Argument for God from Complexity

[john_doran]

But if you arrange a set as {… -2, -1, 0} which is a perfectly legitmate set, the last member of this infinite set would have an immediate predecessor. Under this model, there is no beginning time or beginning event.

A) we’re not “arranging” a set; we’re supposing that a number of successive moments can be added to form an infinite number. which means that, as each moment of time passes by, the number of elapsed moments is increased by one until aleph-null is reached, now. which can’t be done.

B) that having been said, all you have done in your example is to invert the problem: instead of there being no predecessor for the last member of the infinite set, there will be no successor to the “infinitieth” moment of past time, which means that there could be no subsequent moments at all. but, again, there are successive moments of time…

cor:

But in a world with an infinite past, it’s not necessary that we have traversed its infinite past – “we” life finite lives, or at least lives with a finite past. I suppose you could say that the “world” must have traversed its infinite past but “traversing” seems to be something done by a person, not the “world” – only persons traverse time and in a world with an infinite past its possible that each person in that world at any given moment in time traverses a finite amount of time.

this has got nothing to do with “traversing” time; it has to do with a successive number of elapsed moments of time, which occurs with our without people, or even a world.

it’s not “traversing” a time-line that’s gets you into trouble - it’s the incremental increase of moments of time in an effort to get to (or count-down-from) aleph-null.

 

[john_doran]

I didn’t expect it to become fact by virtue of my liking the idea. But my reasoning doesn’t become invalid simply because you declared my conclusions to be a “philosohpical position” and put words in my mouth.

he didn’t say that it became invalid; his point is that you need to present an argument for the truth of materialism. and you haven’t.

 

[IanBoyd57]

God doesn’t violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason because it is held that there are two kinds of beings:

1. Beings that have their explanation outside of themselves.
2. Beings that have their explanation within themselves.

Then why can’t the universe have it’s explanation within itself?

As I was alluding to earlier, there’s actually a chance that the universe doesn’t have an explanation within itself, and that it was the result of two branes (membranes) colliding. However, whatever is at the end of all things, can certainly have an explanation within itself if God can.

None of this disproves God. There could be some being outside of spacetime who watches over us, and is all loving, yet sends a large majority of us to eternal infinite torture for not finding the correct evidence for him and his particular church, however, and this is my overriding point, God is not necessary.

Yes, he could exist, but it doesn’t mean he does.

Exactly why is it that God gets to have special exceptions, like not needing a cause, being perfect, being self contained, having no beginning, but yet these things cannot be applied to the universe?

And finally, the universe, that is to say, existence itself, is of a different ‘set,’ a different category than all the things within it.

Take the set of odd numbers. The difference between each consecutive odd number is 2, right?

Does this mean that the set of rational numbers, which contains the set of odd numbers (like existence contains matter), has a difference of 2 between each consecutive rational number?

Of course not. In fact, that doesn’t even begin to make any sense. There are no consecutive rational numbers, there is an infinite number of numbers between any two rational numbers.

The point is, rules that apply to certain ‘sets,’ like all the matter in the universe, do not necessarily apply to other sets that encompass them.

In my example, it’s not even applicable. It’s completely undefined.

So maybe, then, the cause of the universe is also undefined.

I mean, we don’t even know what happens when you divide by zero.

And I’m not saying we should give up. Some of you may be content in your answers, but scientists are not. Where do you think I got this idea of branes from?

The scientists are working very hard to discover what you find when you travel down the rabbit hole, so to speak.

In the same way ancient people were content to say the Sun orbits the Earth, in the same way they were content to say man must have been created by God and not by natural processes, in the same way some (albeit severely misled) people even today, sadly, embarrassingly, still believe the world is on the order of a few thousand years old, I think that future generations will scoff at the idea that God must’ve created the universe.

Perhaps our descendants will still believe in God, but I don’t think we have stretched our knowledge to it’s limits yet.

