that our senses interpret as Meaning (Mind, ideas), or as Thingness (physical objects).

So the waveform of our universe defines an ontological continuum that varies from positive Reality (actual) to Nonexistence (nothingness) to negative Reality (potential). The positives & negatives describe physical-temporal existence that comes & goes : Life & Death; while the zeros describe a state equivalent to Timeless Eternity. In my thesis, I interpret the baseline nothingness as the normal state of Ontology (BEING), which is also the eternal state of Logos, the Enformer. An act of Creation (Enformation, Causation) causes the neutral state to transition into positive-but-transitory existence (real, actual, Energy), which soon dissipates into (unreal, potential, Entropy). I go further to imagine fast oscillations (lightspeed) as Energy, and slow oscillations as Matter.

I'm sure this Enformationism "explication" sounds speculative & far-out, but your question was also pretty unconventional, and called for conjecture. I feel sure a physicist (Paul Davies) could translate my analogies & metaphors into mathematical equations. But, this is about as far as my layman's interpretation of Information can go into essential Ontology. :nerd:

PS__I wouldn't recommend that you waste your time debating abstruse Ontological concepts, such as existence of God. You wouldn't convince anyone that you are right, and they won't respect your unconventional erudition.

ESSENTIAL WAVEFORM OF CREATION

COMPLEX WAVEFORM OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE

It's not their main concern, but it is certainly a factor. It's routinely invoked as a counter to 'fine-tuning'-style arguments by pop-sci figures.

And therein lies the key- pop science figures and pop science journalism, which is always quick to sensationalize things or provide overly simplistic narratives. So far as I can tell, to the extent that multiverse models are motivated by fine-tuning at all, the motivation isn't to avoid the conclusion of an intelligent designer (which isn't really on the table anyways), its to avoid relinquishing the Copernican principle: the principle that we do not occupy a special or privileged place in the universe, that we assume everything about our position and situation to be as typical as is consistent with the available evidence.

This principle is motivated more by modesty and probability (after all, if you pick something from a collection at random, you are more likely to have chosen a typical member of that collection) than by any specific empirical evidence. And fine-tuning obviously runs directly counter to this principle, that we are not special and that our situation is typical. That is the threat, not the non-sequiturs about god/Gods that can be tacked on to the end of the supposed problem of fine-tuning: these aren't serious or credible arguments to begin with, so its good that scientists don't credit them overmuch or worry about blocking their conclusions. The Copernican principle, otoh, is something we want to hold on to if we can.

I can sympathise with the appeal of setting out one's thinking systematically as a process of review and consolidation. I did something similar in my own about section on this forum, in which I set out a fw things that I found myself repeating.

But one must avoid the systematiser's generic fault: going a step too far.

My admiration for Wittgenstein stems in part from hs approach to his own "worldview". He built a systematic answer to all philosophical questions, in his Tractatus, and then dismantled it in his Investigations. What is of value in his work is not so much the content as the process, the method with which he approached philosophy.

Another aspect worthy of admiration is his willingness to let the most important things go unsaid.

A lie-to-children I sometimes tell myself might make my position clearer. We know from Godel and related work that any system advanced enough to explain arithmetic must either be incomplete or inconsistent. It follows that any attempt at setting out a complete system will inevitable result in contradiction. Good philosophy, then, will consist in part in identifying the contradictions in any supposedly complete system.

Perhaps foremost amongst Wittgenstein's methods is the identification and rejection of metaphysical notions; those places where language spins freely, failing to engage with the world. Examples are aplenty in this thread, beginning with the supposed principle of causation.

The notion of worldview is too close to the notion of incommensurable conceptual schemes, which I think must also be rejected. In particular, when an individual attempts to develop such a world view in the absence of critical review, it will inevitably fail. As an individual project, developing a world view is inevitable senseless.

But as a social project, the development of this world view as opposed to that world view makes no sense, and hence the very notion dissipates.

Time must have a start. The past is either a finite or infinite number of days long. If its infinite, then its longer than any finite number of days. But finite numbers go on forever, so that's impossible.

We know you believe time must have a start, that you want time to have had a start. The problem is of course that the evidence and logic of the matter doesn't tell us firmly either way: again, hence scientific models of both varieties remaining viable.

And so one can either live with this ignorance, or can opt for blind faith as you have done. I prefer the former, but different strokes and whatever floats your boat and all that.

You keep making claims about logical impossibility, but then failing to derive or produce a contradiction from whatever is alleged to be logically impossible. It seems you're confused about what logical impossibility is and what it isn't: logical impossibility means entailing a contradiction. A and ~ A is logically impossible, because it is contradictory.

Logical impossibility does not mean "what you find conceptually difficult to imagine", which is evidently how you are using the phrase here. Supertasks or infinite sequences may strike you as conceptually difficult to imagine or grasp, but if they do not entail a contradiction, then they are not logically impossible. If you claim that something is logically impossible, stating why it is implausible or weird is not sufficient: show us where it involves a contradiction.

:up:

And therein lies the key- pop science figures and pop science journalism, which is always quick to sensationalize things or provide overly simplistic narratives. — Enai De A Lukal

But you can't deny that the mythologising of scientific ideas plays a huge role in popular culture - especially today's. (Actually there's rather a perceptive critique on just this point in the Atlantic, The Multiverse Idea is Rotting Culture.) And besides, not all of the proponents of many worlds ideas are popularisers; David Deutsche is an evangelist, as is Sean Carroll.

