Is this Universe Really Eternal? And why I believe "God did it."

Dagless,

We are going towards things which may never be proven either way so I think people are free to hold either belief. As far as I know (and I do not study the big bang for a living so I'm sure someone out there can answer this better) the mainstream belief is that at the moment of, and for a while after, the big bang; space, time, matter, the 4 forces, etc. did not exist in the way that we know them, it took time for them to come into their current existence (more milliseconds than years but nevertheless not the instant of the bang).

Well, again, if you claim an agnostic stance then that ends the discussion. However, the argument provided in the OP is not an agnostic stance and I'm endeavouring to meet it with a reasoned criticism and response. But, as far as I know, I agree that the four forces were once unified at the extremely high energy densities in the early Universe - their de-unification allegedly representing symmetry breaks in the 'curled-up' dimensions responsible for those forces. However, the important laws for causality that involve conservation of momentum and energy are derived from the symmetry that still exists in the four 'macro' dimensions of space-time. I know of no model that argues that this symmetry 'began' as broken in the early Universe and then reformed later on, thus I don't agree that our knowledge of space-time is irrelevant to the early Universe and the space-time boundary that I've been discussing. I think we have enough information to come to some tentative conclusions which is why I've proposed my argument in this thread.

I agree that people are free to hold any beliefs they like (although acting on them may be illegal!), but if you want to claim your position is rational then you have to supply a rational argument to back it up and defend that argument from the criticisms laid against it. Simple assertion is worthless, in my opinion, as it can just be denied by the contra-assertion and you're back in the schoolground argument of 'is so', 'is not' etc. (not that I'm saying we're at that stage, it's just something I really like to avoid).

God is not inside this system and so can be the uncaused causer.

But what supports this assertion? In your previous post (#72) you pointed out that we can't describe things outside of the Universe, yet here you are saying that God is outside and then describing it as being both uncaused and capable of causing things. You appear to be contradicting your own previous statement. Causality is a property of our Universe, how are you justified in saying that something 'outside' our Universe is capable of operating causally?

If you line up lots of dominoes and push one so they all fall, and then one domino thinks about why it was pushed... it'll think its domino's all the way back and that you must be a domino and another domino must have pushed you for you to push the next. You were not part of the system and needed nothing to push you. But being a domino all it knows are dominoes, because that's all its ever seen. Likewise we only know what we've seen and everything is based upon that. Yeah its a really bad example but its 0340 and I'm missing sleep to type this so if you don't like it, think of another one yourself

Don't worry if you think it's a bad example - take your time to think up a better one if you can. I think what you're trying to say is that our knowledge is limited by what we have experienced and observed and so any conclusions we come to may be false due to our incomplete knowledge. I agree, that's why I tend to use the word 'tentative' quite often. But I don't think arguing 'we don't know everything about some thing therefore we can't know anything about that thing' is not a constructive position - it's always useful to think up arguments that can always then be modified if new information arises.

However, I actually think this domino metaphor works against the theist position, too. If the dominoes represent instances of time and the first domino is the first instant then, constrained by 'just what we've seen', you're always going to ask what pushed the first domino/caused the first instance. This is because we're embedded in space-time and constantly perceive that we're affected by causality. We naturally think (by naive inductivism) that, therefore, everything else must be affected by causality. But the problem is that the first domino is qualitatively similar to every other domino - they're all lumps of matter embedded in space-time, they all need a push to fall over. As I've pointed out previously, this is not the case with the first instance of time (the space-time boundary). The fact that it has no instances preceding it directly affects its relationship to causality - there is no previous time to contain a cause, no 'space' for a godly-finger to give it a push.

I'm sure people will point out again that I'm applying the rules of our Universe to God, but if that's not allowed then you're not allowed to do the same and call God a causer.

Once again this is your opinion. Terms like 'volume', 'duration', etc. only make sense in this universe. You cannot say they are requirements outside this universe. You are assuming this is the only existence or is the only way things can exist. You cannot compare God to His creation. I think you already know this since its not disputed that we don't experience everything. There are dimensions we cannot see, that have no volume or duration we can measure, yet we do not say they are out of existence... only out of our existence.

I am not saying 'volume' and 'duration' are requirements for things outside the Universe. 'Volume' and 'duration' are properties of our Universe derived directly from space-time - they are only applicable to things in space-time. I'm saying that things 'outside' the Universe have, by definition, the 'properties' of 'no volume' and 'no duration' - they must be described as such because, as you say, you can't apply properties in our Universe to things outside it. Without being in space-time they cannot have any volume or duration. The problem becomes that things that are without volume or duration are indistinguishable from things that don't exist - if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ...

