First cause

[Polymath257]

That's your opinion. It's not a fact. ...and I might add, it's a biased opinion, at that
Just because people may have conflicting opinions, or may tell lies about you, doesn't make you a non existence, does it? Let's be reasonable here Polymath257, and not cater to emotional preferences.

I wasn't catering to the emotional preferences of believers. I was pointing out the simple fact that most of the universe shows no intelligent agents acting.

You do not know what's natural? Do you? Prove it, and you will begin to make sense.
Why not start with gravity. Prove that gravity is natural.

Well, before we do that, we need a definition of the term 'natural'. It isn't given to us. WE need to define what WE mean.

Natural, is a concept, based on man's limited understanding... of which he should humbly admit, he doesn't understand.

To say there is a chair in my room is a fact based on human understanding. That doens't mean it is wrong.

Rather, he prefers to say, "We don't know." out of one side of his mouth, and out of the other side, he says, "We know." Then he wakes up the next morning, and accepts the phrase, "scientists thought", but never would he say, "We thought we knew." Well, at least the humble scientists does. I tip my hat to them.

I am saying we know beyond a reasonable doubt. Can there still be doubt? Sure. Is it possible new evidence will force us to rethink things? Sure. But that will be at the margins of what we now know, not at the core.

You seem to be speaking of time, regardless of man's perspective. In that case, I would say, there is no question then - no option - time is infinite.
One can't refer to time in that sense, and the create an option, where time is finite. That would be the equivalent of saying God had to begin, or in other words, something had to be before God. Madness, evidently.

That is your opinion. But I think it is a biased opinion biased on your emotional response. You have zero evidence for your deity, nor that time has to be infinite in that sense (although it could be---we do not know). Like me, you don't know.

But we can decide where the weight of the evidence is.

Oh, I see. So there are none. You just hoped I would accept your claim. In other words, you have ideas that are not tested, and as far as we know, might never be... and may be supernatural - as far as you don't want to see.

My view is that the notion of 'supernatural' is incoherent: it is literally meaningless. When we understand what the term 'natural' means, we find that the 'supernatural' has no meaning.

When your ideas are accepted in science, you can officially say, "There are *some* theories that allow for testing of multiverse".
Until then, you basically have ideas, you are hoping to propose.

That is what is known as 'hypothesis formation'. The next step is key: testing those hypotheses.

Please don't just say things, because you can.
You don't know. ...and the collection of historical documents about God, written by eyewitnesses, says he does have a mind - he is an intelligent entity.

Those documents are myths written by humans to try to understand things before we had science. They are NOT historical documents about God. They are history and mythology and propaganda and pure speculation mixed together.

It does address your point, which was... that the multiverse cannot compare to God, or the supernatural, because, to quote you...Quote - I am not saying the multiverse is conscious. I am not saying the multiverse gives moral guidance. I am not saying the multiverse had an intention. - Unquote.
I'm saying, the ideas you present, in order to ridicule, such as the spaghetti monster, may not have a mind, and do not. The point is, they cannot be falsified.

And neither can any deity. Which is why they are, as far as I can see, all nonsense, ultimately.

"The effects of gravity from 'other universes."

Oh dear. So when you see effects, you are going to attribute those effects to an imaginary multiverse??? Oh dear. Dark Matter and Dark Energy will be understood by then, surely. So there will be no more question marks.
MJ sang, "I don't know whether to laugh, or cry." I'd better smile.

I am merely pointing out that some *can* be tested. There is, of course, a LOT we do not know. But to deny the things we do know is as silly as saying we know everything.

But we don't need to know everything to detect ideas that have no explanatory power. And that includes all talk about a supernatural.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Because a verb requires a subject.

Spirituality is different view than english grammar, though. I personally don't see anything created just formed into being from already pre-existing things.

Maybe another way to put it, why do things that exist need to have a first cause.
How do you connect what's here and a "creator"?

 

[Polymath257]

"... Aquinas is not arguing that the universe must have had a beginning – that the first cause he is arguing for is “first” not in a temporal sense, but in an ontological sense, a sustaining cause of the world here and now and at any moment at which the world exists at all."

Edward Feser: Edwards on infinite causal series

And what, precisely, is meant by the term 'sustaining cause' and why would we think such a thing exists?

