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MindOverMatter2
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Everything that started to Exist, must have an External Cause for its Existence
Everything that started to Exist, must have an External Cause for its Existence
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plinko
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iwillendure
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Gravity cant exist without something already existing. In order to have gravity you need to have mass in order to have mass you need to have something. if you have something then you dont have nothing.
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MindOverMatter2
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True nothingness falls outside the realm of the physical sciences. Hawking’s is not talking about the universe coming out of metaphysical nothingness (the absence of any reality and all reality), but rather, he is misleadingly and obviously referring to a different sense of nothing. If he isn’t, then he ought to be, since his argument clearly states the following…
“Given the existence of gravity”
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gravity -
*a (1) : the gravitational attraction of the mass of the earth, the moon, or a planet for bodies at or near its surface (2) : a fundamental physical force that is responsible for interactions which occur because of mass between particles, between aggregations of matter (as stars and planets), and between particles (as photons) and aggregations of matter, that is 10-39 times the strength of the strong force, and that extends over infinite distances but is dominant over macroscopic distances especially between aggregations of matter —called also gravitation, gravitational force — compare electromagnetism 2a, strong force, weak force *
That’s a whole lot of nothing for the universe to come out of, especially when the universe is supposedly coming out that which is apart of the existing physical universe.
In any case simply stating that a famous scientist said something does not in anyway tell us whether his philosophy is correct or rational, neither is it science, and neither does it address my argument.
Thanks.
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plinko
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I know. I haven’t read the book yet, and I knew by posting a quote I would get flamed. I did it anyway. I wanted to see what would happen.
What was your point in posting a sentence? Is it to prove that there HAS to be a god because humans haven’t thought of an exception to your claim (yet)?
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Pieman333272
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I read it. Even if you’re an atheist, don’t get it. It’ll give you a response to the fine-tuning and cosmological arguments that works, but is completely unsupported by science, criticized by atheists and highly improbable. In fact, it doesn’t really work. It would work if it went completely unchallenged, but obviously it hasn’t (see here and here). And then there’s the reality that he opens the book saying “philosophy is dead” but spends at least 1/3 of the book bending his hypothesis to answer philosophical questions.
No offence intended, but there’s much better work out there.
And for the record, MindOverMatter did not “flame” you. He critiqued Hawking’s focus in writing that book and demonstrated that his objection (M-Theory) is a metaphysical impossibility in its current state.
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Spock
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This is presented as an absolute principle. It is supposed to lead to some “god’s” existence. There are 3 problems with it.
Problem #1. This principle is the derivative on many observations. It has been arrived at in an inductive fashion, coming from very many obseravtions. As such to state that there can be no exceptions is a fallacy, just like saying: “white ravens have never been observed, therefore there can be no white ravens”.
Problem #2. The principle can be restated as: “There are no ‘fresh’, or ‘new’ casual chains”. Everything we experience comes from some already existing phenomenon. If all of our actions are caused by some external causative agent, then the so-called “free will” is merely an illusion. Important addendum: “caused” should not be confused by “influenced”.
Problem #3. This problem happens when the above (already dubious) principle is applied to the whole universe. The phrase “started to exist” means that there was a time, when that enity did not exist, and then there is a time when it already exists. This worldview is the old Newtonian one, which assumed an absolute “time”, independent from the universe. This worldview has been abandoned when Einstein introduced the theory of relativity. According to our understanding time is a phenomenon of the universe (along with space) and so the expression “the universe started to exist” is nonsense. One cannot say anything meaningful about the “beginning of the universe”. It is exactly as meaningless as to talk about the point in space which is directly to the north from the North Pole.
Summary: to attempt to use the starting principle to establish the existence of some “creator” is futile.
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freethinker83
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I don’t want to get involved in a debate, so this is all I will say.
If what you say is true, what caused God to exist? I don’t think your quote is a very good argument for God.
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iwillendure
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only things in our universe have to have a begining, as far as other places or univeres are concernd there may not be any laws to follow and therefore would not need a begining and so nothing would have had to create him.
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Hastrman
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Only if existence is not intrinsic to its nature (that’s why God doesn’t require an external cause). Since nothing in the universe is logically necessary (God is, being existence itself), “to exist” is not intrinsic to the nature of the universe.
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Hastrman
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Even in the absence of time (no beginnings) anything not logically necessary would need a logical cause to its existence. That’s why Hindus believe in God, but also believe in the eternity of the cosmos.
