The Causality Web

[Draconis]

This is a subject I've though about many times. Aquinus has told us that "there must be a first cause", otherwise the universe cannot exist. I know this argument has been refuted before, but perhaps there's another way to do so.

Consider this. There is a car crash. This is caused by the following causes: cars exist. Roads exist. People being inattentive exist. Etc etc. The crash causes lots of things to happen: people get injured. People are late for work. People's work doesn't get done. Ambulance drivers and doctors have jobs. etc etc

So in everyday life, there is no one cause of everything. Causes make things happen, but they very often branch off and cause other things to happen, and some of these things that happen combine with other unrelated causes and thus cause yet more things to happen, endlessly branching off and combining into infinity. This is a web of causality, not a linear line of this causes that and then something else with no direct contributions from anything else.

If there is this web of causality, then how do we deduce from that assumption that there is a single and first cause of it all? It doesn't fit with the complex web of intersecting and branching causes suggested above. Going back in time possibly makes the web smaller... but it doesn't shrink it to a linear sequence of causes and events.

So perhaps the best we can say is that there are multiple, independent first causes. That's not a single creator God.

 

[bilby]

http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2195

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

This is a subject I've though about many times. Aquinus has told us that "there must be a first cause", otherwise the universe cannot exist. I know this argument has been refuted before, but perhaps there's another way to do so.

Consider this. There is a car crash. This is caused by the following causes: cars exist. Roads exist. People being inattentive exist. Etc etc. The crash causes lots of things to happen: people get injured. People are late for work. People's work doesn't get done. Ambulance drivers and doctors have jobs. etc etc

So in everyday life, there is no one cause of everything. Causes make things happen, but they very often branch off and cause other things to happen, and some of these things that happen combine with other unrelated causes and thus cause yet more things to happen, endlessly branching off and combining into infinity. This is a web of causality, not a linear line of this causes that and then something else with no direct contributions from anything else.

If there is this web of causality, then how do we deduce from that assumption that there is a single and first cause of it all? It doesn't fit with the complex web of intersecting and branching causes suggested above. Going back in time possibly makes the web smaller... but it doesn't shrink it to a linear sequence of causes and events.

So perhaps the best we can say is that there are multiple, independent first causes. That's not a single creator God.

Theists will deny this of course. The usual excuse is supernatural beings such as Gods don't follow the same rules as material beings. God as a supernatural being is defined as the first cause. Of course there are problems with the concept which resulted in the doctrine of God's simplicity and aseity. So in essence, its an old problem that theologians claim to have solved long ago.

 

[Draconis]

Theists will deny this of course. The usual excuse is supernatural beings such as Gods don't follow the same rules as material beings. God as a supernatural being is defined as the first cause. Of course there are problems with the concept which resulted in the doctrine of God's simplicity and aseity. So in essence, its an old problem that theologians claim to have solved long ago.

One thing I find funny (or perhaps sad) about Theists is that they employ logic, find themselves in a logical trap, then use "magic" to get them out of said trap.

God is made of God/"Godiness" - what the hell does that mean?

 

[Kharakov]

If there is this web of causality, then how do we deduce from that assumption that there is a single and first cause of it all? It doesn't fit with the complex web of intersecting and branching causes suggested above. Going back in time possibly makes the web smaller... but it doesn't shrink it to a linear sequence of causes and events.

So perhaps the best we can say is that there are multiple, independent first causes. That's not a single creator God.

We still have a unitary spacetime uniting and dividing all.

 

[Malintent]

If there is this web of causality, then how do we deduce from that assumption that there is a single and first cause of it all? It doesn't fit with the complex web of intersecting and branching causes suggested above. Going back in time possibly makes the web smaller... but it doesn't shrink it to a linear sequence of causes and events.

It "shrinks" to a point. That point may lead to a line, which then leads to a branch of lines, which then leads to the complex web you described. As time moves forward from the single point of the theoretical singularity, there is very little in existence that can act as a cause.. thus the linear sequence of events thereafter.. Eventually, as more "causers" develop, the line becomes a web... as complexity between entities in the universe increases, so does this web.

That is how I see it, at least.

 

[remez]

Theists will deny this of course. The usual excuse is supernatural beings such as Gods don't follow the same rules as material beings. God as a supernatural being is defined as the first cause. Of course there are problems with the concept which resulted in the doctrine of God's simplicity and aseity. So in essence, its an old problem that theologians claim to have solved long ago.

One thing I find funny (or perhaps sad) about Theists is that they employ logic, find themselves in a logical trap, then use "magic" to get them out of said trap.

God is made of God/"Godiness" - what the hell does that mean?

I don’t see your logical trap. I see a categorical fallacy.

I logically concede that a car crash is an event that has a “web of causes,” but those causes have causes. If you rewind the logic back to when time, space, energy and mass came into existence then we are addressing a FIRST cause that will eventually lead to your “web of causes” for the car crash.

