Why Couldn't the Universe Exist Without a Cause?

[Bradski]

People look at the unimaginable vastness of the observable universe and the huge time to its beginning and they think with Feynman: “the stage is too big for the drama.” We might not agree with them, but that is a reasonable and understandable conclusion.

The full quote:

“It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.”

The more I learn about the natural world, the more convinced I am of that. Just last night I was reading how the heavier elements were formed in stars back at the very beginning and thought…wow, hang on. This is not a let-there-be-light kinda moment. It is convoluted to the max.

If science had got stuck in some sort of rut, then we’d still be absolutely convinced that God made all this (and ‘all this’ wasn’t very much at all) a few thousand years ago. How many would be shaken in their belief if it was suddenly revealed what we know now.

We’ve been boiling that frog for two thousand years. I’m not sure how many people realise it.

 

[inocente]

No. I’ve already shown that there needs to be a necessarily existing being.

I look forward to watching your meeting with the Pope.

I think that we have to look at the concept of a necessarily existing being. The question we need to ask is why does anything exist at all? There has to be something that exists that is metaphysically necessary. Or that exists as a necessarily existing being. And in this being it would be the only being whose nature is existence itself. Everything that is contingent on something else for its existence has existence, but its very nature is not existence, but has received existence. Whereas a necessarily existing being exists by its own nature. Nothing else brought it into existence. But if this necessarily existing being did not exist then nothing else could exist. Since it is metaphysically impossible for something to come from nothing or non being. Therefore, a necessarily existing being must exist.

There appear to be a number of unsupported assumptions here. What does “metaphysically necessary” mean? If there is such a rule, that something must exist, then does the rule apply to itself? Is God really forced to exist by a rule of metaphysics? How can God be omnipotent if metaphysics forces Him to exist?

What are these “natures” you speak of? Do things really have “natures”? How can things with different “natures” interact as part of one nature?

You claim that everything other than God receives existence, that existence is a property which gets inherited. How then does your “nature” exist if it didn’t exist before you were conceived? Or is your nature also “metaphysically necessary”?

And so on.

 

[inocente]

Also, I seem to remember a philosphical paper which purported to prove that something rather than nothing must exist - that the Universe necessarily exists. I can’t remember who wrote it but I’ll see if I can find it.

Sounds interesting, the bibliography here might ring a bell - plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I’m sure that’s what you think, and that too is reasonable and understandable, **but more people **find the size, and our place in it, leads away from a Natural Theology than towards it.

Maybe among your friends, but not the world at large nor among my friends.

What the vastness of the universe suggests is not Nogod, but an omnipotent God.

If you feel dwarfed by the size of the universe, that is natural. If you feel being dwarfed is a sign of Nogod, that is not natural theology so much as atheism.

One of the most telling signs of atheism, I believe, is the notion that man is nothing special.

The size of the universe proves nothing of that sort.

As Pascal said, despite his size, man is greater than the vast universe because he knows he exists, whereas the universe knows nothing of the sort.

So I’ll see your Feynman and raise you an Einstein.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Is God really forced to exist by a rule of metaphysics? How can God be omnipotent if metaphysics forces Him to exist?

I guess it’s asking too much to ask you to proofread your thoughts before committing yourself to them?

NOTHING FORCES GOD TO EXIST.

GOD FORCES EVERYTHING ELSE TO EXIST,

INCLUDING METAPHYSICS!

 

[inocente]

I guess it’s asking too much to ask you to proofread your thoughts before committing yourself to them?

NOTHING FORCES GOD TO EXIST.

GOD FORCES EVERYTHING ELSE TO EXIST,

INCLUDING METAPHYSICS!

I completely agree which is why I said that was an unsupported assumption.

Might be an idea to actually read posts before throwing such all-caps tantrums, I mean all you’ve managed to do is draw more attention to your own error .

 

[JuanFlorencio]

OK, let’s look at it in terms of the mathematical model (presumably containing GR and the standard big bang cosmological model). As I understand it, whatever you ask of the model, you get reasonable results for every past time t except t=0, when you get infinities.

Assuming this is the case, your original question was whether the principle of non-contradiction could be employed. I doubt it, and to rephrase my question in terms of the model - do you think the model can tell you something which cannot be both true and false about causality at t=0?

