wegs said:
Add to this the creation of time and we lose the ability to draw a distinction between cause and effect. In a sense, causality is the creation of time.
I guess, from the sense of a first ''event'' causing a second ''event,'' and the second ''event,'' only occuring because of the first one. That's the actual definition of causality, so what was the first event? The Big Bang, or what caused it?
That's the Big Question that motivates both religion and science. I think it speaks to the nature of human reason more than anything else. We demand that everything have a cause. Yet we know from physics that time is a relative thing; we understand, for example, that causality apparently vanishes in the proximity of a black hole or within very small distances approaching the wavelength of an elementary particle. We might also ponder the loss of causality for the photon . . .which apparently lives frozen in time.
The Big Bang is the seminal case for making an exception to conventional wisdom about causality. Given that time was created at the outset of the expansion, then there simply can be no cause for the Big Bang. In a sense, it "always was and ever shall be". It stands frozen in time - in a sense it never happened, and is always happening. From this ever-present "cause" there is a peeling off of time some ~13.8 billion years ago, followed by the history that brings us up to present day. But I think the best conclusion we can draw from this is that the universe is uncaused.
Put aside God for a moment, (you brought him into this discussion, I'll have the record show )
(Noting you posted a smiley there) Guilty as charged. With you I know I'm not inviting trolling since you are level-headed and able to express your religious beliefs without losing touch of your intellect and reason. I'm sure that's the way it is among most religious people. After all, fundamentalism is a rather late phenomenon in the history of religion, so the nuts it produces simply haven't had time to perpetuate themselves nearly as much as the orthodox believers such as yourself. But I do think that the notion of God is relevant here, which is why I mentioned it. The idea I am proposing is that (ignoring the mootness of argument) any ideation that places God at the moment of the Big Bang is contradicted by the statement that time is created in the Big Bang. That is, even God cannot exist outside of time. You can model God as a sentient photon and you'll get the same result. The photon certainly interacts with the world, in perhaps the most basic physical interaction of all (the electron-photon interaction), which gives rise to just about every property of matter and energy at our macro scale of existence. Interestingly enough, there is even an argument for concluding that all photons are time-shadows of one original photon, which can "be everywhere at once" due the timeless nature of the world it inhabits. So far this makes a pretty good physical model for God. But then it breaks down when we try to superimpose the quality of sentience. There simply can be no sentience without time. It takes a moment--it takes a history of moments--to construct any element of conscious will that we might associate with God. And even that requires the passage of time. Bring time to a standstill, and there can be no Will that creates anything. It's one thing to say that the lack of causality precludes the notion of Divine Creation, but it's utterly devastating to the religious proposition to say that time stands still at the onset of the Big Bang. It impoverishes even God - robs Him of any time to have any Will to do anything. There simply is no power that can be ascribed to God to overcome this obstacle. In the first place, the power was created by the authors of the religions who gave gods anthropomorphic traits. "Will" (to create) is fundamentally human (animal); it's rooted in our biology, based on the propagation of "action potentials" in living neurons--and that takes time. There simply is no such thing as "will" without the passage of time.
how can something be 'uncaused,' if causality needs those two things to happen? I'm a little confused on that point, just from a general understanding of cause and effect, especially in terms of the Big Bang Theory.
That's the crux of the matter. Hopefully my discussion above addresses this. The key is to grapple with the meaning of timelessness. As hard as it is for the naysayers (Creation Science folks) to respond to the facts of science without having to manufacture junk science and then try to dress it up as the real thing -- here they are completely out in left field on this. While they will try to harp on the issue of "something out of nothing" I doubt they have even bothered to take on the underlying issue, which is time out of timelessness. As long as they skirt around this more central concept, they will never be responding to the evidence that confronts their dishonesty. Of course that comes with practicing science without a license, so to speak.
I mentioned that there are some paradoxes associated with God - there are some things He simply cannot do - which make it logically implausible to argue that god exists. For example, He can't create Himself. It's simply not possible (from the causality standpoint alone) since He would have to exist before He gave birth to Himself which no believer should be expected to rely on. This is why I suppose most religious people (if pressed) would have to assume that He existed forever. But that makes no sense - it simply says there is no way to account for His existence "from nothing". We could go on enumerating the impossibilities that even God cannot overcome (He can't kill Himself, He can't be bad, He can't be stupid, and so on). Above all, God cannot think, act, move or create without a timebase to do it in. And evidently that's not available at the outset of the Big Bang. So we have to conclude that the premise that a divinity
could cause the Big Bang is not only moot, but it's impossible. I suppose we could wait for a theologian to try to posit the meaning of God existing outside of time, but it would have to riddled with paradoxes and fallacies just to give it a foundation. This is why I'm saying that the Big Band really puts the nail in the coffin for any argument that God created the universe. Something else is going on out there, and it has nothing to do with Will.
Well, perhaps...but, if we say 'nothing' came before the Big Bang to 'cause' it...that only means science under current terms, can't define it (yet)
I think the opposite is true. I think the science that leads to the conclusion that time was created in the Big Bang is providing a very useful and necessary principle which invalidates the question of causality altogether and leads us into a deeper inquiry about the nature of causality itself. I think it completely undermines all conventional attitudes on the subject. I think nothing short of an exploration of what timelessness even means will come close to trying to understand creation.
If we ponder just the creation of time, it defies the conventional sense of a Creator. That is, it makes no sense to wonder how God might be suspended in time.