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The_Exodus
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This criticism - following Hume, Stuart Mill, Spencer - does not understand the role of the intellect in judging truths. It fails to grasp what St. Thomas and Scholasticism taught, and consequently brings forth this very common strawman which you have presented.
The proposition “whatever begins to exist has a cause” contains implicitly the illative truth that its applicability is universal, just like the applicability of cause/effect, the principle of sufficient reason, and the law of contradiction are all universal.
In other words, “whatever begins to exist has a cause” is a tautology, inducted from experience, true, but which nevertheless has intellectual certainty, just like the proposition “what is is, and what is not, is not” is a universal truth, applicable to all reality, even though we have not experienced every inch of existece.
spock said:
Even if free will did not exist (your reasoning is fallacious by the way, but that is beside the point) this has nothing to do with whether or not the OP’s premise is false.
spock said:
Another strawman.
The universe began to exist *simultaneously *when time began to exist. The beginning of the existence of the two are concomitant.
Further, “began” and “from” can be understood ontologically, not only temporally.
spock said:
Hardly.
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Spock
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I do not accept scholasticism and thomism. I only accept rational concepts, rationally presented.
They are incorrectly accepted as “universal” by some people.
It is not a tautology. It is a proposition, which is taken to be true by some, and denied by others.
If it would be a fallacy, I would like to see your reasoning. Nevertheless, the argument simply points out that the universe has many causative chains in it, and every “free decision” starts a brand new causative chain - therefore the so called “universal principle” is not “universal”.
Without “time” there is no “beginning”. The word “simultaneously” means temporal coexistence. The very word “beginning” means that “before” that moment there was no universe, and “after” that there was. This presupposes an absolute “time”, which is a false concept. “Time”, along with “before” and “after” is only meaningful within the universe, they cannot be applied to the universe.
A meaningless proposition. Maybe you would like to argue that “north” can be understood “ontologically” and not just “spatially”, and thus the “point which is directly to the north from the North Pole” is a meaningful proposition.
Oh, yes. Most the alleged “proofs” of some creator commit the same fallacy: the fallacy of composition. They all take some aspect of the universe, and try to apply it to the universe. Ho-hum. Boring stuff. And no matter how many times it is pointed out, someone will resurrect it. It reminds me of those people who keep on insisting that they “created” a perpetual motion machine, and those who claim that they “solved” the problem of “squaring the circle” and “trisecting a triangle”…
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tonyrey
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MOM, the word “external” has a spatial connotation which complicates matters. You are on firmer ground if you use the argument from contingency. Since there is no evidence that anything exists necessarily nor that things have always existed it is reasonable to believe there is a Necessary Being.
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MindOverMatter2
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This is a straw-man. I am not making a scientific argument. I am making a metaphysical argument concerning existence as an act of being as opposed to nothing at all. “I think therefore I am”, or the statement that “there can be no such thing as a square-triangle”, leaves no possibility of error, because we have certain knowledge of the “general nature” of the things described; despite the absence of any particular scientific knowledge. One knows that in general there is an act of existence, and one need not go into any particulars about the possible forms that existence might take in order to know for certain that existence is not identical in nature to nothing.
This is another straw-man, since you placing mental causes in the mouth of a metaphysical argument. What is required in-order for there to be an act of existence, is a very different question to what might be required for mental causality. They are dealing with different contexts of being. The first is existential in context, and the latter is “functional” in context.
Nobody argued that there was a time when time began to exist. They have argued that time necessarily has a “beginning” given the fact that it is finite in nature and not infinite. There has not been an infinite amount of changes. This is also a matter of context. The argument is being made in an ontological context, not a scientific one. One does not need to imagine a temporal beginning in-order to justify that time is not eternal, that change has not always been, since this is only to say that time (change) does not infinitely regress in its being. Thus there is a point that one cannot go beyond in terms of measuring change, and this is because there is absolutely nothing - no existence - no change, no before that point. Thus one must argue either that the potentiality for change came out of nothing and that time itself is rooted in nothing. Or one must argue that time and its potentiality is rooted in a being that is not changing and is not spatial, since it does not exist “before” time, as you have helped point out.
If one accepts your position, one must believe that time simultaneously began to exist of its own accord, without a cause, out of nothing. What you don’t realise is that it is you that is committing the fallacy of composition since you argue that all causes must be understood in a temporal physical sense.
