Putting aside the term God, would you agree?

[Polymath257]

0 FPS is eternity.
Imagine all the frames of the movie in one time unit all at once.
00:00 is not relevant.

No, it is NOT eternity. It is one instant: the first one.

 

[Segev Moran]

Segev Moran,
This reasoning is called deereism, a Doping Out of knowledge to great for mankind’s brainpower, Epistemological Predicament.

Thanks for the info

Do you believe in God?

I Do.

God has always existed

So it is claimed.

so TIME has always existed

How so? God is not Time.. at least not what we call time.

from eternity.

???

God exists from eternity to eternity!

What does that mean eternity to eternity?
Something is either eternal or not.

 

[Segev Moran]

There's a few different ways to think about this. When considering these, please bear in mind I write in paragraphs for a reason, and taking a single sentence out of context (which it felt like you might have been doing earlier) is probably going to misread what I'm intending to convey with these ideas.

On one level, this is ironically part of the point. There are limits to human experiences and human understanding. Personally, when I run into something that I have trouble understanding, my response isn't to write it off as impossible but to recognize that as symptomatic of my own limitations. On this topic in particular, I'm aware that humans are wired to think in terms of causality. That's going to bias our thought processes to seek causality and find even where there is none. We even have words to describe acausal phenomena - "coincidence." If you want to try and think outside of the causality box - what it means for something to "simply become" - think about phenomena you write off as coincidence as a starting point. The visceral experience of the now, in many respects, transcends causality and simply is. Pardon if this is getting a bit on the mystical wiggity-woo end of things, but I'm not sure how else to put it. If you've ever done any Buddhist-style mindfulness meditations you may have some context for what I'm trying to get at.

On another level, while I certainly perceive things in terms of causality as much as the next human, I've an extensive background in hard science to the point I'm keenly aware of how much causality is oversimplified. My brain twitches inside whenever I hear someone say "a cause" as if such things are ever singular or straightforward. When you study ecology, it's a study of relationships among dozens upon dozens of different variables. You learn to see how all things are interdependent. To put things in another way, you learn to see that everything is both causal and effectual at the same time. As the line gets blurred between cause and effect, you end up seeing cycles, exchanges of energy, and connectedness. Suddenly talking about just "causes" (and especially "cause" singular) stops making a lot of sense to you. It's at odds with how you see the world as you see how this causes that, and that feeds back into this, this here circles around back to that, and on and on.

Don't know if this clarifies or not. Also, I wrote this post yesterday and must have forgotten to post it, so... there's that.

Thank you for the attempt to explain.
I understood (I hope) what you are trying to say, but i still do not agree with it.
I never claimed there is always one cause, rather that things work in order.
To make a drop of rain, many things have to happen, at times at the same time, this is true, but if you will break it down, there is always one thing that leads to another.
it is possible that one thing and another happen in the same time and cause a third thing, yet each of them had a cause
Obviously, the more "advanced" (time wise) things are, the more complex and simultaneous they become.
yet the number of things that happen without something else that caused them is none as far as we know.
There are things we today cannot explain, so we suggest they just happen without a cause.
this doesn't mean there is not one.

 

[Polymath257]

I disagree.
Can you give an example?

Sure. When i start my car, I press on a button, which makes an electrical connection between my battery and my starter, which makes the engine turn over (hopefully). If there is gas in the line, some gas is squirted into the chamber, compressed, and ignited. The explosion of that gas produces a pressure wave driving back the piston, allowing for the process to occur again in a different piston. because of all of this, we say the car has started.

The starting of the car does not have a single cause. My pressing the button would not have started the car without the gas. The gas alone would not have started the car without my press. Also included in the causes of the car starting would be air being put into the cylinder, all the processes involved in forming the engine, etc.

We often shorten this to saying the cause of the car starting is just my pressing the button, but that is very, very far from being a sufficient cause. All the other causes also have to be there in order for the car to actually start.

This is but one example, but it shows the interconnectedness of causality. very seldom is there a single, sufficient cause for any event. Instead, multiple threads of causality converge to produce each event.

But now, even if each even has only two causes, that means when we go back to the causes of those causes, there are four pre-causes. The next generation back, there are eight, then sixteen, etc.

While there has to be some collapse from this exponential growth, it is clear that it is quite unlikely that this would collapse to a single cause for everything. Instead, it is far more likely that there is an entangled network of causes at each point in time.

