God is transcendent, has free will and chooses to create the universe. An unconscious mechanism creates the universe.
Here I think you are saying that God’s ‘choice’ is the first cause? Well I still fail to see how this is any different from saying that the unconscious mechanisms action is the first cause.
My concern here is not over whether God is the first cause, but rather, his ability to cause even when given an eternal existence. The eternal mechanism in contrast seems casually impotent. I don’t see how it has the ability to start anything, and if it does, why hadn’t it happened before that point, given that it’s already had infinity go by in the past? I'll expand on these areas to be clear in the problems I see.
The Problems Facing an Eternal Mechanism (eternal in the same “just is” way as God)
- We need a definition of what your eternal mechanism is. What are you proposing? If it is immaterial and outside of time, what exactly is it?
- The only entities we know of which can posses the property of timelessness and immateriality are minds or abstract objects, like numbers.
- If, in objection, you want to claim that your eternal mechanism is incomprehensible or unable to be known, then it essentially becomes a meaningless proposition. Why are you even proposing that which you have no knowledge or understanding of (and more to the point, why should we take this as the most plausible explanation?)?
- If you were able to overcome these problems, you still need to give an account of how it is that your mechanism has casual power. Furthermore you need to explain how it can begin causing things when it had previously (that is, casually prior) existed eternally unchanged. What allows it to begin time if not a choice or decision? In my mind, any other explanation seems to indicate that time already existed.
The Problems Facing an Actually Infinite existence of the eternal mechanism (it has existed forever in time)
It is important first to realize that the term “actually infinite” is different from “potentially infinite”. When talking about an actual infinite, we are talking about a collection of definite and discrete members whose number is greater than any natural number. By contrast a potential infinite is a collection that is increasing toward infinity as a limit but never gets there.
The problem arises when traversing an actually infinite existence. In order for us to arrive at the moment of the “big bang”, temporal existence of the eternal mechanism has traversed an infinite number of prior events. As a result, when looking at how an event such as the big bang came we are driven back further and further into the infinite past making it impossible for any event to occur. Thus, if the series of past events does not have a beginning, the creation event could never come to be.
To see this, suppose we have just met a man who claims to have been counting down from infinity and is now finishing, “-3, -2, -1, 0”. One could ask, why didn’t he finish yesterday or the day before or the year before? After all, an infinite amount of time had already past so that he should have no problem finishing. As a result there is no point in the infinite past where we could find the man finishing his counting as he should have already finished. Similarly, there is no point in the infinite past were we should find the big bang occurring, since given an infinite past, it should have already occurred.
The only out for you that I can see is if you were to adopt a
B-Theory (or tenseless) view of time.
Asking what causes the mechanism to create the universe is no different than asking what causes God to have free will, as far as I can see.
I see these as quite distinctly different. We are not examining how necessary beings have the properties that they have (after all if they are necessary there need be no explanation of how they attained their properties). Rather we are examining how the properties they do have allow them to carry out what we propose they do. My objection is that given your eternal mechanisms properties (or lack thereof) I see it as casually impotent and unable to cause anything when placed in the scenario of existing necessarily and eternally. Why should it cause anything and how does it do this? Without a mind, how is it not bound to exist as it always has for all eternity? What causes the change in behaviour?
I believe in quantum physics (and even, due to a fairly recent example in classical physics) you can have events which do not have a cause.
Interesting reading there – I wish I had a greater knowledge of physics to do it justice in investigation. Nevertheless I don’t think it’s really needed for my part.
Just quickly, this response didn’t really answer my original question. I was asking for an explanation of how particles coming into existence during the big bang is similar to how your mechanism brings the universe into being. Linking an example of motion without causation in classical physics leaves me with more questions than answers
Back to your original point though, if we extrapolate these findings essentially you seem to be saying that: “Since we have examples of events without causation, it is entirely possible that the universe could come into existence uncaused”. Firstly, I’m surprised that you would go this way. What purpose does your eternal mechanism now have if the universe can come into existence without a cause?
Secondly, I think there is a big difference between some event being uncaused and something coming into being uncaused. In the first, we are looking at an event within a pre-existing environment whilst in the second we are looking at something coming from nothing. The second I think we should be very wary of given our metaphysical intuition that something does not come from nothing – a principle which is confirmed everyday in our experience of life. It’s amusing to me that we have essentially transitioned from a teleological argument to a cosmological one. The Kalam Cosmological Argument seems to tie together some of the points we’ve been discussing.
Kalam Cosmological Argument:
1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2) The universe began to exist
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause
I mean once God has created let’s say, the singularity from which space-time emerges does he necessarily have to be involved for the rest of the universe to work? If not, you can surely see that there are unconscious processes which lead to creation.
Nope he doesn’t necessarily have to be involved and sure, there are unconscious processes which lead to creation. The difference, of course, between these unconscious processes we observe and your mechanism is that they all contingently depend on the other processes and causes prior to them. Essentially they all come back to the big bang.
What I mean is that, if you are accept there was no need for a God after the beginning of time to steer processes along then surely you can see that there are some natural processes which create (for instance the early universe forming new elements). An obvious answer to this is to say, “well sure I accept that – but this begs the question because they are only really natural if we can say that they weren’t started without a God” – I hope the way both camps can beg the question there is obvious.
I think a theist can maintain that processes are natural even if God was the cause of the big bang. This is because when one says natural, it usually means that it is in accordance with the laws we observe within the universe.
But logically you believe in cause and effect, yet we have examples of things which seem to happen without cause?
The examples you cited didn’t show coming into existence without a cause, but nevertheless I don’t regard this as logic anyhow. I regard those as metaphysical intuitions.
Why must we assume there was a cause?
Because this is one of the most commonly affirmed and observed metaphysical intuitions we have. I think it’s certainly more plausible than its negation. If one wants to deny that whatever begins to exist needs a cause, then they must make sense of why anything and everything doesn’t just pop into existence.
Furthermore, could you provide me with some examples of what you believe is “transcendental logic”?
Sure, some logical impossibilities include “married bachelors” and “round squares”. Logical rules will probably fit in here to, ie.
modus ponens,
modus tollens,
hypothetical syllogism etc.
Also on this note, I think mathematics will be in a similar position ie 1 + 1 will always equal 2. I should note that we are not simply playing semantics here. It doesn’t make sense to say that in one possible world “2” is in fact equal to our “5”. This would confuse the issue because we are addressing the truth of the equation and not the particular symbols used to do so.
Well, if you dig deep enough sure there is an element of chance.... but isn’t there still a chance when dealing with a God with free will? I mean, a God with free will isn’t necessarily going to create our universe. By this standard I believe my mechanism which skips free will is better as there is no chance component.
You’re confusing the reasons we are talking about chance here. Our original reason for discussing chance was in regard to the teleological argument when looking at one of the factors which could have been responsible for the fine tuning. This, of course, is different from the God hypothesis since God is able to overcome any improbabilities logged against pure chance by having intelligence that can simply design the universe we observe.
Onto the next point, I don’t think it makes good sense to talk about God’s free willed choice in terms of chance as it’s not as though there are probabilities involved. He simply chooses freely to create our universe. He was able to do otherwise but this doesn’t equate to meaning that there is any chance or probability involved for him in doing so – it is a choice and not chance at its basic level.
I think part of the confusion may stem from the fact that we often say things like, “there is a chance that person x will do action y”. What I think we mean is that we can see some reason/s for x doing y and hence it becomes reasonable to think that x may choose to do y. However, what we don’t mean is literally that there is (say) an 80% chance that x will do y – our minds don’t operate like the flip of a coin or the roll of a die. We simply make a choice based on the relevant factors involved.
