Initial singularity
Posted on: October 8, 2010 - 6:38pm
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Initial singularity
Hello!
To WLCraig's, if something is atemporal then it's likely to be uncaused, for instance God.
Let's admit this premise.
We know that singularity, being lawless, can be considered as atemporal, thus uncaused;this would be the 1st cause- which would make God quite unecessary.
=> As a result, WLCraig explains away this by claiming that although the singularity is out of physical time, it's evanescent (ie, coming into and going out of being) and thus metaphysically temporal and requires a cause.
Is his claim philosophically right?
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No...
1.) Relabeling something "evanescent" then saying it is "metaphysically temporal" sounds to me like he's special pleading, which he needs to get his Kalam argument off the ground. One need only suggest that a god is no different...any objection would seem to suggest even more special pleading. Atemporalness metaphysically speaking existence simply removes time, words like "begins" and "end" logical sequential, but there are not temporal references.
2.) Also, I think he's making a categorical mistake if he says that the universe is "metaphysically temporal" and treating it as if it were physically temporal. If he suggests the Kalam argument uses this sort of atomporalness, then he's question begging and not really proving anything about a physical universe...
3.) One could argue that, that which is "metaphysically temporal" is meaningless outside of physical temporalness unless again he wants to beg the question about what he is trying to prove: the existence of a deity. I think pressing him on a description of a state of affairs that would constitute something "metaphysically temporal" would expose this.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
In layman's terms, "If it sounds like woo, it is woo"
Linguistic gymnastics doesn't constitute evidence. Dressing a skunk up in a tuxedo doesn't magically make the skunk stink free.
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I think he is right... but don't mind me... I'm just an irrational theist...
You are forgeting something Ubuntu... what ever happened; Atemporalness became temporalness! How could that have happened?! This is a odd Universe and we don't know shit about it... although many times we speak as if we do.
We don't have atemporal referent, but I do think we can at least get at it as we do other privative such as infinity.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
Do you realize that for some X to become Y you have to already have temporalness?
I've addressed this elsewhere before, but all this atemporal into temporal stuff basically amounts to claiming "there was a time before time," which is patently false.
You say Atermporalness became temporalness. But the way the word became works, this would require some time t at which the state of affairs was atemporal (and then some later time t + dt at which the state of affairs was temporal). This is clearly impossible.
The "beginning" of temporalness, if such a term is even meaningful, must be uncaused. It is impossible to cause time to start existing because in order to have causality you must already have time, as causes must temporally precede their effects.
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.
I think this is a case of the tail wagging the dog...that is your case for temporalness is based on the semantic usage of a particular terms. I don't think a state of affairs is contingent upon the description of the that state of affairs, but rather the other way around. Should state of affairs happen removed from a temporal context, words like "becoming" and "beginning" have to do with sequences, but sequences do not have to happen over a span of time.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
You guys seem to know a lot more about physics than me. I concur that "It is impossible to cause time to start existing because in order to have causality you must already have time, as causes must temporally precede their effects."
It is impossible but it seems to have happened somehow! This is the biggest paradox of the existence of this Universe as is explained by the Big Bang. There was no before time BUT the state of timeless in Existence indeed existed. How come timeless become time then? It can't have a cause... Time has always existed! Oh! my head!
I think this is all Schrödinger’s cat fault!! LOL
I say that indeed we need to have a cause, it is impossible to have causality without time in the physical world. Here lies the answer: whatever caused time was not physical and merely will time into existence.
Why is time necessary for causality? Time is part of the fabric of the universe such that when the universe came into existence, so did time. Timelessness (that is physical timelessness) therefore can exist logically prior to time but necessarily temporally prior. This would suggest that causality is not contingent upon time... For this reason, I have no reason to think that there is a need for some nonphysical entity that exists in some other sort of time willed time into existence...
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
At this point you guys are using words in ways that I don't use them. I think we need to pin down some definitions.
Cause: What does the statement "A causes B" mean, and what happens to this meaning when time is removed? What are the sufficient and necessary conditions for A to cause B?
Begins to exist: What does the statement "B begins to exist" mean, and what happens to this meaning when time is removed? What are the sufficient and necessary conditions for B to begin existing?
See, the way I would define "begins to exist" inherently depends upon time, and the word becomes completely meaningless when time is removed. The way I would define "cause," combined with results from relativity, leads to a time-dependence and, at the very least, a very significant change in the word's meaning when time is removed. Here are the definitions I propose.
Cause: The statement "A causes B" indicates a few things (which together serve as sufficient and necessary conditions)
1. A is a sufficient condition for B
2. Without A, the sufficient conditions for B are not met
3. A is in some sense prior to B
Now I've only ever really thought of the word "cause" in a temporal sense. With this definition, it could be possible to have some atemporal causality between, say, statements in symbolic logic or something. However, in such systems the idea of "prior" is very different than in temporal systems. When you go from having time to not having time, the definition of prior changes, which in turn changes the meaning of causality.
Begins: The statement "B begins to exist" means that there is some point in time at which B does not exist, and then some later point in time at which B does exist. Of course, this is inherently dependent on having time. I suppose you could use the word "begins" to indicate some sort of lower bound in mathematics, but using this kind of definition makes the phrase "begins to exist" completely meaningless.
