Yes I agree the argument undermines the legitimacy of all prophetic revelation.

Whoops. Sorry.

there are no accounts of gods appearing to people who were not already aware of those gods — Pfhorrest

There was St Paul on the road to Damascus.

There are no uncaused causes
Therefore there must be an uncaused cause — Siti

You have my argument slightly wrong, it is:

- Everything in time has a cause
- Therefore there must be a timeless first cause

In any case, even if you're right, how do you know that it is not the universe itself that is the uncaused cause? — Siti

The universe exists in time and nothing can have permanent existence within past time - the universe in that case would never have started existing so could not even exist now. There must be something permanent external to (space)time to start everything off.

Therefore there can be no first cause...because a first cause can have no prior cause and therefore cannot exist. — Siti

If the first cause is timeless then it is beyond cause and effect. This seems the only possible explanation for the origin of everything - there must be an uncaused cause somewhere - else the universe would be null and void. Only something timeless can be an uncaused cause - there is nothing sequentially/logically before such an entity - it has permanent existence.

Its not about agreeing to differ, your argument - and Aquinas' argument - fails for the precise reason that its conclusion is a refutation of its premise. — Siti

You have given no sound reason as to why the argument fails and you continue to believe in the magic of an infinite causal regression without any justification.

Maybe I can turn the question around: Please explain what causes a car to accelerate if the driver does not press the gas pedal?

If, as you began your argument, there is no first cause, that does not imply that there are no other causes... — Siti

The whole point of my argument was to show that causes require prior causes, without a first cause there can be nothing and that infinite causal regresses are impossible.

I think we will just have to agree to differ on this one.

The false notion that it is the half-trained outsider who innovates — Banno

This does not agree with my personal experience. Add a new person to a subject matter group - they may not be fully unto speed - sure they will make a few errors / say some dumb stuff - but they also usually bring new ideas and a new perspective.

Phlogiston was an excellent first approximation of chemical energy. — Banno

It was the wrong theory - and if it had been blindly accepted without questioning, we could still have it today.

Critical thinking is a skill to be encouraged. Group think is the biggest danger to science.

As far as today's science and math being "phlogistons." Come on. Not everything gets superseded. — Pantagruel

You think we have it all perfect and that list of superseded theories will not grow? You are mistaken - science is a history of 2 steps forward, 1 step back, why should the future not follow the pattern of the past?

- We have huge problems with Cosmology and maths relating to the assumption that actual infinity exists.
- QM and GR are incompatible so one or the other will have to give way.
- There are no sound interpretations of QM.
- We have no real clue how the brain works.

I've answered those objections with discrete segment prime movers — Gregory

I am not sure what bearing the discrete/continuous nature of the universe has on the need for a prime mover, in either case there is motion and perpetual motion is impossible - so a prime mover or start of time is required.

... and pointing out that our physics don't apply at all to a meta-universe. — Gregory

I think it is reasonable to say cause and effect would still apply in any meta-universe / multiverse - they must be able to cause our universe - so Aquinas's arguments still seem to hold.

Can you point them out please.

What?

A sizeable portion of what science and mathematics 'know' today will turn out - in the fullness of time - to be wrong. See, for example, Phlogiston theory and various other intellectual car wrecks from the past:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_theories_in_science

There is already enough group think in the world. What we need is people thinking out of the box and challenging the received 'wisdom'.

In which case "nothing travels faster than light" is a statement about the language of physics rather than a negative proposition about the world. — sime

There is a great deal of empirical evidence that the speed of light is a universal constant obeyed by everything in the universe; we have been measuring it for 100s of years and we currently know it within a measurement uncertainty of 4 parts per billion.

Saying the statement "nothing travels faster than light" is about the language of physics seems to me to be equivalent to saying the statement is a natural law - the language of physics is our model of natural laws after all - so I maintain a belief that the natural laws of the universe are time-aware. This suggests time is more than just a human invention.

We can roll it back so it retraces its course perfectly to it's starting position but even though the ball moved backwards in space, it can never move backwards in time for time has passed into the future between rolling the ball forwards and rolling it backwards. — TheMadFool

Theoretically anyway, the ball can end up back where it started in time - you might like to read about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve

So if time is best modelled as a dimension, which maybe the case, it seems to be a complex, convoluted, non-linear dimension - bearing in mind the results of SR and GR.