The mathematical model doesn’t tell us anything about causality at any time. Any mathematical model establishes relations between defined variables, but causality is not represented with it. No one of the variables is cause or effect of the others.

Don’t know where you’re going with that. Look at it another way using Hume’s fork.

The question is whether it could be proven that physical causality is logically necessary in all possible worlds. It so then it would have been deduced a priori, without any reference to our world.

As I said before, causality cannot be deduced from any set of axioms. It is not a theorem. You could say, as with any axiom, “I will not accept it”, but then you will need to be consistent, and one of the consequences of not accepting causality as a necessary principle is that physical science will not be possible as such. What you will have instead is a kind of Leibnizian interpretation of reality, in which the behavior of each entity is understood as absolutely independent of the others and evolving according to its own inner principles.

But unless you can do some fancy footwork, that seems not to be the case. What we can say is that when certain physical conditions occur we always observe a particular phenomenon (which is how a physical law is defined), and we generalize this by talking of causality or of cause and effect. We know this by logical inference, not by deduction, and so we cannot call it a proof. It relies on our observations, and we can never know that tomorrow some new observation will expose a limitation with Einstein’s gravity, just as it did with Newton’s. But Newton’s theory still works within its limits, and Einstein’s will still work within whatever limitations may be exposed in future.

Perhaps you wanted to say “induction” instead of “logical inference”. In any case I wouldn’t be so sure that any of those processes (or both together) are enough to establish a physical law. I tend to believe that scientific thinking is a creative process. However, I agree with you that physical laws are not established by “logical inference”, and I will add that they are not obtained by “induction” either.

Those limitations of our physical theories that you are mentioning now, and which can be said as well of cosmological models, is not an argument against causality. Whenever we see a change around us, we immediately look for the possible cause; and it can always happen that we make mistakes attributing the causality to something which was not the cause. Nevertheless, as soon as we know about our mistake, we will try to find out which one was the real cause; we will not think: “well, after all may be there was no cause!”.

When I suggested before that without causality we wouldn’t be able to foresee what will happen next, I did not have in my mind a possible proposal of a more general physical law which could substitute another. The driver behind the proposal of the new law would also be the principle of causality (though, I insist, causality itself is not represented in the mathematical model). And, as in the Einstein-Newton case the new model would just have a more extended range of applicability. No, what I meant was that no model would have any value at all; unless Leibniz’ theory was correct, describing a world where, notwithstanding there is absolutely no interaction between the entities which compose it, it is the most harmonious of all possible worlds.

 

[hecd2]

What about the Universe makes it a necessarily existing entity?

Huh?

The question is why does anything at all exist? To assume that the universe or the multi-verse is a ‘brute fact’ does not answer the question.

I can understand if you say that that it doesn’t answer the question to *your *satisfaction, or that it’s not the answer you would give, but nevertheless it is an answer to that question. Because the universe exists and the existence of the universe is a brute fact. Moreover, it is not an answer I made up but one which is discussed and held by a number of credible academic philosphers - people like Quentin Smith, Wes Morriston, Adolf Gruenbaum, Vic Stenger.

No. I’ve already shown that there needs to be a necessarily existing being. It seems that you have already agreed with me about that by your answers.

I don’t think you have shown any such thing and if my answers have misled you to think that I have conceded that, then I am sorry, (although heaven knows how you could have concluded that from what I have written).

Do I have to prove that the universe itself needs a cause?

If that’s your position, yes, that’s the subject of the thread.

It would make more sense that you would have to prove that it doesn’t need a cause. Because if there was a default position it would be that things have causes. To say that everything in the universe has a cause but then to say without any justification or precedence that the universe itself doesn’t have a cause is to commit the ‘taxi cab’ fallacy, where you have arrived at your destination so you can just dismiss the taxi cab. You don’t need to ask where the taxi cab came from. You might assume it just popped into existence so it could take you to your destination.

I think, on the contrary, to say that the everything in the universe has a cause and therefore the universe itself has a cause is the formal fallacy of composition.

 

[hecd2]

Sounds interesting, the bibliography here might ring a bell - plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/

Yep, that’s an excellent discussion. But the bibliography didn’t help.

