The Wrong God

[Logik]

Then why should Einstein's qualifications matter?

I am arguing precisely that they don't. To me anyway! His work is its own merit.

Whether he had a PhD or not does not affect my value-judgment on his work.

Hence me objecting to the line of reasoning where one might use academic epaulettes for the arbitration of the scientific value of ideas.

Yes, how very post-modern/Marxist of me. Trying to make science stand on its own merits and beyond the reach of man-made authorities.

When you can think and recognize bullshit for yourself credentials don't matter. In a world with excessive information a relevance filter is way more useful.

[Immanuel Can]

Oh. I see.
Well, do you think the BB was a caused event, or a completely uncaused one?

I'll go along with Lawrence Krauss on this one and say that quantum fluctuations caused the Big Bang. On this basis we can say the universe was caused.

I'm afraid that won't work, because a quantum vacuum isn't "nothing." So he's already presupposing the existence of something.

The elements we know today came from supernovae. In other words, the majority of elements did not exist until after star formation.

This doesn't get to the question either. We've now taken for granted the existence of supernovae. That is also not a "nothing."

No one really knows what came before the Big Bang. Hawking tells us that the events before the Big Bang have no observational consequence.Events before the Big Bang are not defined so we cannot measure them.

But Hawking relies on a zero-point explanation. It's also been disproved.

However, we don't need to measure events before the BB to know what we are looking for. We just can't find it.

Let me make that as straightforward as I can:

1. A causal-chain universe with an infinite regress of causes is logically and mathematically impossible. (The chain of causes could never start.)

2. This is a causal-chain universe. (i.e. The chain of causality must have somehow 'gotten started').

Conclusion: The universe is not the product of an infinite regress of causes.

One hardly needs premise 2. It's both empirically observable everywhere, and it's implausible to imagine a universe without causal chains: but we'll cover all bases there. At total Idealist could say that our universe is a mental illusion, and so are causal chains: but most of us find that intuitively absurd and practically unliveable, so we can leave that option out, I think. And Idealist of that sort couldn't even believe in the kinds of observational thinking we're doing here, so wouldn't be talking to us anyway.

And, of course, premise 1 is certain and deductive. It's mathematically demonstrable.

The upshot is that there is no way that any explanation of the origins of the universe can be achieved by positing an infinite origin point.

We are left with a very simple, clear conclusion: the universe (including whatever "pre-matter" we posit, like elements, or supernovae, or quantum vacuums) had an inception point, a First Cause. If it did not, there would be no observable causal chains today.

That in a nutshell would be my point.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

We are left with a very simple, clear conclusion: the universe (including whatever "pre-matter" we posit, like elements, or supernovae, or quantum vacuums) had an inception point, a First Cause. If it did not, there would be no observable causal chains today.

But there aren't any observable causal chains. There are constant conjunctions of events.

You presume too much when you presume that naturally there is order .

[Immanuel Can]

You presume too much when you presume that naturally there is order .

I would respond to that, but since, according to you, everything in the universe, presumably including your won words "have no order," I'm not able to.

There's no denying order in a non-self-defeating way, just like you can never reason that reason is untrustworthy. The minute you say it, and expect it to mean something, you've effectively refuted it.

Moreover, if there's no causality, just odd confluences of unrelated events, then science doesn't work either. For then it has neither ability to describe cause, nor any cause-effect predictive power for the future, and thus tells us precisely nothing.

That's a heck of a price to pay for denying the obvious.

[Logik]

You presume too much when you presume that naturally there is order .

I would respond to that, but since, according to you, everything in the universe, presumably including your won words "have no order," I'm not able to.

There's no denying order in a non-self-defeating way, just like you can never reason that reason is untrustworthy. The minute you say it, and expect it to mean something, you've effectively refuted it.

Moreover, if there's no causality, just odd confluences of unrelated events, then science doesn't work either. For then it has neither ability to describe cause, nor any cause-effect predictive power for the future, and thus tells us precisely nothing.

Somebody doesn't understand probability theory and the Anthropic principle.

That science works can simply be coincidental, not incidental. In this universe, with its current parameters - it works.

If the universe so decides and all its "laws" suddenly reshuffle none of our "science" will work anymore.
Heck, we could cease to exist in an instant.

If you believe in infinities (infinite time, infinite space) then science most definitely does not work.
Because probability theory doesn't work with infinities. And probability theory is THE foundation of scientific hypothesis testing.

This is worth-while reading: https://www.amazon.com/Probability-Theo ... 0521592712

That's a heck of a price to pay for denying the obvious.

That which you call "obvious" I call "wishful thinking".

[Immanuel Can]

Somebody doesn't understand probability theory and the Anthropic principle.

The Anthropic Principle is circular: "We're here in this kind of universe, because this is the universe in which we can be." Non-answer.

As for probability theory, and the idea that all our observable causality can be "coincidental," I wonder what the probabilities of all apparent causality instances being merely coincidence would be...

Actually, we have some idea. The odds of just one variable (the cosmological constant) in the universe being accidentally life-permitting is 1 to 10 to the 120th power. And that's just one variable. Take another (the mass and energy balance of the early universe): it's balanced at odds of 1 to the 10th power, to the 123rd power. And that's just a start. Add up just these two...let alone all the other improbabilities in the order of things in the universe, and there is not even the ghost of a reasonable chance that accident, not causality, describes what's going in the universe.

