I did; making it conditional doesn’t invalidate my point. You’re trying to represent lack of belief as belief to create a false equivalence.
This.
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This response has been said in various ways by various people. I think I first heard a version of it from Steven Weinberg. It’s devastating, because it unmasks both the tortured logic of god-as-a-solution and the emotional need that underlies the argument. Even if it were true that we could not provide any suggestion about how a universe could come into being “by itself,” the solution to this “problem” would not be to invent a different thing that came into being by itself. Even as a believer I never liked or indulged in cosmological arguments, even before I considered how complete their failure really is.
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When I was 18, my dad gave me some very good insight. I was attending a secular college, and an agnostic professor challenged me to provide proof for God. I don’t think he expected any–he was just trying to get me to think. Up to then, my diet of fundamentalist Christian books from Danny Orliss to the Sugar Creek Gang was character, but not thought, building. I told my dad that I thought that the cumulative effect of unexplained phenomena in the world was enough to believe. Dad, stemming from a course he took in Hope College at my age, told me a definite, “no.” There is nothing absolutely provable as a miracle, he said. Yet, he was one of the most pious and Christ like men I ever knew. That stood me in good stead for future wrangling with science and life.
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I just don’t agree. We’re talking here about the certainty level of objective and verifiable observation vs abductive inference. An abductive inference will always be based on incomplete information, i.e., usually no observational information, and have at least some element of subjectivity in determining the level of certainty for the inference.
So generally speaking it starts with a disadvantage that with strong evidence it may approach the same certainty level as observation, but I would argue, never fully reach that same level. It will always have an element of subjectivity and always be missing information.
Now I’m not saying you can’t argue for times when the evidence can overcome those disadvantages, but that’s another discussion. My main concern is with claims where there is an obvious deficiency in evidence. Take for example quantum particles.
To say that a quantum particle exists as a wave function until it is measured has no scientific evidence (as defined in the op) to support it that I’m aware of. If it’s not just imagination, it’s about as close to it as you can get. For one thing, how can an abstract object exist as a concrete object? And what evidence is there to support such an unusual claim?
Just because you personally don’t understand quantum mechanics is no reason to attack almost all science. Based on your criterion, we can know almost nothing about the world. We can know there’s a light in the sky, but we can’t know anything about its size, distance, composition, or structure. Again, you have a basic failure of epistemology that you refuse even to probe. There is no way to discuss evidence with you, given that failure.
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Uhm, wrong. You make inferences from observational information. That is the whole basis for making inferences in the first place. For example you infer the elemental composition of the sun by literally observing fraunhofer lines it’s electromagnetic spectrum. Those lines in the spectrum really are observational information.
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Again I disagree with you. But our conversation seems to be going nowhere so I’ll leave it at that.
I believe you may be wrong here in your assessment of my comment. No offense, but from your past comments it seems to me your understanding of logic seems to be a little lacking.
I read the same comment and am also puzzled by what you mean here:
We’re talking here about the certainty level of objective and verifiable observation vs abductive inference. An abductive inference will always be based on incomplete information, i.e., usually no observational information, and have at least some element of subjectivity in determining the level of certainty for the inference.
So generally speaking it starts with a disadvantage that with strong evidence it may approach the same certainty level as observation, but I would argue, never fully reach that same level. It will always have an element of subjectivity and always be missing information.
Why do you say that an abductive inference will usually be based on no observational information? That just doesn’t make any sense. If the inference is not based on observations, then what is it based on?
And clearly an inference will never reach the same level of certainty as an observation. That is why it is an inference - a (provisional) conclusion we reach from studying observations and trying to fit them into an explanatory framework.
OK. Good point. My apologies to @Rumraket if that is what you were commenting on. To clarify, it’s not that the inference is not based on evidence, i.e., objective and verifiable observation. It’s that in most cases it will be an inference that is about something that cannot be observed, e.g., a quantum particle.
So the evidence of the inference will be of observations, but the subject of the inference, e.g., quantum particle, will not be observable. So that is why observational information of the subject of the inference will always be missing when the subject is not observable.
Frankly I simply don’t believe that you are saying this in good faith. It appears like some sort of defense-mechanism you are going to, to avoid admitting that your opening argument has been shown to be hopeless.
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The reason I made that comment about logic is that in one place, unless you were arguing for a first event without a cause, the only other option is that you were basically arguing for something that is logically impossible, i.e., that a physical existence that according the the laws of logic could not possibly exist is responsible for the cause of the first physical event.
And honestly, with some of your other comments I couldn’t figure them out. Maybe it was just me, but they seemed either somewhat incoherent, or just unclear, or a combination of the two. That is why I asked if you could list a few of your most compelling objections so we wouldn’t have to spend days of back and forth trying to figure out if I understood exactly what you were saying in that long post of yours.
