Why you should think that the First-Cause has to be an Intelligent Cause

[steve-b]

steve-b:

it begs a designer

I don’t see how the universe could beg for anything. Where is the contradiction in assuming that the universe is an uncaused cause which was always there?

Explain the universe you’re describing.

 

[AlNg]

Explain the universe you’re describing.

The Universe is all of time and space and all of its contents. The Universe includes planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the smallest subatomic particles, all matter and energy and all life.

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:

Explain the universe you’re describing.

The Universe is all of time and space and all of its contents.

Re: Time:

a : the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues : duration
b : a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future

IOW.

1. time has a beginning.
2. Time doesn’t exist when there is nothing to measure.
3. Everything you mentioned has a beginning, and can’t make itself from nothing

So

all this can’t invent itself.
AINg:

The Universe includes planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the smallest subatomic particles, all matter and energy and all life.

Those are all effects.

How were they caused?
None of that happened on its own. going back to their very beginning , NONE of that stuff was there 1 second before they were created.

 

[fisherman_carl]

Yes you can get something more than one puts into it. When the universe began it only contained basic elements like helium and hydrogen. But by entirely natural, physical processes, we have every element now known to man (over 100 in the periodic table). So even discounting life arising, we have a complex ordered universe that evolved from a simple disordered one.

In my mind that would be begging the question to use the universe as an example of getting something for nothing since the origin of the universe is what is in question here.

 

[fisherman_carl]

The main filter is the environment. So in that case, effectively random. And if you consider us to be all the balls in the pocket from one shot or a royal flush or a 747 produced from a tornado, then you don’t get it and never will.

We are just random pieces of the universe that happened to become self aware through a random set of processes.

I know that sounds a bit bleak, but only if you approach it from your point of view. Me? I got lucky and I happen to be one of those pieces.

So a tornado that took place over millions of years then. Does that make you feel better?

 

[fisherman_carl]

And if you want then to claim that God designed the laws that produced this ordered and complex universe, then I am going to simplify that answer and say that the laws, rather than God, are what have always existed.

Ocamm’s razor comes in so handy in these situations. So no intelligence required. Just physical laws that are an.integral and axiomatic part of the fabric of existence. No god need apply. The position has been taken.

I don’t think you can use occam’s razor here to eliminate the need for an intelligent creator. Anymore than if you were walking down the beach and saw a beautifully constructed sand castle and said to yourself this because of occam’s razor must have been made over millions of years by the wind and waves eliminating the need for an intelligent designer. Which is more likely? I am saying the Intelligent designer is more plausible for the sand castle (and by extension us) despite occam’s razor. And anyone who says differently is biased against intelligent designers. Why should occam’s razor favor random natural processes over intelligent designers?

 

[IWantGod]

Yes you can get something more than one puts into it. When the universe began it only contained basic elements like helium and hydrogen.

I am completely on your side in terms of intelligent design. I never intended the thread to be an intelligent design argument. I also entirely agree that more has apparently come from less, but don’t we still have to make logical sense of that? Is witnessing more coming from less the same as proving that less has caused more to exist than what had essentially existed before? If we are witnesses something appear from nowhere out of nothing is one rationally justified in therefore thinking that it is logically possible for something to come from nothing without an external cause?

Isn’t the fact that more has essentially come from less evidence in favor of a cause external to physical processes?

What we scientifically observe is not necessarily evidence of ontological possibility.

 

[Wesrock]

And if you want then to claim that God designed the laws that produced this ordered and complex universe, then I am going to simplify that answer and say that the laws, rather than God, are what have always existed.

Ocamm’s razor comes in so handy in these situations. So no intelligence required. Just physical laws that are an.integral and axiomatic part of the fabric of existence. No god need apply. The position has been taken.

This would be admitting that the laws of nature are real, if abstract, beings (not implying consciousness, only that they actually exist), which would be admitting a Platonic Realism. Anyway, the issue with this is the admission of their existence as ontological brute facts: they exist, but they have no reason to exist. If one were to argue by the argument from motion, the argument from contingency, the argument from abstract realities, the argument from composition, the argument from the principle of sufficient reason, the conclusion would be clear. Accepting this by Occam’s Razor would make as much sense as accepting that the dead body found in the forest was always there and is just an ontological brute fact without explanation. It’s the simplest explanation only if you don’t think about it that hard, because it’s not really an explanation at all, which is precisely the issue.