 

[nPeace]

I wasn't catering to the emotional preferences of believers. I was pointing out the simple fact that most of the universe shows no intelligent agents acting.



Well, before we do that, we need a definition of the term 'natural'. It isn't given to us. WE need to define what WE mean.

I did ask.

To say there is a chair in my room is a fact based on human understanding. That doens't mean it is wrong.

Ah. You know the chair was made... by man.
It's in harmony with the first part of Hebrews 3:4 - Of course, every house is constructed by someone. However the latter part - but the one who constructed all things is God - doesn't sit well with you.
It fits well with causality though.

I am saying we know beyond a reasonable doubt. Can there still be doubt? Sure. Is it possible new evidence will force us to rethink things? Sure. But that will be at the margins of what we now know, not at the core.

What's that? What did you say we know....? Perhaps I missed that.

That is your opinion. But I think it is a biased opinion biased on your emotional response. You have zero evidence for your deity, nor that time has to be infinite in that sense (although it could be---we do not know). Like me, you don't know.

But we can decide where the weight of the evidence is.

No. Sorry. Romans 1:19, 20 among others, refutes your claims.
Explain please, how time can be infinite, excuse me... finite, so that I can understand you... maybe I am not.

My view is that the notion of 'supernatural' is incoherent: it is literally meaningless. When we understand what the term 'natural' means, we find that the 'supernatural' has no meaning.

? I'm listening. What does natural mean?

That is what is known as 'hypothesis formation'. The next step is key: testing those hypotheses.



Those documents are myths written by humans to try to understand things before we had science. They are NOT historical documents about God. They are history and mythology and propaganda and pure speculation mixed together.

That's interesting. Only the parts that archaeologists haven't dug us, are myths, but what has been confirmed isn't? So Hezekiah did have an encounter wit Sennacherib, but everything apart from the events surrounding those accurate details is myth?
Why? Because you say so?
Opinion noted.

And neither can any deity. Which is why they are, as far as I can see, all nonsense, ultimately.

Which is why, in your opinion, as far as you can see... Thank you.

I am merely pointing out that some *can* be tested. There is, of course, a LOT we do not know. But to deny the things we do know is as silly as saying we know everything.

I'm not sure what you are talking about, so I can't follow you if you are painting with such an extremely broad brush.
What things are you talking about... that bees make wax, and chickens lay eggs? Who would think that a person is denying knowing such things? Are you okay?

But we don't need to know everything to detect ideas that have no explanatory power. And that includes all talk about a supernatural.

I'm lost. What are you really trying to say?

Oh, I have a story to tell.
Once upon a time, someone told an illustration of a man who sowed wheat in a field. During the night, a wicked man came and sowed weeds in among the wheat.
When they sprouted, a passerby said, "What a confusing looking field, why don't the owner uproot these weeds, and plant something to eat?"
A worker in the field said, "...but there is wheat planted in the field. However, someone sowed weeds as well. So it is difficult to identify the two. We have to wait until the harvest to separate the two."
The passerby laughed to himself, and went off thinking, "Some people do make up some stuff. How could one look at a field of such confusion, and believe they is wheat in there? Surely any sensible person would know that no wheat is there."
Meanwhile, noticing the smugness of the passerby, the farm worker said to himself, "Some people don't seem to think too clearly, when they think papers make them knowledgeable."

Do you understand that story?
Thinking that religious confusing means God does not exist, is equivalent to that passerby's thinking.
Why do people get that deluded?
The Bible answers, "because they did not accept the love of the truth". (2 Thessalonians 2:11, 12)

I think you just don't realize how the wicked one has fooled the masses, and so, it is easy for you to be a victim, but the choice is ours.

 

[rational experiences]

When a human who is spiritual says I own a belief....then it is consciously stated...believed but not proven. For a spiritual human who says I own a spirit life after I die knows in conscious expression that they cannot prove it.

Only a lying Satanist would claim otherwise...I will prove it he says for my machine reaction and out of space.

So you would say he says the eternal is the infinite. Yet 2 very differently expressed words...and the history of speaking words first, is a claim that it existed before SCIENCE...speaking of words.

