The First Cause Argument

[McCulloch]

The First Cause Argument
Simply stated this argument asserts that everything in the universe has a cause, therefore there must be an ultimate cause. If the universe has a beginning then there must be something outside it that brought it into existence. This being outside the universe, this Creator, the first cause argument tells us, is God.
Is this a valid proof of the existence of God?

[McCulloch]

Does existence necessarily imply creation? If so, then your argument about God would then dissolve into: either God always existed or a multiverse always existed. And that would be my position.

And this is where I believe, the first arguement leaves us. Either God has always existed (Theism, Deism) or the universe or multiver has always existed (pantheism).

[harvey1]

Now this I totally agree with. It's the way you conclude this to be God and his will that I am struggling to understand... I appreciate your dislike of the potential for multiple instances of universes -- despite the natural extension they represent to the way things are in this particular universe. But either way it seems plain to me that the only will that might be the driving force behind causation is existence. To me such a will would not be particularly fussy about what gets created.

Well, first off, this is God regardless how personable this God is. Again, we are not talking about a brute fact in the sense that this logic of existence could be something other than it is. We are talking about a logical reaction of this fundamental aspect of existence that brings about anything. That is separate from the stuff of the universe, and therefore cannot fit into an atheist conception. A more accurate description would probably be pantheism.

Secondly, what you are missing is that everything that occurs in the universe is supervised by this logical reaction. We have a great deal of evidence from quantum mechanics and even relativity theory that this logical reaction supervises how information is transmitted and processed. For example, we can send a signal many times faster than light, but we cannot send a signal with information faster than light. If we were to do so, we could disrupt the logic of the universe in major ways (e.g., send messages into the past to our grandparents not to give birth to our parents, etc.). In QM the issue is even much more pronounced. The logical reaction, for example, can teleport atoms, keep track of entangled atoms across time and space, keep certain signals unmeasurable if the experimenter is playing with quantum erasure techniques, etc., etc.. This logical reaction is downright smart, not to mention omnipotent and omniscient. I see no reason to limit this feature to something that is plain stupid given the evidence of the physical constants being "just so." In addition, the fact that all of these miracles of life exist at all considering how impossible it would be for us to ever discover a cellular automata (CA) to imitate the behavior of the universe from simple instructions is all the evidence we need for full-blown theism.

Again, I say this all gets back to early childhood experiences of atheists who faced something early that caused them to reject the goodness of God. I really think that theist discussions should be more about that, but we can all go on foolilng ourselves that the atheist emperor has clothes.

[harvey1]

In other words, why is anything in any state at all? If we knew nothing about the pen previously, we might assume that it had the inherent ability to do so. If we were to bop along and come across object X, and knew nothing about object X, then why would we assume that a particular cause was necessarily the reason for it being in its state? Would we even know what "state" meant at that point? For all we know, object X is an uncaused cause. Without a reference point, we would have nothing to compare its current state with, not even its creation. The pen analogy does not work because we know what a pen is, how it's supposed to behave in a gravity environment such as we are in.

Sure, we don't know if X is in the state it is supposed to be in, but we still assume there is a rational reason for it to be in that state versus some other state. What you are saying, in effect, is that there might be an irrational reason why X is in it's X-state. What I'm saying is that this is no different on a pen being in an irrational state. Just because we know how it is supposed to behave does not make the analogy irrelevant. We just happen to know what causes a pen to be in a state where it should rest on some surface (i.e., gravity). If we didn't know what causes that state, we still assume that there is something that causes the state. That is my point. You are changing tune with respect to the universe by saying that it may not have a cause. If it doesn't have a cause, then it is an irrational event. If irrational events are possible, then they are always possible for any occurrence in the universe. However, you seem to want to say that this restriction to an irrational event can be just one occurrence (i.e., the origin of the universe). True, but what restricts an irrational event to just one occurrence? You just admitted that irrational events can happen, and therefore there is nothing about the nature of reality that prevents them. They should be occurring all the time (or, there shouldn't be any rational occurrences at all if we followed that reasoning to its natural implications).

You argue that a multiverse must have a cause because it has a state that we can recognize. And I say, "Oh, really?" And what state is that? Does existence necessarily imply creation? If so, then your argument about God would then dissolve into: either God always existed or a multiverse always existed. And that would be my position.

