Does everything need a cause or do some things not have a cause?

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by pluto2, Jul 16, 2014.

  1. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    This question has always troubled me:

    Does everything need a cause or do some things not have a cause?

    We know that the universe started with the Big Bang but if everything needs a cause then what caused the Big Bang?

    Lets assume for the sake of argument that God caused the Big Bang then the question still remains: Who or what caused God?

    Is an infinite regress of causes even possible or is there really some thing which is uncaused (the uncaused cause)?
     
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  3. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    I suppose every effect has a cause of some sort. I think we can safely say we don't know what caused the big bang.

    Great answer, huh?
     
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  5. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Could be that the big bang was caused by a black hole in another parallel universe that collapsed and cracked through to our universe somehow .
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy only tends to increase over time. Temporally and spatially local reversals of entropy are allowed, and there is no limit on their size. The sudden appearance of the universe (with an exact balance of everything and anti-everything so there was no net creation of anything) can be seen as merely a rather large local reversal of entropy.

    Why it happened when it did is a question with no answer. However, at the subatomic level random events are common. For all we know, there have been zillions of other Big Bangs--so far away from our own universe and so far in the past or future that we'll never have any way to know of their occurrence.
     
  8. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think we actually know that the Big Bang happened. The theory was posited as an event which could have caused the universe to form and it's been generally accepted as the most plausible explanation for the astronomical phenomena we are able to study - so far. It's not proven or testable, and it's certainly open to question.

    Nor is it proven that everything needs a cause. In our empirical experience of the world, cause-effect chains have been found to operate in all the natural and man-made processes we have been able to study - so far.

    If there is a god of some kind behind any events influencing the universe, we have no evidence for it, no description of it, no causative chains leading to it, no criteria to require it in any of the chains we have discovered - so far. The only place we find such a thing is in stories told by primitive humans, nearly all contents of which have already been disproved. If there is a sentient causative agent, and we find him/her/it, I don't think he/she/it fill fit any of the descriptions in the god stories, so we'll probably have to give it another name.
     
  9. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    From the Opening Post
    The classical world of our senses is built on a quantum level of reality.

    At the quantum level, probabilistic laws are applicable. In some sense, there is no causality, only random processes. The following is a paraphrase based on existing notions of Quantum Theory.
    The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle & the random nature of the quantum level of reality would result in a new history.

    A deterministic POV of reality was the mainstream notion of the late 19th & early 20th century. It is no longer considered a valid POV.

    BTW: Some view the Uncertainty Principle as stating limitations on measurement technology. This is not a valid POV.

    Some, including myself, consider the properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate to be strong experimental support for the Uncertainty Principle. The atoms in the condensate have almost zero momentum. Due to the near zero momentum, their positions are smeared over volumes much greater than normal.
     
  10. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    It is not based on limitations, but rather is based on lack of ingenuity, using existing technology. There is a way to disprove the uncertainty principle based on logic and ingenuity; basic engineering contrivance principles.

    The uncertainty principle says we can't measure both position and momentum at the same time. We can only know one or the other, but not both. Position can be measured with a snap shot photo. If you take a picture of a bullet with a grid behind it, we can know its position. The photo will stop time but will leave position unaffected, allowing us to know position. Position is a static variable.

    Momentum is a dynamic variable and cannot be measured properly with a snap shot photo, since the photo stops time and momentum needs time to be expressed. All speeds stopped in time look the same. What we need to use is a movie to measure momentum. A movie allows both time and distance to change thereby giving us the tools needed to measure momentum.

    The trick is we need to combined both into one measurement. This can be done with a movie (for momentum), that has someone in the movie, take a snap shot (position). The result is a still picture (position) in the same movie that shows the momentum.

    As a practice experiment, we can use a car in motion along a track. I will use a digital camera with a large monitor to measure its exact position as it drives by. We can place a grid in the back of the photo. I will also have digital HD movie camera take a movie of the still shot in monitor and the moving car, all in the same frame. In that movie we see the car in motion, as well as a still photo in the monitor; QED.
     
