And not before, so there was no time when the universe did not exist.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Did Aquinas Prove That God Exists?
- Thread starter Left Coast
- Start date
And not before, so there was no time when the universe did not exist.
Correct. Does that mean it wasn't caused to exist?
Heyo
Veteran Member
1. If 1 + 1 = 2, then the next sentence is false.At least, never and nowhere in this universe.If spacetime had a beginning and a cause, isn't what I said logically unavoidable?
2. If 1 + 1 is not 3, then the previous sentence is true.
If you stopped reading after 1., it would have been a perfectly logical sentence. If you stop thinking after your conclusion it makes sense.
If you investigate what is implied by your conclusion, you find that it leads to nonsense (even if you assume a multiverse with its own time and space, because that would also either have a beginning or be eternal).
You land on a paradox anyway.
That's my view.
I'm not sure how it leads to nonsense, unless existence is only something possible within spacetime.
Heyo
Veteran Member
If existence is only possible within spacetime, there can't be an external cause to the existence of spacetime. If something caused spacetime it has to be an event before spacetime - i.e. an event in a time before time.
You can get around that by proposing an enveloping multiverse with its own time. But that multiverse has to also have a cause or beginning - or must be eternal with the problem of finding an endpoint of an infinite time as already described.
Do you have a way to prove that negative?
This seems to be a problem of vocabulary, more than anything. There's no good way to describe things that might exist outside spacetime. There's no "infinite time" outside spacetime because there is no time. Mind-bending concepts though, for sure.
Heyo
Veteran Member
How do you define causality?
Last edited:
If there is a cycle there is no beginning.
In most simple terms, a cause (in the efficient sense) is that which brings something into being.
The problem is that this only applies to the beginning of our universe and every possible universe. The singularity existed prior to the universe. There is absolutely no evidence to support that our universe had an absolute beginning.
The concept of the expansion of the universe from the singularity expansion as the beginning of time/space is based on our knowledge of Quantum Mechanics, which in turn is the basis for the possibility of the multiverse, and the concept that the Quantum World is timeless and boundless.
True, but there is no evidence for a first cause.
In terms of science you cannot prove, falsify nor demonstrate the negative. Science cannot falsify whether there was a first cause.
Well, causality requires time, so it simply isn't possible to have a cause for time. And, in particular, if time is part of the universe, it isn't possible to have a cause for the universe.
And *how* does something bring another thing into being? Through the action of natural laws. So, it is impossible to have a cause for those natural laws.
Furthermore, to 'bring something into being' is a process in time, so time is necessary for causation. Hence it is impossible to have a cause for time itself.
Well, it isn't so much that it is difficult to imagine, but that it is difficult to imagine that something not 'in time' can have a time dependent effect on the world we see.
But, I find it much easier to say that the universe is all that exists, throughout space and time. Hence, the universe itself cannot be caused. It 'just is'.
We're literally walking through the proof(s) for it.