Therefore natural human language owned describing everything first, why it is stated categorically the WORD is holy, not science symbolism...it is fake.

If I say as a bio life body I know I die and my body decomposes....then it virtually goes back to God after death....the body of stone....that males claim is the eternal presence categorically God the ST ONE body...for the theme is one, one body and one cell of one form as thought in one human mind....as first for SCIENCE.

Never in any human history was it first for human...for humans are the first, the male says I am categorically as a male the first. Then he says but the 2 humans are equal and the first selves...humans.

Then ask a male why he had to teach his owned self presence that a male/man is his own first self as a human...when he is naturally living that presence?

In reality he proves he perverted his mind. The homosexual and all changed nature of conscious expressions that proof...so virtually a male today in that AI possession says I am natural owner of 2 human being bodies...when they are totally separate...by his homosexual female behaviours.

And virtually said we are half/half...hence if I destroy half of the half of self, the other half will still survive as a male possessed in his own Satanism.

Therefore if a human says my bio spirit part of self/cell owned by the atmospheric gases/water bio form, not of God the stone, the skeleton body that remains with the Earth God when I die......is owned by the Christ support. Then it was...and the Christ is not any eternal form.

The Christ gases belong historically to the body of the stone also.

And all of his science themes go back to the stone for he cannot build a machine unless he was on a stone planet. And his formula and string involved in machine building takes the string of his machine to be volcanic molten metal mass first.

Therefore he claims that God is the eternal form....for he says that although the sun attacked and converted Earth it could not be destroyed...so it remains in infinity, floating in space......says the same for a dead/cold Sun as coldest body would remain as that body for the infinite floating in space when it is deceased.

Yet no human is deceased speaking and God is not deceased either to be in the infinite reality of his themes.

What a human being self says they own after they die...the eternal of GOD. In 2 conditions. My image remains with Jesus life bio cell sacrificed, for that part of my bio life I no longer own...the water bio oxygen mass....so that theme is real.

The body dies not because Christ is gone...but because radiation constant eventually kills the bio life. So the claim is Christ is Holy.

So when a human being dies in natural life the human says God O the stone was always there before I was...and so was the natural gas mass Christ atmosphere, both there before my human life existed and both there after my human death.

Yet science with a machine owns no claim to either of those histories...actually as the liar Satanist he always was...a coercer of information to allow us to support our life to be eradicated. For science actually is a Destroyer mentality and many scientists......are actually of a depraved social mentality.

However rational and loving caring real scientists also exist. Why my Holy Father messages kept saying, the science today is not real science and they are not really scientists.

A real scientist is a human who says yes we own a life after an Ape in biology....ape sex today produces an ape baby. Humans own life just as a life from one cell and ovary, and it is female...the Female and baby self life male is HOLY, cause it no harm.

That real scientist.

 

[PearlSeeker]

And what, precisely, is meant by the term 'sustaining cause' and why would we think such a thing exists?

Accidentally ordered series of causes is for example father begets son, who begets a son... If the first father dies, the siries can still continue without him.

Essentially ordered causal series is for example: a hand moves a stick that moves a stone. If the hand suddenly stops, then the stick will stop, and so will the stone.

 

[Polymath257]

Accidentally ordered series of causes is for example father begets son, who begets a son... If the first father dies, the siries can still continue without him.

Essentially ordered causal series is for example: a hand moves a stick that moves a stone. If the hand suddenly stops, then the stick will stop, and so will the stone.

Exocet that hand moving the stick moving the stone still happens in time and through the laws of physics.

This is also assuming the default state is to be motionless. But motion (velocity) isn't what is caused by forces, acceleration is.

So, it looks to be an incoherent notion, even in the example given.

 

[Igtheism]

Has it ever occurred to you guys that you're just assuming that "first cause" (and thus "God") is meaningful (i.e., coherent) terminology referring to a concept of something that you can actually have? - Not just something you can say and write. You have made no attempt to define it. Why don't you try?

 

[PearlSeeker]

Exocet that hand moving the stick moving the stone still happens in time and through the laws of physics.

Yes, but every moment the effect is instant and dependent on the first cause.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes, but every moment the effect is instant and dependent on the first cause.