  11. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Major fail. The limitations of the uncertainty principle is not due to a lack of technology. That is as goofy as saying if we had a infinitely powerful microscope we could see what the surface of an electron looks like.

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  12. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    My experiment would work, conceptually. If we can measure position or momentum, but not both, we already have the tech. It is only a matter of knowing how to run the right composite experiment.

    I don't think anyone whats to run such an experiment, because the loss the uncertainty principle would have an impact on all theories that depends on fuzzy dice to smooth out rough edges. This will not go over well. But those who believe in cause and effect can learn to think in terms of a composite of causes to explain apparent random.
     
  13. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, that is spectacularly stupid statement! I think maybe there should be an award for absurdity of your whole concept.

    Let me help you out here. What you seem to not understand is that science is about discovery. Science is about learning. Science is about understanding the world. Scientist LOVE new and innovative thinking.

    If someone ran an experiment that disproved the uncertainty principle, they would be the toast of the town, they would be the most sought after scientific speaking in the world, they would most certainly win the Nobel prize in physics.

    Scientist would think it was great, not something bad.

    You really don't get science at all, do you?
     
  14. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    That's not actually correct on a couple of fronts, most important being the "not proven" claim, and the associated scientific methodology which sees no scientific theories as really proven.
    It's so surprising that so many need to be reminded of this everyday.
    Scientific theories do grow in certainty over time, and sometimes such certainty is so prevalent, that it is sometimes referred to as fact....although I prefer "near fact." Evolution and Abiogenesis are two such theories.
    The BB/Inflationary model for Universe/spacetime evolution is well supported by available evidence and to deny that it is well supported, is to ignore that evidence.
    In all likelyhood it will probably be tinkered with as time goes on, but the basic premise of the BB will probably remain as is.

    Just because as yet we do not know the how's and why's as to its cause, is no reason to doubt the evidence that is at hand.
     
  15. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Origin: You made some excellent posts. Thanx

    If I had made similar Posts, some might attribute them to my stubbornly backing up my POV on this issue.

    What do you think of my POV which considers the properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate as being evidence supporting the Uncertainty Principle? While I might not be the first to express that POV, I have never seen it stated elsewhere.

    BTW: I think that Bose was the one responsible for the paper on the BEC, but could not get it published without asking Einstein to be a coauthor.
     
  16. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Religious people will tell you that God is The Prime Mover -that you surmise correctly, that He commanded the Big Bang and That He always was, has been and will be, but I have to admit that such a reply is not completely satisfactory. It's legitimate to ask where God came from, and how that could have transpired. I don't think any one has the answer, except maybe the atheist who will tell you there is no God, but in my humble opinion, that's just silly. You ask the unanswerable, my friend.

    ...unless, that's the answer to your original question: God had no cause. And in theology God is always subject, never object - if it were otherwise He wouldn't be God then, would He?
     
  17. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    Just to clarify that the "Big Bang" is termed so not because of an explosion, but due to the "explosive" rate (the speed) of the universes expansion. It can be considered that just because it's explosive quick doesn't automatically mean it came from an explosion.

    As for the questions asked by the OP, they'll be two sets of answers, one will be drawn up by a consensus of scientists, with alternative suggestions not being ignored but just not being supported by the same numbers. Those are answers that I couldn't give since that would mean having to be the voice of the entire Scientific Community to which I'm not.

    This therefore leads to my own "personal" answers, which is something that we get a lot of on sciforums (I don't just mean my personal opinion, but that of others too). While indeed it is great to have an opinion and pet theory, it's not something that's necessary survived the brunt of scientific objectivity and therefore should be taken with a proverbial pinch of salt. (Therefore the answers I put forwards are just ideas/suggestion, not actual peer supported ones)

    There is the entire philosophy of "Causality" that queries just that. The outcome is that there are always effects when there is a cause, as to whether those effects are necessary, well that's derived upon the ability to "Observe" them and reason if they are in fact necessary.