I agree that I'm assuming this is the only way for things to exist. It's a tentative assumption based on the fact that there's no evidence for existing in any other way. Again, if you're going to assert that I can't make a conclusion because there may be further knowledge that we just don't know yet, then you're taking an agnostic position.

If you can't compare God to his creation then you cannot compare God's 'causes' to the causes we can observe. The statement 'God caused the Universe' is then qualitiatively different from 'Jack caused the first domino to fall' - the term 'caused' cannot be compared. This, again, is an agnostic position as nothing asserted about God can be compared to any similar format for our Universe. If God cannot be compared to anything then no conclusions about God can be rational, as there is no baseline for comparison and no capacity for objectivity. The term 'God' becomes synonymous with 'the unknown', thus redundant.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'dimensions we cannot see' - are you referring to the 'curled-up' dimensions speculated about in some Grand Unification proposals? If it is and if they're real then they're definitely in our existence - they mediate the forces.

Firstly you said that time was uncaused, that is why I said you were applying them to before space-time. Secondly, it would be more correct to say "time is necessary for causality in this universe and causality is a property of this universe". It has to be that detailed because we need to understand we cannot apply any of these rules or logic to things outside of this universe (God).

I'm not sure that being uncaused necessitates that it has to be 'outside'. Radioactive decay, by all accounts, is an acausal process that definitely exists in our Universe.

I think the statement you've made in quotation marks, above, necessarily leads to the conclusion that time cannot be caused. If causality needs time then time must be there at the instance of any initial cause(s) (the space-time boundary would be that instance) and thus cannot be the result of that initial cause(s). If you apply no rules or logic (or properties from this Universe) to God then you are generating cast-iron agnosticism - everything that we will ever know will be constrained by being in this Universe and thus nothing can ever be known or attributed to God, by definition. The term becomes meaningless.

naidamar,

No, my argument does not fall apart because I have already responded to the criticisms to premise #1 and demonstrated why the criticisms are flawed. Please address my counter-criticisms if you'd like to continue the discussion.

You cannot apply the law of this universe to the creation process of this universe, because the universe did not exist as yet.

There were no processes 'before' the Universe. Processes require time (they are activities within our Universe) and there was no time 'before' the Universe. As I've mentioned in my post to Dagless, above, if you're going to state that we can't apply the law of this Universe to things 'outside' it, then you're not allowed to claim that God causes anything (causality being an internal observation about our Universe). You're adopting an agnostic position.

Dagless,

The agnostic stance is in the "how", not in the "if". I don't claim to know the exact mechanism of how the universe was created and formed. We are again going in circles. I mentioned in previous posts that there are many reasons why theists believe and this is only one piece of the jigsaw.

I don't agree that the agnostic stance is purely concerned with the "how", it is concerned with the "what" aswell. It is just as concerned with what is responsible for something as much as how that something was carried out. Specifically, agnosticism is a position that proclaims that no knowledge is known about the subject in question (and even, in a strong version, that no knowledge can be known about the subject). So, from an agnostic position you cannot claim that God is an 'uncaused causer', for example, as that would mean having some knowledge about God. Your previous statement that we cannot ascribe properties from our Universe to 'things outside' our Universe is solidly agnostic because we will only ever know about things that are 'in' our Universe.

I'd appreciate your more detailed response on this point because your stance appears confusing to me: you simultaneously appear to hold both gnostic and agnostic positions, depending on which aspect of the argument you're addressing.

I'm well aware of the other reasons given for belief in religions, but I won't address them in this thread.

You are not here because you are curious about Islam or because you wish to learn more (I base this on the topics you post on), therefore you should be thinking of the examples since being on an Islamic forum the burden is on you to spread your message (which again is what I assume you are doing).

Please don't ask me to think up examples for you to use to criticise my position, I'm not here to do your arguing for you! I was only acknowledging your opinion that you didn't think it was a good metaphor because it was late when you were writing it, therefore, out of fairness, I'm not going to treat it as some central pillar of your critique of my argument.

Please also don't make personal assumptions about what I'm doing here. I've hardly posted for very long and although you may know where I post, you don't know what I've read.

We have already agreed life without time or a universe completely different is not something fully understood so I don't think its worth arguing about something neither of us can fathom. It would be fun to discuss how time, and dimensions in general might work, but the word is always 'might', and that has no place in this particular discussion.

Being able to fathom a Universe without time is not necessary for my argument. What is necessary is the demonstration that causality cannot occur without time. I have demonstrated this (I hope) by pointing out that causality includes time by definition in its description of causal chains where effects temporally-follow from causes. Can you think of a way that causality can operate without time?