I think it’s the paper below, but if it is I have mis-remembered the thesis. Quentin Smith sets out to prove not that the universe necessarily exists, but using the Hartle-Hawking cosmology, that the universe exists because it has an unconditional probability of existing which he concludes to be near but not 1. The paper is by Quentin Smith in Volume 1, number 1 of Philo which no longer appears to have a website, but the paper’s on-line in many places - here for example.

I still have a nagging feeling that this is not the one I’m remembering, but I can’t find anything else at the moment.

 

[hecd2]

"hecd2:

I’m sure that’s what you think, and that too is reasonable and understandable, **but more people **find the size, and our place in it, leads away from a Natural Theology than towards it

.

Maybe among your friends, but not the world at large nor among my friends.

Well, anecdotes are one thing and statistics another, and there is no doubt that the proportion of open agnostics and atheists in the astronomical community and the community at large has grown massively over the last couple of hundred years as the understanding of the true vastness and age of the universe and our position in it has dawned (along with other factors of course). I am not suggesting that modern cosmology can’t draw people to a theistic world-view - it obviously does in some cases, but the opposite is, I think, much more common across the board. But if you’re right and I’m wrong, and the most common response to understanding modern cosmology is to be drawn to theism, then what is your complaint?

As for Einstein, I don’t think you’ll find him a stalwart defender of theism. In fact I think you’ll find him an agnostic or deist rather than a theist. In essence he asks the question: why should the beautiful complex universe be ordered so that it’s comprehensible? It’s a powerful argument - one that I think about a lot.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

It seems to me that the principle of causality and the principle of non-contradiction and the other axioms of metaphysics, while being axioms on which rational discourse is based, yet have their roots in sense experience. We, individually and collectively, observe that these things are true in our world, to the extent that they become self-evident and can form the foundation for all reasoning. But is it necessarily so?

And these axioms take their dents - causality from quantum theory, non-contraddiction from old ideas like the liar’s paradox. They possibly, even probably survive these, with a bit of wriggling, and we desperately cleave to them because saving reason is so very important.

We can describe a world (if we are talented in that way) in which these principles are modified or absent. Back to the Future. It isn’t this world as far as we can see, and yes, paradoxes and absurdities arise. But we have paradoxes and absurdities enough in this world.

So while I’m content to work with the generally agreed axioms in this world, I’m not sure they necessarily apply where the conditions on which they depend break down. Our intuition and what appears to us to be obvious consequences of certain observations break down regularly on closer inspection: Copernicanism, Euclidean space, quantum behaviour all violate a prior common sense and agreed self-evident truth. What warrant do we have for saying that these metaphysical principles ike non-contradiction and causality are the same in all possible worlds?

Though you have mentioned in another thread that nor mathematics nor logic are your field, I think you have the necessary maturity to deal with the basics and much more; really much more. So, I would like to ask you to proceed in good order and show us how is it that the principle of non-contradiction has its roots in sense experience. Afterwards I would like to continue in the same way with the implications of paradoxes in relation to the same principle. The principle of causality would be the topic of a third discussion, if you agree.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

.As for Einstein, I don’t think you’ll find him a stalwart defender of theism. In fact I think you’ll find him an agnostic or deist rather than a theist. In essence he asks the question: why should the beautiful complex universe be ordered so that it’s comprehensible? It’s a powerful argument - one that I think about a lot.

Please don’t go about making up stuff.

Einstein was not a Christian, but he was not an atheist for sure.

So do you think Einstein’s opinion counts for nothing next to yours.

It would be nice to know why, if that’s what you think.

 

[inocente]

The mathematical model doesn’t tell us anything about causality at any time. Any mathematical model establishes relations between defined variables, but causality is not represented with it. No one of the variables is cause or effect of the others.

In F=ma, we say the force F is the cause of the acceleration a experienced by the mass m. Otherwise, if we’re not allowed to speak of causality even there, when can we?

As I said before, causality cannot be deduced from any set of axioms. It is not a theorem. You could say, as with any axiom, “I will not accept it”, but then you will need to be consistent, and one of the consequences of not accepting causality as a necessary principle is that physical science will not be possible as such. What you will have instead is a kind of Leibnizian interpretation of reality, in which the behavior of each entity is understood as absolutely independent of the others and evolving according to its own inner principles.

