Eternal Creation Ex Nihilo vs Modern Cosmology

[JapaneseKappa]

No; Sean Carroll uses the language of modern naturalists and adherents of scientism. Aquinas uses the language of an Aristotelian who has systematically argued for the Metaphysics. The Second Way is validated by the notions of efficient causality and an essentially ordered series. You have conceded both; for if you didn’t you would be asserting that I do not depend upon my body, which depends upon the cells that make that body, which depends upon spatial displacement, which depends upon temporal placement, etc. These are Efficient-Formal Causes of your being, and as such are essentially ordered and therefore can not regress into infinity.

I’m not sure why I would think you didn’t depend on your body, since you are inside the universe. Why must this reasoning apply to the universe as a whole.

However; since you have asserting that “something exists”. you have also validated the Third Way, and is presented in syllogistic form now;

source: iteadthomam.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/third-way-in-syllogistic-form.html

can you offer a refutation? Since you have conceded the first argument of this chain, you appear to have conceded it all.

My argument has simply been this:
P1A) If everything is contingent, i.e., logically possible to be and not to be (c), then it is logically possible that at one time that there would have been nothing in existence (o).
P2A) Now if at one time there would have actually been nothing in existence (p), even now there would actually be nothing in existence .
CA) There is actually something in existence (~n) therefore there ware no actual times when nothing was in existence (~p)

 

[JapaneseKappa]

To say that we only know that physical reality exists and that therefore physical reality necessarily exists is a circular argument. since lack of knowledge does not necessitate the conclusion.

Regardless, my argument proves that the physical universe is not necessary and that therefore the universe is dependent on a being that is necessary.

I’m not saying physical reality necessarily exists. There is no a-priori reason to expect the physical universe to exist or have the features it does. Even with your God model you can’t explain why the universe is the way it is. You will just say “God made it that way” but you can’t answer “Why did God make it that way.” All that does is kick the explanatory can one step down the road.

 

[tdgesq]

But the second way uses exactly the language that Sean Carroll uses in his talk.

This is incorrect. Aquinas’ second way [redacted]:

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. ] Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false.

Carroll does indeed reject that there must be a first cause of the existence of the universe; something Aquinas absolutely requires due to the impossibility of actual infinite regress.

Certainly within the universe we can observe causes, but we have no reason to think that the observations we make about things inside the universe apply to the universe as a whole.

And what warrant do you have for the proposition that causation does not apply to the universe as a whole? This seems at odds with naturalism’s fundamental precepts.

The second way is invalidated simply by proposing that we don’t know whether or not the universe as a whole must have had a cause.

I think you mean here that in principle it is metaphysically impossible for anyone to know whether the universe as a whole must have had a cause. If this is true though, then why are you and Caroll affirming that it didn’t? It is perplexing that so much time has gone into a model of the universe that is based on something that in principle we can’t ever know. More to the point, we do know that the universe as a whole must have had a cause.

We find ourselves in a an ever expanding changing universe. Aquinas argues that if there is no first cause, there can be no intermediate cause(s); but there clearly are intermediate causes - say the super inflationary events during the Planck Epoch. On an eternal universe theory, there is no first cause. How then did we ever reach any of the intermediate/immediate causes we have observed?

Craig makes a similar argument using set theory to illustrate the absurdity of actually existing temporal infinities:

*f actual infinites that neither increase nor decrease in the number of members they contain were to exist, we would have rather absurd consequences. For example, imagine a library with an actually infinite number of books. Suppose that the library also contains an infinite number of red and an infinite number of black books, so that for every red book there is a black book, and vice versa. It follows that the library contains as many red books as the total books in its collection, and as many red books as red and black books combined. But this is absurd; in reality the subset cannot be equivalent to the entire set. Hence, actual infinites cannot exist in reality.