Imagine if for some unforeseen reason, it was suddenly decided that multiverse and parallel world (and yes, I know they're different ideas) were decided to be taken off the table for legitimate science, and therefore funding and tenure. I think the absence of the metaphorical elbow-room that these notions provide would introduce a kind of welcome sobriety.

the Copernican principle: the principle that we do not occupy a special or privileged place in the universe, that we assume everything about our position and situation to be as typical as is consistent with the available evidence. — Enai De A Lukal

I'm suspicious about 'the Copernican principle' insofar as it brackets out the role of the human observer in arriving at a determination of what is the case. I mean, the human position is 'special' insofar as it does observe, it does know. By saying that human perception is not 'privileged', it in effect absorbs the act of observation into a supposedly neutral background, thereby purportedly providing a perspective which is thought to be independent of the act of observation, as if science can see the Universe as it truly is, devoid of any act of observation, the so-called 'God's eye view'.

Consider how the analogy of 'the Copernican revolution in philosophy' was used by Kant:

Kant argues that, just as Copernicus moved from the supposition of heavenly bodies revolving around a stationary spectator to a moving spectator, so metaphysics, "proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis", should move from assuming that "knowledge must conform to objects" to the supposition that "objects must conform to our [a priori] knowledge". — Wikipedia

Which is an inversion of the 'Copernican principle' as understood by science.

Perhaps foremost amongst Wittgenstein's methods is the identification and rejection of metaphysical notions; those places where language spins freely, failing to engage with the world. — Banno

Wittgenstein points to the insufficiencies of metaphysics as a mode of discourse; he wants to get beyond it, though, not declare it 'otiose', as his positivist followers sought to do. And there's a world of difference. I take Wittgenstein's 'silence' to be apophatic.

Wittgenstein points to the insufficiencies of metaphysics as a mode of discourse; he wants to get beyond it, though, not declare it 'otiose', as his positivist followers sought to do. And there's a world of difference. I take Wittgenstein's 'silence' to be apophatic. — Wayfarer

I agree. Hence,

Another aspect worthy of admiration is his willingness to let the most important things go unsaid. — Banno

I certainly wouldn't deny that popular discussions of science tend to be terrible all around. Sensationalized, partisan, overly simplistic. And certainly, these narratives crafted for the purposes of media consumption rather than education have left the public in a pretty sorry state wrt knowledge of some topics, including/especially cosmology where rife misconceptions and ignorance are the rule. But if we're talking about working scientists and serious scientific models, its important to point out that the role of fine-tuning is quite overblown and is more a creature of pop-science journalism than actual science.

And the Copernican principle isn't denying that human perception plays a privileged role for human observers: he's denying that our situation and location in the universe are unique and privileged, which is essentially just a repudiation of anthropomorphism: we are not the center of the universe, the universe does not exist purely for our benefit. Instead, we live on a typical planet orbiting a typical star in a typical spiral arm of a typical spiral galaxy in a typical local cluster (at least, so we assume until we encounter evidence to the contrary).

But regardless, say what you will about the Copernican principle (I think its quite solid as a methodological guideline), but the point is that is what the underlying concern is wrt fine-tuning, not any theological or creationist boogeyman. Not least of which because the theistic conclusion doesn't really follow from the premises of fine-tuning to begin with, so the true threat posed by fine-tuning is of a different nature than the theist flatters herself by assuming.

Can you give me a synopsis? — 3017amen

Not an easy task, but I'll try. This is just my interpretation.

First, note that in the title Pierce refers to proof of the reality of God, not God's existence.

Pierce maintains that the hypothesis of God necessarily, or inevitably, comes to mind through a form of abductive reasoning. Pierce was a logician and abductive reasoning, which starts with observations and then seeks to find the simplest and most likely conclusion from the observations, was his creation. The earliest stage of abduction is something Pierce calls "musement" or "pure play." This is the unfettered consideration of the universe, consideration without being subject to any limiting rules.

Pierce thought of the universe we normally speak of as consisting in a manner of speaking of three universes. One represents our experience of the possible, one is the universe of our experience of facts, one is our experience of laws which govern the other universes. Through "musement" on the interconnectedness of these universes and the fact that growth is a factor in all of them, and that the universal feature of growth is preparation in earlier stages for later stages, we come, inexorably, to posit the reality of God as simplest explanation for the universe(s).

This is a very simple summary.

Why do you say that?

Would you like to summarize your argument?

Why do you say that? — christian2017

Because one does not want one's beliefs to be challenged.

Sure.

The OP is based on a misapprehension of how physics deals with causation, and hence the argument fails.

But that will make no difference to its defenders, since the real point of this thread is to engage in mutual preening.

This is an alternative way of looking at the same problem:

1. Everything in time has a reason
2. Nothing can be the reason for itself
3. (From 1 and 2) At least one reason must be outside of time

So there has to be one concrete reason (the first cause) outside time. That reason must be uncaused. — Devans99

Your hands are full at the moment. I don't want to distract you from better discussions. Au revoir.

Thats why I'm here - to get your thoughts on these ideas. — Devans99

No, I'm not talking about the mere gathering of other people's thoughts. I'm talking about the judgement of them. How do you know they are wrong? Even when obviously intelligent and knowledgeable people, basically the vast majority of the mathematics community, have told you you're wrong, you still consider yourself to be right, so their conclusions, arguments and demonstrations have had no effect on you whatsoever. Yet they obviously did have an effect on you up to a certain point - you do the same maths as everyone else, it's not a naturally occurring mental activity, so you must have adopted the methods of others at some point.

It seems that at some point (or with some topics) you abruptly decide to no longer adopt your community's syntax. Like you've suddenly decided that 'table' should no longer refer to the flat, waist-high object we eat from, but instead should refer to your cat.

I have no objection to you doing this, of course, you can do what you like, but I am a) very interested in why you would then consult the very community you've already decided you will reject the wisdom of the moment it doesn't suit, and b) slightly annoyed that you're being so evasive about this, which makes me suspect you're motives are hidden and disingenuous.

:grin: