The Bible NETWork ~ Impacting the World for Christ one post at a time!

This is a bit off topic. But I think it's relevant to the connection between the Big Bang and the first act of creation.

All of physics can be derived from five fundamental concepts. One way to formulate those five is this: time, force, action, space, and matter. None of these can be derived from a combination of the other four. Without too much stretching you can substitute "cause" for "force". It makes more sense in what follows.

Let's look at genesis 1:1 in terms of these five concepts:

In the beginning (time), God (cause) created(action) the heavens(space) and the earth(matter).

All five concepts have been referred to, although somewhat indirectly. And there is nothing else in genesis 1:1.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

Hey ES,

Yeah, we actually don't need any amazingly.

Premise 1 is a metaphysical principle. There need not be any examples of it. It's sort of like a logical, intuitive truth (although, we need to be careful with that wording....).

But, moreover, in first-order, predicate logic universally quanitified statements, such as those beginning with "All...." ..or "Everything..." etc. have the logical form of a material conditional statement in its subformula:

(Ax) (P > Q)
This logical formula, if we applied it to KCA's P1, would read:
"IF anything begins to exist, THEN it must have a cause."
(The "if" portion is P and the "then" portion is Q.)

(That should be an upside down "A" technically, but am just making do with the Roman letter keys I have available at the moment.) If the antecedent of the conditional (P) is FALSE, then the entire sentence is true. The only instance in which a material conditional statement is false is if the consequent is False (Q).

So, we can have TT, FT, and FF (as the truth values of P and Q respectively) and the sentence is still true. But, if we have TF, then the sentence is false.

So, even if there were literally no such thing as something that began to exist, then that sentence is still true. (That's because it's an IF statement.)

In our case, the universe is an example of something coming into being. It wasn't just a rearrangement of existing atoms and sub-atomic particles, but the literal coming into being out of material nothingness. So we do have that example.

But, we technically don't even need an example of the antecedent being true. Again, this is due to the laws of logic, but also because P1 is given as a metaphysical truth.

I suppose you could challenge P1 as NOT being a metaphysical truth. (This would seem the only viable line of attack on it that I can think of.)

But doing so really places one in a precarious intellectual and rational position. You would have to believe that at any given moment that something could just spring into existence around you out of no material, nor efficient cause. You would have to believe that nothing can lead to ----> something.

As was mentioned earlier, even atheists don't believe that!

Hi Strider,

Very interesting thoughts. Quite creative too.

I'm not familiar enough with physics to comment too much, but did want to say that matter could also be energy, due to e=mc2. So, even without earth, we could have energy = matter (although, that might not be mentioned in the Bible). ....But, nevertheless, quite interesting.

Excellent. So far, you have posited that the universe is the one and only example of a thing that came into being. So now the question is whether it had a cause or not. So IF you're right, and you can prove that the universe has a cause, then you'll know that the Q is true, and then you'll have TT and you'll know that your 'metaphysical truth' is true. This is what I mean by verifying that it is true. And then (and only then) can you use it to conclude that the universe had a cause (of course, you had to prove that the universe had a cause in order to determine that your truth is true.)

You have not verified that it is true, you have only 'intuited' that it is true, which is the same as an assumption. And indeed intuition is not a very reliable guide for truth.

The entire argument is circular, since the only thing you allow the sentence to refer to is the universe. You assume that it had a cause, and then conclude that it had a cause. This is not convincing.



Wrong, to deny your metaphysical intuition, I would have to hold that some things occur without cause. The standard interpretation of quantum mechanics includes precisely this. And indeed (though I set the argument aside for a while) it calls for virtual particles to come into existence from nothing, from no material cause.

The Feynman graph for a virtual pair to be produced and annihilated is just a little circle or bubble. Something like so. No matter comes in, no matter comes out. They pop out of nothing and return whence they came. Einstein taught us that matter and energy are the same. If virtual particles 'came from' the vacuum energy, then lines of matter representing the vacuum energy would have to enter the Feynman graph. This is not the case. 'Nothing' comes in, and two particles come out (and then they annihilate each other, going back to nothing).

The vacuum energy is simply the average value of the energy tied up in the virtual particles themselves.

_________________
"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."

-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34

Essentials, instead of saying "you assume"...I would reword and say that "William Lane Craig argues..."

As for having to prove the consequent of a conditional, let's remember we're talking about a metaphysical truth....not just any material conditional.

Here, we're essentially talking first-principles. Math, logic, and physics all have them. These are foundational truths that are taken to be true even if we cannot prove that they are true. Godel's incompleteness theorem, for example, shows the inability to prove the axioms of mathematics that formal systems use. ....The inability to prove such first-principles doesn't mean there aren't these truths. We just may not be able to prove them. And this is accepted by intellectuals from all backgrounds.

