Could the Universe be Uncaused?

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Oreoracle said:
Evidently you didn’t read the OP, which anticipated that response:

Also, to add to Tomdstone’s earlier point, the argument against there being an “infinite past” is flawed. The assumption is that it would take an “infinite amount of time” to get from the “beginning” of the universe to this point. The flaw is the assumption that there is a beginning of time. If that kind of argument worked, we couldn’t have an infinite number line in the first place.

You can only measure the time interval between two points. “Infinitely far in the past” is not a definite point in time.
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The Five Ways ( and more ) of Thomas Aquinas were formulated on the assumption ( for the sake of argument only ) that the universe was eternal. Given that assumption, God would have been eternally creating the universe out of nothing, for the things of this universe are, and have been, " eternally " moving/changing from one potential state of existence to another actual state of existence.

Such beings, composed of potentiality and actuality, cannot bring themselves into existence. For that would mean they actually existed before they caused themselves to exist, a clear impossibility. There must exist therefore a Being, an Unmoved Mover, that is purely actual, which, for that reason, is eternal, which is absolutely other that the composed beings of this universe, and who creates, eternally, the beings of this universe - or of any universe.

" .Re: Eternal Creation Ex Nihilo vs Modern Cosmology
I would like to quote one sentence by Thomas Aquinas from De Potentia, Question 3, Artical V, from the footnote #42 in Carroll’s presentation ( see link in the O.P. ), which is just astounding.

" Thus reason proves and faith holds that all things are created by God…" of course you must keep the distinction between the two concepts of creation. Only creation in time out of nothing is De Fide. Creation by origin is open to reason.

Philosophers who have often struggled to explain why the First Way of Thomas is relevant will immediately recognize the importance of being able to say the Unmoved Mover moves the universe by an eternal creation ( of origin, not in time ) of the matter and form of substances along with their inner act of existence. ( see Carrolls paper above and De Potentia, Question 3, Article V ). "

Linus2nd.
 
Bradski said:
We live on a tiny rock in a nondescript solar system which is tucked away in the outer suburbs of an insignificant galaxy which is one of billions and billions (to use a phrase that Sagan was thought to enjoy).

Man has only reached as far as our moon, which is so close I can make out its major features from where I am typing this.

The furthest piece of machinery that we have been able to send outwards has barely reached our back door.

The Universe is expanding so that most of what is out there we will never even see, let alone make contact with. It will be forever hidden from us.

It’s like setting out on a world wide expedition and having the rest of the world move away faster from you than you are moving towards it. There is, to put it in the most profound understatement that it is possible to make, lots we don’t know.

So maybe there are things popping into existence everywhere on a very frequent basis. Let’s say in a part of one in a hundred galaxies every few million years. Or maybe millions of times a second in the parts we will never see.

If someone not so very long ago pointed out that everything was moving away from us, you’d think that we were the centre of the universe itself. If he said that, no - it’s that the space between us and everything else that is actually expanding, you’d think him a lunatic. It would be beyond your comprehension.

Don’t be so ready to assume we know what is going on and that we can ridicule ideas that seem a little strange to our barely prehistoric understanding of the known universe.
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We live in the world which now exists. It is contrary to reason that at some future date we will discover that the world created itself. Consider the following:

The Five Ways ( and more ) of Thomas Aquinas were formulated on the assumption ( for the sake of argument only ) that the universe was eternal. Given that assumption, God would have been eternally creating the universe out of nothing, for the things of this universe are, and have been, " eternally " moving/changing from one potential state of existence to another actual state of existence.

Such beings, composed of potentiality and actuality, cannot bring themselves into existence. For that would mean they actually existed before they caused themselves to exist, a clear impossibility. There must exist therefore a Being, an Unmoved Mover, that is purely actual, which, for that reason, is eternal, which is absolutely other that the composed beings of this universe, and who creates, eternally, the beings of this universe - or of any universe.

" .Re: Eternal Creation Ex Nihilo vs Modern Cosmology
I would like to quote one sentence by Thomas Aquinas from De Potentia, Question 3, Artical V, from the footnote #42 in Carroll’s presentation ( see link in the O.P. ), which is just astounding.

" Thus reason proves and faith holds that all things are created by God…" of course you must keep the distinction between the two concepts of creation. Only creation in time out of nothing is De Fide. Creation by origin is open to reason.

