Quote:
Originally Posted by Inuzuka Skysword
I don't think those are the only three answers. The question "What caused the first cause?" is an absurd and unanswerable question. You can't explain causation outside of causation itself, just like you can't contradict the law of contradiction. Causation exists and it is an axiom that you have to accept if you want to ask any question which begins with "Why?"
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The argument that I've made is that accepting causality as an axiom leads you to one of these conclusions. If you see another, please point it out to me.
I'd like to point out that the Big Bang theory is a result of extrapolating backwards from observations of the expansion of the Universe, and that as we get closer to the "singularity" general relativity breaks down, since it has to deal with infinities. I would argue that this poses a serious problem to any scientific explanation, since we can perhaps claim we've "explained" something because we've traced it back a certain distance to a cause, but if we want a "complete" explanation we also have to give the cause for that cause, and the cause for that cause, and so on, until we approach this singularity where our laws break down, and so it seems we can't really explain anything. This suggests that science can never provide the answer to "why?", which would involve tracing an effect back to its origin, and would only be able to provide stratagems for getting from point A to point B. If we wanted something more, we'd need to turn somewhere else (religion and philosophy, anybody?)