Take science, for example. How does science prove itself? Or, how does logic prove itself. These rest on assumptions, axioms and first principles that we all take to be true.

In the case of metaphysics of causality, it's not really that hard to see P1 as a metaphysical truth (a kind of first-principle). Even atheists recognize P1 as metaphysical truth. I mentioned earlier that you could deny it. But that doing so has an intellectual and rational price-tag.

*wooopsie*.....cutting and pasting and quoting, etc. made my posts kind of weird...I separated them into two separate posts. Hopefully nothing got lost and everything makes sense.

My physics background is too weak (have only taken two undergraduate courses in physics from over 10 years ago ), so I can't comment in a technical way on physics-related phenomenon, essential. Out of curiosity, what is your personal background in physics?

As a general response, without engaging your specific comments above, virtual particles aren't necessarily causually indeterminate (again, putting aside a material cause). At worst, we simply don't know. But, there is no proof that quantum indeterminacy is true. There are fully deterministic models that exist and have equal mathematical undergirding to the probabilistic (which some would not consider the same as indeterministic) ones. So, as for an efficient cause, virtual particles aren't proven to be indeterministic.

I'll rest on that and concede that I don't have the technical background to access the other claim about the lack of a material cause (that virtual particles are not spin-off particles that derive from the background energy of the quantum vacuum)......that point I've always taken on faith. Faith in the knowledge of William Lane Craig and the physicists that he works with.

Fine, it's your (or Craig's) assumption. But it's entirely circular. P1 only talks about things that come into existence in the way the universe did, so it only refers to one thing: the universe. So P1 is equivalent to "The universe had a cause." When he uses this to prove that the universe had a cause, it's not that hard a job, since it was taken as axiomatic.



Possibly some do. I don't.



Not really, since P1 only refers to the universe, and the origin of the universe is the very subject under consideration. If you want me to accept P1, you'll have to support it.

_________________
"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."

-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34

I have a BS and MS in physics. My graduate work focused on elementary particle physics and general relativity.



The classic example of deterministic QM is Bohm's theory. To gain determinism, you have to lose locality, which comes with its own set of headaches. Locality was one of Einstein's first principles. I won't deny that the deterministic theory exists, but it is not taken very seriously.

But more importantly, that doesn't affect the essential matter here. The determinism or indeterminism or probabilism of the mathematical formulation of QM does not affect the nature of virtual particles. Although 'determinism' is associated philosophically with 'causes', that's not precisely what it means in physics and QM. Whatever interpretation of QM you choose to use, it doesn't alter the fact that there are no matter fields entering the Feynman graphs for virtual pair production. I suppose in the Bohmian formulation, if you knew the wavefuction of the universe, you could accurately predict when a virtual pair would emerge out of nothing (so it is deterministic in that sense); but this doesn't alter the fact that the virtual pair comes from nothing. From no material cause.

It doesn't happen for no reason. The laws of quantum mechanics demand that they pop in and out of existence. So perhaps that means that QM is the efficient cause [I'm good at physics, not so good at Aristotle's taxonomy of causes]; and this is what I said earlier about Craig making an unwarranted leap when identifying the cause with God. That may make the mistake(?) of deifying the laws of quantum mechanics.

_________________
"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."

-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34

Hi essentials,

A couple of clarifications and responses, but I'm enjoying the convo so far. I wonder what happened to the thread community we had on this topic from CW forums? Seems like not everyone migrated over.

But to return to our topic(s):

P1 is not an existentially quantified claim (Ex) - that should be a backwards "E," but again...I'm working with a keyboard without those symbols - with exactly one element in its set.

So, it is not formally: (Ex) [(Px & Qx) & (Ay) ((Py & Qy) > x = y)]

Rather, P1 is really a universally quantified claim of the form: (Ax) (Px >Qx)
(Basically a conditional statement of the general form P>Q, read "If P, then Q" after the Ax quantifier)

P1 applies to "all" things. "Anything that begins to exist must have a cause."

But, you argue that there's only one instance we know of (or purport to know of) that came into existence (out of nothing). So, therefore, P1 is really only referring to one thing (and is therefore an existential claim rather than a universal). It might be tempting to think this, but again, notice that there is a material conditional statement inside of the (Ax) quantifier.

Universal claims have the form of an "If, ...then" statement, so that there can literally be nothing that satisfies the antecedent (P) of the conditional (P>Q....or more precisely Px.>Qx). P1 would still be true from a formal logic/structural standpoint EVEN if the entire set comprising the antecedent was empty. There could be NOTHING that begins to exist and P1 would still be true.

That was the reason I mentioned the truth table characteristics of True and False conditional statements in my earlier post. It was merely to point out that P could be false and the conditional would still be true.