Philosophers who have often struggled to explain why the First Way of Thomas is relevant will immediately recognize the importance of being able to say the Unmoved Mover moves the universe by an eternal creation ( of origin, not in time ) of the matter and form of substances along with their inner act of existence. ( see Carrolls paper above and De Potentia, Question 3, Article V ). "

Linus2nd.
 
Linusthe2nd said:
We live in the world which now exists. It is contrary to reason…
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It is contrary to reason that objects that are further apart today than they were yesterday are not necessarily moving relative to each other. It is contrary to reason that the space between two objects actually increases so that they are further apart without having to move.

Common sense will tell you that that can’t happen. Common sense will tell you that an electron cannot be in two places at the same time. Common sense will tell you that light cannot be a wave and a particle at the same time. Common sense will tell you that an event needs a cause.
 
Bradski said:
It is contrary to reason that objects that are further apart today than they were yesterday are not necessarily moving relative to each other. It is contrary to reason that the space between two objects actually increases so that they are further apart without having to move.

Common sense will tell you that that can’t happen. Common sense will tell you that an electron cannot be in two places at the same time. Common sense will tell you that light cannot be a wave and a particle at the same time. Common sense will tell you that an event needs a cause.
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And common sense is correct in that respect. 😃 And nothing in science disproves this conclusion. Yes, I know about Quantum Mechanics and the theories of Relativity. They have abstracted from reality to achieve a theory to explain certain phenomena. But they do not reveal the nature of things as they actually exist.

Linus2nd
 
PMVCatholic said:
Interestingly, I have not read any work of a physicist yet that claimed to know where the laws of physics come from. However, I suppose it doesn’t mean that an answer couldn’t be found in the future. Having said that, the very fact that nature behaves under strict laws, such as gravity, is interesting in it’s own right.

-Phil
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I have yet to see a theologian claim to know why the laws of physics are what they are either. If a theologian could predict the laws of physics based on his understanding of God, he would not only win all future Nobel prizes, but probably settle the whole thorny question of God’s existence once and for all.

Unfortunately “God made the universe this way, but we don’t know why” is really no better than “The universe just happens to be this way, but we don’t know why.”
 
Bahman said:
To me causality is overrated. One can simply argue that free will is not possible in a framework which is causal hence it is logically incorrect to argue that everything that exist has a cause.
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Could you elaborate on this? I think I understand what you mean, but I can’t quite see how the existence of free will is not consistent with a causal framework.

-Phil
 
djchez said:
Here is a good presentation by Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, Phd. regarding this subject.

youtube.com/watch?v=Mkjhxzqr-5k

Enjoy!
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Thank you for sharing this; it is obvious that Fr. Spitzer has put much thought into this topic. I think he has very valid arguments, especially about the “fine-tuning” of the initial conditions of the universe.

-Phil
 
JapaneseKappa said:
Unfortunately “God made the universe this way, but we don’t know why” is really no better than “The universe just happens to be this way, but we don’t know why.”
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So, given this, you would conclude that believing in God is no more rational than believing in no God?
 
PMVCatholic said:
So, given this, you would conclude that believing in God is no more rational than believing in no God?
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No. Just that the lines of reasoning that invoke “first causes” in an attempt to explain the universe are no more explanatory than simply asserting that the universe itself exists uncaused.

This is not the only claimed evidence for or against God.
 
balto said:
No, the universe cannot be uncaused. Aquinas’ First Way purports to show that a reality that is purely actual is needed to ground all the change we witness in the world. If an entity undergoes change, this occurs because said entity previously had a potential for some kind of change that is actualized by an external agent. If you have a series of agents actualizing potentials that is essentially ordered, you need a first member that is pure actuality and thus is not capable of any change at all.

Consider the stock example of the traveler in the forest moving a rock on the forest floor with the end of his staff. The rock is moving because the staff is moving it, the staff is moving because the arm is moving, the arm is moving because the muscles are contracting, the muscles are contracting because the myosin heads are pulling on the actin fibers, the myosin heads are moving because calcium ions are interacting with them, calcium ions are interacting with them because the action potentials activated the calcium channels, which all depend on physical/chemical properties, etc. Is this an infinite series? No, because an infinite series would always have members needing actualization, so no change would ever be initiated. It’s like supposing that a paintbrush can paint a wall by itself as long as the handle is extended to infinity. There’s nothing in the nature of an infinitely long handle that imparts the power of painting a wall. Likewise, you need something that is purely actual that can initiate change without needing initiation itself.