But, again, perhaps I am wrong.

Maybe the universe is queerer than we can suppose. Maybe this is the limit. Perhaps, sadly, we did not evolve to be able to understand the great mysteries of our existence. The blind watchmaker could not foresee that all these things would drive men to madness as it designed us.

Ah well. I am going to sleep. You have all brought up interesting points and been cordial and polite. I appreciate and am thankful for that. We may disagree, but I’m glad we don’t have to be mean about it.

Cheers.

 

[GreenJeans]

Dawkins brings up a very interesting idea in his book. He relates Russell’ s tale of the orbitinbg tea pot. This is the idea that there is a very small teapot orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. It’s way too small to see, and we can’r falsify the claim that it is out there.

 

[cor]

B) that having been said, all you have done in your example is to invert the problem: instead of there being no predecessor for the last member of the infinite set, there will be no successor to the “infinitieth” moment of past time, which means that there could be no subsequent moments at all. but, again, there are successive moments of time…

You are assuming there is an “infinitieth” moment of past time. The set {…, -2, -1, 0} has no member that corresponds to an “infinitieth” moment. Every member of the set corresponds to a finite number, that is, a member that has a finite predecession from 0. Remember this particular set has no first member. Every member of the set is in finite succession/predecession from every other member of the set. Yet the set still remains infinite. So as you can see, an “infinite past” does not entail that there exists moments in time that were infinitely long ago. This seems counter-intuitive but it’s true as illustrated by this set.

 

[Nullasalus]

And I’m not saying we should give up. Some of you may be content in your answers, but scientists are not. Where do you think I got this idea of branes from?

The scientists are working very hard to discover what you find when you travel down the rabbit hole, so to speak.

In the same way ancient people were content to say the Sun orbits the Earth, in the same way they were content to say man must have been created by God and not by natural processes, in the same way some (albeit severely misled) people even today, sadly, embarrassingly, still believe the world is on the order of a few thousand years old, I think that future generations will scoff at the idea that God must’ve created the universe.

Are you saying that Christians, and theists in generally, were not extraordinarily active in pursuing the scientific truth of the world we see?

You seem to be confusing the theological idea that ‘God did something’ with the attitude of ‘And therefore we’ll never understand it’. We may never understand God perfectly, but creation as a whole has long been considered to be reasonable and understandable - in part because it was created by a being who possesses quite some reason. Have a look at the Big Bang thread; you’ll find that theists are entirely comfortable talking about branes. Why is that?

Nor has the denial of scientific inquiry taken place exclusively on the theistic side. There were scientists who strongly resisted everything from Quantum Mechanics to the Big Bang primarily due to their philosophical (rather than theistic) leanings. Hence Max Planck’s quote about his goal not being to convince the professors of his day, but to convince the students who would replace them.

What you apparently don’t accept is that theists can both explain the natural world, accept what they find, and still see God at work. There are Christian/theistic physicists, cosmologists - even biologists. Agnostics and atheists are just going to have to get used to the fact that people can accept the natural world and still differ with them philosophically and (a)theologically.

 

[Mersenne]

no, it’s really not. just like it’s not “special pleading” to say that birds can fly and rocks can’t; or that the strong nuclear force doesn’t affect macroscopic bodies.

It’s not special pleading to say that birds can fly and rocks can’t because we can point to empirical evidence for both those facts. Please look up special pleading and get back to me, you don’t seem to have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about.

A) necessary beings are non-corporeal, because all material objects are contingent;

special pleading. Why do you assume all material objects are contingent? Why does this not apply to non-material objects? Where is your evidence for the existence of non-material objects?

Non-material objects logically can’t exist. Material is anything an object is made of, if it’s made of something other then material, then it’s not an object.