Nobody will object to space being infinite and if time is simply a higher dimensional space then there should be no problem in it being infinite. — TheMadFool

Some people do object - spacetime looks like a creation (see the BB). It's impossible to create anything infinite in size, so therefore spacetime should be finite.

Unfortunately, our intelligence gives us access to statistics that tell us the exact opposite is actually true. — ZhouBoTong

I was not aware of this - I stand corrected. However, I think it is probably a transitory evolutionary phase that we are going through and genetic engineering will pull us out of this phase (of sub-optimal selection during reproduction).

Okey dokey then! We've progressed from "dumb" and Wikipedia, to "child" and "magic"...and still no logical argument establishing the claimed impossibility of an infinite regress. I am beginning to lose hope! — Siti

I have already given you several logical arguments. To reference the last I gave, your ‘belief’ in the possibility of an infinite regress of causes is akin to believing that a car can accelerate without the driver pressing the pedal down - how do exactly do you justify such a belief?

Here is the basic argument I gave, this time expressed as an induction proof:

1. If there is no first cause
2. Then there can be no second cause (because the 2nd cause is caused by the first cause)
3. Likewise, if there is no second cause, there is no third cause
4. And so by induction out to infinity, there can be no current causes in the universe
5. So nothing exists.

Do you see any flaws in the above logic?



The rest of the quote from Wikipedia:

"Perpetual motion is motion of bodies that continues indefinitely. A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical machine that can do work indefinitely without an energy source. This kind of machine is impossible, as it would violate the first or second law of thermodynamics.

These laws of thermodynamics apply regardless of the size of the system. For example, the motions and rotations of celestial bodies such as planets may appear perpetual, but are actually subject to many processes that slowly dissipate their kinetic energy, such as solar wind, interstellar medium resistance, gravitational radiation and thermal radiation, so they will not keep moving forever.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion

Well that gets back to - who was it - Russel's (?) - counter argument — Siti

Discussed here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/360708

But you still have not proved that there cannot be a "turtles all the way down" infinite regress of causes. — Siti

I'm not sure what to say - I've explained it as clearly as possible - including an example a child could follow - I give up. You will just have to continue onwards with your belief in magic.

I can only assume that you have not yet thought of anything in the history of the universe that was not/is not moving? — Siti

I do not see what the lack of a still object demonstrates?

Things are moving in the universe because of the Big Bang - the very fabric of space is expanding - which is most unnatural - it is keeping us out of equilibrium. Very special conditions are needed to avoid equilibrium - and this unnatural expansion provides that. It was IMO engineered by the intelligence that created the universe.

I think evolution is about survival of the fittest species rather than the fittest individual.
— Devans99

Hmmm. I would think it is both...and neither...depending on context. — ZhouBoTong

Random genetic mutations, the mechanism of evolution, take place during reproduction. Beings however have to survive to the point where they breed. So I guess there is an element of both, but I feel over the long term, it is the fittest species that survives - teamwork triumphs over individual efforts.

Evolution wise, it would be difficult to measure "superior" species. Wouldn't organisms that can survive high radiation environments, or the vacuum of space, be at least in some way "superior" to humans? — ZhouBoTong

I believe we are ahead in evolutionary terms of such organisms - not only are we evolving physically like them, in addition, our society and technology is evolving too.

Nearly every human will have the opportunity to pass on their genes... — ZhouBoTong

We are living in a knowledge-based economy. The intelligent should have access to greater financial resources - which are required to facilitate reproduction - so the reproduction of the strongest members of society should still be happening.

I think you are correct however that we are losing something in evolutionary terms through not embracing a mechanism such as eugenics. Here we are handicapped obviously by the dreadful legacy of WW2. Still, with time, I feel the human race is likely to embrace genetic engineering with a resultant great acceleration in our rate of evolutionary progress. This is what I mean about us being the most successful species - we are evolving not only in the original manner of random genetic mutations - our society and technology is evolving too.

Now I am confused...how are the "weaker members of society" being taken care of if not by the government? — ZhouBoTong

I live in a country with a welfare state that does, to a limited degree anyway, care for the weaker members of society.

