The God Hypothesis

[The Duke of Vandals]

The following is from Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion:

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/dawkins06/d ... index.html

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Stephen Jay Gould's 'NOMA' 'non-overlapping magisteria'. Gould claimed that science and true religion never come into conflict because they exist in completely separate dimensions of discourse:

To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists.

This sounds terrific, right up until you give it a moment's thought. You then realize that the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science. A universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference. God could clinch the matter in his favour at any moment by staging a spectacular demonstration of his powers, one that would satisfy the exacting standards of science. Even the infamous Templeton Foundation recognized that God is a scientific hypothesis by funding double-blind trials to test whether remote prayer would speed the recovery of heart patients. It didn't, of course, although a control group who knew they had been prayed for tended to get worse (how about a class action suit against the Templeton Foundation?) Despite such well-financed efforts, no evidence for God's existence has yet appeared.

To see the disingenuous hypocrisy of religious people who embrace NOMA, imagine that forensic archeologists, by some unlikely set of circumstances, discovered DNA evidence demonstrating that Jesus was born of a virgin mother and had no father. If NOMA enthusiasts were sincere, they should dismiss the archeologists' DNA out of hand: "Irrelevant. Scientific evidence has no bearing on theological questions. Wrong magisterium." Does anyone seriously imagine that they would say anything remotely like that? You can bet your boots that not just the fundamentalists but every professor of theology and every bishop in the land would trumpet the archeological evidence to the skies.

Either Jesus had a father or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it. The same is true of any miracle and the deliberate and intentional creation of the universe would have to have been the mother and father of all miracles. Either it happened or it didn't. It is a fact, one way or the other, and in our state of uncertainty we can put a probability on it an estimate that may change as more information comes in. Humanity's best estimate of the probability of divine creation dropped steeply in 1859 when The Origin of Species was published, and it has declined steadily during the subsequent decades, as evolution consolidated itself from plausible theory in the nineteenth century to established fact today.

....

Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis whose truth or falsehood is hidden from us only by lack of evidence, what should be our best estimate of the probability that God exists, given the evidence now available? Pretty low I think, and here's why.

First, most of the traditional arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished. Several of them, such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself. To be sure, we do need some kind of explanation for the origin of all things. Physicists and cosmologists are hard at work on the problem. But whatever the answer a random quantum fluctuation or a Hawking/Penrose singularity or whatever we end up calling it it will be simple. Complex, statistically improbable things, by definition, don't just happen; they demand an explanation in their own right. They are impotent to terminate regresses, in a way that simple things are not. The first cause cannot have been an intelligence let alone an intelligence that answers prayers and enjoys being worshipped. Intelligent, creative, complex, statistically improbable things come late into the universe, as the product of evolution or some other process of gradual escalation from simple beginnings. They come late into the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.

Another of Aquinas' efforts, the Argument from Degree, is worth spelling out, for it epitomises the characteristic flabbiness of theological reasoning. We notice degrees of, say, goodness or temperature, and we measure them, Aquinas said, by reference to a maximum:

Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus, as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things . . . Therefore, there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

That's an argument? You might as well say that people vary in smelliness but we can make the judgment only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion. That's theology.

The only one of the traditional arguments for God that is widely used today is the teleological argument, sometimes called the Argument from Design although since the name begs the question of its validity it should better be called the Argument for Design. It is the familiar 'watchmaker' argument, which is surely one of the most superficially plausible bad arguments ever discovered and it is rediscovered by just about everybody until they are taught the logical fallacy and Darwin's brilliant alternative.

In the familiar world of human artifacts, complicated things that look designed are designed. To nave observers, it seems to follow that similarly complicated things in the natural world that look designed things like eyes and hearts are designed too. It isn't just an argument by analogy. There is a semblance of statistical reasoning here too fallacious, but carrying an illusion of plausibility. If you randomly scramble the fragments of an eye or a leg or a heart a million times, you'd be lucky to hit even one combination that could see, walk or pump. This demonstrates that such devices could not have been put together by chance. And of course, no sensible scientist ever said they could. Lamentably, the scientific education of most British and American students omits all mention of Darwinism, and therefore the only alternative to chance that most people can imagine is design.