"It is impossible but it seems to have happened somehow!"
No, this just misses the point. The point is that it didn't happen at all. Time didn't begin to exist because the very idea of beginning to exist depends upon time.
The earth is finite in size, yet it has no edge. Clearly being finite in extent does not necessitate having an edge. Now treat time as a dimension, much like any spacial dimension, and we see that the finite history of the universe does not logically necessitate a beginning (an edge in time).
"There was no before time BUT the state of timeless in Existence indeed existed."
When? In what sense? What do you mean by saying that such a state existed? I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
"Here lies the answer: whatever caused time was not physical and merely will time into existence."
Here's an alternative: Time was not caused
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.
You can replace the 'need' for temporal sequence with the idea that some identifiable object/entity is bounded in an N-dimensional 'matrix', whether minimal 4-dimensional space-time, or higher-dimensional m-branes, strings, or whatever.
Some quantum-scale events may be seen as the result of a extremely large number of interacting elemental 'particles', which can approach the state of effective randomness, with no identifiable 'cause', just a state of the lowest possible level of energy, or some more elemental basis of existence which makes a given specific event, such as the BB, likely to occur with a finite probability within some N-dimensional non-zero, finite sub-region of the N-dimensional fabric. This is all that is required for something to have a boundary, which to us temporally bound beings will be see as its 'beginning' (or possibly its 'end', for that matter).
Proposing a God is utterly unhelpful in providing any sort of resolution of any mysteries here - it gratuitously introduces a proposed entity utterly beyond any possible mortal comprehension, with attributes for which we have no precedent in experience, whose motives would be utterly beyond any possibility of our determining with any confidence whatever.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
A would be something logically prior to B such that the effect of A direct affect the outcome of B....
The beginning of a sequence does not necessarily require time (i.e. 1,2,3,4.... 1 is the beginning of the sequence). Now when talking about that which "begins to exists" one can talk about something that did not exist prior to whatever caused its existence. This can possibly be temporal, but it is necessarily logical....
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
I rest my comments, this is out of my league... my opinion remains though.
We are just too insignificant in the order of things. I have my convictions and beliefs.
From the OP:
is a non sequitur - it does not logically follow. It is an intuitive assumption, and so, like virtually everything that is discussed under the heading of "Metaphysics", is essentially speculation.
The theory and associated observations of Quantum Mechanics specifically refute the assumption - things can come into and go out of existence with no cause, at least in the sense of 'cause' envisaged in the medieval thinking that underlies such statements.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
The interrelationships between events will always be seen as causal from our perspective as beings who experience time as a flow.
From a multi-dimensional perspective, time is just another axis along which such relationships can be measured. In such cases, any interdependence between two events or entities may have directionality, either way, or both, or there may be no significant mutual interaction dependence.
"Willing" is something that requires a complex process, which requires a substrate capable of supporting a complex persistent structure. Such things cannot be primary entities, they are dependent on the prior existence of a basic ground which can support the emergence of a hierarchy of complex elements. In our universe, this could be written:
?->quarks->particles of matter->atoms->molecules->macro-molecules(eg DNA etc)->cells->multicellular life-forms->animals and plants->social animals->primates->humans->societies->civilzations->?
"In the physical world" is a meaningless and unnecessary qualifier. The better, more useful perspective is that there is a continuum of levels at which one can perceive and experience reality, more-or-less corresponding to that sequence I just listed, but including the additional classes of attributes that the more complex structures can manifest. LIke 'wetness', at the level of collections of molecules, or 'awareness' at the level of the higher animals.
All linked, the simpler elements serving as components for the next level, and the higher levels of description not being 'reducible' to the lower.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
You mean like an if-then relationship? If this is what you mean then when you have iff relationships you have 'A causes B' and 'B causes A.' This is a feature that doesn't occur in temporal causality, which marks a significant difference between what you call "cause" and what I've called "cause."
I think I get what you're saying here, but would you really say that in the sequence 1,2,3,4... 1 causes 2 to begin to exist? That just seems like a poor way of talking about things. I can see the argument for 1 (plus the pattern) causes 2 to be next, but begin to exist seems to carry way more ontological baggage than strictly necessary to accurately describe the situation.
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.
'Iff' does not imply any causality - the correlation could be the result of other factors.
For example if both A and B are dependent on C , then there is no necessary causal relationship of any kind between A and B, even if they always occur together.
Even "if-then" does not entail causality, just correlation.
"Begins-to-exist" in a temporal context translates to a border, an edge, in the time dimension of a region in space-time.
Again, "cause" is not relevent.
Demonstration of causality requires a particular kind of logical relationship, as ubuntu was trying to describe.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
To just refer back to the OP, WLC is a non-event as someone worth taking seriously in anything involving logic.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Pretty much. There is a lot of debate as to exactly what constitutes a cause and what constitutes an effect and the relationship of time to such things.
The sequence of numbers wasn't talking about causal relationships, but rather the sequence "begins" with 1. This is a non-temporal use of the world "Begins". In relation to cause, I don't think it requires much more other than some sort of causal relationship. But, as we've established, we don't share the same understanding of cause...
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”