Why appeals to cause and effect are no evidence of a creator god

[LuisDantas]

After reading a bit on the matter from here

Quantum Diaries

I feel that I have a more structured answer to those who claim that

"Cause and Effect is a major principle of science, therefore existence must have had a creator god"

In a word, nope.

Cause and effect are not even quite a matter science deals with except perhaps indirectly by studying correlations and making speculative inferences... that are supposed to be challenged whenever possible, at that.

The text I linked above tells a bit about how the otherwise remarkable David Hume really made a mistake when he spoke of cause and effect. That may or may not be part of the reason why some theists insist that there is something scientific on the notion that there might be a supernatural creator.

But the notion itself is really not even barely connected to science, let alone supported - or even supportable by it.

Cause and effect are a human bias. We live in an environment that rewarded us with better chances at survival for making that jump. Yet it often leads us to unwarranted assumptions and mistifications.

Science has nothing whatsoever to do with that. Cause and effect may be established in science, but it is far rarer and more difficult than people who claim that it is a "major principle os science" realize. It takes experimental designs to test the hypothetical relationship - something that obviously isn't really possible when dealing with claims of creation of universes. I believe it is not even possible to establish causal relationships in human sciences.

Even leaving science aside, the theistic claims about the supposed convicing power of cause and effect suffer from other major flaws. They rarely if ever attempt to demonstrate how or why their claims should be taken over alternatives such as their supposed cause being in fact the effect, or both cause and effect being actually consequences of a third factor. Quite often even the basic statistical evidence of simple correlation (which is definitely not the same thing as evidence of a causal relationship) is weak at best.

 

[metis]

The Tibetan Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard, covered this rather succinctly in one of his books. If there were to be a stand-alone creator-god, then it would have to either be unchanging or ever-changing. If this deity was unchanging, how could this deity create? If the deity were ever-changing, what would cause the deity to change?

 

[Bunyip]

The problem is that cause and effect arguments are useless. They are worthless, empty, illogical dead ends. But they constantly reappear in apologetics like a phoenix rising from the ashes mainly because there is nothing other than such empty semantic conjouring tricks.

Cause and effect arguments, arguments drawn entirely from equivocation fallacies and Tuquoque fallacies recur endlessly and never go away no matter how often they are obliterated - because that is all there is.

I was asked once why I discuss word definitions so much, when I do not think it is really meaningful to do so. Well modern apologetics leaves us nothing of any greater weight to wrestle with. There is no superior evidence to engage with.

The simple fact is that cause and effect is not a scientific law, never was.

 

[Nietzsche]

The simple fact is that cause and effect is not a scientific law, never was.

It would probably be best to say that cause & effect is more a "strong recommendation". Like how most people treat speed-limits.

 

[Bunyip]

It would probably be best to say that cause & effect is more a "strong recommendation". Like how most people treat speed-limits.

What gets me is that the people who use the argument don't believe it themselves anyway. They don't believe god is caused.

It is inescapably dishonest, and that the leading light of modern Christian apologetics WL Craig has spent his career on it is truly shocking.

Nobody who uses the cause and effect argument honestly believes it - God is not caused. (Apparently)

 

[LuisDantas]

I assume they (sometimes) are honestly troubled by the lack of obvious cause-effect relationships and attempt to placate their anxiety by introducing an appeal to (supernatural) exceptionality.

Not much of a problem and not much of a solution, either. But it feels like one for those so inclined.

 

[Mycroft]

The appeal fails because the idea of a creator is antithetical to the cause/effect nature of the universe.

 

[LuisDantas]

That cause/effect nature of the universe is, at best, undemonstrated.

 

[Laika]

I'm going to stick with sheer blind ignorance and dogma and ignore the scientists on this one. I think I'm reducing the authors argument to absurdity here but If there is NO cause and effect, the universe would not simply be 'choatic' but that natural pheneomena wouldn't operate in predictable patterns; our existence relies on cause and effect through the causal relationship between breathing as a way of deriving oxygen from the atmosphere, or the chemical reactions that make up the digestive system. The law of gravity which keeps up from flying off out into space, our orbiting the sun, the axis tilt of the planet which is necessary for the seasons, etc. any number of things demonstrate in a philosophical way the existence of cause and effect by examining everyday activity. it is true that does not make our knowledge necessarily certian or complete.

This does therefore present problems in demonstrating cause and effect scientifically in a laboratory as well as how we can be sure that our conception of causality is the 'right' one. I can certianly agree that is difficult. That is not the same as saying there is no cause or effect. The Theists use of 'god' as an explanation for the origins of the universe appeals to our sensory perception and relatively basic understanding of our interactions with nature as based on causal relationships. The inverse, when Soviet scientists tried to come up with theories of the origin of the universe without reference to a creator meant they assumed matter is primary and has always existed, creating exactly the same issues, though the form of the universe may not necessarily be a constant one. I think the thesists are wrong out of a philosophical bias, but to say there is effect without cause is as great an error of abstract reasoning as to say that some form of disembodied consciousness in 'god' is the cause of the universe.

 

[LuisDantas]

I'm going to stick with sheer blind ignorance and dogma and ignore the scientists on this one. I think I'm reducing the authors argument to absurdity here but If there is NO cause and effect, the universe would not simply be 'choatic' but that natural pheneomena wouldn't operate in predictable patterns; our existence relies on cause and effect through the causal relationship between breathing as a way of deriving oxygen from the atmosphere, or the chemical reactions that make up the digestive system. The law of gravity which keeps up from flying off out into space, our orbiting the sun, the axis tilt of the planet which is necessary for the seasons, etc. any number of things demonstrate in a philosophical way the existence of cause and effect by examining everyday activity. it is true that does not make our knowledge necessarily certian or complete.