Even before Darwin's time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter, as David Hume realized before Darwin was born. What Hume didn't know was the supremely elegant alternative to both chance and design that Darwin was to give us. Natural selection is so stunningly powerful and elegant, it not only explains the whole of life, it raises our consciousness and boosts our confidence in science's future ability to explain everything else.

Natural selection is not just an alternative to chance. It is the only ultimate alternative ever suggested. Design is a workable explanation for organized complexity only in the short term. It is not an ultimate explanation, because designers themselves demand an explanation. If, as Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel once playfully speculated, life on this planet was deliberately seeded by a payload of bacteria in the nose cone of a rocket, we still need an explanation for the intelligent aliens who dispatched the rocket. Ultimately they must have evolved by gradual degrees from simpler beginnings. Only evolution, or some kind of gradualistic 'crane' (to use Daniel Dennett's neat term), is capable of terminating the regress. Natural selection is an anti-chance process, which gradually builds up complexity, step by tiny step. The end product of this ratcheting process is an eye, or a heart, or a brain a device whose improbable complexity is utterly baffling until you spot the gentle ramp that leads up to it.

Whether my conjecture is right that evolution is the only explanation for life in the universe, there is no doubt that it is the explanation for life on this planet. Evolution is a fact, and it is among the more secure facts known to science. But it had to get started somehow. Natural selection cannot work its wonders until certain minimal conditions are in place, of which the most important is an accurate system of replication DNA, or something that works like DNA.

The origin of life on this planet which means the origin of the first self-replicating molecule is hard to study, because it (probably) only happened once, 4 billion years ago and under very different conditions from those with which we are familiar. We may never know how it happened. Unlike the ordinary evolutionary events that followed, it must have been a genuinely very improbable in the sense of unpredictable event: too improbable, perhaps, for chemists to reproduce it in the laboratory or even devise a plausible theory for what happened. This weirdly paradoxical conclusion that a chemical account of the origin of life, in order to be plausible, has to be implausible would follow if it were the case that life is extremely rare in the universe. And indeed we have never encountered any hint of extraterrestrial life, not even by radio the circumstance that prompted Enrico Fermi's cry: "Where is everybody?"

Suppose life's origin on a planet took place through a hugely improbable stroke of luck, so improbable that it happens on only one in a billion planets. The National Science Foundation would laugh at any chemist whose proposed research had only a one in a hundred chance of succeeding, let alone one in a billion. Yet, given that there are at least a billion billion planets in the universe, even such absurdly low odds as these will yield life on a billion planets. And this is where the famous anthropic principle comes in Earth has to be one of them, because here we are.

If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible. But if you are alive (as you manifestly are if you are about to step into a spaceship) you needn't bother to go looking for that one planet because, by definition, you are already standing on it. The anthropic principle really is rather elegant. By the way, I don't actually think the origin of life was as improbable as all that. I think the galaxy has plenty of islands of life dotted about, even if the islands are too spaced out for any one to hope for a meeting with any other. My point is only that, given the number of planets in the universe, the origin of life could in theory be as lucky as a blindfolded golfer scoring a hole in one. The beauty of the anthropic principle is that, even in the teeth of such stupefying odds against, it still gives us a perfectly satisfying explanation for life's presence on our own planet.

The anthropic principle is usually applied not to planets but to universes. Physicists have suggested that the laws and constants of physics are too good as if the universe were set up to favour our eventual evolution. It is as though there were, say, half a dozen dials representing the major constants of physics. Each of the dials could in principle be tuned to any of a wide range of values. Almost all of these knob-twiddlings would yield a universe in which life would be impossible. Some universes would fizzle out within the first picosecond. Others would contain no elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. In yet others, matter would never condense into stars (and you need stars in order to forge the elements of chemistry and hence life). You can estimate the very low odds against the six knobs all just happening to be correctly tuned, and conclude that a divine knob-twiddler must have been at work. But, as we have already seen, that explanation is vacuous because it begs the biggest question of all. The divine knob twiddler would himself have to have been at least as improbable as the settings of his knobs.