Your car crash and the moon landing have a different “web of causes,” but logically they have the same First cause. You are conflating a “web of causes” with the one and only First cause. Theists logically concede both exist, but just as logically contend they are distinct from one another. Failure to do so is a categorical fallacy.

You are also boarding on committing a fallacy of composition and the taxicab fallacy as well. So take caution on how you choose to defend your “logical” trap.

No magic required.

 

[Kharakov]

If there is this web of causality, then how do we deduce from that assumption that there is a single and first cause of it all? It doesn't fit with the complex web of intersecting and branching causes suggested above. Going back in time possibly makes the web smaller... but it doesn't shrink it to a linear sequence of causes and events.

It "shrinks" to a point. That point may lead to a line, which then leads to a branch of lines, which then leads to the complex web you described. As time moves forward from the single point of the theoretical singularity, there is very little in existence that can act as a cause.. thus the linear sequence of events thereafter.. Eventually, as more "causers" develop, the line becomes a web... as complexity between entities in the universe increases, so does this web.

Do any of you consider yourselves points, or are you information/qualia webs with various qualia/information amplified and dampened, including your ability or inability to amplify/dampen certain qualia/information?

Sometimes I think of the original, undifferentiated, all possible qualia chaos consciousness (undifferentiated primal chaos (formless matter) is a G-reek idea??). It had to "learn" (by luck at first) to amplify certain aspects of itself, and dampen others. Its ability to have progeny was out of fucking control, which was witch led to a few questions about eternal paternity.


Back to the topic. Feynman describes an interesting perspective on causally related webs of interconnected ideas and axioms in his 'lecture on' Greek vs. Babylonian mathematics:

 

[George S]

Nothing creating Everything is Impossible according to Kirk Cameron

"Nothing creating Everything is a scientific impossibility." -- Kirk Cameron

I quite agree. In your monotheism in the beginning God was Everything.

Nothing created God. Therefore God does not exist.

 

[George S]

There never was a state of nothingness entire since time itself is something.
Without time nothing has time to happen.

 

[George S]

On, not off. Not nothing. Existence bare. Everything in one place. Frequency of 1. Time for things to happen. Space in which to happen. Causation begins. And entropy increases.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

One thing I find funny (or perhaps sad) about Theists is that they employ logic, find themselves in a logical trap, then use "magic" to get them out of said trap.

God is made of God/"Godiness" - what the hell does that mean?

I don’t see your logical trap. I see a categorical fallacy.

I logically concede that a car crash is an event that has a “web of causes,” but those causes have causes. If you rewind the logic back to when time, space, energy and mass came into existence then we are addressing a FIRST cause that will eventually lead to your “web of causes” for the car crash.

Your car crash and the moon landing have a different “web of causes,” but logically they have the same First cause. You are conflating a “web of causes” with the one and only First cause. Theists logically concede both exist, but just as logically contend they are distinct from one another. Failure to do so is a categorical fallacy.

You are also boarding on committing a fallacy of composition and the taxicab fallacy as well. So take caution on how you choose to defend your “logical” trap.

No magic required.

God can supposedly do anything he wants to. That's akin to a magical explanation.

 

[untermensche]

This is a subject I've though about many times. Aquinus has told us that "there must be a first cause", otherwise the universe cannot exist. I know this argument has been refuted before, but perhaps there's another way to do so.

Consider this. There is a car crash. This is caused by the following causes: cars exist. Roads exist. People being inattentive exist. Etc etc. The crash causes lots of things to happen: people get injured. People are late for work. People's work doesn't get done. Ambulance drivers and doctors have jobs. etc etc

So in everyday life, there is no one cause of everything. Causes make things happen, but they very often branch off and cause other things to happen, and some of these things that happen combine with other unrelated causes and thus cause yet more things to happen, endlessly branching off and combining into infinity. This is a web of causality, not a linear line of this causes that and then something else with no direct contributions from anything else.

If there is this web of causality, then how do we deduce from that assumption that there is a single and first cause of it all? It doesn't fit with the complex web of intersecting and branching causes suggested above. Going back in time possibly makes the web smaller... but it doesn't shrink it to a linear sequence of causes and events.

So perhaps the best we can say is that there are multiple, independent first causes. That's not a single creator God.

Consider this.

Two random people meet. They have sex where 1 out of millions of sperm cells succeeds in fertilizing a randomly extruded egg.

No single cause to anything.

Therefore humans cannot have a common ancestor.

 

[remez]

I don’t see your logical trap. I see a categorical fallacy.

I logically concede that a car crash is an event that has a “web of causes,” but those causes have causes. If you rewind the logic back to when time, space, energy and mass came into existence then we are addressing a FIRST cause that will eventually lead to your “web of causes” for the car crash.

Your car crash and the moon landing have a different “web of causes,” but logically they have the same First cause. You are conflating a “web of causes” with the one and only First cause. Theists logically concede both exist, but just as logically contend they are distinct from one another. Failure to do so is a categorical fallacy.

You are also boarding on committing a fallacy of composition and the taxicab fallacy as well. So take caution on how you choose to defend your “logical” trap.

No magic required.