 

[IsaiahSpirit]

What is your understanding in pure philosophy on ‘consciousness’ itself?
World based anthropomorphic history on ‘consciousness,’ used to avoid
‘the hard problem,’ of consciousness purposely.
From my understanding, ultimate causeless cause non contingency, must have
a causeless non contingent consciousness, that always existed.
And this must be be intelligent. And since, all of us have hope;
there must be a final cause for us revealed by a Benevolent Always Existent
Being for us. Otherwise, we would have an ultimately futile existence.
That since this Benevolent Always Existent Being Created us for hope;
there must be objective laws; that do not cause the harm we see all around us.
~
The whole point of consciousness, that can think transcendentally, is to realize
that these things have been revealed. The to search in the history of the human
condition for the best revelation of these things.
In one way or another; I have learned from Learned Devout walking the walk;
truly caring for neighbor witnesses who truly sacrifice for the good of the other;
in this hope — the best explanation is Jesus Christ Himself.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

This would be admitting that the laws of nature are real, if abstract, beings (not implying consciousness, only that they actually exist), which would be admitting a Platonic Realism.

So far, so good.

Anyway, the issue with this is the admission of their existence as ontological brute facts: they exist, but they have no reason to exist.

Is this an issue? Why should everything, or anything, have a reason to exist?

If one were to argue by the argument from motion, the argument from contingency, the argument from abstract realities, the argument from composition, the argument from the principle of sufficient reason, the conclusion would be clear.

All these arguments boil down to: “everything has a cause except the first cause”, which is based on the assumption that ‘everything’ had a beginning. However, there is no logical reason why that “first cause” had to have a reason to exist. If it did have a reason to exist, then we might simply ask what the reason for the reason was, and simply push the argument a little further back along a path to infinite recurrence.

This makes sense even for theists. God does not need a “reason” to exist, nor does he need to be ‘explained’ in those terms. Wesrock’s comment about a statement of fact that “it’s not really an explanation at all”, must invite the response (at least of the “first cause”): “why should there be an explanation?”

I very much follow Badskii’s argument that he can “simplify that answer and say that the laws, rather than God, are what have always existed.” However, I don’t think that Occam’s razor applies in this case. You do not really simplify the workings of a computer by putting them in a box, you merely hide them. In exactly the same way, however, describing these initial conditions as God is also an obscuration, not a simplification.

The laws, as descriptions of everything that has occurred, must be coupled to the potentiality for those laws to be executed, and I think that it is the potentiality that has to be investigated for signs of ‘intelligence’, not just the laws.

 

[Aloysium]

the laws, rather than God, are what have always existed.

Interpreting what we observe in the universe through those natural laws, we have concluded that the universe began as a singularity. The question would then arise as to where they were then. The laws represent a structure to the universe that determines events. As there are small individual events, the cosmos may be thought of as one big event, beginning to end, enveloping everything that was, is and will be relative to our position here and now. It can be thought of as simply being itself. The evidence that I would present to counter this pantheistic view, is the existence of what is other - the finiteness and relational nature of being, which is present from the simplest of photons, now a particle, then a wave in a beam of electromagnetic energy, to we ourselves, here communicating. At the basis of all creation, outside of it and permeating every aspect is Existence itself, intelligent in that all the essences of things, what they are in themselves, the laws that govern the universe, He, the Triune Godhead, brings into being in their moment.

 

[Bradskii]

Whoa. Back the truck up here. Laws of nature are descriptive not proscriptive. They don’t exist to force matter to behave in a particular way. They are descriptions of how matter acts.

This is quite often a cause for confusion when people talk about fine tuning. Especially when they suggest that ‘if the laws were slightly different then we wouldn’t be here’.

But the laws are what describe existence. They don’t force existence to be set up in a specific way. It is quite possible that existence could not be any way other than it is and so the laws of nature, descriptions of that existence, could not be anything other than they are.

And bear in mind that at the beginning of our universe there was nothing but plasma, followed by protons followed by…everything that now makes up our existence. So the natural laws came into existence as the universe developed. They weren’t ‘there’ in the etha controlling how things evolved. They were descriptions of how things were evolving. For example, one plus one doesn’t equal two because of a mathematical rule. If you have one object and you add another, then it cannot be anything other than two. So we have worked out rules for addition that describe what happens.

