Out of nothing comes nothing, So how is creation exnihilo possible?

[kdbueno]

The objectivity of divine law is real.

 

[Tomdstone]

I’m still reading through your sources, but I don’t understand how what you’ve pointed out even in principle undermines the concept of efficient causality. It seems as though it simply proves is that there is non-deterministic causality. Any good theist who believes in free will would say that same.

In a sense, I suppose you could say that the uncertainty principle is some sort of a non-deterministic microlocal cause for a violation of the conservation of energy and creation of the particle antiparticle pair. I was thinking of causality in a deterministic sense that if A causes B, then A must always be followed by B. In the quantum world we know that identical conditions may give rise to a variety of different events along a stochastic probability distribution.
Of course, you also have a violation of Bell’s inequalities in the quantum theory which implies that nature is incompatible with local causal realism. Generally, it is thought that quantum theory would become causal only by adding hidden variables, which is ruled out by Bell’s theorem. Phenomena such as radioactive decay, photon emission and absorption, and many others are such that only a probabilistic description of them can be given.
But then again, you can argue for a weak non-deterministic version of causality.
There is a recent paper by Xian O. Camanho, Jose D. Edelstein, Juan Maldacena, Alexander Zhiboedov which argues that there is a high energy scattering process which leads to causality violation.
arxiv.org/pdf/1407.5597v1.pdf
Getting back to the Kalam argument, do you think it is provable that the universe itself, as a whole, has a Newtonian or deterministic cause? Or if you allow weaker non-deterministic and probabilistic causes, could it have arrived as a result of a quantum fluctuation?
Also, not much is known about before the BB, so it is not obvious to a lot of people that the universe had a beginning.

 

[ynotzap]

Right. The production of the particle antiparticle pair comes about not because of deterministic causality, but because of quantum indeterminism given by the uncertainty principle. Before the particle antiparticle creation, the energy in the vacuum was E(0) say. But because of the quantum theory uncertainty principle there will be an increase in energy of the order of dE = (h/2pi)/dt over a very short period of time. So the energy increases from E(0) to E(0) + dE, not by any deterministic causal principle, but by quantum uncertainty which arises because of the statistical nature of quantum mechanics.

Physics does not answer what energy is, because it can not explain the nature of motion. Ontology will explain that matter can not move itself, and motion is explained as a capacity for change to the actual changing, or potency to act. The capacity for change, or fulfillment, can not move itself to change or to fulfillement, but must be moved by an exterior agent that causes the change, or fulfillment (act) Pure energy(or force) is pure act, and pure act is God.
Change is caused by another, matter can not change itself, because it can not move itself. Did splitting the atom cause itself to split? Can matter be reduced to its ultimate particle, and if it can, will it explain itself? Some of the theories of quantum mechanics have a particle going in opposite direction at the same time. They need to get their heads out of science fiction and calling it real science. The uncertainty principle is really at work Remember you are treating the theories of quantum mechanics as fact, and they are not. In the meantime disprove that things that come into existence must have a cause, show the the error in logic, or reasoning.

Physics states that matter in motion generally is equal to energy. Physics never answers what is the nature of energy, the nature of motion., they are stuck at ground level.

 

[Aloysium]

:twocents:

Existence is relational in nature; ultimately, the Father begetting the Son who returns all He is to the Father, the process involving the ontological breath of God, the Holy Spirit. One God - Love.

From that Font, all creation is brought into being, and we ourselves in His image.

We cannot exist but through that loving relationship, whereby God brings us into being. We are ultimately rooted in that relationship with God as Father, as the Word which formed the world and became one of us, and through the Holy Spirit who inspires us. In God’s image, we are created self-other; when truly ourselves, we are in loving relation to one another, not isolated but connected, by our relational nature to God, to one another and to all creation. In perfecting our relationships, giving ourselves to God, to Love, we become Christ-like and our truest self. Maintaining our Individuality, through the church, we form the body of Christ.

Nothing needs to exist but God, who does so eternally. We clearly do not create ourselves. We as part of everything in creation, need God to exist. Creation is not formed out of His being as if He were some substrate, but rather as a manifestation of His creative power and compassion. As He is the eternal Act of Being, He brings us into existence that we may witness and participate in His Glory.

In regards to the material universe, as we get to its limits of time, space, matter and how they are related and interact, things get kind of wonky. People project all sorts of metaphysical concepts onto what are the limits to our capacities to know. The uncertainty principle asserts that there exists a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain physical properties of a particle, such as the complementary variables of position and momentum, can be known. It has to do with the nature of our relationship with the material universe and how far we can manipulate matter to make it reveal its secrets.