Again, the anthropic principle delivers its devastatingly neat solution. Physicists already have reason to suspect that our universe everything we can see is only one universe among perhaps billions. Some theorists postulate a multiverse of foam, where the universe we know is just one bubble. Each bubble has its own laws and constants. Our familiar laws of physics are parochial bylaws. Of all the universes in the foam, only a minority has what it takes to generate life. And, with anthropic hindsight, we obviously have to be sitting in a member of that minority, because, well, here we are, aren't we? As physicists have said, it is no accident that we see stars in our sky, for a universe without stars would also lack the chemical elements necessary for life. There may be universes whose skies have no stars: but they also have no inhabitants to notice the lack. Similarly, it is no accident that we see a rich diversity of living species: for an evolutionary process that is capable of yielding a species that can see things and reflect on them cannot help producing lots of other species at the same time. The reflective species must be surrounded by an ecosystem, as it must be surrounded by stars.

The anthropic principle entitles us to postulate a massive dose of luck in accounting for the existence of life on our planet. But there are limits. We are allowed one stroke of luck for the origin of evolution, and perhaps for a couple of other unique events like the origin of the eukaryotic cell and the origin of consciousness. But that's the end of our entitlement to large-scale luck. We emphatically cannot invoke major strokes of luck to account for the illusion of design that glows from each of the billion species of living creature that have ever lived on Earth. The evolution of life is a general and continuing process, producing essentially the same result in all species, however different the details.

Contrary to what is sometimes alleged, evolution is a predictive science. If you pick any hitherto unstudied species and subject it to minute scrutiny, any evolutionist will confidently predict that each individual will be observed to do everything in its power, in the particular way of the species plant, herbivore, carnivore, nectivore or whatever it is to survive and propagate the DNA that rides inside it. We won't be around long enough to test the prediction but we can say, with great confidence, that if a comet strikes Earth and wipes out the mammals, a new fauna will rise to fill their shoes, just as the mammals filled those of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And the range of parts played by the new cast of life's drama will be similar in broad outline, though not in detail, to the roles played by the mammals, and the dinosaurs before them, and the mammal-like reptiles before the dinosaurs. The same rules are predictably being followed, in millions of species all over the globe, and for hundreds of millions of years. Such a general observation requires an entirely different explanatory principle from the anthropic principle that explains one-off events like the origin of life, or the origin of the universe, by luck. That entirely different principle is natural selection.

We explain our existence by a combination of the anthropic principle and Darwin's principle of natural selection. That combination provides a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable.[/indent]

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Do you agree that the question of god'e existence is a scientific one? If not, how do you justify this? Do you support Dawkins' stance?

Discuss.

[WelshBoy]

Is there a reason you're ignoring the points I raised in the second post of mine to this thread?

Best just to repost the points duke, rather than assuming they're being 'ignored'. There's a lot of text and a myriad of posts on this site, it's very easy to miss things.

[MrWhy]

There are dozens of reasons why the universe had a beginning. Tell you what. Instead of me taking time and effort to prove something which is accepted by every single scientists I know, have read, or have heard speak, how about you offer an alternative and ANYTHING (I'll even remove the demand of "evidence" for you) supporting this alternative.

I move that the court accept the scientifically accepted fact that the universe had a beginning. Any objections?

Last evenings chicken dinner had a beginning. We have theories and facts about the chickens beginning. We may assume the universe had a beginning, but we have no theory on that beginning. Any speculation or hypothesis about that beginning is just that.

Is there not is a problem using words like "cause" and "beginning" to discuss a "before time" state? There seems to be some critical component missing before this can be sensibly discussed.