    An analogy could be used to query it further:
    Now it can be applied that the very nature of the Traffic lights (The Event in question) has a purpose and therefore a "Cause" and John in this instance is stopped by them. While the lights weren't designed specifically to stop John in his travels, they are there to do something else which is generically control traffic flow. John being stopped by the lights therefore consists of both the nature of Chaos/Entropy since it's just by chance that he was there to be stopped, however John happened to fit in the traffic management scheme by it's design.

    This suggests that while something indeed might seem completely "Unrelated", it can still fall to some system where "Cause and Effect" is hidden behind the scenes.

    We (The Human Race) need the "Big Bang". Another analogy:
    The premise is that we want to move forwards with Technology and Science, however there is only so much you can build on a foundation of sand. This is why Cosmology and Science in general tries to work out the very nature and foundations of the universe/world in which we exist. If science can master it's origins and the base of it's existence, it reduces the nature of the uncertainty of Peers. (We all up on the same page)

    I wouldn't assume a "God" would create the universe. The simplest reasoning is that "we" exist in this universe, this is "our" universe. We might well share it with other lifeforms (It's proven so just by looking at the worlds natural Flora and Fauna), we might even share it with extraterrestrials (Although I'm extremely apprehensive about this), however on a whole this universe is what we observe, what we catalogue, what we want to build on and more than likely want greater control of.

    By this philosophy, this means that Mankind is likely it's own Creator (although religious zealots would likely suggest this hubris, even though the whispers of their religions are just words passed down through many iterations of slaves to keep them docile, but that's an entirely different opinion beyond the initial questions.)

    With this reasoning it would suggest one day in our future we'll create a "Big Bang", we might call it a simulation of the one we have but we'll try to put all the information we have about our own existence together to make as close to ours as possible. We'll likely end up doing more than just studying a simulation, eventually we might harness the power of simulation to aid control our reality, after all if a simulation could be sped up and then merged, "future" acts as specified by the simulation could be used to morph the universe to make those acts happen.

    *(The problem here is that this reasoning gets into extreme levels of Futurism which might be a method to project where we can potentially go and what we might do with Science, however the Science we know and love hasn't quite got there yet, so it will rightfully be treated as Fringe material)

    If Space-Time was "Mutual Exclusive" events would still have cause, there just wouldn't be as many points where fuzzy commonalities derive them. (The events might appear "Orphaned" but still are connected to space or time) That however is the nature of the "Big Bang" to put the theory and practice of Spacetime into an ever increasing volume which is then populated, making everything tangible.
    However... The distance of the events and their relationships is Localised (Smaller volumes of effect) which is supported by Relativity and the nature of Entropy.

    This means I don't know what number you've written on your computer if asked (To observe the universe at that level would be preposterous), however using "medium(s)" to communicate that effect to my position would make it possible. (such as seeing it on a web camera, using a monitoring point of your screen itself, getting someone to look over you shoulder and phone me etc)

    In closing:
    I hope my answers from my position at least is food for thought in regards to generating some sort of closure for the OP, it will likely cause others to debate or nitpick the reasoning but that's what forums are for and maybe hashing it out with people will aid in working out the true answers.
     
  18. Nomadd22 Registered Senior Member

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    I don't have any reason, but I don't think everything needs a cause.
    Actually, there is a very basic reason to believe in random events. The entire basis of quantum dynamics is the assumption of pure randomness in creation. Not just unknown causes for some events, but purely random ones. The creation of virtual particles or the decay of others.
     
  19. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Things that never happen do not have a cause.

    Things that happen generally do have a cause, even if we do not know what the cause is.
     
  20. Layman Totally Internally Reflected Valued Senior Member

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    Everything has a cause, and if it didn't, I am sure the universe would fill one in for us. I think that, before the Big Bang, there was absolutely nothing. That would mean that there was no spacetime or matter/energy. Then all there would be is a point. This point would have to be smaller than the Plank Scale. If it was smaller than the Plank Scale than it couldn't be detected and would still be nothing. Then the only thing that could exist in this point of nothing would be a point like particle. Take the photon for instance, if there was only a point, it wouldn't travel the speed of light. It wouldn't have anywhere to travel too. Then it would be nothing as well. Therefore, you could have a photon in a point smaller than the Planck Scale, and it would still just be nothing.