Having said that, I'm not surprised there aren't more instances of P1, because if God does exist, then it might be weird if He created our universe such that things do just pop into existence out of nothing....that would really scare us, LOL. What if humans were walking around and always worried that a horse or a new tree might just POP into existence out of nothing? It'd be like a haunted house. So, I'm glad God doesn't order our world such that that is the case.

Hi again, Essentials...looks like I'm going to have to do a bunch of separate posts, unfortunately. I'm not quickly learning to adapt to the cut and pasting and proper alignment of quotes when quoting other people's posts (that have nested quotes within quotes in them). It's a bit too tedious to do, so I've just resorted to making separate posts for now.

Again, I don't see how P1 is the equivalent of saying "The universe had a cause" as you alleged earlier. It's a universally quantified statement, instead of a one-case existential claim. It clearly refers to everything.

It's also a metaphysical first-principle, so that it needs no support. We don't have to prove a first-principle in math, science, logic, and the like. ..They are all taken as true assumptions.

I did say, however, one could deny P1 as being a metaphysical first-principle, but that could reallllly be a precarious position. Since, at least, the time of Aristotle, our first-principles of things like non-contradiction, cause and effects, of "being," and the like have come to be accepted as part of our understanding (principles) of the world. These are certainly intuitive and conform to how things are around us. ....But simply because a first principle cannot be proven does not mean it is not true. It just can't be proven.

I see that you don't accept P1 as a first-principle truth of metaphysics. So, here, I'm not sure what to say. If one thinks that something can just POP into existence out of nothing, uncaused, then yes KCA fails as a sound argument.

I suppose the ONLY thing(s) I or anyone else could do in this case would be:

a.) Try to argue that it's wrong to not accept P1 as a metaphysical truth.
b.) Try to prove P1.

I'm not sure how I'd go about "proving" P1 - especially if it's a first-principle that may not be capable of being proved. But I think we could maybe talk about why P1 is, in fact, a valid starting principle.

I'll leave things at that for now. I haven't had time to get back to your other post. But will also be preparing for my final exams coming up, so won't have much time from now until mid-December to respond to much. I'll carry on when I have time freed up....and that might depend. But feel free to respond and I'll reply once I have some free time. Thanks for the comments and happy chatting!

I ask the following questions:

Is God something?

Is God "...all in all."?

If so, does nothing exist?

Were we created by God — through and in (within) God the Father and the Son?

If God is something, an entity, and we reside within Him and the Light of the World, can we have come from or out of nothing?

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1Jo 4:13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.

1Jo 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.

Blessings

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waiting

This topic is very interesting to me. Pardon me for jumping in without reading through the thread first. I just want to toss in two concepts from modern physics.

First off, it's about the start of the universe. Classical physics in the nineteenth century, held that the universe had always existed. It wasn't until a physicist named Hubble introduced the idea that the universe had a distinct beginning point that physicists began to change their view. You probably know the name Hubble from the telescope named for him.
This eventually became know as the Big Bang theory.

There are numerous observations made since then that might have falsified big bang theory. So far, none of the observations has falsified the theory.

Big bang theory says that the universe started about 15 billion years ago. The Bible, as some believers read it, says that the unverse was formed about 6 thousand years ago. There's a big difference between 6 thousand and 15 billion. But there's an even bigger difference between 6 thousand years and infinity.

Second, the question many modernists among philosophers have been raising ever since Isaac Newton is where free will fits into the cosmology of the physicists. Indeed, the Newtonian universe seems to fit in with a completely mechanistic view of the unfolding of events. No room for free will.

A physicist named Heisenberg came up with a theory that accounts for certain quantum phenomena. It's called the uncertainty principle. It's held up for almost a century of observation without being falsified. You can't reconcile a deterministic and mechanistic universe with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The theological implications of the uncertainty principle are staggering. They even bothered Albert Einstein.

All of the "modernists" who think that science has made the concept of God irrelevant because the universe is a machine are still living with nineteenth century physics. A mechanistic universe that never began. That's not what scientists believe. Whether Stephen Hawking is a "modernist" or a "post modernist" is beyond my ken.

I'll add more after I've waded through the posts in this thread. I apologize if this post duplicates something that's already been written.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

Although the standard view of quantum mechanics is not deterministic, it doesn't have much bearing on free will. Quantum events are too 'small' to have an effect on your brain (despite the not-at-all accepted hypothesis of Roger Penrose). More importantly, even if they did, it would mean that your decisions are not free, but are just as random as the radioactive decay of a nucleus.

_________________
"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."

-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34

FWIW, scientists do not pretend to know the "why" of existence. Nor do they purport to know when the universe began: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/020622/index.html.

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"I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State;
Ronald Reagan