 

[ynotzap]

In a sense, I suppose you could say that the uncertainty principle is some sort of a non-deterministic microlocal cause for a violation of the conservation of energy and creation of the particle antiparticle pair. I was thinking of causality in a deterministic sense that if A causes B, then A must always be followed by B. In the quantum world we know that identical conditions may give rise to a variety of different events along a stochastic probability distribution.
Of course, you also have a violation of Bell’s inequalities in the quantum theory which implies that nature is incompatible with local causal realism. Generally, it is thought that quantum theory would become causal only by adding hidden variables, which is ruled out by Bell’s theorem. Phenomena such as radioactive decay, photon emission and absorption, and many others are such that only a probabilistic description of them can be given.
But then again, you can argue for a weak non-deterministic version of causality.
There is a recent paper by Xian O. Camanho, Jose D. Edelstein, Juan Maldacena, Alexander Zhiboedov which argues that there is a high energy scattering process which leads to causality violation.
arxiv.org/pdf/1407.5597v1.pdf
Getting back to the Kalam argument, do you think it is provable that the universe itself, as a whole, has a Newtonian or deterministic cause? Or if you allow weaker non-deterministic and probabilistic causes, could it have arrived as a result of a quantum fluctuation?
Also, not much is known about before the BB, so it is not obvious to a lot of people that the universe had a beginning.

Self evident principles are not evident to some, the principle of contradiction does not apply for some, and neither does you can’t give what you do not have. When applying these principles to the quantum theory, the theory can not stand. More energy coming from less energy, things pop in and out of existence, no certainty causing possibilities, almost a departure from objective reasoning, like I said a lot of subjective thinking with error. Using math to explain reality, by formula.

 

[Anthony_V]

In a sense, I suppose you could say that the uncertainty principle is some sort of a non-deterministic microlocal cause for a violation of the conservation of energy and creation of the particle antiparticle pair. I was thinking of causality in a deterministic sense that if A causes B, then A must always be followed by B. In the quantum world we know that identical conditions may give rise to a variety of different events along a stochastic probability distribution.

Why would A always be followed by B? If A is a sufficient rather than both a necessary and sufficient condition, then I don’t see any problem. All that matters with, say, the principle of finality (a corollary of the principle of causality) is that a potential is a potential for an effect or range of effects. The potential will not, when actualized, give rise to something it didn’t have the potential for. It does no damage to say that one potential can give rise to different actualities. This kind of non-determinism is even broader, it seems, than probabilistic conceptions. With the example of free will, at least in the Thomistic account, our choices are not based upon chance itself (I’m not certain that chance even has any kind of causal power anyway, but more on that below), even if they aren’t determined beforehand.

Unless I’m wrong, it seems that all you’re saying is that quantum fluctuation is the kind of thing that has the potential, when actualized, to give rise to different actualities, even all things being equal.

Of course, you also have a violation of Bell’s inequalities in the quantum theory which implies that nature is incompatible with local causal realism. Generally, it is thought that quantum theory would become causal only by adding hidden variables, which is ruled out by Bell’s theorem. Phenomena such as radioactive decay, photon emission and absorption, and many others are such that only a probabilistic description of them can be given.

I assume what you’re saying is that “all things being equal” is a certain proposition, not merely one which says “all detectable things being equal.” So we’ve ruled out hidden variables, which means that the same set of circumstances bring about different results in different instances. That just means the potencies in things pertinent to quantum fluctuations are variegated. I’m not convinced this does any damage to the principle of causality any more than free will does.

Now, if we’re saying that “probabilistic” is not merely a predication of the pertinent cause, but is in fact the pertinent cause, I think that needs some further explanation. How can numbers exhibit causality? We may as well posit a Platonic third realm; but I don’t see many people in a rush to interpret quantum mechanics as implying some sort of idealism.

But then again, you can argue for a weak non-deterministic version of causality.
There is a recent paper by Xian O. Camanho, Jose D. Edelstein, Juan Maldacena, Alexander Zhiboedov which argues that there is a high energy scattering process which leads to causality violation.
arxiv.org/pdf/1407.5597v1.pdf

You’re going to have to unpack the basic conclusion for me. I’ve never been good at mathematics.

Getting back to the Kalam argument, do you think it is provable that the universe itself, as a whole, has a Newtonian or deterministic cause? Or if you allow weaker non-deterministic and probabilistic causes, could it have arrived as a result of a quantum fluctuation?
Also, not much is known about before the BB, so it is not obvious to a lot of people that the universe had a beginning.