But how can you prove logically that it is "impossible"? Just because someone - even someone as smart as Aquinas - can't get their head around it doesn't prove its impossible. — Siti

We have no examples of infinite causal regresses from nature we can examine, so let's examine a finite causal regress. So for example, a car: the driver presses the accelerator pedal, more gas is fed into the cylinders and the car accelerates. If the first cause (driver presses the accelerator pedal) is taken away, does the car still accelerate? No. So if you take the first cause away from a finite causal regression, the rest of the regress disappears. By definition, an infinite causal regression (into the past) has no first cause - so none of the subsequent causes in the regression exist. The existence of an infinite causal regression is therefore impossible.

A belief in the possibility of an infinite causal regress is equivalent to a belief in magic.

Neither can you disprove perpetual motion — Siti

The natural end to any form of dumb gravitational perpetual motion is everything ends up in a black hole due to gravity and orbital decay. Then the black hole evaporates due to Hawking radiation, resulting in a sea of pure energy - thermodynamic equilibrium. So our universe cannot have been in perpetual motion because we would be in thermodynamic equilibrium now. Also see Wikipedia:

"Perpetual motion is motion of bodies that continues indefinitely. A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical machine that can do work indefinitely without an energy source. This kind of machine is impossible, as it would violate the first or second law of thermodynamics."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion

Time is a human concept of convenience — sandman

Yet there is a universal speed limit - the speed of light - and speed = distance / time, so it appears that something / some mechanism within the universe must be 'time-aware' else the speed limit could not be enforced - so time seems not just a human concept - it seems to be part of nature.

Why does the first cause have to be a substance? Buddhism speaks of thoughts without a thinker and action with an actor — Gregory

"For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm" - Psalm 33:9

But the first cause has to be causally efficacious in our material world - a purely spiritual first cause seems impossible - how could it 'talk' a universe into existence? The first cause must be able to interact with matter/energy - so it must be composed of some form of substance (some form of matter/energy).

The BB suggests that spacetime began 14 billion years ago and the cause of this beginning must be eternal to spacetime - so made of a substance from from beyond spacetime.

One of the most difficult aspect of asceticism is describing it. It can only be lived and experienced. Whatever Buddha or any ascetic says will always be lost in translation when it is spread around people who don't live that type of life. It takes an empty stomach to understand how the poor feel. — Wittgenstein

You will no doubt recall that the Buddha willingly abandoned a life of luxury and subjected himself to an extreme of asceticism under the bodhi tree. He did so in order to experience the life of a poor, deprived, person - to understand their feelings and meditate on a solution. The result was the ‘middle way’ - a sort of psuedo-asceticism - that is intended to help us to deal with the difficulties life presents - a balance between asceticism and hedonism. I think the Buddha’s advise may still hold for modern society: we should not deprive ourselves but, through a limited practice of asceticism, we should be able to deal with the inevitable deprivations that are part of life.

The Buddha said:

"Let go of the past, let go of the future, let go of the present, and cross over to the farther shore of existence. With mind wholly liberated, you shall come no more to birth and death.”

We all have to let go of everything in the end, so asceticism is a good disciple to master.

If a category on the left-side menu called 'the trashcan' or some such was introduced, we would be able to peruse offending OPs and make our own minds up.

Potential infinity can be expressed as:

$\lim_{n \to 0} 1/n = \infty$

Actual infinity is then:

$1/0 = UNDEFINED$

First of all, how do you know that nothing can exist permanently within time? — Siti

Because it would have no start / no initial state and therefore no subsequent states so could not exist. Also, you might consider the arguments against the possibility of past infinite time I give here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/360596
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/360410

1. The universe does indeed exist permanently (it perdures, is a perduring process) within time
2. Everything in the universe requires a prior cause

Therefore, the cause of everything in the universe exists within the universe. — Siti

Your formulation leads to an infinite regress of causes into the past with no first/ultimate cause. Thats impossible - the cause of everything has to be external to time.

You are moving relative to more or less everything else - you just don't sense it because because you are sitting on a fairly large lump of rock that is spinning you around its own center of gravity faster than a jet plane, whizzing you around the sun faster than a rocket and is itself being carried around the center of the Milky Way at half a million miles per hour...how is that "a state"? Relatively, of course, and those are the only kind of states there are...relative states - approximations - abstractions - not real... — Siti

How can the universe not be a state? All the particles involved always have well defined positions and velocities. This constitutes a state and that state must of evolved from a previous state. From this we can determine the requirement for an initial state - an initial set of positions and velocities of the particles - else everything in the universe would be undefined - the universe would have no initial positions and velocities and therefore no subsequent positions and velocities. It is a simple matter: if the initial positions/velocities are UNDEFINED, all subsequent positions/velocities are UNDEFINED. Any mathematical operator combined with UNDEFINED yields UNDEFINED.