Sure, cause and effect is something we observe, not something we can know a priori. We seem to be in full agreement that it is not an axiom nor can it be deduced from axioms (i.e. propositions “regarded as self-evidently true without proof”). So I still say we have no rigorous basis for claiming that the singularity has a cause, only intuition that is seems like it oughta.

*Perhaps you wanted to say “induction” instead of “logical inference”. In any case I wouldn’t be so sure that any of those processes (or both together) are enough to establish a physical law. I tend to believe that scientific thinking is a creative process. However, I agree with you that physical laws are not established by “logical inference”, and I will add that they are not obtained by “induction” either.

Those limitations of our physical theories that you are mentioning now, and which can be said as well of cosmological models, is not an argument against causality. Whenever we see a change around us, we immediately look for the possible cause; and it can always happen that we make mistakes attributing the causality to something which was not the cause. Nevertheless, as soon as we know about our mistake, we will try to find out which one was the real cause; we will not think: “well, after all may be there was no cause!”.

When I suggested before that without causality we wouldn’t be able to foresee what will happen next, I did not have in my mind a possible proposal of a more general physical law which could substitute another. The driver behind the proposal of the new law would also be the principle of causality (though, I insist, causality itself is not represented in the mathematical model). And, as in the Einstein-Newton case the new model would just have a more extended range of applicability. No, what I meant was that no model would have any value at all; unless Leibniz’ theory was correct, describing a world where, notwithstanding there is absolutely no interaction between the entities which compose it, it is the most harmonious of all possible worlds.*

Yes, I meant logical induction. And sure, creativity is needed. When Galileo dared to question Aristotle’s doctrine that heavier objects fall faster, he devised an ingenious thought experiment: connect a light object to a heavy object by a length of string, and if Aristotle is correct then the light object will slow the fall of the heavy. But hang on here, the connected objects together are heavier than either was separate, so according to Aristotle then should fall faster not slower. Nicely creative argument.

I disagree that causality is not represented in the math. The reason why Newton’s theory of gravity was found to be limited is that the math didn’t always give the correct predictions, as if causality was violated. In the example above, if we find a case where F is not equal ma we immediately know something’s up. Either we got the measurements wrong or we need to twiddle something.

Indeed, sometimes we have to introduce a physical constant to make the math come out right at all, so as to make predictions of the effects tally with observation. And then some folk reify the constant and decide that every particle and cubic mm of space in the universe must somehow know its value, such that the value could be fine-tuned everywhere and the world could be different, and glory be, it’s a miracle, math proves God.

 

[thinkandmull]

Einstein wrote a paper in 1940 in which he said he didn’t believe in a transcendent God who acts on humans. He was further away from Catholicism than deists I think. He like Spinoza, but denied that the universe (matter) was all there is to God, as did Spinoza (also Jew by the way). Fulton Sheen commented on this in 1940, saying that Einsteins “cosmic God” has one to many "s"es, meaning it was comical. He also asked if Einstein would die for his universe-God

 

[inocente]

Yep, that’s an excellent discussion. But the bibliography didn’t help.

I think it’s the paper below, but if it is I have mis-remembered the thesis. Quentin Smith sets out to prove not that the universe necessarily exists, but using the Hartle-Hawking cosmology, that the universe exists because it has an unconditional probability of existing which he concludes to be near but not 1. The paper is by Quentin Smith in Volume 1, number 1 of Philo which no longer appears to have a website, but the paper’s on-line in many places - here for example.

I still have a nagging feeling that this is not the one I’m remembering, but I can’t find anything else at the moment.

Thank you kindly, I’ll be reading that tomorrow.

 

[hecd2]

Though you have mentioned in another thread that nor mathematics nor logic are your field, I think you have the necessary maturity to deal with the basics and much more; really much more. So, I would like to ask you to proceed in good order and show us how is it that the principle of non-contradiction has its roots in sense experience. Afterwards I would like to continue in the same way with the implications of paradoxes in relation to the same principle. The principle of causality would be the topic of a third discussion, if you agree.