    With nothing to measure its velocity relative too, it could assume that it was traveling at any velocity or the ultimate velocity (the speed of light). Then it wouldn't be able to go anywhere because there was no spacetime. Then comes a paradox. It could be traveling at any rate, but there should be nowhere for it to travel too. Then by some miracle the universe decided to be closed, and it could travel back to the other side of this small point. If it was allowed to travel away from the point, then there would have had to have been space there that didn't exist yet. That is the only space it could go. Then I think it traveled around in circles in a higher dimension, but it could only be translated into our 4 dimensions. If you translate a unit circle onto a plane, you end up getting a sinusoidal wave.

    I think this wave would be able to intensify itself, and it could gain mass and become an electron. Since it no longer traveled the speed of light acquiring mass, the spacetime around it would no longer be contracted as much. Then space itself would expand. Although, relative to the original photon that stayed the speed of light, spacetime would still be contracted to zero if it assumed it was at rest, and everything else was traveling the speed of light. Then from the frame of reference of light, there would only still just be that single point. It would be as though the Big Bang never happened. The universe would be contracted to zero. Therefore, the universe itself only exist because our frame of reference is not traveling at light speed.

    It really makes me think if there was a multiverse that came out of the big bang that had different universes with different laws of physics that the main determining factors of the others universes laws of physics would be the value of the speed of light and the number of dimensions there could be. They may just have different values from that, and everything else would just fall into place differently by that being a different value. In other words, nothing can go however fast it wanted too, and nothing could be described in any number of dimensions. Supersymmetry and the multiverse has been unable to fit with the correct mass of the Higgs Boson, it makes it seem like there would have to be a different theory that is somewhere in-between those two ideas, since the real mass of the Higgs Boson sits right in between where these two different theories predicted.
     
  21. Locust Registered Member

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    If we acept Big Bang theory then answer is we dont know cause of it. But I dont accept it at all.
     
  22. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Layman: From your Post #17
    Apparently you accept the 19th century POV of a deterministic universe rather than the modern view of a reality which accepts the following

    The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

    Probabilistic laws also associated with modern Quantum Theory.​
     
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    We know that there is motion on the subatomic level that can be called "random." For example, radioactive isotopes decay, but it's impossible to predict which atom in the sample will decay first.

    Perfect example. Even the Second Law of Thermodynamics allows for a bit of randomness. It tells us that entropy tends to increase over time, but temporally and/or spatially local reversals of entropy can also occur. In fact, a very cynical definition of "life" might be, "a large but local reversal of entropy," as we destroy the organization of living things by killing them, in order to increase the organization in our bodies by eating them.

    The key here is to realize that there is no limit on the magnitude of a local reversal of entropy. The Big Bang can be seen as nothing more or less than a local reversal of entropy, since there is apparently a perfect balance of matter and antimatter, so nothing was actually created at that instant; it was just reorganized. This was a rather large reversal of entropy, to be sure, but the Second Law places no limit on magnitude. Since that moment, entropy has been slowly increasing, and the universe will eventually sputter to a halt.

    And anyway, who are we to decide what a "large" reversal of entropy is? Maybe this reversal was a teeny-weenie one!

    Indeed. The definition of "universe" is "everything that exists." I think we can all agree that if God is actually real and has actually done all the things that are attributed to him, then he must surely exist. This, of course, means that he is part of the universe, and therefore he must have had to create himself. Logical Fallacy Time, and so much for that particular Bronze Age fairytale.

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    Fortunately the Big Bang does not require that question to be answered. Nonetheless, perhaps one day we will delve deeper into the structure of the universe and we'll discover some new sub-microscopic phenomenon that determines which atom in a lump of radioactive material will decay first. Then maybe we'll be able to predict where and when the next universe will pop into existence... since the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not say that this can only happen once!
     

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