My favourite analogy is a perfect, frictionless pool table. The balls are all wizzing around - the balls will continue wizzing around for a potential infinity of time. We have no idea how long the balls have been wizzing around, but we can infer an initial state where the player set the white ball in motion; else all would be still.

..systems do not jump from state to state - that's really what Zeno's arrow paradox shows - arrows don't jump from state to state in space, they fly continuously through space - they process continuously... obviously our descriptions can't match that because we would have to have an infinite set of descriptions with infinitesimal graduations for every aspect of reality - the arrow hitting the target does not depend on any previous "states" of the arrow, it depends on the process of its flight, which is potentially (potentially mind you) describable (describable mind you) by any number of an infinite array of imaginary "states" (i.e. momentary - actually 'timeless' - locations and velocities). The locations and velocities are not real - but the flight (i.e. the process) is real. — Siti

The (possible) continuousness of nature is no excuse for there being no initial state - the arrow hitting the target depends on the initial state of the arrow being set in flight by the archer, be it a continuous process or otherwise.

I also think you are making assumptions that you cannot prove: matter is discrete and electrons are known to perform a quantum jump from orbit to orbit without passing through any intermediate states - we have no proof of any continuous processes in the universe.

P1 there can be no uncaused cause
P2 nothing can be self-existing

Therefore there must be a self-existing uncaused cause

That would certainly rank as an epic fail in a Logic 101 exam. — Siti

You say I fail Logic 101 yet you offer no alternative solution:

1. It is clear that nothing can exist permanently within time.
2. It is also clear that everything in time requires a prior cause.

I see no other option but a recall to a timeless 'something' that is the ultimate cause of everything.

If you disagree, what is your solution that encompasses axioms [1] and [2] above?

The clock that has always existed shows an undeterminent time at present. Whatever it shows now, it will show five minutes more in five minutes. — god must be atheist

A clock that has 'always' existed has can only have an UNDEFINED time at present - it never started ticking and so for example, UNDEFINED + 24 = UNDEFINED. You admit so much yourself by using the term 'undeterminent'. No such clock can exist, it is a figment of wishful thinking, as is an infinite past in general.

Every one of your arguments involves a starting point. And you don't specifically say it, but you imply that everything must have a starting point. — god must be atheist

I believe everything in time must have a temporal starting point - maybe you can give a counter example?

And my arguments are not restricted to the need for a temporal starting point - I have referenced equilibrium, probability/math and scientific arguments in this / other threads.

Again, you are speaking of a starting point. But there is no starting point in infinite space in any direction. — god must be atheist

Spacetime has boundaries I believe. It started 14 billion years ago with the BB and has been expanding ever since - leading to a finite radius of the universe. What is beyond this radius? Nothing - there is no time and no space beyond these boundaries - nothing can exist without space or time - and nothing has no size - so the entirety of everything is finite.

It sounds to me like you should listen to your uncle more.

In this argument you contend that the "lack of an initial state invalidates all the subsequent states - a system’s initial state determines all subsequent states." But what exactly is a "state" - the universe does not really have "states" - it has, or rather it IS, process..."states" are purely imaginary and therefore by your own definition do not have physical existence. "States" are "freeze-frame" snapshots - abstractions, not realities. To refute this, simply name one thing that is not moving - i.e. is actually in a "state" right now — Siti

How can you contend that the universe / any system / a process does not have states? If a system has no states, it would not exist as a system - it would just an endless sequence of nothing.

I am not moving so I am in a state - movement is relative. And it does not matter if things are moving or not, they are still in states - we can take any subdivision of time and call it an approximate state - and any approximate must have a prior approximate state, else it could not exist.

Egg zackly! And to be a cause of a physical effect, one has to exist in time n'est-ce pas? Do you know of any cause that exists "not in time"? — Siti

I think you are missing the point: everything that exists in time has a cause. Nothing can be causeless and nothing can be the cause of itself. Therefore there must be something that exists outside of time... the prime mover I think we have to assume.

