eternity - a clarification

Originally posted by frogstomp
Look for them in probabilities of quantum field theory. It is a Big universe , ya know. Don't despair that science doesn't prove the existence of God, it doesn't disprove Him either.

Wow , you're in the end game before I've got the pieces out . Could you return to the argument at hand please.

Originally posted by frogstomp
Ok then , mass and energy didn't need to be "created" because it's stuff.
Is that subtle enough for you?

It's quite possible that matter and energy didn't need to be created , but only if they did not have a beginning. If they had a beginning then they are likely to have been begun by something since 'something from nothing' makes no sense. They would therefore be eternal in their own right.

When thinking about the universe/existence we ultimately are left with only two options 1) an effect without a cause or 2) an uncaused cause. 1) violates the observed link between cause and effect 2) does not violate that link since there is still a connection between cause and effect . Thus we have a choice to either break the link in the chain or speculate that the first link is without beginning and has no break in it. This link could be God or energy or unicorns if you like , I am simply trying to establish that breaking the chain seems intuitively and self evidently less rational than preserving it because causality or what I clumsily called 'causal logic' is so intrinsic to how we make any sense of the world.

In short I think many Atheists deny this 'logic' in order to give religion a quick stuffing and pretend that one can easily and flippantly say "Oh , yeah ...'something from nothing'...fine" . As a Theist I am entitled to leaps of faith on occasions , I can own it , I do not hide it . The 'something from nothing ' brigade do the same but pretend it's 'logical'. There's a hidden agenda here somewhere.....

Originally posted by knightmeister
Thanks for the concillatory gesture. I have been very sarcastic I know so far but I don't take kindly to being accused of 'gibbering'. I am trying so hard to understand why you lot seem to think that something from nothing is just a run of the mill hypothesis. I will lower my guard and admit that eternity is an incredible claim as well. Since we are i ...[text shortened]... al understanding.

Could you say what you mean when you say my articles 'almost got you'?

You almost got me- but then I looked at the article in more detail. If say we went back to the warehouse analogy. As you said it really isn't a vaccum because we have a few matcches here and there. However, if we were to represent the warehouse in coordinate form (accepting that we can't do this in a quantum world anyway because of the measurement problem), there would be areas where there are no matches. In the quantum world because the "matches' would be uncertain in position and momentum and move in random fashion, we make probabilities that there is nothing in any place. For nothingess to not exist every coordinate must be occupied with something (and this is really impossible due to the measurement problrem). We do not have every "coordinate" occupied in the quantum world.

There is no reason either, why something cannot come out of nothing. You just haven't observed it. The closest I think of is the law of conservation of mass- but in reverse. There is no problem of with the concept of something out of nothing, in fact the concept is used to explain the forces of attraction between nucleons in the atom.

Other then that, I didn't mean to offend by saying you were gibbering. I'm just here to enjoy the science. I'm not here to make you an atheist. And I think your pulling out some interesting material.

Peace.

Originally posted by knightmeister
It's quite possible that matter and energy didn't need to be created , but only if they did not have a beginning. If they had a beginning then they are likely to have been begun by something since 'something from nothing' makes no sense. They would therefore be eternal in their own right.

When thinking about the universe/existence we ultimately are ...[text shortened]... e same but pretend it's 'logical'. There's a hidden agenda here somewhere.....

But we do have uncaused causes. Radioactive decay is something like that. What makes an unstable emit radiation at any time is umpredictable.

And anyway, if we are speculating on events before the universe it might be that there is no such thing as cause and effect before this universe. Or such thing as time. Or length. The laws of logic may only exist in this universe. Or there may be no universe before ours.
All i'm saying is that no atheist must accept any paradox in rejecting a creator.

Originally posted by knightmeister
It's quite possible that matter and energy didn't need to be created , but only if they did not have a beginning. If they had a beginning then they are likely to have been begun by something since 'something from nothing' makes no sense. They would therefore be eternal in their own right.

When thinking about the universe/existence we ultimately are e same but pretend it's 'logical'. There's a hidden agenda here somewhere.....

As a theist , you are dangerously close to arguing against the 'well what caused God then? debate' that you previously mentioned. Which in a nutshell is what this whole thread is about anyway.
So I will re-iterate: The instant that any action occurs, time is.
Since time only moves along ONE vector, there is no such thing as eternity unless things are eternal or created, the problem with things being created is simply this: You need a creator to create your creator, and so on , ad infinitum.

edit and BTW you are still stuck with the problem of why did it get created at the precise moment that it did, instead of ,say, trillions of years before or after.