No, it is NOT instant. The effect actually propagates down the stick to produce the effect. It happens at the speed of the compression wave, which is not instant.

So, the claim of an instant effect is simply not substantiated.

 

[PearlSeeker]

No, it is NOT instant. The effect actually propagates down the stick to produce the effect. It happens at the speed of the compression wave, which is not instant.

So, the claim of an instant effect is simply not substantiated.

"At every moment in which the last part of the series (viz. the motion of the stone) exists, the earlier parts (the motion of the hand and of the stick) exist as well."
(E. Feser)

 

[Polymath257]

"At every moment in which the last part of the series (viz. the motion of the stone) exists, the earlier parts (the motion of the hand and of the stick) exist as well."
(E. Feser)

Irrelevant for what i was saying. The cause happens through time. When the hand moves, it takes time for the stick to respond and time for the rock to move.

 

[Igtheism]

Physics is wrong about one thing. There is no such thing as time. There's just stuff moving around. There are just a lot of clocks a-running and a-ticking, and people a-saying the equivalent of "If I notice that those clock hands are pointing in such-and-such a way, then I'll do such and such an activity or go such and such a place! They'll say "Look. That big hand is pointing to the 8 and the little hand is pointing to the 12 so I'm going to go to work. How does the fact that we people do things like that prove that there is any kind of stuff called "time"?. I claim there isn't any such stuff as "time" and we just talk like there is. But there isn't. Physicists and scientists do their math with the numbers they read off a clock, and come up with wonderful and marvelous things. But that doesn't show that there is any such thing as time. It's wonderful that scientists do all those wonderful things, but that doesn't mean there is anything to label 'time'. Now, as a layman I've found that you can go in a physics forum and ask them any question you want about physics and they'll gladly tell you anything, and explain it in layman's terms so you can understand it. But you'd better not say what I just said above - that there is no such thing as time, for they'll kick you out of the physics forum. I know by experience.

 

[ratiocinator]

Physics is wrong about one thing. There is no such thing as time. There's just stuff moving around.

I'm mystified as to why so many people make this claim. Movement is change of position with respect to time. No time, no movement.

What's more, relativity tells us that space and time are observer-dependant directions through space-time and that space and time cannot be separated and are, to an extent, interchangeable. Different observers count different direction to be their notions of space and time. There is plentiful evidence to support relativity.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Irrelevant for what i was saying. The cause happens through time. When the hand moves, it takes time for the stick to respond and time for the rock to move.

Yes, if you would record it and slow down playing speed, you would notice a time delay. But that is not the point. It is not how it all began because this would eventually bring us back to singularity. It's not about process how something came to be. It's about sustaining cause.

Once the stick responds the hand is part of the effect. The hand doesn't at once dissappear in thin air. Once the stone responds the stick and the hand are part of the effect.

I can give you also a "motionless" example. A stone is standing on a stone, which is standing on stone etc. Eventually the last stone standing on the ground.

Above examples are just illustrations. First cause is about the ground of being underlying all existence.

 

[Igtheism]

I'm mystified as to why so many people make this claim.

Because there isn't any such thing. "To time" is a verb. We just talk as though "time" were a noun. But we humans have simply learned to do an activity that we call "timing". It's like honesty. There is no such thing as honesty. There are only honest people. It works fine to say there is something called "honesty" or "time" and even to do math as though there were such a thing called "time". But that's just the adjective "honest" that helps us describe people who don't cheat or steal and the verb "to time" that refers to the activity that humans have learned to do that works real great. In fact, I shouldn't say that, because there are no activities either. People only act and speak as though there are things that we do when we act. But we just act. But that doesn't mean that there exists something labeled "time". There just plain isn't any such thing. We just do our activity of timing and SAY the words "Time exists", but that's just the way we talk, not the way it is.

ratiocinator:>>> Movement is change of position with respect to time. No time, no movement.<<<

Yes, we speak like that and it works great. We time things and come up with a number. I'm not denying that talking like that doesn't work great. It does. It works great to say that verbs and adjectives are nouns, but they're not. All we do is time things. There is no stuff called "time". It's just something we do. For that matter, there is no stuff called "motion" either. We just talk that way. But all we're doing is saying that things move.