God can supposedly do anything he wants to. That's akin to a magical explanation.

What do you mean by that?

 

[remez]

I don’t see your logical trap. I see a categorical fallacy.

I logically concede that a car crash is an event that has a “web of causes,” but those causes have causes. If you rewind the logic back to when time, space, energy and mass came into existence then we are addressing a FIRST cause that will eventually lead to your “web of causes” for the car crash.

Your car crash and the moon landing have a different “web of causes,” but logically they have the same First cause. You are conflating a “web of causes” with the one and only First cause. Theists logically concede both exist, but just as logically contend they are distinct from one another. Failure to do so is a categorical fallacy.

You are also boarding on committing a fallacy of composition and the taxicab fallacy as well. So take caution on how you choose to defend your “logical” trap.

No magic required.

God can supposedly do anything he wants to. That's akin to a magical explanation.

More specifically are you asserting that any explanation beyond the limited self defeating reach of methodological naturalism is magical?

Seems petty and lazy.

 

[atrib]

One thing I find funny (or perhaps sad) about Theists is that they employ logic, find themselves in a logical trap, then use "magic" to get them out of said trap.

God is made of God/"Godiness" - what the hell does that mean?

I don’t see your logical trap. I see a categorical fallacy.

I logically concede that a car crash is an event that has a “web of causes,” but those causes have causes. If you rewind the logic back to when time, space, energy and mass came into existence then we are addressing a FIRST cause that will eventually lead to your “web of causes” for the car crash.

Your car crash and the moon landing have a different “web of causes,” but logically they have the same First cause. You are conflating a “web of causes” with the one and only First cause. Theists logically concede both exist, but just as logically contend they are distinct from one another. Failure to do so is a categorical fallacy.

You are also boarding on committing a fallacy of composition and the taxicab fallacy as well. So take caution on how you choose to defend your “logical” trap.

No magic required.

Why do you assume that our universe has to have a cause?

 

[remez]

I don’t see your logical trap. I see a categorical fallacy.

I logically concede that a car crash is an event that has a “web of causes,” but those causes have causes. If you rewind the logic back to when time, space, energy and mass came into existence then we are addressing a FIRST cause that will eventually lead to your “web of causes” for the car crash.

Your car crash and the moon landing have a different “web of causes,” but logically they have the same First cause. You are conflating a “web of causes” with the one and only First cause. Theists logically concede both exist, but just as logically contend they are distinct from one another. Failure to do so is a categorical fallacy.

You are also boarding on committing a fallacy of composition and the taxicab fallacy as well. So take caution on how you choose to defend your “logical” trap.

No magic required.

Why do you assume that our universe has to have a cause?

I wasn’t. Draconis set the terms in the OP. I was addressing a distinction Draconis failed to make.

 

[Random Person]

This is a subject I've though about many times. Aquinus has told us that "there must be a first cause", otherwise the universe cannot exist. I know this argument has been refuted before, but perhaps there's another way to do so.

Consider this. There is a car crash. This is caused by the following causes: cars exist. Roads exist. People being inattentive exist. Etc etc. The crash causes lots of things to happen: people get injured. People are late for work. People's work doesn't get done. Ambulance drivers and doctors have jobs. etc etc

So in everyday life, there is no one cause of everything. Causes make things happen, but they very often branch off and cause other things to happen, and some of these things that happen combine with other unrelated causes and thus cause yet more things to happen, endlessly branching off and combining into infinity. This is a web of causality, not a linear line of this causes that and then something else with no direct contributions from anything else.

If there is this web of causality, then how do we deduce from that assumption that there is a single and first cause of it all? It doesn't fit with the complex web of intersecting and branching causes suggested above. Going back in time possibly makes the web smaller... but it doesn't shrink it to a linear sequence of causes and events.

So perhaps the best we can say is that there are multiple, independent first causes. That's not a single creator God.

It seems to me that you are confusing the argument. The First Cause argument says that things happen for a reason. For instance in a car crash the car would have had to hit something or be hit by something. A car doesn't spontaneously get wrecked. Adding multiple causes doesn't doesn't change the nature of the argument. If it makes you happy you can call it the first causes argument.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The principal of sufficient reason. Liebnez. Everything has a reason , a cause, for its existence. Of course, God is excluded, he is his own reason. Of course if naturalism is true, then we have a chain of causes back into infinity.
Parmenide's principal. Nothing comes from nothing, so there must have always been something.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

The principal of sufficient reason. Liebnez. Everything has a reason , a cause, for its existence. Of course, God is excluded, he is his own reason. Of course if naturalism is true, then we have a chain of causes back into infinity.
Parmenide's principal. Nothing comes from nothing, so there must have always been something.

Both are assumptions. They depend entirely on what is called "common sense", but we should know by now that reality doesn't have to play by our game. I see nothing wrong with admitting the possibility that something could come from nothing, since we'll most likely never know what happened in the first place, and to make a blanket statement and say "absolutely everything must work according to my logic- including nothing, even though it's nothing" is ridiculous.