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Spock
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If your metaphysics is contradicted by actual physics (reality!), then you should abandon your faulty speculation.
See above. What you exposed in your OP was that there are no “new causal chains”. I refuted that.
Since time cannot be separated from the universe (as Einstein’s relativity shows), you certainly did.
Empty speculation.
See the first paragraph.
Incorrect. Our current physics does not say anything about the nature of the singularity. “Time”, “before”, “after”, “causality” cannot applied to the whole universe. That is the fallacy of composition your argument commits.
To repeat: one cannot offer some “metaphysical” argument if it is contradicted by reality. It carries no weight at all.
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danserr
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Everything that begins to exist must have a cause of its existence
This definitely seems more plausible than not. Things popping into existence out of nothing just doesn’t seem very plausible, (actually it sounds more like magic than science or serious metaphysics) and anyway the causal principle is continually affirmed in our experience. I’ll mention one consideration though, that I have not seen mentioned yet,
“If something could come into existence from nothing, it is inexplicable why anything and everything doesn’t come into existence from nothing.”
This seems a fair enough point. The universe is some sort of exception to the causal principle? Doesn’t strike me as terribly plausible.
This definitely seems more plausible than not. Things popping into existence out of nothing just doesn’t seem very plausible, (actually it sounds more like magic than science or serious metaphysics) and anyway the causal principle is continually affirmed in our experience. I’ll mention one consideration though, that I have not seen mentioned yet,
“If something could come into existence from nothing, it is inexplicable why anything and everything doesn’t come into existence from nothing.”
This seems a fair enough point. The universe is some sort of exception to the causal principle? Doesn’t strike me as terribly plausible.
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The_Exodus
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I did not present a system of Scholasticism or Thomism, but something which St. Thomas and the Scholastics held.
Are you going to simply wave your hand at that concept, or intellectually engage with it?
Anyway, if you truly did deny what I put forth, you would be denying the intellect’s ability to make universal judgments about being qua being, in which case you’d be led to deny the universal applicablility of the law of contradiction, among other things.
Which if hardly a rational thing to do - from your standpoint.
What is your reasoning behind this?
Well your criticism relies on saying that it IS a tautology - i.e. a definitional statement conjured up apriori by the human mind and projected onto all of reality universally, without being justified.
I am not sure you understand your own criticism all that well.
What do you mean by the word “many” when you say the universe has “many” causal chains? Are you implying every action is the start of a new chain?
If so, that would be absurd, for it would not then have any connection with the preceding and already present chain. Indeed, if every act was the start of a “new” chain, there would be no “chain” at all, but mere unconnected events.
If not, then it would simply be another link in the already existing chain.
MindOverMatter has pointed out your equivocation nicely. I have nothing to add to what he has said.
Actually, a very simply picture can illustrate what is meant by ontological as opposed to temporal priority.
Instead of picturing a line in which everything to the left of a given point is “prior” to it, imagine a base which serves as the ultimately prior position relative to anything build on or above the base.
The arguments rely on coming to grip with the fundamental laws of being, which are universal in regards to existence (the law of contradiction, identity, etc). These are principles which hold up every proposition whatsoever - yours included. They cannot be denied except on pain of absurdity.
And anyway, even if your criticism followed, it would not be an argument against God, but only for agnosticism. For we have not explored every inch of the universe, and, therefore, we could not conclude that no such being as God exists. Further, all science would be destroyed, since we could not make universal propositions about substances, such as man, molecule, etc. In which case, there is no reason to suppose that all men are not mortal. Maybe some are, since we have not observed every single one? Maybe, further, miracles are possible? In which case, it becomes just as likely to think Christ may have rose from the dead and performed miracles.
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Spock
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Plausibility is not the point. Certainly we observe zillions of causative events. The problem is the step of generalization: “we observe zillions of causations, therefore causation is universal”. A clear example of the “no white raven…” fallacy.
This is the another problematic assertion, and it has been addressed. The universe is not a “thing”, it is the collection of “things”. To say that all members of a set have a certain propery of “X”, and therefore the collection also has the property of “X” is the fallacy of composition.
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Spock
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You are mistaken. What I presented is not an argument against God’s existence. It is an argument against this particular attempt to prove God’s existence. Maybe there can be a valid argument, starting from the properties of the universe, which would logically lead to God’s existence. I don’t think there is, but who knows? All I am saying is that this particular attempt fails.
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