Wrong - an infinite regress of anything has no first term - that's all you can say...using the example of the negative integers, I can think of the biggest integer I can imagine and because I can imagine it, it exists (at least as an idea in my mind) and so does the entire series of negative integers between it and -1 — Siti

Just because you can imagine something, does not mean it could have physical existence. I can imagine a square circle but it cannot exist. Likewise anything with the structure of the (infinite) negative integers cannot exist in within time. Please consider the argument given in this OP:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6218/the-universe-cannot-have-existed-forever/p1

Prime Mover" is just a gap filler - and in any case, the kind of "Prime Mover" Aquinas was talking about simply replaces one infinite regress with another — Siti

It does not, to see so, consider the following reasonable statement:

Everything that exists in time has a cause.

My proposal in the OP almost guarantees a painless death.

I acknowledge that if you throw yourself off a high building and are lucky/skilful enough to land head first, then maybe death takes less than 5 minutes - but it still takes time and is still painful.

I don't generally like to talk about such things, but your brain, scattered on the pavement, is still alive, even if it is in fragments. One (or more?) fragment would contain your self awareness and it would be some time before oxygen starvation kills that fragment. Please don't throw yourself off a building.

How can it travel and be here and there at the same time? — Athena

I am afraid I am not a physicist, but I will try to explain the bits I understand. Please forgive me if there are any mistakes... it is not my field.

In Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity it is assumed as an axiom that the speed of light is constant for all observers, regardless of motion. We have many experimental results that indicate that Einstein’s axiom is correct.

Time dilation is then usually explained with light clocks - these fire a beam of light at a mirror and the light bounces back to a detector. So you can imagine a stationary light clock, the beam travels perpendicular to the beam source, is reflected back along a perpendicular path to the detector and that counts as one ’tick’ of the light clock.

Then imagine a second light clock, this time moving to the right relative to you. Imagine the path the beam of light would take from your perspective - it would not be straight up and down anymore, instead, the beam would set off at a slight angle to the right, be reflected at a the mirror at a slight angle and return to the detector - tracing out an acute triangle shape.

But the speed of the beam would be the same because the speed of light is constant for all observers. Therefore because the beam of light has to take a longer path, it would take slightly longer from your perspective for the beam to travel from emitter to the mirror and back again (because the beam is tracing out a triangular rather than perpendicular path).

So from your stationary perspective, a stationary light clock ‘ticks’ faster than a moving light clock - meaning presumably that time is somehow running slower for the moving clock.

Then you can imagine light clocks moving relative to you at increasingly faster speeds, with increasingly slower ticking - as movement of the clocks speed up, the path the beam takes becomes more and more horizontal from your perspective - a flatter and flatter triangle shape is traced out.

Finally, imagine a light clock that is moving to the right relative to you at the speed of light. Now the beam is moving at the speed of light to the right but the clock is also moving at the speed of light to the right. The beam will therefore never hit the mirror on the detector so, from your perspective, time is not passing for a light clock moving at the speed of light. This is why it's said that the photon is a timeless particle - it travels at the speed of light so it can travel any distance in seemingly no time.

If the prime mover ran out of energy it would slow down and everywhere there was nothing, everywhere there would be something. — Athena

I believe that a prime mover must be something from beyond time. So temporal terms, such as running out of something, would not apply to such an entity.

An infinite regress of causes has no first or ultimate cause, so it's a simple matter of induction to show that the whole of such sequence cannot exist. See:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/360708

So absent the assumption of a "Prime Mover", is there actually any compelling reason to imagine that reality has ever done anything other than continually change...forever before? — Siti

Perpetual motion without a prime mover is an impossibility. See:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/360714

It can show any time ... The clock never started. — god must be atheist

The clock never started keeping time so it can show no time currently - so an eternal clock is impossible - not only did it never start keeping time, it never started existing so cannot exist currently.

Every system that exists within time, be it a clock, a particle, or a whole universe, requires an initial state else there are no subsequent states - the initial state is the ultimate determinant of all subsequent states. That initial state can only be given by the start of time. Without that initial state, poof, the system does not exist.

Let me ask you: Let's suppose you are right, and time does have a beginning, at which the clock was started. Then what was the time five minutes before that? Because every time you pick a specific time, there are five minutes before that, and five minutes after that. — god must be atheist

Time is UNDEFINED before the start of time and the clock does not exist. There is no time before the start of time. 'Before' is a temporal concept, it does not apply to timelessness.