I have already answered this. There are dimensions that we believe must exist but we cannot measure their volume, or duration, or in fact anything about them, but the majority do not equate them with the term "do not exist". This is something you believe.

I still don't understand where your assertion "there are dimensions that we believe must exist..." comes from. If you mean time, as you allude to later in your post, then this is definitely part of our Universe. Remember, it is dimensions that enable properties - that is my whole point: you cannot have volume if you don't have three (or more) spatial dimensions, you cannot have duration if you don't have time, etc.

A lot of what you type is questionable but statements like these are easy to verify since there has been a huge amount of work on the subject. Anyone can look it up on the net and see radioactive decay is caused by a difference of forces, so again not worth the time arguing here.

I'm talking about the actual event of the radioactive decay of a specific atom. This is not determined by previous events (the decay occurs at a random point after the formation of the atom) and is therefore not part of a causal chain. The OPs argument is that the Universe is causally determined by God and that there's no random element involved (which would demonstrate something in addition to God, potentially acausal).

This is because you are looking at only one aspect; religion has a huge amount of evidence (which science supports and new data continues to support).

This whole thread reminds me of the "a bee can't fly" story. You are looking at a leaf of religious belief and then trying to break it down using "logic" (I put the term in quotes because I can see this turning into nihilism within the next few replies) to justify your own belief that trees don't exist.

Well, I'm not going to deviate from this 'leaf' in this thread because I don't want to derail. I doubt very much that anyone would change their mind about faith due to a rational argument because most people don't hold faith due to rational arguments, so I don't see other aspects of belief as relevant to the topic at hand. But I can assure you that I'm well aware of the 'tree of belief', it's just the object(s) that its assertions point to that I'm skeptical of.


Thanks a lot for continuing on with this debate - I hope you're enjoying having the discussion as much as I am. However, I'll be away for the next few days so won't be able to respond until I'm back - hopefully at some point over the weekend. Have a good rest of the week!

format_quote Originally Posted by DuncG

I don't agree that the agnostic stance is purely concerned with the "how", it is concerned with the "what" aswell. It is just as concerned with what is responsible for something as much as how that something was carried out. Specifically, agnosticism is a position that proclaims that no knowledge is known about the subject in question (and even, in a strong version, that no knowledge can be known about the subject). So, from an agnostic position you cannot claim that God is an 'uncaused causer', for example, as that would mean having some knowledge about God. Your previous statement that we cannot ascribe properties from our Universe to 'things outside' our Universe is solidly agnostic because we will only ever know about things that are 'in' our Universe.

I agree with this to a degree. As mentioned we know about God what he has revealed about Himself. I cannot make up random statements about God because I don't know. I can only know what He has told. This, of course, is based upon my religion.

format_quote Originally Posted by DuncG

I'd appreciate your more detailed response on this point because your stance appears confusing to me: you simultaneously appear to hold both gnostic and agnostic positions, depending on which aspect of the argument you're addressing.

Put simply: I believe everything in my religion, but my religion does not tell me in detail the mechanism of how the universe was created, therefore I can happily say I don't know and that some of the theories put forward so far appeal to my reason.

format_quote Originally Posted by DuncG

Thanks a lot for continuing on with this debate - I hope you're enjoying having the discussion as much as I am. However, I'll be away for the next few days so won't be able to respond until I'm back - hopefully at some point over the weekend. Have a good rest of the week!

Enjoy your time away. Yes, apart from the repetition its a good thread. I also think some of the topics would be more interesting when discussed with a different objective.

Dagless,

At last I have some time to get back to this...

You appear to be proposing some form of limited gnosticism, in that you claim to have some knowledge of God delivered by revelation - but this knowledge is limited as you're only willing to accept revelation as a means for knowing about God. Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but from this perspective it appears that any reason-based argument about God would be worthless if it's not accepted, a priori, that such an argument could be valid.

I can see by going down this route we'll soon get into an epistemological discussion because I can't see why it's reasonable to accept anything provided by revelation - that just appears to be an argument to authority.

Put simply: I believe everything in my religion, but my religion does not tell me in detail the mechanism of how the universe was created, therefore I can happily say I don't know and that some of the theories put forward so far appeal to my reason.

But my argument doesn't care about any speculation regarding how God allegedly 'created' the Universe. It makes the point that no process whatsoever can be a cause for the Universe. The only way to avoid this is to redefine the meaning of the word 'process' so that it doesn't include time - but I would see such a redefinition as unreasonable without a good argument as to why it should be accepted (and I wouldn't accept 'because the Quran says so' as a good argument, for the reason stated above).