Originally posted by Conrau K
You almost got me- but then I looked at the article in more detail. If say we went back to the warehouse analogy. As you said it really isn't a vaccum because we have a few matcches here and there. However, if we were to represent the warehouse in coordinate form (accepting that we can't do this in a quantum world anyway because of the measurement problem), ...[text shortened]... ake you an atheist. And I think your pulling out some interesting material.

Peace.

Peace also. I was wondering what you make of the idea of strings and fields and plasma which suggest we have to go even further beyond the quantum world. There is good science behind this too. Don't you think it's entirely likely that in 20 years time physicists will be saying "Oh , you remember the late 90's and 00's when we thought those quantum particles were coming out of nothing."

Originally posted by knightmeister
Peace also. I was wondering what you make of the idea of strings and fields and plasma which suggest we have to go even further beyond the quantum world. There is good science behind this too. Don't you think it's entirely likely that in 20 years time physicists will be saying "Oh , you remember the late 90's and 00's when we thought those quantum particles were coming out of nothing."

I'm not sure superstrings give an explanation of this.

Originally posted by knightmeister
In order to be able to say 'all physics in wrong ' on the matter of time then it would be neccessary for there to be general agreement on time within physics. No-one would dispute that time is a dimension but the real issue at hand is whether that dimension exists in the same way as matter exists. I don't know of any general agreement about what time i ...[text shortened]... d and therefore dependent on them for existence rather than the other way round.

time isn't a "thing", no mass or energy, it's a dimension for things to exist within.

Originally posted by knightmeister
I seem to remember you saying that 'before' the universe there was no time (which incidently I agree with). So if time did not pre-exist the universe how can you then claim time as a requirement of cause and effect? Presumably you would agree that the Big Bang and what followed after was cause and effect? So if there was no time around , how could this ...[text shortened]... anything to happen and yet you still believe there was no time 'before' the Big Bang? OOPS!

no, I don't agree that the Big Bang requires a cause, therefore time is not a necessary concern.

Originally posted by knightmeister
It's quite possible that matter and energy didn't need to be created , but only if they did not have a beginning. If they had a beginning then they are likely to have been begun by something since 'something from nothing' makes no sense. They would therefore be eternal in their own right.

Time is a property of the universe. Whether or not time has a beginning, ie a limit in that particular direction, has nothing to do with whether or not a 'cause' is required for the universe to exist. The only way that what you are saying can be even barely logical is if the universe was created after the beginning of time. The next question would be whether the known space dimensions also existed and what we mean by the word universe.

When thinking about the universe/existence we ultimately are left with only two options 1) an effect without a cause or 2) an uncaused cause. 1) violates the observed link between cause and effect 2) does not violate that link since there is still a connection between cause and effect . Thus we have a choice to either break the link in the chain or speculate that the first link is without beginning and has no break in it. This link could be God or energy or unicorns if you like , I am simply trying to establish that breaking the chain seems intuitively and self evidently less rational than preserving it because causality or what I clumsily called 'causal logic' is so intrinsic to how we make any sense of the world.
The reason that it seems 'intuitively and self evidently less rational' to you is merely because your only experience is based on events within the universe and within time. Once you understand this you should imediately realise that there is nothing 'intuitive or self evident' about the universe having a cause, infact it would be more rational to expect that a cause is not necessary.

Originally posted by knightmeister
It's quite possible that matter and energy didn't need to be created , but only if they did not have a beginning. If they had a beginning then they are likely to have been begun by something since 'something from nothing' makes no sense. They would therefore be eternal in their own right.

When thinking about the universe/existence we ultimately are ...[text shortened]... e same but pretend it's 'logical'. There's a hidden agenda here somewhere.....

as to this : "2) does not violate that link since there is still a connection between cause and effect "
It does too , because you still need a causal agent, which there's no scientific proof of and worse still you are basing your entire premise on the premise that the agent didn't need a cause.

So , get ye back to the drawing board, that is, if you want to talk about science, which , as I have said before , approaches metaphysics when you raise the mumbo-jumbo premise of an " uncaused cause".

Now, if you want to say " God done it" that's ok. However, it has been pointed out, God needs to have been created too.

Originally posted by Conrau K
But we do have uncaused causes. Radioactive decay is something like that. What makes an unstable emit radiation at any time is umpredictable.