Craig goes so far as to claim that a past eternal universe is a metaphysical impossibility. Science stops once an eternal universe is claimed because it is in the business of investigating causes and effects, and it can’t investigate an infinite series of events past. The basis for the claim of an eternal universe must necessarily be a philosophical one. I have yet to see a cogent argument.*

 

[Linusthe2nd]

JapaneseKappa,

You posted:

" Originally Posted by JapaneseKappa
But the second way uses exactly the language that Sean Carroll uses in his talk. "

I’m sure you are a very nice person, but it is obvious you know absolutely nothing about Thomas Aquinas and don’t even understand what Sean Carroll was talking about - which was basically false assumptions, gross generalizations, a line of red herrings, and pure imagination.
It was one hour of pure hot air.

Linus2nd

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I think you mean here that in principle it is metaphysically impossible for anyone to know whether the universe as a whole must have had a cause. If this is true though, then why are you and Caroll affirming that it didn’t? It is perplexing that so much time has gone into a model of the universe that is based on something that in principle we can’t ever know. More to the point, we do know that the universe as a whole must have had a cause.

I don’t think either one of us affirmed that it didn’t. In this thread I have been asserting it as the alternative that cannot simply be written off.

This doesn’t really somehow contradict naturalism for the reasons Sean explains. He phrases it as “There are reasons why there are reasons why.” Specifically, inside the universe, things obey laws and orderings and dependencies. There are laws that are obeyed and an arrow of time; and those laws and arrow of time allow us to order things and describe things as causes or dependents. However, the universe itself is not necessarily subject to those same laws or that same arrow of time. It may be. It may be subject to different laws. It may be subject to no laws at all.

*f actual infinites that neither increase nor decrease in the number of members they contain were to exist, we would have rather absurd consequences. For example, imagine a library with an actually infinite number of books. Suppose that the library also contains an infinite number of red and an infinite number of black books, so that for every red book there is a black book, and vice versa. It follows that the library contains as many red books as the total books in its collection, and as many red books as red and black books combined. But this is absurd; in reality the subset cannot be equivalent to the entire set. Hence, actual infinites cannot exist in reality.

Craig goes so far as to claim that a past eternal universe is a metaphysical impossibility. Science stops once an eternal universe is claimed because it is in the business of investigating causes and effects, and it can’t investigate an infinite series of events past. The basis for the claim of an eternal universe must necessarily be a philosophical one. I have yet to see a cogent argument.*

Just because infinities are highly counter-intuitive does not mean they are absurd. You can tell Craig is a public debater because this argument is a bald appeal to an audience’s unfamiliarity with math. This is the same sort of reasoning that leads people to really want the universe to have a cause. It seems like the universe should have some ultimate cause, so people tend to reject the alternative out of hand. In the same way, it seems like actual infinities are too weird to be real, so they tend to reject them out of hand.

Carroll’s point is that if we build up a model of the universe that matches all the data we have and predicts an infinite universe, we have no intellectual right to reject that model on the basis of “infinities are weird to think about.” In the same way we have no intellectual right to demand some meta-explanation of why the model works. We can certainly try to find an explanation, but we cannot *assert *that it has an explanation and reason from there.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

JapaneseKappa,

You posted:

" Originally Posted by JapaneseKappa
But the second way uses exactly the language that Sean Carroll uses in his talk. "

I’m sure you are a very nice person, but it is obvious you know absolutely nothing about Thomas Aquinas and don’t even understand what Sean Carroll was talking about - which was basically false assumptions, gross generalizations, a line of red herrings, and pure imagination.
It was one hour of pure hot air.

Linus2nd

I’m not sure why. Edward Feser endorsed this summary of the cosmological arguments. It immediately addresses both of Sean Carroll’s arguments as valid problems with cosmological arguments. He then proposes that the solutions involve things like the Principle of Sufficient Reason or a Causal Principle, just as Sean Carroll said. He goes on to give probabilistic arguments for why someone should believe that the PSR is true.

So I see a situation where two people are using the same words, to make the same arguments in the same order, but you are telling me that they are saying completely different things.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I’m not sure why. Edward Feser endorsed this summary of the cosmological arguments. It immediately addresses both of Sean Carroll’s arguments as valid problems with cosmological arguments. He then proposes that the solutions involve things like the Principle of Sufficient Reason or a Causal Principle, just as Sean Carroll said. He goes on to give probabilistic arguments for why someone should believe that the PSR is true.

