Putting aside the term God, would you agree?

[Polymath257]

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

And not, for example, my filling of the gas tank?

Nope. It has a chain of causes.

Not a chain: a network.

True.

True again

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

Not all of them. The gas needs to be there and that isn't from my pushing the button. The air needs to be there and it also isn't from my button push.

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.

Why was the first the one that started everything after? Why not other 'beginnings'?

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

Until the point it "shrinks" back.

Why would there need to be such a shrinking?

How so?

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

It was there whenever there was mass, energy, time, and space.

 

[Polymath257]

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

If you take any particle and move backwards in time, there is a stage past which you cannot go.

 

[Polymath257]

Exactly! and than it does

Not *then*. Something exists. At no time did nothing exist.

 

[exchemist]

Agree, reasoning is a better request

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?

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

True. as many other models before it

In answer to your question, no, I would not jump to that conclusion, at least not from a scientific perspective (though I might have an aesthetic preference). As I have indicated earlier, there are events in physics that appear to be uncaused and there is a branch of physics theory that provides for uncaused events.

Furthermore, according to my (admittedly imperfect) understanding of cosmology, we do not have evidence allowing us to extrapolate with complete confidence to the first instant of the universe's existence. So we do not know what happened right at the start or why.

 

[LuisDantas]

I know yet most atheists think the same yet they will usually not admit it and argue that I don't know is a more relevant answer.

Frankly, I doubt it.

I tend to agree when you have no understanding of how things work, but as science advances, the not knowing excuse becomes much less relevant.

It is no excuse. It is, rather, honesty.

 

[Milton Platt]

This question is mostly to people who lack the belief in God (Mono).

Let's put aside for a second the term God and all the ways people try and define this god.

Would you agree that there must be an initial cause to everything?
I mean that from our human POV, we today know that time had a starting point, this means that (from our POV) there was a point in our history when time "stood still". We can refer to this idea as an eternity (again, only from our POV as we don't really know what happened before that).

Also, there has to be an event (or something else ) that started the whole process of reality. even if you somehow believe that reality started itself, this means that some sort of "reality version" existed before our reality, we can refer to this as the initial state of existence.

This means that eventually, going back chronically (events wise), there must be an initiator (regardless of what that initiator is) that was there without being initiated in the first place.

So we can assume regardless of our belief that there was an initial event that was "placed" in what we can only describe as eternity as we have no understanding of time before our time.

We can also have the understanding that this thing, contained within it all our reality, meaning the universe as we know it emerged from that same initiator causing our reality to become what it is.

Thoughts?

I don’t think we can say anything about anything beyond just after the initial inflation began. So you can gather opinions, but not facts.
An event is not the same thing as a god.

One hypothhesis is that the big bang never actually ends but constantly occurs again and again. That is part of the multiverse theory, or more properly, hypothesis. But who knows.

There may have always been a reality, just not ours, and there may be concurrent realities.

We cannot have an understanding about anything that might have contained our reality because we have no way to investigate it if it in fact existed. Besides, there is no reason to assume our reality was contained in anything. Our reality most likely began with the big bang.

How can you have an eternity without time, if the word describes infinite time?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

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

Right: it's a cause, not the cause.

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

Right: it's a cause, not the cause.

Exactly!!!

So you agree that this one event - the hammer hitting the metal - has many causes?

 

[j1i]

Do you think you would turn into a criminal if you lost your faith?

If yes, then keep believing, by all means.

Ciao

- viole

You know what incentives are.

One of the qualifications of faith is not harassment, theft and lying

I want to make God happy as my mother and father
This is my right. I feel this and I see that God sets the Highest Example. He is the Mighty, the Wise.

All incentives fall if God is Not satisfied with me

How you will celebrate in any occasion while the audience are resentful of your fallen morals
I will feel something wrong

GOD bless you all

 

[Segev Moran]

And not, for example, my filling of the gas tank?

No.
You stated it from the push of a button.
You putting the gas in is a different chain of events.
You can put the gas and only a month later start the car.. there is no link between the events.

Not a chain: a network.

