Summations Only

The purpose of this topic is to discuss the notion "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" and it's relationship to our Universe and the implications of a finite past."Everything that begins to exist has a cause" is an intuitive idea, notably lacking a rigorous definition of "beginning to exist". We must take it then, to refer to the beginnings of everyday experience. In everyday experience the thing does not exist, the cause operates and then the thing exists. And, intuitively the cause is responsible for the change from the state where the object in question does not exist to a state where it does.Now consider the case of the first moment of time. For everything that exists at that moment of time there is no prior state when it did not exist, and if a cause is needed it is not needed to bring the object into existence, for that simple reason that it already exists. Thus if we take these objects to have a beginning it is one different from the every day beginnings - and in a way that would seem to remove the need for a cause.To save the argument then, we need a rigorous definition of "beginning to exist", we need to show that it is in fact true that everything that meets this definition has a cause - taking care to deal with the extreme cases - and we need to accept this definition when building on the argument.

How would you address the slightly different formulation, "Everything that happens has a cause"?About this sentence from the third paragraph: You're talking about the first moment in time, so shouldn't the reason why no cause is needed be that there was no prior time for a cause to operate?Edited by Admin, : Remove manual sig.

quote:

---

How would you address the slightly different formulation, "Everything that happens has a cause"?

---

It seems to be covered by the same argument. If the universe didn't come into existence, then that isn't something that happened.

quote:

---

You're talking about the first moment in time, so shouldn't the reason why no cause is needed be that there was no prior time for a cause to operate?

---

No. I think that the argument I used is a little stronger, since it can't be attacked by arguing for simultaneous causation (which is the common response).

Thread copied here from the Time and Beginning to Exist thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

quote:

---

You're talking about the first moment in time, so shouldn't the reason why no cause is needed be that there was no prior time for a cause to operate?

---

The premise of a 'beginning' is more aligned with time than matter. The matter represents a secondary action in time.Analogy. The first car out of the factory was a blue pontiac. Here, 'first' represents time, more than the car; the latter car is subsequential.It raises the question whether time is an abstract premise or a definitive phenomenon which does not require any action to make it real. This raises the question, is 40 weeks the measure of a human pregnancy - or is the pregnancy subject to the 40 week time factor? Here, if we say a host of other factors determine the pregnancy, such as copulation, one can also say that cause could not activate a pregnancy if there was no time. We end up in a circular arguement - proof it is the wrong path.IMHO, both time and matter, based on a finite universe, is irrefutably the result of an external, precedent factor, and I know of no alternative to this premise.

Please keep this thread free of you particular god.This is a science thread and as such does not 'align' with you idea of a god.

Actually our boys are working on a theory that time and space are intertwined, basically one cannot exists whiteout the other.Im looking for the article will post it when i find it. Well super string theory talks about a collision between 2 universes that produced space-time and matter in our universe. So actions that took place in the multi-verse could have created or shaped our universe but we can only theorize about the multi verse did the multi-verse come in to exsistance as our universe did or was it always there. We do have evidence that point to other universes like their gravitational effects.

quote:

---

Actually our boys are working on a theory that time and space are intertwined, basically one cannot exists whiteout the other.

---

Intertwined is valid logic. In fact, everything the universe now contains is intertwined, and all its contents would have become existent simultainiously, then became definitive entities via some form of evolving. How else - there is nowhere else for something new to come from?

quote:

---

Well super string theory talks about a collision between 2 universes that produced space-time and matter in our universe.

---

MV violates the finite factor of this universe. Also, it ends in a circular premise, negating itself from science. There is good reason behind the avoidance of a finite universe!

You are being unscientific when omitting the finite evidence of the universe. I challenge you to state any scientific reasoning while addressing this universe as absolutely finite - anyone can wax poetic of an infinite realm, but it is not science!

H IamJoseph,Please stop posting to this thread. Thanks.

Is there anything beside the Universe that is considered to potentially not have a cause? Almost everything in the collective experiance of man has been shown to have had a precedent cause. Some of these causes we can not identify but that is mearly temporary ignorance.The wall comes when we consider time and cause to be things that only function inside of our Universe. My question is then, how can time and space begin to exist if time and space are required for existence? (abe; Its a trap!) Can time not exist independent of space?Edited by Dogmafood, : No reason given.

quote:

---

Is there anything beside the Universe that is considered to potentially not have a cause? Almost everything in the collective experiance of man has been shown to have had a precedent cause. Some of these causes we can not identify but that is mearly temporary ignorance.

---

Of course, this fails to address the point. The point is that IF there is no time prior to our universe, we have good grounds to question whether it needs a cause - grounds that CANNOT be answered by our experience, since the situation is completely outside our experience.

quote:

---

The wall comes when we consider time and cause to be things that only function inside of our Universe. My question is then, how can time and space begin to exist if time and space are required for existence? Can time not exist independent of space?

---

By my understanding time and space are related in such a way that it is not possible (in an absolute sense). I'm sure that Cavediver or Son Goku could give you a more authoritative answer. However, this is not relevant to the argument which only relies on there being a first moment in time, and the universe existing (in some form) at that point (i.e. we need to account for the energy, not just spacetime).

I don't think our failure to identify causes is mere ignorance. Our current understanding is that types of events have no explanation.What causes a particular Bismuth-212 atom to emit an alpha particle and a different Bismuth-212 to emit a beta particle?What causes one particular photon to take a particular path through a diffraction grating such that large numbers of such paths generate a characteristic diffraction pattern?I don't believe such questions have an answer that we simply have not yet discovered. Our universe is not mechanistic in the sense that perfect knowledge of its current state can allow us to predict exactly its next state.If events are "caused" simply by matter and energy being in a given state but that state does not "cause" things in any thing like a deterministic fashion, then what does that imply about possible "causes" for the universe. Are those things causes in the convention sense, or in any sense that provides scientific evidence for a creator of the universe?I think not.

Dogmafood's comment fails to address the point only if we add the key word here to your previous formulations, here being the observable or deducible universe which we trace back to an origin of space-time. The same definitional effect is achieved if we define "universe" in that particular way, and both seem to beg the question.With supersymmetry and M-theory (as I dimly understand it) we see the possibility of our universe originating in the collision or intersection of extra-dimensional branes.So, yes, I see how one can fairly say our local universe has no local cause, as there is no local time in which it did not exist; but we also must entertain the possibility that the cause(s) of our local universe and time exists/existed elsewhere.Similarly, as everyday experience suggests causal origins, it also suggests that a cause is external to its effect. This also would be preserved in an M-theory multiverse explanation of our local space-time.Perhaps the idea that our universe, whether it is local or total, had no beginning is true is the most profound and absolute sense rather than within a qualifying, bracketed here. But we don't know that as yet, and we have at least some theoretical grounds to suggest it may not be so.

quote:

---

So, yes, I see how one can fairly say our local universe has no local cause, as there is no local time in which it did not exist; but we also must entertain the possibility that the cause(s) of our local universe and time exists/existed elsewhere.

---

And I do. However, this is not what I am discussing, because placing the cause in an external time, still doesn't render the cause timeless. That is why designtheorist declined to take that tack. His argument requires that there is no time prior to our universe in an absolute sense, and this is what I have chosen to address here.