You're right, it doesn't make sense, because God wouldn't be 'suspended in time.' That is your manmade view of God, doing the posting there.
Ha ha. This goes back to the things even God can't do. Maybe now you're catching my meaning. The point is that even God can't live outside of time. It renders Him inert. Once God has a thought, contemplates or wills an act, or actually commits an act, then the clock is necessarily ticking. And that's impossible at the dawn of time itself.
It certainly unravels all conventional definitions of God.
In your manmade thinking, you are right, it does. lol You're trying to define God, with scientific approach or definition.
Ha ha. It's not any different than the manmade thinking that requires God to be the surrogate for the Big Bang. There's nothing particularly insidious about that, is there? No, I think we can't draw these strict lines in the sand when it comes down to grappling with ultimate reality. Here we're just stuck with essential facts and we're trying to put the jigsaw puzzle together based on how the pieces fit. In this we are all equal - equally smart and ignorant, equally rational and emotional, and so on. It's just us and the cosmos. What I really set out to do was to begin to define timelessness. For the same reason that God - in the timeless realm that "precedes" the Big Bang - can't lift the magic wand and command "Let there be light!", there can be no question of causality either. Genesis needs to be updated:
In the beginning there was no beginning because there was no time. There was no space. There was only Singularity. We can take it from there, but we still won't arrive at the definition of "will" until some approx. 12.5 billion yrs. after time began, when animal life emerged on Earth and "will" became a biological trait to further the survival of animal species.
Among the fallacies of an all-powerful Being - God can't create without time.
When I think of God, I imagine him to be infinite, and eternal. He created time, he didn't create because of it.
Do you see the paradox in that now, based on what I've said thus far? Even God can't exist outside of time. It renders him as a frozen hunk of impotence. Even for all of the goodness associated with God, there can simply be no actualization of that good intent, since the hands of time are at a standstill. Notice this has nothing to do with belief, it's just a necessary result of joining various truths into a coherent conclusion about ultimate reality. Interestingly enough, I'm in total agreement with you that any God frozen in time would remain that way eternally. The other weird side of this is that is makes God contemporaneous with every moment "that ever was or ever shall be". But then He's frozen. That pretty well establishes that God
can never exist at any time whatsoever, not in the viable sense. He would necessarily be frozen forever. This is kinda what I meant about contemplating timelessness. It drives us to visit some rather nuanced insights onto some of the older ideas.
Many 'creationists' believe in the Biblical 'version' of it. I don't. I believe in science, and frankly, I don't believe science has limits. I once posted that early on here, that I thought science has 'limits,' but I've since tweaked that a bit. Instead, I believe science has NO LIMITS, but mankind will not reach the limits of which science can offer to answer all of these ''mysteries'' of the universe. Man will never reach infinity, because it's impossible. And God, should he exist...represents Infinity.
I enjoy getting that kind of insight from you. I think less about what can't be done and more about the phenomenal mountain of work that can and already has been done, to lift us out of our intellectual poverty into this richer position. We live in an age where we can finally begin to understand how something can exist without being caused.
I realize this wasn't the direct thrust of your OP,
That's ok, I think you're a closet Creationist.
Actually I came out of the closet when I was a proverbial knee-high, with my own conclusion that all religion is completely an artifact of acculturation. I think my first introduction to world history, and my growing awareness of the geographical distribution of the world religions, was evidence enough of that fact. Of course a thousand more things came later to corroborate my early instincts. But obviously my first instincts were right. If you had been born in Calcutta you would likely be convinced that Krishna rode with Arjuna at the dawn of creation. If you were born in Riyadh you would be convinced that Allah made Adam and later sent The Prophet as his personal emissary to instruct the faithful on the rules of Heaven. And if you were born in the Himalayas you would likely find the source of all wisdom from a young man who went into trance under the Bodhi tree, leaving you with almost no creation myth to speak of as your basis for pursuing self-perfection. And we can go on to include the countless smaller religions that have existed to boot. It's just a matter of culture. If you had been brought up in world that was more rational and more attuned to reserving judgment until the facts are in, no doubt you would count yourself among the smaller number of atheists who are just ahead of their time.
I'm oddly pleased that you took this direction, although true, it wasn't my intent. I can have a conversation without bringing the 'God-factor' into it. lol But, for the sake of this specific discussion, it definitely relevant, because as a believer in God, I do believe there is a higher power that set in motion...the universe as we know it.
God is conventionally held up as the Power which suspends the laws of nature as it pleases Him. (Pleasure of course is completely anthropomorphic.) I suppose we could say God acts indiscriminately but that sort of dismantles all religious notions of Him as well. However, once we start enumerating the things that even He can't do (kill Himself, be bad, be stupid, etc.), we eventually arrive at the part where even He cannot start or stop the passage of time. To do so robs him of all of his powers. This is different than saying God can work miracles. Even miracles are understood to unfold at prescribed times. Jesus purportedly was born and lived in the era of Imperial Rome, was executed as a viable adult, was reanimated and then went tending to mundane affairs for a while before levitating into outer space. In the timeless realm, these events all coincide in the same eternal moment - one which never began or ended, but remains static forever. In the same way that this robs Jesus of the sequence of events leading to the his putative martyrdom, timelessness robs God of the act of creating anything. Besides, there simply can be no creation of time "before there was time". There simply is no "before".