 

[Mersenne]

Let me present an argument for the existence of Absolute Perfection, independent of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

If one has the intuition that Absolute Perfection has the logical possibility of existing, then one can conclude that there is a possible world in which Absolute Perfection exists. If you are unfamiliar with the term “possible world” read this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world

If one furthermore has the intuition that Absolute Perfection entails necessarily existing, then one can conclude using Axiom S5 of modal logic that Absolute Perfection exists in every possible world. You can read this short article on Axiom S5 here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_S5

Since the actual world (see the possible world article above for terminology) is a possible world, it follows then that Absolute Perfection exists in the actual world.

Instead of accepting the argument one might reject the intuition that Absolute Perfection is possible by saying that the nature of Absolute Perfection involves a self-contradiction (for example, by saying that Absolute Perfection entails perfect goodness as well as perfect freedom, including the freedom to be evil but the freedom to be evil is inconsistent with perfect goodness)

The question of whether or not Absolute Perfection exists and the question of whether or not Absolute Perfection violates the Principle of Sufficient Reason are two distinct questions – since one might accept the existence of Absolute Perfection while rejecting the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

I hold that Absolute Perfection is compatible with the Principle of Sufficient Reason as the former’s explanation can be contained within itself. I also have the intuition that such would be the case (contained within itself perhaps by a circle of causes or infinite regression or some other kind of causation) but perhaps you don’t share it.

I reject the notion of the term “Absolute Perfection” even making any sense, perfection is relative to your standards. Maybe perfection to me would be a jelly donut that exists and I can eat right now. I don’t see one materializing.

If one holds to the principle that a cause must be at least as great as its effect

I don’t. I don’t think anyone can reasonably make that claim. “lesser” things cause “greater” things all the time, if you can even claim any objective standard of “greater” or “lesser”

 

[Mersenne]

he didn’t say that it became invalid; his point is that you need to present an argument for the truth of materialism. and you haven’t.

Yes I did. He edited that part out of my post.

 

[Nullasalus]

Yes I did. He edited that part out of my post.

No, you actually haven’t. You’ve just asserted it, and dismissed any talk of the immaterial as ludicrous. Why not just go the whole nine yards and argue that everything that exists or ever has existed is within our universe?

And really, you should calm down. Getting so angry just because people disagree with you is supposed to be a religious trait.

 

[cor]

Mersenne:

Non-material objects logically can’t exist. Material is anything an object is made of, if it’s made of something other then material, then it’s not an object.

You seem to be saying that all objects are made of things distinct from the object, but one can imagine a particle that is not made of anything other than itself (for instance imagine a true fundamental particle).

Your words also seem to allow for the existence of abstract objects like sets. Like the set {1, 2} which is “made of” the elements 1 and 2 – but most people would not describe the set {1, 2} as a “material” thing.

 

[cor]

“lesser” things cause “greater” things all the time, if you can even claim any objective standard of “greater” or “lesser”

Can you give any examples of lesser things causing greater things?

 

[john_doran]

You are assuming there is an “infinitieth” moment of past time. The set {…, -2, -1, 0} has no member that corresponds to an “infinitieth” moment.

no, i’m not - i’m asuming that the set of elapsed moments is equal to aleph-null (aleph-null itself isn’t the “infinitieth” member of that set - i was simply being (apparently too) colloquial). if you are trying to get from one end of the set to another by successive addition, then you must work through each member of the set, which entails having to work through the gap between aleph-null and its successive constitutent numbers. which cannot be done.

cor:

Every member of the set corresponds to a finite number, that is, a member that has a finite predecession from 0. Remember this particular set has no first member. Every member of the set is in finite succession/predecession from every other member of the set. Yet the set still remains infinite.

this is false, i’m afraid: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/images/equations/ContinuumHypothesis/inline1.gifis at an infinite remove from 0; if it wasn’t, then the set would not be infinite, as you claim it to be. in fact, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/images/equations/ContinuumHypothesis/inline1.gifis at an infinite remove from every member of the set (which entails another problem with trying to realize an actual infinite).

