I would like to think that the first cause argument is known practically by everyone in this forum. So its nothing new. This comes with a request so this is honouring that request.
The first cause argument is one of the cosmological arguments. Many have posited various arguments in history and the most prominent argument is of the philosopher Imam Ghazali. One of the significant differences between two of the philosophers in this topic, Avicenna and Ghazali is that Ghazali sticks to one single or fundamental first cause argument which has separated other cosmological arguments from his Kalam argument but Avicenna makes one Kalam argument with the contingency argument as well, and he seems to take a pragmatic school of thought.
Simply put, every originated thing has an originator, and since the world is originated, it has an originator. This would argue that if its "first cause" argument on the table, that goes into validating the first cause, and the God argument is a separate argument from the first cause argument and is not the topic at hand.
The first cause argument is simply a logical premise by premise argument.
P1: Every being that has a beginning has a cause for its beginning.
P2: The universe has a beginning.
C : Thus its "possesses" a cause for its beginning.
Why is this a valid argument that there is a first cause?
Its a logical argument that banks on logical pondering based on exactly what is concisely explained in the argument itself. To elaborate or expand on it, philosophers argue that every being is contingent, which means this being can exist in other ways, contingent upon something else, and that "something else or other being" has a beginning, and if that being is contingent, it would be contingent upon something else. This will go on forever and ends up in an infinite regression. Thus the conclusion is that the universe has a beginning. Now it has to be applied to the argument above.
This is why the first cause argument is a valid argument for a first cause. In its primitive nature this argument is not arguing for a God which carries a lot of baggage and immediately everyone goes into a top down argument. Thus God is a completely separate argument, which is addressed by the Kalam cosmological argument philosophically, it its not the scope of this thread.
Peace.
As I wrote this reply, I realized that you gave me a great deal of food for thought. It was very thought provoking to consider the idea of an infinite past.
"every originated thing has an originator" (proof?????)
If you start with a false premise, you might reach a false conclusion. By the way, I don't know if that is a false premise. But, it appears to be a premise that cannot be proven.
The real question is what originated the very first thing.
"the God argument is a separate argument from the first cause argument and is not the topic"
I don't understand, if God is not the originator, who made the universe? If God was the originator, now you have to figure out who made God. Some say that God made himself. Couldn't we just as easily say that the universe made itself, and cut out the middle man (God)? You are saying that
instead of a long line of Gods creating Gods, maybe there was just one event in which the universe was formed.
The
atheist alternative is that every originated thing doesn't have an originator (no entity making things), but it sprung into existence.
Somehow it is not very satisfying to think of the universe springing into existence from nothing, and not very satisfying to think of God making the universe and somehow God was made. The alternative, that you presented, is that somehow it was all created at once. Which, I believe, is the Big Bang theory. But one has to ponder how and why it banged, and what was there before.
New theories of the origin of the universe are coming from Astrophysics. Some argue, now, that the universe was never a singularity, but rather it started as a plasma ball.
I wonder if perhaps spacetime wrapped around on itself, making the future the past. This would be consistent with the bible's alpha and omega idea (the beginning and the end are the same).
I wonder if perhaps matter from outside of the universe could come in? In a Black Hole, mass can enter, but, except for Black Hole evaporation, no mass can leave it. Even if it evaporated, it would be just outside of the event horizon and there is really only one way for it to go (get sucked back in).
I believe that the universe is pretty close to being a black hole, in that nothing can escape it. But, I think that recent calculations show that it doesn't have enough mass to do that. Furthermore, it is accelerating and already the metric is going apart at faster than the speed of light....a feat impossible if traveling across the metric, but quite possible, and actually happening because of the expanding metric of space and the acceleration of that expansion.
"Infinite Past." Hmm.....time slows in very powerful gravitational fields. And, what could be more powerful than the gravitational field of all of the mass in the universe before the big bang? Clearly, time would have slowed to zero (time stopped). If time stopped, it would be impossible for the expansion of the universe to happen. So, maybe the universe was never at a point where the force of gravity was so strong that time slowed to a complete stop?
The
"infinite past" might be a result of time slowing to a crawl. Furthermore, if the universe was collapsing, further and further, the gravitational field would have become more intense at the surface. Thus, time would slow even more.
Under these conditions of slowed time, just what could have caused the big bang?