Nope... a network of chains

Not all of them. The gas needs to be there and that isn't from my pushing the button. The air needs to be there and it also isn't from my button push.

True

Why was the first the one that started everything after? Why not other 'beginnings'?
There is an actual answer to this if you really want to know. it is a very long one, but there is a one.

Why would there need to be such a shrinking?

Observing the tree... it is quite obvious it wasn't always the full tree it is today.

It was there whenever there was mass, energy, time, and space.

Exactly!
before it, it was not this one "whatever" that made it for not to is might be what we can describe as the first event in the chain of our reality

 

[Segev Moran]

If you take any particle and move backwards in time, there is a stage past which you cannot go.

Yep.
YOU (and ME) cannot go.
Indeed.

 

[Segev Moran]

Not *then*. Something exists. At no time did nothing exist.

If you think things can simply become out of no-thing.. you might think that. i find it hard to believe.

 

[Polymath257]

No.
You stated it from the push of a button.
You putting the gas in is a different chain of events.
You can put the gas and only a month later start the car.. there is no link between the events.

I disagree. The gas is there. That is a link. Without the gas, the car would not start. So pushing the button alone cannot be the full cause of the car starting.

Again, almost all macroscopic events have a network of causes, not a single cause. In order for the event to happen, a whole constellation of previous events must occur.

 

[Segev Moran]

In answer to your question, no, I would not jump to that conclusion, at least not from a scientific perspective (though I might have an aesthetic preference). As I have indicated earlier, there are events in physics that appear to be uncaused and there is a branch of physics theory that provides for uncaused events.

Furthermore, according to my (admittedly imperfect) understanding of cosmology, we do not have evidence allowing us to extrapolate with complete confidence to the first instant of the universe's existence. So we do not know what happened right at the start or why.

Agreed. yet we know it started

 

[Polymath257]

If you think things can simply become out of no-thing.. you might think that. i find it hard to believe.

Well, that is more a statement about your system of beliefs than about reality. What sort of evidence would demonstrate to you that something has no cause?

Or that things do, in fact, appear out of nothing (and disappear back into nothing)?

 

[Segev Moran]

Frankly, I doubt it.



It is no excuse. It is, rather, honesty.

Excuse is not something that is not honest
Excuse is a reason.

 

[Segev Moran]

So you agree that this one event - the hammer hitting the metal - has many causes?

Of course... but none of them is the hammer or the metal.
It has many causes that follow one another until the main "event" (the hit itself)
It is not 20 events happening in the same time (although such things do happen )

 

[Segev Moran]

Well, that is more a statement about your system of beliefs than about reality. What sort of evidence would demonstrate to you that something has no cause?

Or that things do, in fact, appear out of nothing (and disappear back into nothing)?

If this was how things work, wouldn't you agree we would have seen it more?
If things could just pop out into existence, why aren't they?
If i told you Fairies are real... wouldn't you expect at least some kind of fairy related things in our reality?
Nothing in our reality suggests that things happen without a cause... why do we assume it does?

 

[Polymath257]

If this was how things work, wouldn't you agree we would have seen it more?

No. The effect tends to be small for most situations. it is a quantum effect.

If things could just pop out into existence, why aren't they?

They do. It is a measured effect.

If i told you Fairies are real... wouldn't you expect at least some kind of fairy related things in our reality?
Nothing in our reality suggests that things happen without a cause... why do we assume it does?

Simply wrong. Quantum mechanics is an acausal theory of physics and is fundamental. It has been extensively tested and even some of its more unusual predictions have been verified (in particular, those related to causality).

QM is *by far* the best scientific theory we have. The fact that is is not a causal theory needs to be taken seriously and is definitely a 'suggestion' that things happen without a cause in many cases. If anything, causality is a sum of probabilistic effects--it comes about because probabilistic laws lead to predictable long-term averages.

 

[LuisDantas]

Excuse is not something that is not honest
Excuse is a reason.

When I use that word, it is not synonimous with reason.

 

[exchemist]

Agreed. yet we know it started

So?

Why the "yet"?