And anyway, if we are speculating on events before the universe it might be that there is no such thing as cause and effect before this universe. Or such thing as time. Or length. The laws of logic may only exist ...[text shortened]... efore ours.
All i'm saying is that no atheist must accept any paradox in rejecting a creator.

How do we know radioactive decay is unpredictable? Maybe the pattern is so complicated we don't understand it yet. It could easily be caused by something we haven't found yet , it's happened before, lots of times.There's every reason to think that it might happen again.

And yes the laws of logic may only exist in this universe and it may be completely unintelligble to science or rationality...better to be a mystic ultimately? Why do atheists then always say 'but this God thing , it's so illogical' as if expecting that it needs to obey some form of logic to be a genuine belief. According to you , the whole thing could easily be insane anyway , the games up , bring back the unicorns? We have no basis for any debate whatsoever unless we project some kind of consistency into what lies beyond the universe. It's scientific to make logical projections into the unknown. Again, there's every reason to assume that the logical/natural laws of this universe will not entirely go out of the window when we go further into it and it's reasonable to do this.
What I am trying to establish is that taking the something out of nothing approach eventually leads to a projection that 'the laws of logic may only exist in this universe' I disagree with this assumption , I may be wrong but I am being LOGICALLY wrong if I am

Originally posted by frogstomp
as to this : "2) does not violate that link since there is still a connection between cause and effect "
It does too , because you still need a causal agent, which there's no scientific proof of and worse still you are basing your entire premise on the premise that the agent didn't need a cause.

So , get ye back to the drawing board, that is, if you ...[text shortened]... e it" that's ok. However, it has been pointed out, God needs to have been created too.

As you have said , an agent. But an 'agent' is not an 'effect' . You still preserve the link by having an uncaused agent (NOT effect) because you work at it from one side. You don't break the link in the middle . If God was an 'effect' then he would need a cause but an eternal agent doesn't need a cause because the is no beginning.

I agree this is an unimaginably awesome idea and is hard to imagine because it is beyond our rationality but the link is intact , if something has a beginning then it must be caused by something else. You can still say this with eternity , with something from nothing you can't.

Effectively you have a choice between imagining a chain of links suspended in mid air with the bottom link appearing 'out of nothing' , resting on nothing...or the same set of links except the first link is infinite (eternal) in length Two solutions , one with a 'broken' link , one without a break. They're not the same solution , even though it seems so at first. I think one of these is most likely the truth but I find the second one more logical. To me an infinite link is more imaginable than a 'magically' appearing link since the infinite link did not 'appear' but always was and you don't have to get your hacksaw out either to break the chain. Eternity is an uncaused cause but not an uncaused effect. Give it some thought

Originally posted by twhitehead
The reason that it seems self evidently more rational to you is merely because your only experience is based on events within the universe and within time. Once you understand this you should imediately realise that there is nothing 'intuitive or self evident' about the universe having a cause, infact it would be more rational to expect that a cause is not necessary.[/b]

So are you saying I should base my logic on experiences outside of time and the universe...that's very interesting. Where else should I get my logic from? I can equally argue that the only reason you find Jesus coming back from the dead 'self evidently illogical' is because you are basing your reasoning on your experiences of events within time and the universe.

If Christians talk about 'mystical' experiences of the timeless eternity beyond the universe they get shot down in flames by you lot. I think I'm starting to show how you atheists can't argue against this one without starting to saw off the very branch they are sitting on. Just accept eternity seems more likely than than something from nothing (which doesn't prove God) and you won't be sawing...watch out ....timber!!!!!

Originally posted by knightmeister
As you have said , an agent. But an 'agent' is not an 'effect' . You still preserve the link by having an uncaused agent (NOT effect) because you work at it from one side. You don't break the link in the middle . If God was an 'effect' then he would need a cause but an eternal agent doesn't need a cause because the is no beginning.

I agree this is a ...[text shortened]... ternity is an uncaused cause but not an uncaused effect. Give it some thought

It's only your opinion that everything needs a cause that is your problem with this, you must remember that while the conservation of mass and energy law exists in our universe, at the quantum level and the higher Lie Groups, mass and energy aren't necessarily bound by the laws that govern that which we can measure.
You need to study group theory and the ramifications it has on quarks and lower levels interactions before you can even venture a guess on whether you need a god to create stuff or that it's just a naturally occuring series of events.Even beyond that is the possibility that energy always existed or at least the positive and negative electric charges and the interactions between their associated gauge fields playing the role of your creator.
You don't need a creator to create naturally occuring events!