A 'first cause' is an incredibly unlikely special case.

 

[Segev Moran]

Define? I can describe the reasoning. We have observed a number of lines of evidence that are consistent with there having been a Big Bang.

Agree, reasoning is a better request

These both suggest expansion from a small, very hot origin.

Great.
So we know something caused the universe to expand.
Would you agree some kind of an event took place that cause the universe to expand? or did it just happen because it wanted to?

We can model the physics of what would give rise to this, and from that we have a model - the simplest we can think of, consistent with the evidence.

Yep, the model describes what we think makes the universe work as it does.

But like anything in science it is only provisional. So yes it is what we "assume", as you put it, but at the back of our minds we know it might one day be shown to be an inadequate model.

True. as many other models before it

Just like Newtonian gravitation or the plum pudding model of the atom.

 

[Polymath257]

Indeed. One can only assume something made these laws act as they do.

Again, that is simply a disguise for more causality and further laws. For *ultimate* laws, that cannot be the case.

Nope... not two causes. one cause. two participants.
The hammer is not the cause and the metal is not the cause. the hammer striking the metal is the cause.
The hammer rushing towards the metal is the cause.
The hammer picked up by someone is the cause.

Nope. there is always one thing that leads to another, even if several parts are involved.
Take a 200 pcs puzzle... if one completes the puzzle, this is not because it had 200 causes. it had one... the first piece, then another, the second piece fitting the first and so on.
So it had a chain of 200 causes each was only possible due to the one before it.

And what if there are two people working on the same puzzle simultaneously? They both put their final pieces down at the same time. There would then be two causes for the finishing of the puzzle.

Again, it is very rare that there is actually a *chain* of causes, as opposed to a network of causes converging on an event.

 

[Polymath257]

Without a known cause
We can't know if there is or not a cause for it.
Take entanglement for example.
Would you assume there is no cause for it?
If so, how come it works as it does?
If there was no cause, there was no prediction.
The fact we know that directing one particle will instantly cause the other to face the other direction already means there is a cause for it... even if we don't really know what that cause is.

Entanglement is caused by whatever produced the entangled particles. That produces a *correlation* between what the particles can do later. There is no 'instant causation'. There is an already established correlation between random processes.

But yes, we *can* say with confidence that some events are, in fact, uncaused. it isn't just that we don't know a cause, but that causality itself has been tested and found to fail.

Yep.

From our POV! thats my whole point.
But we don't really know if there is a before or not, yet everything in our reality points that something was there before everything came to be.

On the contrary, this would say there *could not* be such a thing because there is no 'before'.

Exactly!!!!
So if there was no time, and nothing could cause time because cause needs time... it means there was something that cause time to exist... well... as it exists!

No, if causality requires time, then time *cannot* have a cause. If there is no time, then there is no cause.

Yet it is obvious there was a beginning as we obviously began
The fact we don't know how it began doesn't mean it didn't

Language can be tricky here. There was no time before things existed because time itself is one of the things that started. That means there *cannot* be a cause because causality requires a 'before' and a 'before' requires time.

 

[Polymath257]

Can you describe the singularity? i am not sure we speak of the same thing.

How technical can we go? The singularity is the failure of the ability to extend some coordinate or timeline past a certain point because of the inherent geography of the situation.

 

[Segev Moran]

Well, there are many problems with that, especially if we consider the ontology of time we get from relativity, but I would like to keep the discussion focused. I am also a bit selfish, since invoking the ontology of time we get from modern physics would destroy all arguments involving beginnings, causes, ends, etc. And it is not fun to use the nuclear option prematurely and kill the problem from the start.

Fire away
I've been nuked quite a lot in this post
But for the record.. how would you call it when time didn't exist? timeless universe sounds better than when there was no time (as we can't use the term when... bla bla bla)?
[/QUOTE]
So, let's adhere to the 18th century view of time. The Newtonian time that flows, leaving the past behind it and where the future is yet to come. The time of our natural developed intuition. In which things can begin to exist in the present without having already been present in the future. The so-called A theory of time. I also concede a predefined arrow that runs (from past into future through present) independently of the contingencies of the Universe. The time that accompanied humanity until Einstein.