ratiocinator:>>>What's more, relativity<<<<

There is no such thing as relativity either. "Relative" is an adjective. Things are simply relative. There is no such thing as relativity -- or gravity. It's true that things gravitate according to the inverse square law. But nothing exists called "gravity". We just talk that way. Humans made their language that way. So I'm actually talking about language and how it affects our way of thinking. Verbs are verbs and adjectives are adjectives. Just because our language is such that we speak as though we can turn adjectives and verbs into what we call "abstract nouns", these abstract nouns don't refer to things that exist. This man-made thing called "language" allows us to say "verbs exist" and "adjectives exist". But they don't. The language has evolved so that we speak as though that were the case. But it isn't the case.

ratiobinator:>>>tells us that space

But there is nothing called space either. Things are just spaced apart, and we measure how far they are spaced apart. But there is no stuff called space. There are just things spaced apart.

ratiobinator:>>and time are observer-dependant directions through space-time and that space and time cannot be separated and are, to an extent, interchangeable. Different observers count different direction to be their notions of space and time. There is plentiful evidence to support relativity.<<

There is nothing called "space-time" either. But it works real well that we talk this way.

What I'm really headed toward is the realization that there are no activities or qualities. We just speak that way. There is no time, only timing. There is no God. There are only people Godding.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes, if you would record it and slow down playing speed, you would notice a time delay. But that is not the point. It is not how it all began because this would eventually bring us back to singularity. It's not about process how something came to be. It's about sustaining cause.

That doesn't seem to be the sustaining cause at all, but rather the temporal cause. Which was the whole point of the objection.

Once the stick responds the hand is part of the effect. The hand doesn't at once dissappear in thin air. Once the stone responds the stick and the hand are part of the effect.

I'm not sure what you are claiming here. There is a feedback loop (in time) where the hand acts on itself through the stick and stone, etc. They are part of a system. But the causal links are within the system and through time.

I can give you also a "motionless" example. A stone is standing on a stone, which is standing on stone etc. Eventually the last stone standing on the ground.

In other words, standing on the Earth, which is what produces the gravity for all those stones. But then, the Earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the center of the galaxy.

That again is NOT simultaneous causality.

Above examples are just illustrations. First cause is about the ground of being underlying all existence.

And why would you expect there to be a separate 'ground' for existence? Why not just say things exist?

 

[Aupmanyav]

@Pru-Phillip: WHY there is something instead of nothing?
@Polymath: .. which means there is something and not nothing.

Who knows, @Polymath, what future research will come up with. Nothing changing into something.

Oh I get it now I guess there doesn't have to be a first cause, so I guess in a way I did understand it. I thought I may have.

I would not go with that. The cause will be there. We have to find it and science will not stop at 'Goddidit'.

The universe doesn't need a reason for it being here.
And the explanation answers your question. That "something," being the universe, was always here, that's why there was never "nothing" there.

'Has always been there' needs to answer the question - Why? It is an answer very similar to "God has always been there', no further explanation about it. That is not sufficient. Whether the 'God is eternal' or the 'universe is eternal', both need to answer this question. Of course, we do not have the answer now, but it may be available in future, a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, five hundred years from now. Getting to the point of relativity and Quantum Mechanics too us upward of 75,000 years.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Nope. According to science, the universe is one of the things that *cannot* have a cause.
Causes *only* make sense *within* the universe.

That is what could be said today. How can you say that science will not find something new and different? I basically point to the problem of existence and non-existence or the problem of Ex-nihilo. If there is a dissolution of things into nothing, something like we talk in Hinduism, 'Pralaya'. I like to keep an open mind about it.

 

[Igtheism]

>>>Aupmanyav>>>>>That is what could be said today. How can you say that science will not find something new and different?

You question amounts to: "How can you say that science will not find something new and different that will cause the words 'cause of the universe' to make sense?" That's like asking "How can you say that science will not find something new and different that will cause Chomsky's word soup "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" to take on meaning?"

>>>Aupmanyav>>>>>...I like to keep an open mind about it.

Do you keep an open mind about science finding something new and different that will cause "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" to take on meaning? If not, why be biased toward science finding something new and different to cause one row of words to make sense over another row of words to make sense? Neither does.​