look, by stipulating that every member of an infinite set can be at a finite remove from 0, you are assuming what you are trying to prove: namely tht the addition of a number of finite numbers can be result in aleph-null…

look, even if you’re not familiar with transfinite math, isn’t the impossibility of something like that just obvious? i mean, remember, it’s not like we’re talking about an actual infinite being given all at once, but rather the formation of one by increment; it’s only the latter that runs into problems.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

on a purely mathematical level, aleph null (http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/b/e/4/be4c703ed73456618ed283b892c6715a.png) … basically, there’s no way for us to get to this moment by passing through an infinite number of precedent moments. but here we are. so the number of past moments cannot be infinite.

Thanks for this. Very useful. I bookmarked it.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Mersenne:

Where’s your evidence that there are being that have their explanation outside themselves and beings that have their explanation within themselves?

I think the poster was continuing a discussion from my questions on the distinction between ‘being’ and ‘a being.’ For that you are going to have to read Heidegger as to ‘evidence.’ And good luck to ya on that one!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

… why can’t we just have a non-intelligent particle that causes the universe that is a “necessary being”

We can.
If we do, then that particle would be God.
As for its non-intelligence: that would remain to be demonstrated.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Everything has a basis in physical processes, your obfuscated non-logic aside.

Chill.

 

[john_doran]

It’s not special pleading to say that birds can fly and rocks can’t because we can point to empirical evidence for both those facts. Please look up special pleading and get back to me, you don’t seem to have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about.

sigh. i know very well what special pleading is. here are a number of definitions from several websites:

“Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption.”

“Special pleading is a form of spurious argumentation where a position in a dispute introduces favorable details or excludes unfavorable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations themselves. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.”

“The argument defends a position by claiming that the opponent lacks the necessary perspective (experiences or credentials) to appreciate the position. This lack allegedly makes the opponent unqualified to critique the position.”

where in any of those definitions do you find reference to “empirical” proof? sounds like special pleading to me…

at any rate, it’s very clear that you don’t really understand the terms you’re using, since my reasoning clearly is not an example of special pleading: there are justifications for my statements forthcoming; special pleading involves the presentation of arguments for which such justification is not available.

the only reason i don’t offer point-by-point elaborations of my statements right off the bat is that there are libraries dedicated to the investigation of these issues, and i’m not going to start reproducing all of the books i have read and papers i have written just to avoid juvenile and erroneous accusations from people like you that i’m engaged in some logical fallacy; what’s more, many more learned people than you already know much of this stuff, which would make my reproduction of it superfluous.

Mersenne:

special pleading. Why do you assume all material objects are contingent? Why does this not apply to non-material objects? Where is your evidence for the existence of non-material objects?

as i said above, i have answers for each of these questions, so i am not engaged in special pleading.

Mersenne:

Non-material objects logically can’t exist. Material is anything an object is made of, if it’s made of something other then material, then it’s not an object.

do you have an argument to support this position? if not, then you’re specially pleading, right?

and i hope that this isn’t your argument, because it is an good example of circular reasoning, since your conclusion “if an object is made of something that’s not material, then it’s not an object (i.e. then it does not exist)”, is one of your premises: “non-material objects cannot exist”.

do you have anything else?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Physicalism is a philosophical position, not a fact. You may really, really like the idea, but it doesn’t become a fact as a result. The assertion reminds me of the argument that ‘all that exists is within our universe, nothing else exists or can even be thought to exist.’ Which has some interesting ramifications for physicists.

Yes.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Mersenne:

It’s not special pleading to say that birds can fly and rocks can’t because we can point to empirical evidence for both those facts. Please look up special pleading and get back to me, you don’t seem to have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about.

This is a discussion. Not a contest. When posters indicate that clarification is needed around a claim which you have made, then the onus for that clarification falls on you. Dissing is not clarification. Sending other posters on rabbit chases is not clarification. Finding common language and then setting forth support for your claims in a logical manner is clarification.