Well I am flattered, Juan, but a little hesitant. What can I say other than to cover ground where academic philosophers have already beaten the grass flat? I have made a fool of myself so many times in these sorts of discussion by saying some naive thing, and I see from the other side how people who haven’t got the background in science express opinions which are really laughable about scientific topics. In any case I’ll have to think about how to approach this for a day or three (and I’m away for a few days anyway from tomorrow). When I’m back I’ll see whether I feel up to donning the clown’s costume.

 

[inocente]

So do you think Einstein’s opinion counts for nothing next to yours.

It would be nice to know why, if that’s what you think.

Not addressed to me, but Einstein’s view is more subtle than selected quotes might suggest. For example he writes:

“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” - theguardian.com/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion

There are other famous scientists who don’t agree with him of course. I’d say no matter how famous someone might be, that at the very least when he steps outside his own field of expertise there’s no reason to value his opinion more highly than any other.

 

[fisherman_carl]

The full quote:

“It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.”

The more I learn about the natural world, the more convinced I am of that. Just last night I was reading how the heavier elements were formed in stars back at the very beginning and thought…wow, hang on. This is not a let-there-be-light kinda moment. It is convoluted to the max.

If science had got stuck in some sort of rut, then we’d still be absolutely convinced that God made all this (and ‘all this’ wasn’t very much at all) a few thousand years ago. How many would be shaken in their belief if it was suddenly revealed what we know now.

We’ve been boiling that frog for two thousand years. I’m not sure how many people realise it.

It sounds like you belong to some kind of religion that loosely associates itself with science. Since if anything science supports theism. Science supports a beginning of the universe or any multiverse. And anything that has a beginning has an external cause.

The more complex a thing is, the more order it has suggests all the more that it is by design.

Heavier elements being formed in stars does nothing to support atheism. The fact is science supports a beginning. Since something can not come from nothing the universe must have a cause outside itself. Elementary.

 

[hecd2]

Please don’t go about making up stuff.

Charles, please calm down. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a bad person, and not everything they say is wrong or deceptive. What is it that I am supposed to have made up? I said Einstein was not a theist, but more akin to a deist or an agnostic.

He wrote: “It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly.”

and: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

and: “The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.”

and: “I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”

and: “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it”

and in response to a letter asking if a Jesuit had converted him: “I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. … It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it, and that is all.”

and: “My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.”

and: “I cannot prove to you there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws”

and: “A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”

All from here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein

So do you think Einstein’s opinion counts for nothing next to yours.

It would be nice to know why, if that’s what you think.

I am sure you are very secure in your beliefs, but if so, then you have no need to appeal to Einstein as an authority. And to answer your question directly, I think that Einstein’s opinion, on these matters, before any inspection of our reasons, counts exactly the same as mine - why should they count more or less on either side? And why do you assume that our opinions would conflict?

 

[fisherman_carl]

There appear to be a number of unsupported assumptions here. What does “metaphysically necessary” mean? If there is such a rule, that something must exist, then does the rule apply to itself? Is God really forced to exist by a rule of metaphysics? How can God be omnipotent if metaphysics forces Him to exist?

No. God does not exist by some metaphysical rule. You misunderstand what I am saying. Metaphysics has to do with existence. I am merely stating that there must be a necessarily existing being for which existence is its very nature. In order to answer the question why does anything exist at all. If not anything existed then we wouldn’t exist. Yet, contingent creatures such as ourselves do not necessarily exist. We are contingent on something else bringing us into existence. And it is possible that we could not have been brought into existence. Everything in the universe that we can see is like this. Therefore, there must be something that is not contingent, that necessarily exists by its own nature, and not by some outside cause. We could call this a first cause, not in order of time, but in order of causes of existence. Since a first cause of existence can be supporting existence for all contingent things at every moment of time, even for an infinite amount of time.

What are these “natures” you speak of? Do things really have “natures”? How can things with different “natures” interact as part of one nature?

A nature is a term that describes the inherent character about a person or thing. In science they talk about the nature of things.

You claim that everything other than God receives existence, that existence is a property which gets inherited. How then does your “nature” exist if it didn’t exist before you were conceived? Or is your nature also “metaphysically necessary”?

And so on.

Your nature wouldn’t exist until you existed. Since all your nature is, is a description of your essence. And, your essence does not exist until you do.

I look forward to watching your meeting with the Pope.

Oh, and I’m sure the pope already knows all this. And, there are far better people than I to explain it to him.