So we are left with the multiverse as an un-testable option. We also have the "god" theory which is un-testable from our limitations. However, if God interjects himself into his creation, THEN and only at that moment in time, can we test this theory. I submit that one such time was about 2000 years ago in the form of Jesus of Nazareth.

Not a theory unless there's evidence. Too many have claimed to have some special relationship with a god. None have any evidence or testability.

Therefore we are left with philosophy, history and other "sciences" to answer this question. I would submit that history would indicate a all encompassing being encountering this universe in a variety of ways. So I submit that since we have something (even if it as weak as almost nothing at all) supporting "god" and nothing supporting the alternate theory, that the more likely solution (for NOW, not forever) is God.

What you suggest are empty alternatives, and you left out another, more reasonable, option. We don't have a clue. Due to the complete absence of evidence, I suggest "We don't have a clue" is currently the only reasonable answer to the ultimate question.

Ah from a science point you are correct. However, just because science doesn't know . . . . does this automatically mean God can't exist or that he didn't create the universe, even through methods we will someday discover?

You could take the position that anything is possible, but why would anyone pick some "just possible" idea and build a life guiding/limiting philosophy on it? There is a reason humans latch onto such ideas, but the reason may not be a compliment to our image.

[The Duke of Vandals]

Ah from a science point you are correct. However, just because science doesn't know . . . . does this automatically mean God can't exist or that he didn't create the universe, even through methods we will someday discover?

Your ability to conceptualize a thing does not evidence that thing nor prove it possible.

What our examination here means is that we can discard the god hypothesis as an explanation of how the universe formed. Without evidence, the claim "god is real" is false.

[QED]

As of right NOW, we are unable to test multiverses. We do not have this ability. So as of right NOW a single universe is the most plausible option.

But even if we go along with this logic, we really ought to declare our assumption when making profound teleological declarations on the basis of it -- and besides, we have no idea what extent this supposedly "single universe" has. We know for certain that there is more to it than can be observed. This could easily be another route to the necessary state-space required to account for the appearance of fine-tuning.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that the multiverse or eternal inflationary universe etc. are all hypotheses providing alternative explanations for the appearance of design that we perceive in our (part of) the universe.

This is besides the point. My original point was that right now, a single universe has been shown to be true. The origin of the universe is fairly well known and accepted. . . . . . .




I just had a thought. . . .


The existence of other universes doesn't really matter. It is a God of Gaps argument. And I fell for it.







Even if there were 100,000,000,000,000,000 other universes, it doesn't impact God, or the creation of this universe one little bit because the HOW, while interesting, doesn't negate the why.


And I fell for it.



LOL




Anyway, so I don't leave us all hanging, right now a single universe is more likely than a multiverse. But either way, it doesn't matter for an openminded Christian.

By this I presume that you mean an "open-minded Christian" could see more of the glory of God in the revealing of his methods. But this is what I don't understand: if the "task of design" is left to the opening of larger and larger probabilistic state-spaces and the Anthropic Principle, then surely it distances us more and more from the idea that we're the whole object of creation? I thought that this was the foundation of Christianity.

[Cathar1950]

Even if there were 100,000,000,000,000,000 other universes, it doesn't impact God, or the creation of this universe one little bit because the HOW, while interesting, doesn't negate the why.

That seems to be a problem to me.
If it doesn't impact God what is the point?
As I recall the Bible says God created for his own good pleasure.
Yet Christian thinking has God outside of time and space.
What is the Christian going to do if there is a God for every one of these universes?
Is there going to be a Jesus hanging on a cross for every universe because there is a blood thirsty God of the gaps upset that his creatures being like the gods knows (experiences) good and evil and failed to obey some rule that says don't eat the fruit? Then it seems they fear man will eat of the other tree and live forever?
My impression is that Paul's faith was in vain while Paul's false sense of humility was vain. After the mythical flood the gods loved the smell of the burned offering and decided not to kill all the life on the planet again.

[achilles12604]

As of right NOW, we are unable to test multiverses. We do not have this ability. So as of right NOW a single universe is the most plausible option.