Let's concentrate on this version of time. I am afraid you have still to show, even under this premise, that causality chains always reach an end.
[/QUOTE]
I didn't claim they reach an end, rather they had a start

My challenge to you is to show me that something like an infinite regress will lead to some sort of contradiction. Remember:

1) Nobody knows what happened at the Big Bang. Some speculate that there was an Universe "before". For instance, sir R. Penrose and S. Carroll. So, nothing is settled there.
2) You can have infinite regressed sequences that unfolds in finite time

So, show it to me. Show me that causality chains will always eventually reach an uncaused cause, otherwise we have a logical contradiction. After you made your case, we will submit it to logical analysis.

Ciao

- viole

I claim just the opposite.
I claim there is no un-caused cause.
I can assume by saying "un-caused cause" you think i will say God is an uncaused cause, but i have no idea what God is.
it might be an uncaused cause or not. the claims are it was uncaused.
Logically, it makes sense to me and i will explain why:

In the timeless void (when there was no time and no universe), from the human POV, things don't happen. nothing causes anything, nothing moves, nothing exists.
from this "state" (or whatever you want to call it), everything became.

I simply say, that something caused everything to become.
As you will probably say, become can only happen when there is time, lets change it to:

There was no reality a human mind can understand, and somehow, there was.
From that first time unit... the plank time 1, everything became. before it, there was no before

I simply claim that no being that becomes, is probably became due to something that made it begin

 

[Segev Moran]

Zero fps = no time.
Therefore there is no time unit for them to be contained all at once.

eternity is not a time unit

 

[Segev Moran]

But with multiple causes: any time we can say "if not for this, it wouldn't have happened," the "this" is a cause.

- your mother being born is a cause of your existence.
- your father being born is a cause of your existence.
- your grandparents being born is 4 causes of your existence.
- whatever happened to cause your parents to meet is a set of causes of your existence.
- whatever events in your life could have killed you but didn't are causes of your current existence.

Yes. exactly.
Each took place in its own chain of events leading to more events leading to more events.
my grandparents parents had to be born, their had to be born and so on and so on...
Homo sapience had to become.
Homos had to become.
Monkeys had to become.
Life had to become.
Earth had to become.
Sun had to become.
Universe had to become and so on and on.

So you still haven't answered my challenge: name something that only has one cause.

I think you really really really misunderstood my OP.
I didn't say EVERYTHING in our existence has only one and no more causes.
I said the exact opposite.
I said that every thing that ever happens to anyone, has a cause, and that cause had a cause, and that had a cause and so on and so on until you reach one cause that started the chain of events.

Lets for a second assume there was nothing before you.
The first event will be the exact time when you were conceived.
This is the "Main event"...
From there, Trillions of events (causes) made you who or what you are!
but they all came from that first event that created you.

 

[Segev Moran]

Without a hammer, you would not have the hammer striking metal.

True... yet the hammer is still no the cause

Without the metal, you would not have the hammer striking metal.

True... yet the metal is still not the cause.

Both of those objects - or, if you prefer, all the many events that caused those objects to exist and be in that location - are causes for the hammer striking the metal.

Exactly!!!

 

[Polymath257]

Logically, it makes sense to me and i will explain why:

In the timeless void (when there was no time and no universe), from the human POV, things don't happen. nothing causes anything, nothing moves, nothing exists.
from this "state" (or whatever you want to call it), everything became.

There was no 'when there was no time'. The whole notion is self-contradictory.

And no, there was no 'state when' things were like that. Again, that is just self-contradictory.

All that exists is part of the universe *by definition* of the universe. Causality is part of the universe, no something that operates *on* the universe.

 

[Segev Moran]

No, it is NOT eternity. It is one instant: the first one.

Instant? Instant is a time frame.
We already agreed there was no time, thus instant is not a good description for it.
as there is no time, it cannot be an instant. it can simply be.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes. exactly.
Each took place in its own chain of events leading to more events leading to more events.
my grandparents parents had to be born, their had to be born and so on and so on...
Homo sapience had to become.
Homos had to become.
Monkeys had to become.
Life had to become.
Earth had to become.
Sun had to become.
Universe had to become and so on and on.


I think you really really really misunderstood my OP.
I didn't say EVERYTHING in our existence has only one and no more causes.
I said the exact opposite.
I said that every thing that ever happens to anyone, has a cause, and that cause had a cause, and that had a cause and so on and so on until you reach one cause that started the chain of events.