So I see a situation where two people are using the same words, to make the same arguments in the same order, but you are telling me that they are saying completely different things.

I didn’t find Feser mentioned anywhere? But since this is an anthology, he might have supported some particular line of reasoning in it somewhere. But in general Feser rejects the Kalam argument in any form. Sean Carroll does not address any of Aquinas’ arguments. I don’t think you understand anything Sean Carroll said. He simply dismisses Metaphysics, he does not disprove its validity. Nor does he establish the validity of his own view.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

The purpose of this thread, as made plain in the O.P. and in post # 5 was to explain the two senses in which Creation ex nihilo was understood by Thomas Aquinas and how each of his Five Ways must be understood as assuming, for the sake of argument, an eternal creation ex nihilo, but not in time, by the First Cause.

JapaneseKappa has mistakenly assumed the purpose of this thread was to support everything William E. Carroll said in his written and video presentations. He then grabbed onto a presentation by Sean Carroll, adament atheist and anti-theist propagandist, as refuting everything William E. Carroll said. In other words he has hijacked the thread and done it to no purpose because he gives no evidence that he looked seriously at anything William E. Carroll
said and incorrectly assumes that Sean Carrol has refuted Metaphysics, in toto. Sean Carroll certainly does not disprove any school of Metaphysics, he simply, waves a hand and dismisses it as not scientific and therefore unfalsifiable. That of course is no argument. But that is beside the point. The point is that JapaneseKappa has missunderstood the purpose of the thread and violated all rules of this forum by jumping the thread to advance his own personal interests.

Linus2nd

 

[Skeptic92]

The purpose of this thread, as made plain in the O.P. and in post # 5 was to explain the two senses in which Creation ex nihilo was understood by Thomas Aquinas and how each of his Five Ways must be understood as assuming, for the sake of argument, an eternal creation ex nihilo, but not in time, by the First Cause.

JapaneseKappa has mistakenly assumed the purpose of this thread was to support everything William E. Carroll said in his written and video presentations. He then grabbed onto a presentation by Sean Carroll, adament atheist and anti-theist propagandist, as refuting everything William E. Carroll said. In other words he has hijacked the thread and done it to no purpose because he gives no evidence that he looked seriously at anything William E. Carroll
said and incorrectly assumes that Sean Carrol has refuted Metaphysics, in toto. Sean Carroll certainly does not disprove any school of Metaphysics, he simply, waves a hand and dismisses it as not scientific and therefore unfalsifiable. That of course is no argument. But that is beside the point. The point is that JapaneseKappa has missunderstood the purpose of the thread and violated all rules of this forum by jumping the thread to advance his own personal interests.

Linus2nd

In the process of this; conceding the validity of both the Second and Third ways

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I didn’t find Feser mentioned anywhere?

It is clear that Sean does not understand the Thomistic argument. For some insight into this I recommend his blogspot and archives. Here is an example:

goodreads.com/author/show/43145.Edward_Feser/blog

The link to Feser’s blog you gave me contains the sentence:

Consider Alex Pruss’s article “The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. In general it is (as, of course, Alex’s work typically is) excellent.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

The purpose of this thread, as made plain in the O.P. and in post # 5 was to explain the two senses in which Creation ex nihilo was understood by Thomas Aquinas and how each of his Five Ways must be understood as assuming, for the sake of argument, an eternal creation ex nihilo, but not in time, by the First Cause.

If the opinion of a modern cosmologist is not relevant to a thread entitled “Eternal Creation Ex Nihilo vs Modern Cosmology” then someone really needs to work on the quality of their titles.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

If the opinion of a modern cosmologist is not relevant to a thread entitled “Eternal Creation Ex Nihilo vs Modern Cosmology” then someone really needs to work on the quality of their titles.

I’ll tell you what JK, if you really do want to discuss Carroll vs Carroll then by all means start a thread of your own. The title of this thread is appropriate once you read the O.P. Perhaps you could think of a better title, but since I am not you, we have the title I gave it. That’s life, eh?

Linus2nd.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

In the process of this; conceding the validity of both the Second and Third ways

And even the Fourth and Fifth .

You do see the importance of an eternal creation ex nihil, but as orgin as opposed to one dependent on a first moment,don’t you?