It seems to me at least, that the objection you are most concerned with is regarding the definition of supernatural. If that’s something you want to further discuss I’m more than happy to do so. I don’t see any incoherence with it. However, even if there is a problem with it, as you seem to think, I don’t see how that would be an insurmountable problem for my argument.
But quantum particles are observed. You are just using a very simplistic and incorrect understanding of what an observation is. That was the point of my comment in #59, which was ignored: Your claim is the equivalent of saying a birdsong exists, but the sun doesn’t, because we can hear a birdsong, but we can’t hear the sun.
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It was just you.
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This is the second time you have said that without arguing for it. I’m not saying this to be condescending, but it appears you do not understand the difference between what is called a bare assertion, and what an argument is.
I would like for you to try to argue the case for what you just said. Please argue for the truth of the claim, that I have made an argument or assertion that implies a logical impossibility.
To do that I suggest you first quote the argument or assertion I made, which you are referring to here, and then explain, or argue, how or why it implies a logical impossibility.
Can you clarify what, specifically, you understand me to have argued, which could supposedly not exist according to the laws of logic?
I did that very thing in the post linked by this sentence.
I find that surprising because it is not. It is one of my concerns, but nowhere near the chief one. It still is one of my numerous concerns, and you have not substantively rebutted either this, nor any of the other problems I have pointed out with it.
I have not exactly graded the degree to which your different statements concern me, but I have argued extensively about multiple other points you’ve made. I’d prefer it if you went over them all.
It is frustrating to have this conversation with you because I get the feeling you can’t really be bothered. Apparently I have too many issues with your posts for you to want to take the time to address all of them. This is a problem for this conversation because every one of the issues I have with your argument, is crucially undermining for your entire endeavor. As such, every single one of my objections needs to be addressed or your argument cannot be successful.
I have asked you now multiple times to also clarify key terms, and turns of phrase you use. And some of them could have been answered with simple yes/no questions. But you haven’t done so, which leads me to believe you’re not even bothering to read my posts through to the end. In fact as I’m typing this, since the question concerning your definition of the supernatural seems to be the only one you’ve attempted to address at any appreciable length, and this is the first one in each of my multiple posts, I get the feeling you’ve basically only read that far and then stopped.
Am I wrong? If so, please go back over my previous posts and address the different points I make, not just the one concerning the definition of supernatural you are seeking to establish.
That’s simply astonishing, since I gave a concrete example of an implied absurdity. Are you sure you even want to really argue about anything or have your statements analyzed and critiqued?
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I understand them, and no-one else seems to have any problems.
It’s just you.
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I’ve made the case already for why it’s logically impossible to have a physical cause for the first physical event. Let me make it one more time.
Your claim, as far as I can tell, is that there is a physical cause for the first physical event. Now assuming you would agree with me that a physical cause must exist before it can be a cause, and that physical existence begins at the moment of the first physical event, my question is, how can a physical cause exist where there is no physical existence?
I have to point out that you haven’t actually made a case for logical impossibility. You have asserted it would be logically impossible, not argued for it. And I have explained what is wrong with your “case”.
Yes, and I gave an example of how that could be the case.
Here it is again:
Me: Why can’t there be a physical cause of the first physical event? Seems super simple to me. Just to give an example, suppose the first physical event in history is that two particles of opposite charge, which exist some space apart, move closer together. So the very first “tick” of the clock is that those two particles move nearer each other. The cause of this first event is their mutual physical attraction . They are moving closer together at the first moment of time, because they are electromagnetically attracted to each other. A first physical event with a physical cause.
You: That wouldn’t be the first physical event. The particles would not exist logically prior to the first physical event.
Me: There’s no reason think that. There is no evidence that “physical existence”(I suppose by that you mean the physical universe, as in all of spacetime, matter, and energy?) was ever not in existence. Zero.
If the universe was not ever non-existant, then there is no transition from nothing to something that requires a causal explanation. Rather, there was simply a first moment of time, at which the universe already existed. That can be the case even for a universe with a finite age. You go back to the first moment of time, and the universe exists already at the first moment of time. It is just very hot and dense. But you can not go any further back, because you can’t go back before time itself. Hence there was not ever a time at which there was nothing, and so no transition from nothingness to the universe.
And then your direct responses stopped, and you started complaining that you just don’t find my posts compelling or coherent:
You: I find in the rest of what you’ve posted a lot of comments which are hard for me to put together in a coherent way to understand exactly what your objections are to my argument.
