Thanks.
Here is best, because my time is sporadic at best.
We aren't still on the OP's topic, but nobody is trying to address that topic, so we aren't trying to hijack an ongoing discussion. I'm good with here.
The KCA (that seems to be your focus) is sound and valid.
...
• The Bicycle Argument:
P1: The sun will rise tomorrow.
P2: No, the sun will not rise tomorrow.
C: Therefore, you must buy me a bicycle.
...
If you present your "sound" and "valid" KCA, I will point out flaws.
I agree with you that the bicycle argument fails for the reasons you presented. But how is it a parody of the first cause argument? You provided no reasoning for the analogy.
You hadn't, at this point, presented your version of the first cause argument, so I could not yet explain the analogy.
Would your bicycle-parody-reasoning destroy……
p1. Miracles are a violation of natural laws.
p2. Natural laws are immutable.
p3. It is impossible to violate immutable laws.
c Therefore, miracles are impossible.
Or this reasoning
...
I don't want to spend time and effort on tangents. You present the first cause argument below, so I'll deal with that.
It seems that you are saying the all syllogistic reasoning is wrong by bicycle parody. I don’t get it.
No, I repudiate that interpretation. The bicycle argument does not impugn all syllogistic reasoning. It makes fun of wildly invalid arguments with suspect or even contradictory premises.
If you present your "sound" and "valid" KCA, I will point out flaws.
p1 Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
p2 The universe began to exist.
C: The universe has a cause.
Thank you.
Problems with P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
-
First, it looks like special pleading.
Why do those who believe in an unbegun god say that everything that
begins to exist has a cause? If they believed in a blue god, would they say everything that isn't blue has a cause?
Either everything is caused or not. I don't know of any reason to carve an exception for things unbegun.
If you told me your tie pin is unbegun, I'd still believe that the reason it's here today is that it was here yesterday. And the cause of it being here yesterday was that it was here the day before. Wouldn't an unbegun tie tack has
more causes than begun one, an infinite series of causes?
-
Is there any reason to believe P1 is true?
Virtual particles begin without cause, right? P1 is contrary to the scientific consensus.
P1 seems to be false; the KCA seems to be unsound.
Problems with P2: The universe began to exist.-
There's no reason to believe P2 is true.
I know people
say the universe began at the big bang, but that seems to be a conventional expression. Hawking and Asimov said something like, "The universe began at the big bang -- or at least we can say that it did because we have no idea what happened before that."
More recently (though not terribly recently) an internet Christian insisted to me that scientists agree that the universe began at the big bang, that I went up on campus and found myself a cosmologist, and put the question to him:
Is there a scientific consensus that the big bang was the beginning of the universe? He said, "Nobody knows what happened before the big bang. Nobody knows what happened before the big bang. Nobody knows what happened before the big bang."
I conclude, therefore, that there is no such scientific consensus. Christians tell me the universe began with the big bang; science does not.
-
The KCA cannot be valid if it equivocates on the word universe, using it one way in the premise and another in the conclusion.
The first cause argument is about the ultimate beginning. Where did everything come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? It is about
everything, the entire universe, everything that exists. This includes gods, if gods exist.
In P2, proponents of the KCA usually use "universe" as if it means "some things but not everything, certainly not gods." But when they say "universe" in the triumphal conclusion, they usually seem to mean the actual ultimate beginning of everything.
If the meaning of a word changes between P2 and the conclusion, the KCA is not valid.
If the meaning doesn't change, then "universe" means "some things" in both places, or it means "everything" in both places.
If the latter, if the conclusion is just that some things are caused, that's no big whoop. It's not news. We already know that some things are caused.
If the former, if the conclusion is important, if it is the announcement that everything has a cause, then the conclusion doesn't flow from the premises. The KCA isn't valid.
The KCA, then, is either trivial or invalid.
I like to keep it clear how much we're talking about when we say "universe" by substituting either
allaverse or
partaverse. If P2 means the partaverse began, and the conclusion means the allaverse was caused, that's equivocation. If the KCA validly argues that the partaverse began and therefore the partaverse was cause, that's trivial, a waste of our attention. To get to a valid conclusion that the real, actual, ultimate beginning of the allaverse was caused, P1 would have to establish that everthing is caused, not just some stuff.
Note: Remez, I'm not putting words in your mouth. You may not be equivocating. For you, the "universe" may be the partaverse in both places, or it may be the allaverse in both places. I don't know whether or which, and I'm certainly not trying to accuse you of having other people's faults. I'll take you at your word so long as you are consistent in your usage.
-
What does "begin to exist" mean?
Let me stipulate -- for the purposes of this subsection of this argument -- that the big bang really was the beginning. Before the big bang, nothing. No time, no space, no matter or other energy, nothing.
But then, bang, and there was stuff.
That's a beginning, right? If stuff existed at time zero, but didn't exist before time zero, then stuff began.
That goes for gods too, unless we're special pleading. If gods didn't exist before the bang -- and we're stipulating that the didn't because there was no before -- and if they did exist after, then gods began. In which case, P1 stipulates that gods are caused.