Linus2nd

 

[Skeptic92]

And even the Fourth and Fifth .

You do see the importance of an eternal creation ex nihil, but as orgin as opposed to one dependent on a first moment,don’t you?

Linus2nd

Yes, given that God is immutable (confirmed by both the assent of reason, and the deposit of Faith) for God to create at one moment and cease creating at another would be formal heresy,

Therefore we can distinguish between two modes of Divine Causation;

From the assent of reason and metaphysical deduction we can see creatio ex nihilo as the origin and conservation of created beings in their being. I believe it is this that Carroll calls “origin”; at every moment God is continually creating and sustaining in being all created being. As this is the bestowal of ‘being’ onto what is not (non-being, or nothing), it can be properly termed to be creatio ex nihilo

The second mode is an article of Faith, which is being debated in the realms of the Ontology of Time and Mathematical Physics. That is Creation strictly; the moment “in the beginning” when God created the Universe. I am not qualified to say whether reason can deduce this conclusion or not, it is however an article of faith.

Both senses are Gods “creative act”, and in fact the distinction between the two modes of causation is not a real distinction but is a distinction of reason. This is as, actually speaking, God does not change; this is one single eternal act of Creatio Ex Nihilo.

The truth is even more unimaginable then something coming from nothing.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Yes, given that God is immutable (confirmed by both the assent of reason, and the deposit of Faith) for God to create at one moment and cease creating at another would be formal heresy,

Therefore we can distinguish between two modes of Divine Causation;

From the assent of reason and metaphysical deduction we can see creatio ex nihilo as the origin and conservation of created beings in their being. I believe it is this that Carroll calls “origin”; at every moment God is continually creating and sustaining in being all created being. As this is the bestowal of ‘being’ onto what is not (non-being, or nothing), it can be properly termed to be creatio ex nihilo

The second mode is an article of Faith, which is being debated in the realms of the Ontology of Time and Mathematical Physics. That is Creation strictly; the moment “in the beginning” when God created the Universe. I am not qualified to say whether reason can deduce this conclusion or not, it is however an article of faith.

Both senses are Gods “creative act”, and in fact the distinction between the two modes of causation is not a real distinction but is a distinction of reason. This is as, actually speaking, God does not change; this is one single eternal act of Creatio Ex Nihilo.

The truth is even more unimaginable then something coming from nothing.

The point to be made is that unless the Cosmological argument ( BTW not so named by Aquinas but by modern philosophers ) can be shown, from reason, to allow for an eternal creation, then the validity of first three ways, in the minds of many, becomes much more difficult to demonstrate. And unless it can be shown that such a creation has nothing to do with the Church’s De Fide teaching on creation in time and is not in conflict with that teaching, then Catholic philosophers could not accept that concept.

And Thomas has shown that it is not contrary to Faith and William E. Carroll appears to be the only one who has seen and demonstrated that Thomas did teach this and that the Five Ways really very heavily on this possibility. Feser saw the need for insisting on making the Unmoved Mover the source of existence of the universe but he did not explain how to defend this thesis. But W. Carroll has done so.

Linus2nd

 

[tdgesq]

I don’t think either one of us affirmed that it didn’t. In this thread I have been asserting it as the alternative that cannot simply be written off.

Well, in order to claim that the argument “we don’t know whether or not the universe as a whole must have had a cause” is a viable alternative, then you must at a minimum explain how it’s a viable alternative. Otherwise, yes, it can simply be written off.

This doesn’t really somehow contradict naturalism for the reasons Sean explains. He phrases it as “There are reasons why there are reasons why.” Specifically, inside the universe, things obey laws and orderings and dependencies. There are laws that are obeyed and an arrow of time; and those laws and arrow of time allow us to order things and describe things as causes or dependents. However, the universe itself is not necessarily subject to those same laws or that same arrow of time. It may be. It may be subject to different laws. It may be subject to no laws at all.

Except that he doesn’t assume there are no laws at all. He assumes that some of the laws that apply in this universe also apply outside of this universe (if there is such a thing) and others don’t; like that causation doesn’t apply. Until he can explain why that’s a reasonable assumption given our experience of everything else, his philosophical dilemma remains.