Further inspection of pure actuality would reveal that since pure actuality does not change, it does not need to receive existence from an external agent, and hence just is existence itself and hence uncaused. The universe does not fit this bill because it changes and has potentialities that need actualization.
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Now apply this reasoning to God. We admittedly don’t know enough about God or how He came into existence, so how can we be so sure that He is indeed the Uncaused Cause? Everything had to come from somewhere, apparently. Where did God come from?
 
MarcoPolo said:
The argument in question is only dealing with the causational aspect of God. Bringing up further details does not apply to the parameters of this discussion. The OP’s question did not go into further detail. See what I mean?
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I was addressing the issue that if God is not the uncaused cause, then the universe would be God.
 
Bahman said:
To me causality is overrated. One can simply argue that free will is not possible in a framework which is causal hence it is logically incorrect to argue that everything that exist has a cause.
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Yes. It does seem that determinism rules out free will.
 
One of my favorite topics of Father Spitzer’s is the VBG therom. Read Section VI of this PDF: magiscenter.com/pdf/Magis_FactSheet.pdf

It concludes that all models whether cyclic or multiverse have a beginning. Therefore, a beginning in time, so far, has been impossible to fashion into any theory that the Universe is uncaused.

The idea of something that is uncaused is itself very unscientific. There is nothing that we have experienced that we can determine is uncaused. Only by revelation of God to man within Christianity is it asserted that God is uncaused. It fits into the logic of the reality that we see that there was an initial beginning and this helps us to believe God’s revelation to us. Yet, what is the nonreligious rational that the same matter that we see has been it’s own uncaused beginning when nothing about it has ever been seen with such a property? The two views are not even close to being equally rational.

I also don’t see the connection that Bahman has made where causality equates with determinism. Our souls are caused, we make free choices that we act upon which are caused by us. Causality is complete without the necessity of determinism.
 
wmw said:
…, we make free choices that we act upon which are caused by us.
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What causes you to make the choice? If the criminal chooses to commit a crime, but this choice is caused by factors outside of his control, why should he be punished? Punish instead the one who is causing the criminal to make the choices that he does.
 
wmw said:
One of my favorite topics of Father Spitzer’s is the VBG therom. Read Section VI of this PDF: magiscenter.com/pdf/Magis_FactSheet.pdf

It concludes that all models whether cyclic or multiverse have a beginning…
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The following paper shows that you can have inflation without a beginning in the case of simple cosmological boundary conditions on an infinite null surface near which the spacetime looks de Sitter. In other words, the VBG theorem does not by itself disprove that the universe is eternal in the past. So it is wrong to conclude that all models of the universe must have a beginning.
arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0301042
 
Tomdstone said:
The following paper shows that you can have inflation without a beginning in the case of simple cosmological boundary conditions on an infinite null surface near which the spacetime looks de Sitter. In other words, the VBG theorem does not by itself disprove that the universe is eternal in the past. So it is wrong to conclude that all models of the universe must have a beginning.
arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0301042
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This is interesting mathematics that does not fit into any current model of our universe. Mathematics is a very flexible tool that can be shaped even to describe infinite conditions. If you can imagine it mathematics can describe it, but it doesn’t make it real.
 
Tomdstone said:
What causes you to make the choice? If the criminal chooses to commit a crime, but this choice is caused by factors outside of his control, why should he be punished? Punish instead the one who is causing the criminal to make the choices that he does.
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What would cause the one causing him to make that choice, to make that choice? We’d have to set every dangerous criminal free…

Of course we have reasons for our decisions. Would we have to do things with absolutely no cause or purpose in order to be considered as having free will? That sounds like the complete opposite of free will, actually.
 
laircy said:
What would cause the one causing him to make that choice, to make that choice? We’d have to set every dangerous criminal free…
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That is the problem with causality. If every action of the criminal is due to some cause beyond his control, then he is not really guilty.
 
wmw said:
This is interesting mathematics that does not fit into any current model of our universe. Mathematics is a very flexible tool that can be shaped even to describe infinite conditions. If you can imagine it mathematics can describe it, but it doesn’t make it real.
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Please explain your reasoning as to why deSitter space time cannot fit into any model of the universe.
 
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