From the perspective of classical Thomist philosophy, it’s not demonstrable by reason alone that the universe had a beginning. Some contemporary Thomists say that the Kalam argument can be reconciled with classical Thomism, but I have not investigated the issue myself, and I have no stake in it – at least for the reason that it’s not necessary for proving God’s existence. Again, I don’t understand how quantum mechanics negates certain kinds of causality which, say, are the foundation for theistic arguments for God’s existence. It seems that quantum mechanics merely positively asserts that there are certain kinds of non-deterministic causality on very small scales. It is altogether a very different assertion to say that the causality of macroscopic proportions is entirely reducible to causality on smaller scales. That would involve an investigation into essentialism, irreducibility, and the like.

 

[Tomdstone]

Physics does not answer what energy is,…

I think that physics tells us that energy is the capacity to do work. Generally, there are three types of energy, heat, kinetic and potential energy.

 

[Tomdstone]

Change is caused by another, matter can not change itself, because it can not move itself.

I changed myself by learning French on my own. This change enabled me to communicate while in France and Belgium.

 

[PRmerger]

I changed myself by learning French on my own. This change enabled me to communicate while in France and Belgium.

Yep. You initiated a course of events.

French didn’t just appear in our brain, uninitiated.

Thank you for proving the point.

 

[Anthony_V]

I changed myself by learning French on my own. This change enabled me to communicate while in France and Belgium.

But your potential to learn French did not cause itself to become actual.

The principle of causality simply implies that potentials do not cause themselves inasmuch as they are potential; for inasmuch as they are potential, they do not exist in actuality. Causes which are not actually existent do not produce actually existent effects.

 

[Tomdstone]

Remember you are treating the theories of quantum mechanics as fact, and they are not.

AFAIK, there is no physical theory which is an absolute fact. The value of a physical theory depends on both the success with which it explains a wide range of presently known facts and its usefulness in suggesting places to look for presently unexplained phenomena. Physical theories are tentative and can be corrected or modified depending on experimental results. However, the quantum theory and the theory of relativity have both been hugely successful and valuable in describing physical phenomena. Of course, today we see many physicists working on string theory in an attempt to unify the two theories on both the large and the small scale.

 

[Tomdstone]

In the meantime disprove that things that come into existence must have a cause, show the the error in logic, or reasoning.

To answer that, I need to know what you mean by cause. Some people will define cause weakly, others will define it strongly.

 

[Tomdstone]

Physics never answers what is … the nature of motion., they are stuck at ground level.

Generally, motion is a change in position of an object with respect to time. Motion can be described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, time and speed.To observe the motion of a body you need to attach a frame of reference and measure the change in position of the body relative to that frame.
Classical mechanics is based on Newton’s 3 laws of motion which describe the relationship between the forces acting on a body and its motion. Relativity theory handles the case when an object is moving close to the speed of light.
Quantum mechanics has been successful in describing what happens at the subatomic level. However, due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the location and velocity of a subatomic particle cannot be simultaneously determined.

 

[Tomdstone]

you can’t give what you do not have.

I am not sure that that is true in every sense of the phrase, although it will be true in a lot of cases. For example, suppose that I am not fluent in French, but I spend time teaching my neighbor the French language and he becomes fluent in it. So I was not fluent, but my student did become fluent by means of my teaching him the subject.
And of course, we have the theory of emergence, where each part of the system does not have a certain property, but when grouped together, a new property emerges.

 

[Tomdstone]

But your potential to learn French did not cause itself to become actual.

The principle of causality simply implies that potentials do not cause themselves inasmuch as they are potential; for inasmuch as they are potential, they do not exist in actuality. Causes which are not actually existent do not produce actually existent effects.

I thought that the question was whether or not something could change itself. Is it yes or no?

 

[Aloysium]

I thought that the question was whether or not something could change itself. Is it yes or no?

We can because we have free will. Otherwise it is determined.

 

[Tomdstone]

From the perspective of classical Thomist philosophy, it’s not demonstrable by reason alone that the universe had a beginning.

Then that kills the Kalam argument which assumes such. Or, if not kill, it at least reduces the Kalam argument to speculation.

 

[ynotzap]

I think that physics tells us that energy is the capacity to do work. Generally, there are three types of energy, heat, kinetic and potential energy.

As secondary causes, not the primary cause of power (Pure Act) A capacity to do work is not the doing, it is only a potential, a potential is not an act, the act is the doing’ and the potential for work, a capacity can not fill itself, but must be filled (moved) by another to become an act(work) We take things for granted because those who represent authorities say so, as if they can’t be wrong, or questioned What does it profit a person to eat a meal that someone else has digested…

 

[Tomdstone]

What does it profit a person to eat a meal that someone else has digested…

I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean the scholastic Aristotelian type philosophy that was digested during the Dark Ages?

 

[Anthony_V]

Then that kills the Kalam argument which assumes such. Or, if not kill, it at least reduces the Kalam argument to speculation.

And what does that matter if there are arguments based on more basic principles?