As should be perfectly obvious by now, you seem to have an assumption that the first event MUST be the coming into existence of “physical reality”, from nothing. As I explained, we don’t have to assume this ever occurred. Hence we do not need to invoke a cause to explain an event that did not occur. Rather, like the particle example I gave, the first event is just that the existing physical stuff undergoes change. I also gave an example where the first physical event could be the expansion of the universe. Time begins, as in the clock starts ticking, at the instant the universe undergoes any kind of physical change, such as it’s expansion.
We had this exchange also:
You: OK. If you read my op I’ve laid it out there. But let me point out a few problems with your analysis. If there was a cause for the first physical event, there would not be “something physical” in existence logically prior to the event.
Me: First of all, why not?
Second, suppose there was not, why does that even matter? It is not clear to me why there HAS to be something physical in existence before the first physical event. It is not clear to me that it is even coherent to talk about there being such a thing as a time before the first physical event.
You: Because the first physical event would bring physical existence into being.
Me: Well no, that doesn’t have to be the first physical event. There is currently no evidence known that should cause us to think that the universe was at some point non-existent.
Rather, all the evidence we have says that at the earliest possible time, the universe existed, and that the first physical “event” in history was some infinitesimally short period of it’s expansion from a hot and dense state. However small you want to make the shortest periods of time (maybe planck times?), there has not been any such period at which the universe did not exist. The only thing that changes as we go back in time is how large the universe is at whatever period you think of. The further back we go, the smaller, hotter, and denser it gets. There is no evidence we have that at some period it did not even exist.
In the same post, I go on to clarify:
Me: It’s pretty simple actually. Current estimations are that the universe’s age can be extrapolated back to a first moment approximately 13.72 billion years ago(or however much the latest estimation is).
But it doesn’t make sense to talk about a period of time (say)15 billion years ago then. Because there was no time before the universe.You cannot coherently talk about chronological relations if time does not exist. Hence there can’t have been a time before time itself. As such, there can not have been a time at which the universe did not exist . So there can’t have been some period at which there was not anything in existence, because the concept of a period of time only makes sense if time exists.
But that means the universe must have always existed. “Always” meaning for all of time. For all of those 13.72 billion years. And then we can’t go further back than that. That means there can’t have been a time at which the states of affairs was nothingness. So there was not ever(at any time) such a thing as nothingness. If there was not ever such a thing as nothingness, then there was not ever(at any time) a transition from a state of nothingness into a state with the universe existing. Since there was not ever (at any time) such a transition, no cause will ever be required to facilitate it.That means the first thing that ever happened, was a change of the universe itself(it expanded) while it already existed at the first moment of time.
I don’t agree that necessarily must be the case. I gave an example of why in one of my first posts in this thread:
Me: From the standpoint of logic alone we can allow for causes to be absolutely simultaneous with their effects. That would then make it possible for the universe to cause itself to begin to exist simultaneously with it beginning to exist. This way, there is no requirement for the cause to exist chronologically prior to, or independent of the universe itself.
Ironically, Christian apologist William Lane Craig used to believe in the possibility of absolute simultaneity between causes and their effects(he used to argue that God caused the universe to exist absolutely simultaneously with it coming into existence). To explain the principle of absolute simultaneity, he would use an old philosophical idea of a ball having rested on a cushion for an endless eternity into the past, being the cause of an indentation in the cushion. The cause for the indentation, being the ball resting on the cushion, is thus simultaneous with it’s effect.
So we don’t have to assume a cause must exist chronologically prior to it’s effect.
and that physical existence begins at the moment of the first physical event
I don’t agree with that either, for reasons stated above numerous times.
Let go of your assumption that there is no physical existence. That’s all it is, an assumption you are making. There’s no evidence for it.
There is no reason to think that there was ever some period, or point, or instant, at which the physical universe did not exist. It was only ever smaller, hotter, and denser, than it currently is.
The further back we go if we extrapolate backwards in time before the formation of the CMBR, the smaller and hotter and denser it gets. But we don’t have to assume that it was ever nonexistant. You can extrapolate it all the way back into a singularity if you want, but then the universe was a singularity with infinite curvature, density, and temperature, which is still a physical thing, not nothing. You do not have any good reason to assume that such a singularity was at some point nonexistant.
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Addressing some-one else’s claim is not making your case. Nor is asking them questions.
If this is how you make your case, then you have no case.
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OK. I will grant you that. But then, since your cause begins to exist at the moment of the first physical event, you now have to come up with what caused your cause to exist. Or else you have to say it has no cause, or it’s a brute fact. So all you’ve done is kicked the can down the road so to speak.
Your solution, it appears, is just to make something up that you call a “non-physical cause”, with no understanding, description or account of what this is nor evidence that it could even exist, and assert that this solves the problem.
It should be obvious why that is not a workable response.
It also seems to me that the very idea of a “non-physical cause” that manifests itself thru its effect on things in the physical universe is incoherent. If it has physical effects, then it must be physical by definition.
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