dogmafood writes:
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.
PaulK writes:
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.
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.
"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."