Can there be real causation for a material atheist?

[harvey1]

Here is my argument against material atheism:

1. If a material atheist world exists, then there must be a material cause for every effect; there can be no effect without a material cause.
2. Slicing up time to the minimum slices of time, we see there cannot be material causes that materially connects time slice A to its effect in time slice B.
3. Therefore, a material atheist world does not exist.

Based on this argument, can anyone show that it is possible for a material atheist world to exist?

[harvey1]

As far as I can see, so far nobody here has agreed with this premise. To imagine time as something that can be put on pause and then to challenge others to offer a real mechanism to press play again leads me to view this as a 'trick question'. What entitles you to present (as reality) a picture of a frozen cosmos in the first place?

That's fine. If you don't agree with that premise, then the argument becomes...

1. If a material atheist cause exists, there is some identifiable in principle event C that causes some identifiable in principle event E
2. There are no identifiable in principle events
3. There are no material atheist causes

According to (2), you cannot have identity of an event since according to your rejection of my previous premise, we cannot assume time has identifiable (even in principle) events. Therefore, rejecting my premise leads you to this argument, which again is reason to reject a material atheist world (i.e., if there are no material atheist causes then there can be no material atheist worlds).

[QED]

That's fine. If you don't agree with that premise, then the argument becomes...

1. If a material atheist cause exists, there is some identifiable in principle event C that causes some identifiable in principle event E
2. There are no identifiable in principle events
3. There are no material atheist causes

According to (2), you cannot have identity of an event since according to your rejection of my previous premise, we cannot assume time has identifiable (even in principle) events.

You must be joking. Time can't be arbitrarily put on hold as a challenge to others. Time simply goes on regardless. Events can still be identified as change over time. The fact that they mark-out points in time does not make time stop in need of something to kick it on again.

[Cathar1950]

What is a material atheist? I know what a Material Christians is I see them on tv all the time. I know what a Christian materialist is found in the Same place.I just wonder why Materialism wasn't just singled out and why Atheist was added.
Do what kind of events do Christians have?
Any one seen my time machine?

[Curious]

Hi again Harvey1, sorry I took a while to get back on this but duty called.

This polarisation filter statement really is a superfluous addition to the argument. The effect of the black hole on the photon, which changes it's course, is in fact repolarising the photon by changing its direction.

Why would the black hole necessarily cause the photon to "collapse" into one polarized state? If the photon is in superposition, I don't see how gravitational influence would cause it to do so.

The photon does not "collapse " into a polarised state by the effect of the black hole, it just has it's direction altered. Even photons in scattered light are polarised( just not all in the same direction) so when we pass it through a polarising filter we only allow, for example, east to west directed photons pass through, we then call this light east-west polarised. The arc that the photon traverses due to gravitational deflection (ie. attraction due to gravity) causes the photon to have a different direction at each point of the arc.

So you say some physicists think something so we should give credence to it? What about the physicists who don't agree, shall we give credence to them more or less? Saying somebody believes something really means nothing unless you tell me why they believe it.

We can talk about what a number of physicists believe, but I am not a physicist. So, what is the purpose of defending their work when it is beyond my ability to argue with you? This is similar to the circumstance I ran in with Spetey where he wanted to argue modal logic. The argument against Spetey was that philosophers accepted that one philosopher's modal logic was sound, so I don't feel I have to get in that technical discussion. All I have to do is demonstrate that there are enough professionals who believe something is possible, and with that I can say that there is nothing apparently wrong with discrete time from a physics point of view.

Now, that doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong with it from a philosophical perspective. And, I'm willing to discuss the philosophy of discrete time or indiscrete time, however that's not your argument. Your argument is that special relativity forbids discrete time, and I find that puzzling since brilliant people such as Lee Smolin think that this is the best way to solve a quantum theory of gravity. Is he just an idiot that has somehow been able to get published in physics journals with his theories? I would think that if the argument was so nailed shut like you suggest, then relativists such as Lee Smolin, Carlo Rovelli, Ted Jacobson, Roger Penrose and their ilk wouldn't get published and wouldn't be so ill-informed in backing loop geometries.