The universe is largely chaotic. It just turns out that chaos has a way of spontaneously organizing itself.

Also, we are not impartial observers using a random sample of existence, quite on the contrary. We are very much biased both towards perceiving somewhat organized yet unrepresentative parts of existence (largely because our survival relies on ready access to them) and also towards perceiving cause-and-effect even when there is none.

 

[Laika]

The universe is largely chaotic. It just turns out that chaos has a way of spontaneously organizing itself.

That's quite fair. I tend to think Science is trying to find order in the choas, and perhaps giving us the knowledge to manipulate that choas to our advantage. Chaotic does not necessarily mean without cause. I admittedly take a bias in which I assume there is an order in the choas to start with, but I don't think of that as a problem. I honestly would say thinking there is no order in the choas would be the problem as it makes any questions insoluable by definition and is therefore an impractical position to take.

Also, we are not impartial observers using a random sample of existence, quite on the contrary. We are very much biased both towards perceiving somewhat organized yet unrepresentative parts of existence (largely because our survival relies on ready access to them) and also towards perceiving cause-and-effect even when there is none.

That necessarily assumes there can be impartial observers with perfect knowledge. If man is the only source of our knowledge, then that knowledge will necessarily contain that bias. How therefore can we compare human knowledge to a perfect standard of objectivity if there isn't one?

 

[LuisDantas]

That necessarily assumes there can be impartial observers with perfect knowledge. If man is the only source of our knowledge, then that knowledge will necessarily contain that bias. How therefore can we compare human knowledge to a perfect standard of objectivity if there isn't one?

Does it? I'm not seeing it, myself. There is no particular reason why such impartial observers must exist.

It would be convenient if they could be found, but our convenience is not necessarily going to be satisfied. Maybe we will never have the standard to compare ourselves to.

Not sure that is much of a problem, either.

 

[Windwalker]

The universe is largely chaotic. It just turns out that chaos has a way of spontaneously organizing itself.

Technically this is not true. I don't believe there is true chaos in the universe. Isn't it really more a matter of degrees of order, that parts of the universe are less ordered? And yes, I agree that higher degrees of order emerge from lesser degrees of order, spontaneously. But if you stand back and look at that, isn't that a cause and effect relationship? Isn't "creation" a continual activity, a fundamental principle of the universe itself, as Whitehead pointed out?

I think understood this way, the mythic creator God standing outside the universe and putting all the pieces into the ordered universe that appears before us is really just a model of the universe that saw things fixed as they appear. Evolution was not a part of this model of reality. But if you see evolution as basically creativity, order from disorder, organizing into higher and higher forms of stable structures, can't this Static Creator God be in a sense reimagined as underlying impulse of creativity and subsequent creations itself? Personally, I think it may help if people reimagined the universe itself as not "the creation", but as "Creating", like a pot constantly boiling out new life. In other words the "Universe" is potential, and creation is what gets churned out incessantly, following established streams and patterns, and creating new streams and patterns.

Also, we are not impartial observers using a random sample of existence, quite on the contrary. We are very much biased both towards perceiving somewhat organized yet unrepresentative parts of existence (largely because our survival relies on ready access to them) and also towards perceiving cause-and-effect even when there is none.

This is true, but it goes deeper than this. We all take our perceptions and trying to fit them into our own current ways of modeling reality, which varies from culture to culture, as well as developmental stages of conscious awareness itself.

 

[metis]

The simple fact is that cause and effect is not a scientific law, never was.

Actually it's considered an "axiom" in science, namely that if something happens, we look for what may have caused it. It is never assumed that somehow it caused itself or popped out of nothing, unless there were to be all other possible factors discounted, which is darn near impossible to do. However, even "axioms" can be challenged in science.

 

[metis]

The universe is largely chaotic.

Actually it is not as far as we can tell, which is why mathematics works. If things just happen without cause, math simply wouldn't work.

 

[NewGuyOnTheBlock]

But if you see evolution as basically creativity, order from disorder, organizing into higher and higher forms of stable structures, can't this Static Creator God be in a sense reimagined as underlying impulse of creativity and subsequent creations itself?

This is incorrect. Evolution is about change. There is no law or rule in evolution that stipulates organisms must evolve into "higher" orders. This is a misconception, made popular by Hollywood.

 

[Ouroboros]

The Tibetan Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard, covered this rather succinctly in one of his books. If there were to be a stand-alone creator-god, then it would have to either be unchanging or ever-changing. If this deity was unchanging, how could this deity create? If the deity were ever-changing, what would cause the deity to change?

That's a very good way of putting it. That's exactly what I realized years ago, but I could never put it down in such a simple way.

 

[Ouroboros]

The universe is largely chaotic. It just turns out that chaos has a way of spontaneously organizing itself.

I've been thinking about this lately.

Chaos is essentially energy. Chaos comes to order when there are rules or laws, anything that restricts chaos in one way or another. That leads it to order. For instance, gravity is a law of nature that orders chaotic energy to become stars, planets, etc.

 

[Windwalker]

This is incorrect. Evolution is about change. There is no law or rule in evolution that stipulates organisms must evolve into "higher" orders. This is a misconception, made popular by Hollywood.

First to clarify, I did not say "Biological Evolution". I said evolution, and I was speaking of the process of change, which applies to everything in the universe. Secondly, I never said "must", nor do I image it must. There is however a tendency towards increased complexity through the process of change over time, or evolution. I do not mean to suggest a linear progression. But when order comes from disorder, there is in fact an increase in complexity. It advances. The process is in fact creative, something "new" emerges, which was my original point. Atoms become molecules, molecules become cells, cells become bodies, etc.

 

[rusra02]

So your argument is that effects do not prove a cause? A house, a spoon, a piece of cloth, effects all, do not show a cause? If that is "science", it is also foolishness, IMO.