Another way of showing that time is infinite is the method of mathematical induction. Mathemathical induction is a type of proof in which if you can establish that in the first instance ... The same process of induction can be applied to time. — god must be atheist

Induction cannot be used to prove past time is infinite because there is no first moment of time from which to start the induction reasoning from. The example you give is not induction, it is reverse induction - you are working backwards from today to justify infinite past time. That's not how time works; each moment defines and determines the next moment so it is only valid to use forward rather than reverse induction.

As you have found with the clock example, forward induction is impossible with infinite past time as there is no start of time from which to start the induction process.

This may strike you as unbelievable, but just because it strikes you so, you have not proven that they are impossible. They are bizarre, for which a synonym is absurd, but it has no relation to the reductio ad absurdum logic state. — god must be atheist

So you are at least admitting infinite past time is bizarre. Reductio ad absurdum is when you have an argument that leads to an absurd conclusion. You say my argument leads to a bizarre but not absurd conclusion. I think you are splitting hairs.

Consider also the measure problem:

- Assume time is eternal.
- Probability of event X happening is 1% per calendar year
- Probability of event Y happening is 0.00001% per calendar year
- Over infinite time X happens 1% * ∞ = ∞ times
- Over infinite time Y happens 0.00001% * ∞ = ∞ times
- That is the same 'kind' of infinity for both the number of occurrences of X and Y
- So X and Y are both equally likely over infinite time
- Reductio ad absurdum.

The math of probability works just fine for finite time periods, as shown above probability results in absurdities when used with infinite time. So either probability is absurd or infinity is absurd. My money is on the 2nd.

This is a false argument. You might as well challenge the infinity of the three dimensional space with a similar mental experiment.

"Infinite directions are impossibilities. To see this, you can for example imagine an infinite series of yardsticks that have been lain in one direction coming toward you, and reaches the point at which you exist. How many inches (fractions are allowed) does the yardstick show at the point on which you stand?" — god must be atheist

I do challenge the infinity of infinite space. Infinity is plain impossible - the whole idea is a pipe dream. Only in our minds can things continue ‘forever’; in reality this would surely be akin to magic. In your infinite yardsticks example, how did the infinite yard sticks come about? Someone would have to lay the infinite yard sticks out - but that's impossible - they would never finish laying them out - there is no greatest number - numbers go on forever but at no point do we ever encounter a number ∞ - so an infinite number of yardsticks is impossibility.

We can also imagine the infinite yardsticks as represented by the series of negative integers:

{ ..., -5, -4, -3, -2, -1 }

So I would be standing at the point represented by -1 and the next yardstick out would be -2 etc... The person laying out the yardsticks would have to start at the point '...' but that's impossible, that point is UNDEFINED - so they can never have started laying out the infinite yardsticks - there are no infinite yardsticks.

An interesting point. The universe itself could be the intelligence. Panpsychist I think they call it. Thanks for the conversation.

It says 5 minutes in the link I provided but it does not say how high a building they were considering. I'd really rather not speculate too much on this one!

Well most forms of comedy are based on doing something wrong. Clown A kicks clown B in the bum etc...

Or impressionist / modern art is strictly speaking a wrong portrayal of reality but still has artistic merit.

Or perhaps in science a theory maybe wrong, but it may lead to a better theory being developed through intellectual insights taken from the wrong theory.

What do you find useful in a falsehood known to be false? — ovdtogt

Falsehoods are often of value from an artistic or comedic aspect. They can also generate other ideas that are not false and turn out to be useful.

There are many more ways to do something wrong than right (=optimal) so the world would be a pretty bare place without falsehoods.

Why are you more scared of (potential) oblivion than pain? The first does not hurt, the 2nd does.

Falling from a height to death is a somewhat painful and somewhat prolonged experience I'm afraid. See here for the gruesome details:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1crhni/suicide_pain_and_effectiveness/

Every day the risk of you dying increases. Is this painful? — ovdtogt

I think the fear of the pain of death is greater than the fear of death itself. If the first could be alleviated through regular dosages pain killers - used in a rotational manner to avoid tolerance increases - and increased in dosage as your risk of death increases - then we would all have happier lives.