Firstly, I would not dream of calling anybody an idiot, secondly, I do not say that discrete time is forbidden by SR at all. My argument is that the use of discrete time cannot be used as a basis for the causality argument as one man's discrete time is another man's indiscrete time, this is what SR shows. We see with the photon example that even at it's most indivisible, time does not stop the photon reacting to external forces.
What we do know is that SR shows that time dilation and velocity (when calculated geometrically), strongly suggests a smooth ramp in relation to object velocity to C. Now I suppose if we see a graph, this apparent smoothness (if looked at on a computer screen) would be made up of pixels, and in this way it would be possible that a smooth ramp could be made up of very small gradations in time and/or velocity. Again though, if this was the case, it could just be the quantum energy levels that make it appear that there is a minimum passage in time from one state to the next, like trying to accelerate a car by throwing cricket balls at it. This does not mean that the time is limited to these discrete quanta, just that the physical system is made up of these units and is affected by these units.
The main problem as I see it requires an example so if you bear with me I will explain:
From the perspective of the universe, time can be thought of as a large square which encompasses all velocities from relative 0 to C. Within this square are innumerable other squares, each one having a distinct relative perspective of time. Now if event A occured in frame A (which consists of 10 minimum discrete passages) was replicated in frame B (which for the sake of argument I will say has time stretched so that it seems to last for 20 minimum discrete passages from the perspective of frame A), then this whole event would only last 10 passages (in fact that is what the event is) from the perspective of frame B.
So you see we have the problem that if we say that time is ultimately discrete it only appears so from the perspective of the particular frame in which it is observed. Now if the frame has velocity, it follows that there is the potential for observation outside this frame (from the frame it is relative 0) and therefore another discrete time value would be possible.
Of course then there is gravity, but as we were discussing SR, this is not relevant.

[harvey1]

You must be joking. Time can't be arbitrarily put on hold as a challenge to others. Time simply goes on regardless. Events can still be identified as change over time. The fact that they mark-out points in time does not make time stop in need of something to kick it on again.

That's not my argument here. If you reject that time can be sliced into exact moments (e.g., finite moments or infinitesimal moments), then that means that time cannot be sliced accordingly since any one particular event lacks an identity. However, that contradicts the view that an event causes another event.

[QED]

You must be joking. Time can't be arbitrarily put on hold as a challenge to others. Time simply goes on regardless. Events can still be identified as change over time. The fact that they mark-out points in time does not make time stop in need of something to kick it on again.

That's not my argument here. If you reject that time can be sliced into exact moments (e.g., finite moments or infinitesimal moments), then that means that time cannot be sliced accordingly since any one particular event lacks an identity. However, that contradicts the view that an event causes another event.

Sat next to me is a Tektronix TDS3014 digital oscilloscope (aren't I the lucky one) which can perform 1.25 Billion Samples per second so I'm not rejecting the fact that time can be sliced. I'm just saying it can't be stopped!

[harvey1]

Sat next to me is a Tektronix TDS3014 digital oscilloscope (aren't I the lucky one) which can perform 1.25 Billion Samples per second so I'm not rejecting the fact that time can be sliced. I'm just saying it can't be stopped!

The question, though, is if one of those samples is an actual event? If it is a real event, then that means it cannot be fine-grained so that this event washes away from all the smaller events that compose it. If it cannot be fine-grained away, then this is to say that it is a real event. In which case, my question is how does one an event that occurs within 1.25 billionth of a second cause the event that follows immediately afterward? If all such samples are easily fine-grained away, then there are no real events, in which case there are no causes (i.e., using a materialist interpretation).

Either way we approach this problem, the answer comes back the same: no material atheist causation.

[QED]

I'm sorry Harvey, but no matter how I try and look at your premise I simply can't make sense of it. Asking how one event (i.e. measured change) causes another seems ludicrous to me. The transfer of kinetic energy is caused by the exchange of photons travelling at a maximum of the cosmic speed limit c. If there was no speed limit everything in the cosmos would happen at once. Maybe it does (for the photon) but from our frame of reference it's all spaced-out.

[harvey1]

Asking how one event (i.e. measured change) causes another seems ludicrous to me. The transfer of kinetic energy is caused by the exchange of photons travelling at a maximum of the cosmic speed limit c. If there was no speed limit everything in the cosmos would happen at once. Maybe it does (for the photon) but from our frame of reference it's all spaced-out.

If no event causes another event, then why didn't you just say that you do not think that there is causation in the world?

[Cathar1950]

harvey1 wrote:

If no event causes another event, then why didn't you just say that you do not think that there is causation in the world?

harveyr1 didn't you start this thread? The whole Atheist materialism seems trumped up.
You could have just dealt with Materialism. for some reason you had to toss Atheism in the soup. Your trying to toss the bath water out with the baby. Not every one is done taking a bath.
i don't belive he is saying there is no causation in the world. that seems rather silly.
the problem is we don't know what causes anything until after it happens. There are many causes and many events.