cardboard adolescent

the basic problem of causality is summed up as chicken/egg. aristotle says: causality implies a first cause, and since this first cause is the origin of the entire universe let's go ahead and call it God. the atheist responds: but what about God? doesn't he need a cause too? causality implies it... the theologian responds: but God is outside space and time, and therefore not subject to causality. the atheist responds: but God needs to be inside space and time to be the first cause.

the atheist has it easy since he's responding to claims made by the theologian. so now we can turn on the atheist and ask: if there is no first cause, how does causality work? as far as i can see, there are three possible responses here. the first is to do away with causality altogether, and say that it implies an absurdity (regression ad infinitum) and hence should be abandoned. this causes some serious problems, since most of our thinking is based on causality. i would suggest that a thinking not based in causality would probably be enlightenment (because there is no past or future) or at least what meditation aims at. the second possibility is that causality is a closed loop, that the big bang is the result of a big crunch or some other such device. however, if we postulate a universe in which the beginning is the end (alpha=omega) which is eternal, and in which everything comes from and returns to a single point, isn't this basically the worldview most religions have sponsored? (specifically the tao te ching, the kaballah, and hinduism). the third possibility is an infinite (linear) sequence of causes and effects, but this raises the question of how a universe with no beginning and no end could generate cycles with beginnings and endings, and what force is counteracting entropy. buckminster fuller and teilhard de chardin have both postulated a force counteracting entropy, which bucky called syntropy. syntropy is the tendency of matter to crystallize (evolve) and form structures, the most "complex" or "evolved" of which is probably the human mind. hence, the human mind should be able to introduce new energy into the universe to counteract the energy lost by friction. and isn't this essentially the function of religion: to introduce a unifying principle (love) which undoes the differences between people that cause friction? and the structure of syntropy (something out of nothing) is essentially the paradox of love: the more you give away the more you have.

so, to go back to the conversation in the first paragraph, the theologian can now say: God is the first cause and final effect, which puts him inside of space and time. however, since any given moment apart from the singularity is either a movement away from or toward the singularity, God is also outside of space and time, as that which they are moving toward/away from.

ultimately, the atheist will hopefully find that rather than standing for a threat to their personal identity, God really stands for the unity which underlies all the processes in the universe which bring us joy: meaning (signifier=signified) love (self=other) beauty (permanence=impermanence) etc

Sljslj

To say God is the cause of events that occur naturally is what bothers me. Rational thought neglect is what bothers me.
I can see why it's comforting to have an entity control, create, and supervise everything in existance, but I just can't bring myself to believe it. Every time I argue about religion vs. atheism with my friends and I say something like "So God created us, then who created God? Because he can't exist without being created", they always say something along the lines of "God is beyond our understanding". Why is it easier to accept religion than common sense and science that is atleast provable on some level?
Just so people know, I don't deny the existance of a deity, I just think it's improbable.

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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?"

The real problem with these guys is that they really don't have a strong base themselves, which makes their arrogance show much more.

How do you propose people know anything if they are afraid to admit it? You ask people to think, but at the sight of someone trying to reason their way through explaining the universe you tell them that they can never know. Look below your position and you will find nothing there. How do you defend that we can not know anything? We can know what does and does not exist through contradiction. We know that A can not equal non-A. There is the base, and from there we build.

What in the essence of happiness necessitates its being temporary? I don't disagree with you, but I think that you would have a much stronger and fruitful argument if you were to give the reason for this.

cardboard adolescent

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?)

Inuzuka Skysword

Alright here we go:

The next conclusion, which was not mentioned, is that we cannot know what caused the first cause. We cannot know because the question comes down to "Why does causation exist?" This question asks for an answer that does not exist. The conclusion is that we cannot know what caused causation and that we shouldn't desire to know.