[Logik]

The Anthropic Principle is circular: "We're here in this kind of universe, because this is the universe in which we can be." Non-answer.

It's not circular - it's just biased. Because if the universe was any other way neither you nor I would be here to be conducting this conversation right now.

Actually, we have some idea. The odds of just one variable (the cosmological constant) in the universe being accidentally life-permitting is 1 to 10 to the 120th power.

So the odds of us having this conversation are 1 in 10^120? And the odds of us NOT having this conversation 10^120 to 1 ?

So if statistics is anything to go by then it is certain beyond reasonable doubt that we are NOT having a conversation at this very moment. Oh wait...

Way to make my point for me, genius.

[Immanuel Can]

The Anthropic Principle is circular: "We're here in this kind of universe, because this is the universe in which we can be." Non-answer.

No shit! Because if the universe was any other way neither you nor I would be here to be conducting this conversation.

It still doesn't answer anything. Even Dawkins admits it's a non-explanation. Instead, he says he just hopes science will make progress on it. (This by the way, is the same "science" that wouldn't tell us anything if causality doesn't work.)

[Logik]

It still doesn't answer anything.

What do you expect an answer to look like, feel like or behave like?

If The Ultimate Answer to life, the universe and everything was to mysteriously arrive in a book, on your doorstep tomorrow morning. How would you recognize it for what it is?

Even Dawkins admits it's a non-explanation.

Again. State your expectation. What kind of answer/explanation would satisfy you?

"God did it" is an answer/explanation. In fact "God did it" is the PERFECT answer/explanation. It answers/explains absolutely EVERYTHING.

It doesn't explain where God comes from, but it DOES explain where the universe comes from.

Why doesn't THAT satisfy you? What is wrong with it?

[Logik]

This by the way, is the same "science" that wouldn't tell us anything if causality doesn't work

You do recognize that the only definition for what it means for "science to works" is that it predicts things. Right?

It promises and it delivers. It does what it says on the box.

Simply: it meets (but never exceeds) your expectations.

[Immanuel Can]

Why doesn't THAT satisfy you? What is wrong with it?

Because until one understands the reasons for it, it looks merely arbitrary. All answers, even right ones, look that way when one suddenly skips the middle steps of the reasoning required for others to stay with you and make sense of them.

Step one is to understand the impossibility of an infinite regression of causes. That, as I pointed out a few messages ago, is undeniable for anyone who accepts the existence of causality.

What that also does is that it nicely eliminates a whole bunch of irrational pseudo-answers that all depend on the idea of the universe itself being past-eternal. The universe is an entity that had to come into being at a definite point in the past: that much we can know for certain. That step alone doesn't get us to "God did it", but it makes it inevitable that we know that something was a First Cause of the causal chain.

But as I say, that's only the first step of many. Still, it's necessary.

[Immanuel Can]

This by the way, is the same "science" that wouldn't tell us anything if causality doesn't work

You do recognize that the only definition for what it means for "science to works" is that it predicts things. Right?

That's the point. If causality doesn't exist, if it's all just circumstantial, then there is no reason for science to have any predictive success: for were that true, it could not describe either what causes a phenomenon, nor could it give us reason to believe that phenomenon would ever predictively recur. And that would be true for all phenomena, from the simple to the very complex...so science would then not be able to tell us anything.

But it does.

[Scott Mayers]

This by the way, is the same "science" that wouldn't tell us anything if causality doesn't work

You do recognize that the only definition for what it means for "science to works" is that it predicts things. Right?

That's the point. If causality doesn't exist, if it's all just circumstantial, then there is no reason for science to have any predictive success: for were that true, it could not describe either what causes a phenomenon, nor could it give us reason to believe that phenomenon would ever predictively recur. And that would be true for all phenomena, from the simple to the very complex...so science would then not be able to tell us anything.

But it does.

You can't USE logic to validate what you believe against the mechanism's reality that determines that validity and truth (soundness). That is, you have to know a calculator is itself a reality to trust its display's result. Causality is ALSO logical but just more complex than the simplest metalanguage used to establish those higher-ordered languages, which includes a justification for the practicality to gamble on methods that are less certain.

Edit: changed 'conclusion' to "display's result" to fit with the intended example.

[uwot]

If causality doesn't exist, if it's all just circumstantial, then there is no reason for science to have any predictive success...

Richard Feynman, always worth watching, makes the point that science has absolutely no need of causality for predictive success, particularly in the last minute and a half: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM-zWTU7X-k&t=74s

[Scott Mayers]

The logical error when using causality is about a confusion about the order of implication. If I said, "If X occurs, (and) then Y occurs" is about the difference meaning of 'then' with an absence of 'and' that acts as the operator. In this statement, "then" is not logically causative but dependent upon time. You'd require to show that "If Y, then X" [opposing implication], were the "then" here is logical. The actual relation when specifying correlation in time logically with the first order kept would require stating something like "(X and (Y then X))".

Then you can see the error:

If Y then X
X
Therefore, if X then Y

The error is affirming a condition that can't be determined by anything given from the assumption.

Obviously, if one wants to prove the logical causation of Y from X, one must reword it as:

If Y then X
Y
Therefore X

This is called "material implication" meaning the material meaning of Y's existence assures X existed.