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I am not arguing for Theism, as I am not a Theist. I am an agnostic who tends towards naturalistic explanations for all phenomenon. I am obsessed with the following philosophical assertion.
1. All things that come into being have a cause.
2. The Universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.
This is an assertion made prominent apologists of Theism. It’s simplistic, but the answer has significant consequence. How does the Naturalist deal with this issue?
In anticipation of a definitional question. For the purposes of this assertion, cause simply means, to bring about.
So in the sense of the philosophical assertion advanced in the thread. What brought about the universe? And what brought about, whatever brought about the original cause? Does this never ending causation require an original supernatural cause?
I am not arguing for Theism, as I am not a Theist. I am an agnostic who tends towards naturalistic explanations for all phenomenon. I am obsessed with the following philosophical assertion.
1. All things that come into being have a cause.
2. The Universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.
This is an assertion made prominent apologists of Theism. It’s simplistic, but the answer has significant consequence. How does the Naturalist deal with this issue?
In anticipation of a definitional question. For the purposes of this assertion, cause simply means, to bring about.
So in the sense of the philosophical assertion advanced in the thread. What brought about the universe? And what brought about, whatever brought about the original cause? Does this never ending causation require an original supernatural cause?
No reason or ever knowable reason….. Ask the same question of supernatural causes (god), it is an infinite regress, if they can just be then any cause of the universe can just be. Also, consider that the assumption implied in the question is that the default state is nothing, when there is no law or reason that it isn’t something….....
In modern cosmology speculations about beginnings often involve random quantum fluctuations. They just happen with no cause. (Google the term “quantum vacuum fluctuations.”
One possible way out of this conundrum is the many world’s hypothesis. But it’s very difficult to test. As is string theory.
Keep in mind their is no evidence god made the universe in any literal sense. No revealed religion gives credible evidence such a god is capable of doing that. It’s simply a deduction, perhaps valid, but only tentatively. Science is much more powerful than deduction.
God could have made the universe and I still wouldn’t join a religion. If god made this universe, he was very dumb and didn’t have us in mind. The evidence is the billions of years it took for us to get here. It was quite a long chore only in the context that human beings can and (one day will) do better. It certainly won’t be another million years before we understand the genome, heck, even ten thousand before humanity begins teraforming mars.
This is extremely easy to see if one is dissatisfied with one’s incompetent design and its limitations. But the religious want (or allow) limitations that require suffering and heartache. Faced with this dissonance between their own goal of self preservation or expanding human health, intelligence, and general ability, many perhaps most, would choose to make the world a better place for them, or certainly for their children.
Once the goal of expanding human health and intelligence is legitimate it will be very difficult to stop us as most people want to live long prosperous lives—even the religious.
I am not arguing for Theism, as I am not a Theist. I am an agnostic who tends towards naturalistic explanations for all phenomenon. I am obsessed with the following philosophical assertion.
One of the underlying assertions (part of the OS) should be:
There are things we don’t know, and there may very well be things we can’t know.
and,
Until/unless we find an answer with sufficient evidence and sound epistemology we must reserve judgment (accept it as an unknown).
Fear of the unknown motivates a whole lot of bad reasoning and false answers ... including much and perhaps most of religious dogma.
Further, even if the universe does have a cause, that is not evidence for any specific cause, and without evidence that suggests one specific cause, all suggestions are, again, assumptive and speculative. (And often times merely wishful thinking.)
And as Byron has pointed out above, “I/We don’t know.” is a perfectly acceptable answer to many questions.
Without any evidence for something outside the universe this argument is pointless, yet plausible. Definitions can skew the conclusion in any direction one chooses.
Besides, why a single cause for the most complex ‘object’ in existence?
Creation is not a word any theist or atheist can understand. The same can be said for the common definition of god. This lack of knowledge is strong evidence against a beginning cause (or causes) but doesn’t disprove it.
I concur: there are simply lots of things we do not know.
The problem lies in your initial assumption. How do you know that everything has a cause? Maybe somethings can happen without a cause.
Anyway, even if follow the initial assumption, you get to your third point: The universe has a cause. OK, so what, you still have absolutely no information about what that cause is. You have gotten yourself nowhere.
The theist takes that one step further and says that cause is God, totally ignoring the fact that until they mentioned it, God has not been presumed. They forget to add in the addition assumption: 4. - Anything that has a cause that is not known is caused by God.
Because we assume a cause and we assume the universe was caused….. then we assume a creator?
Don’t think so. Because we do not know or yet understand, does not make something divine or supernatural. That is indeed a leap of faith.
Many theists/creationists take the same approach with abiogenesis and the origins of life. They believe that complex molecules could not just assemble themselves and start replicating on their own without a cause or reason or design.
Hogwash of course. They simply do not try to understand thermodynamics and biochemistry.
As burt mentioned above, rapid fluctuations in vaccuum, known as the Casimir Effect, have in the lab produced sub-atomic particles…...out of basically ...nothing. No apparent cause. There is a lot of vaccuum in our universe. We have some ideas, but at this time we just don’t know for sure.
In modern cosmology speculations about beginnings often involve random quantum fluctuations. They just happen with no cause. (Google the term “quantum vacuum fluctuations.”
Yes, but while I have no problem understanding that they can happen in this universe, I don’t see how they are supposed to ‘happen’ in ‘no universe’. To ‘happen’ is to require the pre-existence of a continuum in which to happen, is it not?
