Can you think of anything–anything at all–that has ever begun to exist without a cause?
Just to state that something exists as a brute fact does not remove the problem of something needing a cause or an explanation for its existence. Consider this. Theists often get flack from atheists who accuse theists of saying that God is a brute fact. Thus, they come up with all kinds of nonsensical things like the spaghetti monster as an alternative explanation to God. Since one brute fact is as good as another. Why not posit 10000 spaghetti monsters? Why just one? Or all sorts of things we could imagine as brute facts that cause the universe. Since a brute fact has no explanation. We just have to accept it. However, for the classical theist God is not a brute fact. He is the necessarily existing being. Since we derive a necessarily existing being not from a brute fact but from reasoning about existence. God in this sense is only a slice of the being from the gods of religion, but it is enough to disprove atheism.
Actually, to conclude that universe requires a cause is not the fallacy of composition. It is actually a sound induction. The fallacy of composition is to conclude that because part of a thing has a property then the whole thing itself must have that property. Now, sometimes the whole thing does have the same property as its parts. For example a white picket fence as a whole is also white, not just each individual board. However, other times it does not. For instance, if part of an elephant is light it does not mean the whole elephant must also be light.
There you go again, making up stuff.
Quantum physics asserts that particles do some from nothing, apparently. We Christians counter that the particles are either going into invisibility, or God is creating and de-creating at will. Scientist want to rule out all non-local factors, but they can’t rule out God
Actually, there is a lot of misinformation about this and the word ‘nothing’ is used rather loosely here. Nothing is not a low energy vacuum state. Nothing is non being or the absence of anything. If you have a vacuum or a low energy state with the laws of physics that is not nothing. That is still something.
No, this equation is the definition of “force”, and we are allowed to speak of causality whenever we see a change. So, when we see a body falling to the earth with accelerated movement we look for the cause, and if then we observe that the acceleration of the body decreases until a terminal speed is reached, we look for another cause. In the first case we have come to the conclusion that there is an interaction between the body and the earth. In the second case we say there is an interaction between the body and air. Depending on how we describe the interaction we will see the earth and the air as the causes, or the other way around.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?
Well, that depends on what you mean by “to observe”. I prefer the term “to apprehend”. All rational rigor is founded on rational principles, and in the case of our theories about the physical world one of those principles is precisely the principle of causality. However, as physical science is limited in its scope to the realm of interactions, we cannot go beyond the physical realm while remaining scientific. However, we are still rational if we go beyond the description of physical interactions.
Yes, Galileo’s work is a nice and interesting example of how scientific minds sometimes proceed. It deserves to be studied with care, in order to have a better understanding of human thought processes.
If there was something that Newton’s theory did not represent adequately it was his theory which needed some adjustment or replacement, not the principle of causality. A scientist wouldn’t say: “well, let’s keep Newton’s theory; anyway perhaps the principle of causality has no ontological value, and Newton’s theory has been useful sometimes. So, let’s take advantage of it as long as we are lucky”.
Where does it assert this?
LOL!
Surely you see how ridiculous that is. “Nothing with properties” is just another way of saying “something”.
Exactly
Calls to mind a joke I often enjoy:
You just did it again, you just told God he must necessarily exist. (Unless by being you don’t mean God of course.)
I think you just made it worse. You say God must necessarily exist. Therefore every aspect of God must necessarily exist exactly as it is, and God is necessarily exactly whatever your logic says he must be. We wouldn’t need revelation, any competent logician could work out exactly what God must be.
But if I continue following your logic, you say God must necessarily exist, therefore every aspect of God must necessarily exist exactly as it is, and therefore God has no choice but to create everything as it is, and no choice but to continue creating everything exactly as it is. Is God a slave to logic? Can you prove his love by logic? Does logic dictate that Christ must die on the cross?
Nope. Natures, essences and so on are part of Aristotle’s hylomorphism, which isn’t taught or used in modern science.
I’m fairly certain the Pope’s not writing your posts.Oh, and I’m sure the pope already knows all this. And, there are far better people than I to explain it to him.
Not sure why you’re being so coy about causality. In physics at least, all the important stuff is in the math, so if cause and effect were not to be found in the math then they would be inessential footnotes.
Suppose you firmly believe there’s a large elephant looking over your shoulder right now, along with a tub of butter, Genghis Khan wearing two square triangles, and a being from the seventy-fifth dimension. None of them are interacting with you in any way, but you say you’re still rational. Please explicate.
I’d have thought scientists try as hard as possible to retain existing theories. Stage magicians claim to possess all kinds of powers, and only by being skeptical can we discover the subterfuge. And surely lots of people still use Newton’s theory of gravity even though they know it doesn’t work in cases which don’t interest them. They know gravity is a curve in spacetime but still think of it as a force, and do so without any reification, because it still has explanatory power. This was after all a battle Newton had to fight - others said he must explain what gravity is, and he said no, “hypotheses non fingo = I contrive no hypotheses”, and that principle, that we must not invent occult qualities not justified by observation, is a founding principle of modern science.