Lets for a second assume there was nothing before you.
The first event will be the exact time when you were conceived.
This is the "Main event"...
From there, Trillions of events (causes) made you who or what you are!
but they all came from that first event that created you.

Not *from*. Only *after*. Just because I would be first in your scenario, that doesn't mean I cause everything later.

 

[Polymath257]

Instant? Instant is a time frame.
We already agreed there was no time, thus instant is not a good description for it.
as there is no time, it cannot be an instant. it can simply be.

Which means it simply doens't exist.

 

[viole]

Fire away
I've been nuked quite a lot in this post
But for the record.. how would you call it when time didn't exist? timeless universe sounds better than when there was no time (as we can't use the term when... bla bla bla)?

So, let's adhere to the 18th century view of time. The Newtonian time that flows, leaving the past behind it and where the future is yet to come. The time of our natural developed intuition. In which things can begin to exist in the present without having already been present in the future. The so-called A theory of time. I also concede a predefined arrow that runs (from past into future through present) independently of the contingencies of the Universe. The time that accompanied humanity until Einstein.

Let's concentrate on this version of time. I am afraid you have still to show, even under this premise, that causality chains always reach an end.
[/QUOTE]
I didn't claim they reach an end, rather they had a start

I claim just the opposite.
I claim there is no un-caused cause.
I can assume by saying "un-caused cause" you think i will say God is an uncaused cause, but i have no idea what God is.
it might be an uncaused cause or not. the claims are it was uncaused.
Logically, it makes sense to me and i will explain why:

In the timeless void (when there was no time and no universe), from the human POV, things don't happen. nothing causes anything, nothing moves, nothing exists.
from this "state" (or whatever you want to call it), everything became.

I simply say, that something caused everything to become.
As you will probably say, become can only happen when there is time, lets change it to:

There was no reality a human mind can understand, and somehow, there was.
From that first time unit... the plank time 1, everything became. before it, there was no before

I simply claim that no being that becomes, is probably became due to something that made it begin [/QUOTE]

If you agree there is no uncaused cause, then I do not need to debate this any further. I would like to challenge that as well (sorry I like to challenge everything), but I have honestly no time to devote to people who agree with me.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Segev Moran]

Sure. When i start my car, I press on a button, which makes an electrical connection between my battery and my starter, which makes the engine turn over (hopefully). If there is gas in the line, some gas is squirted into the chamber, compressed, and ignited. The explosion of that gas produces a pressure wave driving back the piston, allowing for the process to occur again in a different piston. because of all of this, we say the car has started.

In that specific chain of events, you starting the car is the first cause.

The starting of the car does not have a single cause.

Nope. It has a chain of causes.

My pressing the button would not have started the car without the gas.

True.

The gas alone would not have started the car without my press.

True again

Also included in the causes of the car starting would be air being put into the cylinder, all the processes involved in forming the engine, etc.

Exactly.
A chain of events all tracing back to you pushing the button

We often shorten this to saying the cause of the car starting is just my pressing the button, but that is very, very far from being a sufficient cause. All the other causes also have to be there in order for the car to actually start.

I didn't claim this is the only cause, rather the first one.
Before it, there were billions of billions of causes that led you to press the button and so on.
Eventually... in the history of all causes of everything, there was one cause that started the entire process.

This is but one example, but it shows the interconnectedness of causality. very seldom is there a single, sufficient cause for any event. Instead, multiple threads of causality converge to produce each event.

Imagine a tree growing while each leaf is a cause....

But now, even if each even has only two causes, that means when we go back to the causes of those causes, there are four pre-causes. The next generation back, there are eight, then sixteen, etc.

Until the point it "shrinks" back.

While there has to be some collapse from this exponential growth, it is clear that it is quite unlikely that this would collapse to a single cause for everything.

How so?

Instead, it is far more likely that there is an entangled network of causes at each point in time.

And what started this entangled network? it was always there i assume?

A 'first cause' is an incredibly unlikely special case.

 

[Segev Moran]

How technical can we go? The singularity is the failure of the ability to extend some coordinate or timeline past a certain point because of the inherent geography of the situation.

Great.
Can you explain this situation of no timeline?
How would you describe it?

 

[Segev Moran]

Which means it simply doens't exist.

Exactly! and than it does