barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (04/21/85)
[]
There has been some discussion of the "First Cause" argument for the
existence of God recently, but I think it has missed the real essence of the
issue.
When I was 13, and experiencing my first doubts about the validity of
the religious teachings I had absorbed as a child, the First Cause argument
became the last refuge of my religious belief; a Godless universe seemed to
have no way to get going.
This attitude lasted for perhaps 4-5 months, at which time I saw the
flaw that many here on the net have pointed out, that God does not solve the
First Cause paradox, only pushes it back one level (what caused God, instead
of what caused the universe). At that point, I became agnostic.
But the paradox remains unsolved. We have strong scientific evidence
that the universe has not existed forever; it seems to have begun some few
billion years ago (estimates change frequently, but it's maybe ~20 billion).
This fact should make those who believe that all of reality can be encompassed
in a very strict cause-and-effect system uncomfortable. Either at least one
uncaused event has, indeed, occured (the universe began), or
cause-and-effect's validity must be pushed back before the universe began, and
something must be hypothesized that caused the universe to begin. But either
answer shows that a strict cause-and-effect explanation of reality is
inadequate. If the universe has not always existed, you *must* have either a
first, uncaused event, or an infinite regression of causes which reach past
the physical universe to a metaphysical before-the-universe.
There is a similar limit one reaches to the cause-and-effect paradigm
when one looks into the world of the subatomic particles, as Michael Ellis
pointed out in his interesting article. Just as cause-and-effect demands an
infinity of time to avoid the First Cause paradox, so it would need an
infinite regression of ever-more-fundamental particles to explain the workings
of the universe as we know it to be. But quantum physics holds that there is
no infinite regress; instead there is a size limit below which the law of
cause-and-effect no longer applies (I am of course oversimplifying, here).
Individual events are truly random, and all rules are statistical in nature.
So, the solution to the paradox? Simply to recognize that the domain
of the cause-and-effect principle, while very large, is ultimately local, not
universal. It cannot explain the motion of subatomic particles, and it cannot
explain the origin of the universe, for it is local to that universe, and
cannot be applied to a framework larger than the universe, such as any
framework which speaks of the universe having "begun".
There is mystery here. There is metaphysics, in that these questions
go beyond the defined domain of physics, the 20-billion year old universe we
all know and love. Whether anything answering the description of God has a
role in all this remains an unanswered question, but it seems clear we must go
beyond the local rules that apply within the universe (and only at the
macroscopic level even there) when attempting to deal with the origin of that
universe. I suspect that claiming to know *anything* about this may be
unjustifiable arrogance, but such claims are made as frequently by
materialists as by the religious. The assumptions of the materialists are
perhaps more minimal, and may therefore seem more reasonable, but they're
still assumptions, and some of them, like cause-and-effect, are looking a bit
shaky.
Let me close with a favorite quote of mine. I believe it's from Sir
James Jeans, but I'm not sure: "The universe is not only stranger than we
imagine, it is stranger than we CAN imagine".
- From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry
NASA-Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, CA
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USENET: {ihnp4,vortex,dual,hao,menlo70,hplabs}!ames!barrylaura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (04/23/85)
``The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, but queerer than we *can* imagine'' -- JBS Haldane Laura Creighton utzoo!laura
dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) (04/25/85)
In article <946@ames.UUCP> barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) writes: > But the paradox remains unsolved. We have strong scientific evidence >that the universe has not existed forever; it seems to have begun some few >billion years ago (estimates change frequently, but it's maybe ~20 billion). >This fact should make those who believe that all of reality can be encompassed >in a very strict cause-and-effect system uncomfortable. Either at least one >uncaused event has, indeed, occured (the universe began), or >cause-and-effect's validity must be pushed back before the universe began, and >something must be hypothesized that caused the universe to begin. But either >answer shows that a strict cause-and-effect explanation of reality is >inadequate. If the universe has not always existed, you *must* have either a >first, uncaused event, or an infinite regression of causes which reach past >the physical universe to a metaphysical before-the-universe. What follows is pure speculation, based on a mathematical idea that everybody should be able to understand. Suppose that time is only defined within the universe, so that it is meaningless to speak of anything coming "before" the universe. Now, a belief in strict cause-and-effect may be stated by saying that the state of the universe at any time is completely determined by the state of the universe at any earlier time. Add one further supposition, that the variable, t, that represents time, can take on all values greater than zero (at least to the present), and *only* values *strictly* greater than zero. Then there is no need for a first cause, because for every state of the universe, there are previous states of the universe. For the state of the universe at any time, t, there is an earlier state at time t/2. (Remember, t > 0, therefore t > t/2.) Since there is no "first state" of the universe, there is no need for a "first cause". And (try not to let this boggle your mind) what I've just described is a universe of finite age *with* *no* *beginning*. Whaddaya think of that? -- David Canzi Man: An animal [whose]... chief occupation is the extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. Ambrose Bierce