In answer to MeThinks, I like this ‘explanation’ from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time:
“ A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
- But seriously, I think science cannot answer the question of the origin of all existence. The multiverse, D-Branes, etc. fail to answer that. At best, these speculative answers amount to a variation of “turtles all the way down”. Infinite regression
Why is there (and why was there) anything at all, rather than nothing?. Why does the universe persist? Well, that’s why I’m agnostic. I don’t know the answers, and I think they are unknowable.
theist: you have no explanation. God is therefore necessary.
Atheist: saying god did it doesn’t make it so. besides, what caused God??
theist: he is uncaused.
Atheist: hardly, the universe is a quantum object which through random quantum fluctuations came into existence.
Notice I am not saying one is wrong about applying this approach, just that is unconvincing to the theist.
It’s usually not a winning move to use the same moves of your opponent against them. This seems clever for those that already agree, but isn’t convincing at all to those who don’t.
To say science cannot understand the origin and causes of the universe is to proclaim special knowledge which one apparently does not posses. It’s wiser to be agnostic about the future of what we can know. For example, it is commonly believed human beings will never live past 120 years. But if one has a naturalist philosophy, it’s easy to see this is an imaginary limit. To proclaim it’s impossible requires very detailed knowledge of why….
and if one had that knowledge, the engineering necessary to fix the problem would result. So perhaps not a perfect analogy unless you think I might be implying one day we will make universes of our own!
eudemonia: there is no reason why god has to be supernatural. This isn’t an argument for Christianity—just some kind of ‘first mover’. Again, please don’t argue from ‘no apparent cause’—that is your ignorance (and everyone’s currently!) and shouldn’t be defended.
theist: you have no explanation. God is therefore necessary.
Atheist: saying god did it doesn’t make it so. besides, what caused God??
theist: he is uncaused.
Atheist: hardly, the universe is a quantum object which through random quantum fluctuations came into existence.
Notice I am not saying one is wrong about applying this approach, just that is unconvincing to the theist.
It’s the same claim as the theist in terms of the “first cause” question, actually—a case of asking the wrong question in search of an answer to a poorly understood (by anyone) phenomenon, if the term phenomenon can even be applied.
theist: you have no explanation. God is therefore necessary.
Atheist: saying god did it doesn’t make it so. besides, what caused God??
theist: he is uncaused.
Atheist: hardly, the universe is a quantum object which through random quantum fluctuations came into existence.
Notice I am not saying one is wrong about applying this approach, just that is unconvincing to the theist.
the argument is irrelevant to many theists (though not all). To continue the scenario:
agnostic: that may be an unprovable hypothesis, but supposing it’s true: tell me more about where this quantum fluctuation arose - in hyperspace, as a result of colliding D-Branes? So, D-Branes existed? And upon what turtle are the D-Branes resting?
Matthew_F - 13 July 2009 10:04 AM
It’s usually not a winning move to use the same moves of your opponent against them. This seems clever for those that already agree, but isn’t convincing at all to those who don’t.
I have no interest in winning moves. I’m not out to convince anyone that a God doesn’t exist. Maybe a God does exist, and maybe not. What’s true will remain true, irrespective of all dogmatic claims to certainty.
(Hey, maybe a God both exists and doesn’t exist, in the ultimate superposition. That would screw up a few debates)
Matthew_F - 13 July 2009 10:04 AM
To say science cannot understand the origin and causes of the universe is to proclaim special knowledge which one apparently does not posses.
There need be no limit to what scientists may eventually ‘know’ about THIS universe, and I’ll grant that, from that knowledge, scientists can draw inferences regarding other possible universes preceding and in parallel with this one. Inferences, such as in the Many Worlds explanation of quantum uncertainty, and the origin of a quantum singularity at the beginning of our space-time continuum. But inference is all there can be. Working hypotheses. What we have to play with are the laws of physics. The laws of physics of OUR universe.
Moreover, the explanations are unimportant from the metaphysical perspective.
eudemonia: there is no reason why god has to be supernatural. This isn’t an argument for Christianity—just some kind of ‘first mover’.
Well Matt….a ‘god’ who was a first mover would be outside the laws of known physics and then be ‘supernatural’ Of course if you want to play semantics we can say that the laws of the natural universe ARE ‘god’. But Pantheism is not Monotheism of course.
What exactly do you have in mind for a prime mover unmoved then?
That’s generally all quite reasonable Fred. It’s your business of course how you approach the problems religion poses. I don’t view infinity as a viable explanation for any process since there are 0 known infinities (ie models utilize infinities but the universe doesn’t contain any infinite quantities). The fact of their being 0 known infinities is quite remarkable in itself.
This is especially relevant when debating a theist which wants to generalize a proposed gods infinite property to doing something useful within the known universe! lol. But it’s also an empirical fact to the best of my knowledge.
——————-
Dear eudomonia, it turns out that before human beings knew how to fly, we used to attach feathers and beaks to our bodies and flap really hard while falling just as hard to the ground. There was nothing supernatural about flying - ever - even though we didn’t have the physical models. “outside the laws of physics” doesn’t ever mean outside reality. Reality has no boundary but models do. Theory exists within minds only. So I don’t mean to suggest a prime mover is outside any imaginary boundary. The belief that a natural (not supernatural) designer made this universe has other problems…but it is at least possible.
It really is possible for god to exist, just a more limited variety. It just turns out that its a very small chance and useless when it comes to defending traditional religion this way. A natural god isn’t a problem for atheists (as a hypothetical construct).
That’s generally all quite reasonable Fred. It’s your business of course how you approach the problems religion poses..
Well, yes - although I wasn’t discussing religion, only scientific and philosophical assertions relating to a possible God. How I approach the problems of religion is another matter.