No. I say the (multi/uni)verse must have a cause because I think allowance of irrational events is irrational thinking. You could use that same thinking to justify any event. "Science can't explain it? Well, just use the same irrational event stuff that we're using over here to explain the existence of the universe. Works fine for me."

[harvey1]

I'd like to hear how an uncaused universe is irrational but an uncaused God is rational.

Read my response to QED who asked this question earlier today.

[Being1]

I agree that everything has a cause. I don't think, however, that it is logical to say that if the universe has a beginning then there must be something outside it that brought it into existence. Why should this Causal Creative Being - God - always be seen as something separate to existence? I am the cause of many of the experiences that I have in my life, but I am not separate from them. They are a part of me, and together it is the totality of what I am. Surely it is more logical to apply this experiential knowledge to the bigger picture?

Yes, but you, yourself are a caused being. If you say that the First Cause, is part of the caused universe, then it, being part of everything must have had a cause. You say that everything has a cause, therefore the God, if it exists and is to be included in the set you call everything, must have a cause. Where did your God come from? The standard theological answer is that God always has been. God is uncaused. Therefore, God is not to be included in the set of all caused things.

Yes I say that every thing has a cause, but what I am and what God is, is not a thing. What would you say that you are? You are more than a body, which is a thing. You are in essence, let's see, what word might be comfortable for you?... consciousness? spirit? You cannot observe this or measure it. The scientist cannot play with it or debate about it all really. The standard theological answer is still pretty good... God always has been. I know that this explanation is pretty empty to the inquiring, clever mind, but that is because it is in the realm where the mind cannot go. Only direct experience can help us here.

[Curious]

The First Cause Argument
Simply stated this argument asserts that everything in the universe has a cause, therefore there must be an ultimate cause. If the universe has a beginning then there must be something outside it that brought it into existence. This being outside the universe, this Creator, the first cause argument tells us, is God.
Is this a valid proof of the existence of God?

The argument would make sense except for the fact that everything in the universe does not have a cause or can be shown to have a cause. Energy has no cause and it is this that makes up all we see around us. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only borrowed and/or converted. So we have an example of something known to be completely uncaused with the potential of being converted into everything we see in the universe. So why exactly look for something else using an argument that is based on a false premise?

[harvey1]

The argument would make sense except for the fact that everything in the universe does not have a cause or can be shown to have a cause. Energy has no cause and it is this that makes up all we see around us. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only borrowed and/or converted. So we have an example of something known to be completely uncaused with the potential of being converted into everything we see in the universe. So why exactly look for something else using an argument that is based on a false premise?

Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems show that our universe cannot be of infinite age.

[Tim the Skeptic]

Harvey 1 wrote:

If it doesn't have a cause, then it is an irrational event.

So is God an irrational event?

Or must God exist because Existence without a cause is an irrational event? God doesn't have a cause, so is an irrational event (God) the cause of a rational event (the Universe)

And where did the definitions of rational and irrational come from?

[Curious]

The argument would make sense except for the fact that everything in the universe does not have a cause or can be shown to have a cause. Energy has no cause and it is this that makes up all we see around us. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only borrowed and/or converted. So we have an example of something known to be completely uncaused with the potential of being converted into everything we see in the universe. So why exactly look for something else using an argument that is based on a false premise?

Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems show that our universe cannot be of infinite age.

Infinite age assumes infinite time. Also, there is no reason why a universe is more likely to be a trillion years old, a billion years old or a second old. The only thing that sets the age of the universe is the time it has previously existed for. This particular universal configuration need not even be the first attempt and need not necessarily be the last. So how exactly do these theorems have any bearing on my original postulation?

[harvey1]

This particular universal configuration need not even be the first attempt and need not necessarily be the last. So how exactly do these theorems have any bearing on my original postulation?

The theorems show that there is no configuration of energy-matter where General Relativity does not require a singularity in the past. Therefore, it is not possible, according to the theorem, for the matter-energy to exist indefinitely in the past. Your argument was that matter-energy "can be neither created nor destroyed but only borrowed and/or converted" and this is not true indefinitely in the past. There was a time when matter-energy had no prior history (according to these theorems), otherwise known as the big bang.