Just because infinities are highly counter-intuitive does not mean they are absurd. You can tell Craig is a public debater because this argument is a bald appeal to an audience’s unfamiliarity with math. This is the same sort of reasoning that leads people to really want the universe to have a cause. It seems like the universe should have some ultimate cause, so people tend to reject the alternative out of hand. In the same way, it seems like actual infinities are too weird to be real, so they tend to reject them out of hand.

Craig’s argument for the metaphysical impossibility of the infinitude of the past is contained in peer reviewed philosophical journals throughout the world. It’s a little bit misleading then to characterize it as a clever debate trick for the masses. Craig aside for a moment, it still doesn’t address Aquinas’ argument in the second way. How many causal events took place up to yesterday? An infinite number. A little difficult to explain how we reach today then. I wonder why it would be more reasonable to assume an infinite series of events than not. By the way, that applies to a B-theory of time, theories of meta-time and the postulated infinite multiverse.

Carroll’s point is that if we build up a model of the universe that matches all the data we have and predicts an infinite universe, we have no intellectual right to reject that model on the basis of “infinities are weird to think about.” In the same way we have no intellectual right to demand some meta-explanation of why the model works. We can certainly try to find an explanation, but we cannot *assert *that it has an explanation and reason from there.

If I understand you correctly, then I agree with most of it. The issue being that this isn’t what Carroll has done. He’s made metaphysical assumptions that are contrary to our observations ie. that causation applies differently outside of our universe and that the universe(s) is/are past eternal. His model starts out with these assumptions. That’s fine, but let’s not engage in the fiction that he’s describing any “data” that we have at our disposal.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Once again, the purpose of the thread is not a discussion on the merits or demerits of the views of Sean Carroll, as interesting as these may or may not be. The purpose is to discuss the possibility of an eternal creation. This is clear if you read the O.P and post # 5. If anyone wishes to start a thread about the views of Sean Carroll they are welcome to do so. I admit the thread was poorly titled.

Linus2nd

 

[Aloysium]

The idea of eternal creation may be shared by all religions. It is because it is truth.

In Hinduism for example, there is the image of the King of the Dancers:
Shiva, within the peace of the eternal Now, dances on a lotus, symbolizing purity and generation. In his upper right hand, a drum beats out the creation of time; in his upper left hand he holds the fire of death. His left foot is raised and his right rests on a figure personifying the victory over illusion and ignorance. On his head, a skull represents his conquest of death and a third eye, his omniscience. He is the unchanging dancer at the hub of the flaming wheel of creation.

The cosmology of Scientism comes a poor last as an intellectual and spiritual aid to our contemplation of the mysteries of Being.

 

[inocente]

Once again, the purpose of the thread is not a discussion on the merits or demerits of the views of Sean Carroll, as interesting as these may or may not be. The purpose is to discuss the possibility of an eternal creation. This is clear if you read the O.P and post # 5. If anyone wishes to start a thread about the views of Sean Carroll they are welcome to do so. I admit the thread was poorly titled.

I don’t have much to contribute, but wonder what you make of Aristotle’s various arguments for an eternal universe - that matter and motion must always have existed and a void could never exist.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_eternity
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Historical_interpretation
www3.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/nath31.htm (from Boedder 1902 at Notre Dame)

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I don’t have much to contribute, but wonder what you make of Aristotle’s various arguments for an eternal universe - that matter and motion must always have existed and a void could never exist.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_eternity
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Historical_interpretation
www3.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/nath31.htm (from Boedder 1902 at Notre Dame)

Since I blew this thread by creating an unclear title I will just respond by saying that the question isn’t interesting to me. But Thomas has argued ( De Potentia, Book 1, arts 3 & 5 ) that God could have eternally been creating the universe out of nothing. The point being that whether or not the universe has had a finite or an eternal past, a creation out of nothing would still have been necessary. But for Cathlics the answer is that God created the universe, in time, our of nothing. It is a De Fide teaching based on the Scriptures.

58 degrees in KC, MO. right now. Very unusual but refreshing.

Linus2nd.