Consequently, when there was nothing to describe, there could not have existed any laws (and why do we need anything other than an axiomatic Primal Law such as ‘There Cannot Be Nothing’ which possibly starts everything off?).

 

[Bradskii]

As a follow up in regard to confusing laws of nature with simply that which happens, I think it was Copernicus who spent many years trying to work out the Law that forced our planet to be exactly positioned to allow us to exist.

As you probably realise, there is no such law. All we have is The Goldilocks Rule which states that IF a planet is at a particular distance from its star then it might have conditions conducive to life.

 

[IWantGod]

Whoa. Back the truck up here. Laws of nature are descriptive not proscriptive. They don’t exist to force matter to behave in a particular way. They are descriptions of how matter acts.

Exactly, that’s why i am confused as to why you would say that the uncaused cause is the “laws of physics”. What could that possibly mean?.

 

[Aloysium]

As a follow up in regard to confusing laws of nature with simply that which happens, I think it was Copernicus who spent many years trying to work out the Law that forced our planet to be exactly positioned to allow us to exist.
As you probably realise, there is no such law. All we have is The Goldilocks Rule which states that IF a planet is at a particular distance from its star then it might have conditions conducive to life.

Copernicus would have had to exist outside of time and space, possessing supernatural powers to work out the Law that forced our planet to be exactly positioned to allow us to exist. Quite rightly, there is no law to which matter must choose to adhere. Things happen as they happen and the laws we formulate describe the behaviour of those events in the world. As things happened, creation was brought forth from nothingness including creatures big and small, and also as the main point, we ourselves. This is what happens when everything works together to a common end, the realization of He who brings all this forth from eternity.

 

[Aloysium]

at the beginning of our universe there was nothing but plasma, followed by protons followed by…everything that now makes up our existence. So the natural laws came into existence as the universe developed.

It brought itself into existence according to that ancient view. This sort of understanding led Sagan to favour Hinduism. I get it, but that’s not the entire picture. Protons and such were brought into existence using the original plasma as their substrate, in a similar manner that we here exhibit, entering into a discussion as a gazillion protons organised as persons communicating with one another as whole beings, one in ourselves and in relation to what is other to our selves.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Whoa. Back the truck up here. Laws of nature are descriptive not proscriptive. They don’t exist to force matter to behave in a particular way. They are descriptions of how matter acts.

Exactly, that’s why i am confused as to why you would say that the uncaused cause is the “laws of physics”. What could that possibly mean?.

Perhaps there is a single axiomatic law that kick starts the process. ‘There cannot be nothing’. Admitedly I’m just winging it there. But gee, it’s a lot simpler than God. Why not just pare things back to the absolute basic. The only thing that needs to exist is a law that says nothing is allowed to exist. And from that point there is only one direction existence can take (within quantum variability) and the physical laws aren’t required. They are only used, post hoc, to describe what happened.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

at the beginning of our universe there was nothing but plasma, followed by protons followed by…everything that now makes up our existence. So the natural laws came into existence as the universe developed.

It brought itself into existence according to that ancient view. This sort of understanding led Sagan to favour Hinduism. I get it, but that’s not the entire picture. Protons and such were brought into existence using the original plasma as their substrate, in a similar manner that we here exhibit, entering into a discussion as a gazillion protons organised as persons communicating with one another as whole beings, one in ourselves and in relation to what is other to our selves.

There’s a song by a well known Australian singer/song writer. From little things, big things grow.

 

[IWantGod]

Perhaps there is a single axiomatic law that kick starts the process.

But you just agreed that laws are descriptive of what “things” are doing. Laws are not beings in and of themselves… So what sense does it make to say that a physical law is the uncaused-cause?

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Perhaps there is a single axiomatic law that kick starts the process.

But you just agreed that laws are descriptive of what “things” are doing. Laws are not beings in and of themselves… So what sense does it make to say that a physical law is the uncaused-cause?

Well yeah. I did say I was winging it. But we can only descibe what happened as ‘a law’. The more things happen, the more laws we need to describe them.

If there is a single initial condition that we could describe as the primary, initial, axiomatic law that states (post hoc) ‘Nothing Cannot Exist’, then the ball starts rolling.

Smacks of deism to me though. A ‘deity’ (for want of a different description) that initiates and then is no longer required.

Then again, I effectively just made this up and it STILL makes a lot more sense than a personal God.to me.