But even if we go along with this logic, we really ought to declare our assumption when making profound teleological declarations on the basis of it -- and besides, we have no idea what extent this supposedly "single universe" has. We know for certain that there is more to it than can be observed. This could easily be another route to the necessary state-space required to account for the appearance of fine-tuning.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that the multiverse or eternal inflationary universe etc. are all hypotheses providing alternative explanations for the appearance of design that we perceive in our (part of) the universe.

This is besides the point. My original point was that right now, a single universe has been shown to be true. The origin of the universe is fairly well known and accepted. . . . . . .




I just had a thought. . . .


The existence of other universes doesn't really matter. It is a God of Gaps argument. And I fell for it.







Even if there were 100,000,000,000,000,000 other universes, it doesn't impact God, or the creation of this universe one little bit because the HOW, while interesting, doesn't negate the why.


And I fell for it.



LOL




Anyway, so I don't leave us all hanging, right now a single universe is more likely than a multiverse. But either way, it doesn't matter for an openminded Christian.

By this I presume that you mean an "open-minded Christian" could see more of the glory of God in the revealing of his methods. But this is what I don't understand: if the "task of design" is left to the opening of larger and larger probabilistic state-spaces and the Anthropic Principle, then surely it distances us more and more from the idea that we're the whole object of creation? I thought that this was the foundation of Christianity.

For some Christians you are absolutly correct. I am about to marry a woman who went to a high school which taught YEC. Many of these individuals would lose their faith if their traditional creation was proven false (in their opinions). In fact while snooping in the outer darkness I read cephus reason for de-conversion. It revolved around this very thing.

However, my central post for Christianity is the man of Jesus. This is my foundation. His life, ministry, death and resurrection are my foundation. So I don't really care how God decided to create things. He could have been as direct as to place every detail with his "finger" or as removed as the watchmaker idea. It doesn't matter because this belief isn't going to save or condemn me.

[achilles12604]

Is there a reason you're ignoring the points I raised in the second post of mine to this thread?

My apologies. I missed it. I will hit it now.

First is the accusation that Dawkins is arrogant. While I can see where the more thin-skinned theist may take umbrage with his assertions, arrogance isn't the correct descriptor for Dawkins. Arrogance would imply exaggeration of his own worth which we don't see in his writings. He doesn't employ the word "I" (the hallmark of the arrogant) nearly enough. It was Dawkins who coined the term meme which offers us another option beyond "theists are stupid / atheists are stubborn".

Having read his work, I can agree that Dawkins is arrogant. His arrogance does not stem from his assertion that he is always right. His arrogance is his condescending statements and his tendency to be sure everyone else is dead wrong.

Dawkins, in an earlier chapter of the book, describes how religion is given an "off-limits" status in our society. We can argue about politics, the weather, sports, current events or the hairstyles (or lack there of...) of white trash celebrities... but when the topic of god comes up, debate is stamped out under the auspice of not wanting to hurt someone's feelings (or what have you). Dawkins challenges this strange habit. WHY is it bad or wrong to talk about religion? Why is it wrong to challenge it or hold it to the same scrutiny we would give to the actions of a political party?

What you are describing are the actions of Campus Crusades, World Evangelical Alliance, World Vision, Billy Graham, etc. None of these groups shy away from discussing religion although they do take the opposing viewpoint. Besides, if Debate about religions is Taboo, what do you make of the 184766 discussion and debating forums in yahoo
alone?

In my opinion if someone is close minded about debating religion, leave them alone. They are probably easier to deal with if you havent angered them to begin with.

Second, I see a lot of misconceptions about the stance of theists and atheists. Let us look at an analogy now: Instead of "How did the universe form?" let's draw a parallel to "how did that heavy statue get onto that high ledge on the side of that rock wall?"

Sally the atheist and Jim the theist are going rock climbing in the wilderness. They arrive at their destination in the middle of nowhere and find a massive statue at the top of their rock ledge. They agree the statue must weigh a few tons. They're both baffled as to how it could have arrived where it is.