Even if we didn't object to P1's special pleading, gods began. Therefore they are caused. Therefore they are not the first cause; the "first cause" must have an infinite regress of precursor causes. The universe did not begin. The first cause argument proves itself wrong.
There is no single meaning of the word "begun" for which gods didn't begin but the rest of the universe did.
Problems with C: The universe has a cause.
- I've already dealt with some of this above, under P2.
-
No room for a cause.
If we're talking about the allaverse, it can't have a cause. To have a cause, it would have to cause itself. The allaverse is
everything that exists, and there is nothing else. Nothing else to cause it.
-
No time for a cause.
Some theists deal with this by saying causes needn't precede their effects. First, that is linguistic nonsense; it is not what we mean by "cause."
Second, to abandon the need for causes to precede effects is to
abandon the need for a first cause. The big bang may be caused by an accident at the Large Hadron Collider that won't happen until next year.
-
We are not bound by your imaginings.
If you say that everything is caused back to the big bang, and if you imagine that some magic kingdom or alternate universe precedes the big bang, that doesn't mean you get to invent rules for this alternate phase space where you think your gods live. You don't know whether heaven has time or logic or causation. You don't know anything about it, and we are not required to agree with your musings.
If your conclusion means only that some things are caused, we agree with that trivial claim.
If you claim that everything has a cause, that claim is patently false unless you denature the meaning of "cause," in which case the claim becomes meaningless or unproven.
If your claim is something like, "Everything but gods have causes, and gods caused everything else," then that conclusion depends on premises that suffer from special pleading, equivocation, and the assumption that we for some reason agree with the rules that you made up about your imagined precursor place, call it -- I don't know -- "Gods' quantum foam."
Brief intro…..I reason that the universe (by universe I mean, all of spacetime reality, the space time continuum to include all time, space and matter) began to exist.
I don't know of any reason to believe that.
Evidenced by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, expanding universe, cosmic radiation background, the galaxy seeds, relativity, the BGV theorem, all the failed cosmological models for and eternal universe, the absence of any viable cosmological model theorizing eternality in the past, etc.
We need either a scientific consensus, or else an argument so compelling that laymen can judge for themselves that there
should be scientific consensus.
Naming a bunch of potential arguments does not accomplish either of those.
It would be fruitless for me to try to deal with those named-but-unexplained arguments, because if I do a good job of imagining what your argument might be, and then do a good job of refuting said argument, I can only expect you to say that I didn't represent you well, that your argument is not as I imagined it.
Nonetheless, I'll mention that the expanding universe and cosmic background radiation arguments only get us back
toward the big bang. They don't even suggest that nothing happened before that.
And 2nd Law is a statistical thing. It has more force as the number of particles increases. Increasing the number of particles increases our confidence in 2nd Law's predictions at a remarkably fast rate. It is fair to say that big things behave according to 2nd Law.
The big bang started as a little thing. It's not strange for entropy to decrease in little things. That happens all the time.
I’m not claiming absolute certainty,
Not necessary.
I claiming reasonable certainty.
That's all I'm looking for. More than I'm looking for, really. Reasonable certainty would be lavish. I'll count myself in tall clover if you provide a well-founded suspicion.
So this is how that plays out in p2. I’m not asserting that I’m absolutely certain that the universe began, but that p2 is more reasonable than it’s alternatives……thus I’m reasonably certain that it began. Put another way…. I contend that it is far more plausible that the universe began to exist than the possibility that it is eternal in the past. Also to be clear….. I’m not asserting I know HOW it began, but that I’m reasonably certain THAT it began.
The way I see it, our choices are an allaverse (including gods, if gods exist) that began without cause or an allaverse that is eternal and unbegun. Each is the argument against the other. That is, proponents of infinite regress point at the uncaused beginning and say, "How would
that happen?" And proponents of the uncaused beginning point at infinite regress and say the same thing.
What people believe depends on which version they find less palatable. I don't know of any argument stronger than, "I don't understand A, therefore B must be true."
In no way was that intro exhaustive, it was very brief, because I’m granting to you a higher level of understanding with the KCA. I was just hoping to avoid the obvious bogs I usually run into here. However, I’m ready to address whatever you desire.
Thanks, remez.
I have a well-founded horror of discussions in which each response is two or three times as long as what it's responding to. My post is plenty long already, and we're only two posts in.
Perhaps you can pick one or two points that you'd like to focus on, and direct your comments just to them. Then we'll go back and forth until we resolve those issues, and then go on to others.
I'm enjoying this. You're good to talk to.
A note on averting disaster:
This is a long post. I don't want it to disappear when I click Submit Reply. Worse, I walked away in the middle, watched some TV and came back to write the rest. I half expect to lose the whole thing when I try to post. So, I'm saving it to a Word document
before trying to post. Yes, it should be a Notepad document, but I live for the adrenal rush of danger. Or I'm too lazy to try to find Wordpad.
Anyway, if readers of this post are inspired to back up their own long posts before posting them, that might save somebody some anguish.