Sally, as an atheist, suggests it was lifted by a crane. Cranes are understood, have parts which allow them to raise heavy loads and adequately explain how the object could have been lifted without requiring further explanations.

Jim, as a theist, suggests the statue was lifted by a skyhook. A skyhook is something Jim invented which has attributes that allow it to account for the unknown they now face. It hangs in the sky supported by nothing and magically lifts heavy objects onto high places.

Jim's explanation is fatally flawed because we have no evidence that skyhooks are possible. Things don't magically hang in the sky and without evidence it's clear that Jim has simply invented something to explain what he doesn't understand. Worse, his invention requires a tremendous amount of explanation. HOW does a skyhook hang in the sky? Who made it? What powers it? Where did it come from and where is it now?

Because of these flaws in his argument, Jim's explanation is no different from saying "The statue magically lifted up to where it is now."

I disagree with your analogy. I think a better one would be Jim and Sally find the statue on the wall. (the universe) They ponder how it got up on the wall since this is a unique occurrence in their experience.

They both know about cranes. (big bang/multiverse/whatever method you want) Salley suggests that it was put up there with a crane. Jim also realizes that a crane was the most likely method for the statue to have been raised up there. Jim adds however that he is aware of a construction outfit working right in that area. He has read reports about this company and knows about their reason for doing this sort of thing. (God's desire for his creation)

Therefore he suggests that it was this company who used the crane to put the statue on the wall.


This is the belief I hold along with scientists like Falk and Collins.

[achilles12604]

Even if there were 100,000,000,000,000,000 other universes, it doesn't impact God, or the creation of this universe one little bit because the HOW, while interesting, doesn't negate the why.

That seems to be a problem to me.
If it doesn't impact God what is the point?
As I recall the Bible says God created for his own good pleasure.
Yet Christian thinking has God outside of time and space.
What is the Christian going to do if there is a God for every one of these universes?

I would suggest that "god" would have to be outside all space and all time. Otherwise you run into the first cause problem again, only you have pushed it back a few trillion years.

[Cathar1950]

Even if there were 100,000,000,000,000,000 other universes, it doesn't impact God, or the creation of this universe one little bit because the HOW, while interesting, doesn't negate the why.

That seems to be a problem to me.
If it doesn't impact God what is the point?
As I recall the Bible says God created for his own good pleasure.
Yet Christian thinking has God outside of time and space.
What is the Christian going to do if there is a God for every one of these universes?

I would suggest that "god" would have to be outside all space and all time. Otherwise you run into the first cause problem again, only you have pushed it back a few trillion years.

That seems to be a problem of your own making by using the first cause defence of God. I don't know wwhy you would say it would have to be pushed back a few trillion years. Is there some kind of reasoning behind this?
I would think anything outside of time and space would be meaningless and hardly an attribute of God.
At some point you need to ask, where is the connection?
It is fine with me if you want to place God somewhere you can't know about or experience.

[achilles12604]

Even if there were 100,000,000,000,000,000 other universes, it doesn't impact God, or the creation of this universe one little bit because the HOW, while interesting, doesn't negate the why.

That seems to be a problem to me.
If it doesn't impact God what is the point?
As I recall the Bible says God created for his own good pleasure.
Yet Christian thinking has God outside of time and space.
What is the Christian going to do if there is a God for every one of these universes?

I would suggest that "god" would have to be outside all space and all time. Otherwise you run into the first cause problem again, only you have pushed it back a few trillion years.

That seems to be a problem of your own making by using the first cause defence of God. I don't know wwhy you would say it would have to be pushed back a few trillion years. Is there some kind of reasoning behind this?
I would think anything outside of time and space would be meaningless and hardly an attribute of God.
At some point you need to ask, where is the connection?
It is fine with me if you want to place God somewhere you can't know about or experience.

Are you familiar with how I argued the first cause?

Read through posts 6, and 11 (especially 11).

I used simple logic to show that a first cause can be expected. If I failed, show me where.