I confess to rehashing an old dilemma. If I’m blubbering an old premise, please tell me I’m guilty of such, with some proof, and I’ll apologize.
The old debate: Proponents of God vs proponents of no god. ie: God vs no god.
God: There cannot be a universe without a creator. Even by describing the big bang, you must accept that there was an action before that. How can you ever get something from nothing?
No God: Quantum physicists show that even the smallest, emptiest space known has “cosmic jitters” - a relative frequency of proto-matter. Absolutely everything you see today can be explained by theories of progression through random events.
God: But even the cosmic jitters and progression of random events needed to be . . . Created! Every random event came from another random event. Somewhere there has to be a creator.
No God: You could use the same argument for a creator. Every creator needs to be created. How do you explain an original creator without some mechanism causing that intelligence to come about?
HYPOTHESIS: “Theism vs atheism” is a misnomer. The answer lies somewhere in between. The problem is linearity. The idea that there needs to be an origin. And if there is an origin, there must be an “end” or a direction. For the human brain to escape the concept of linearity, is a bit like the human finger pointing to the fourth dimension. Physically, you simply can’t.
Without evolution, the problem will not be solved.
“God” is “Truth” ! The “Lie” is the curse of “Mankind” that will be our downfall if we do not “De-Corrupt”.
“God” has forgiven “Us” but the “Lie” must be purged from this “World” , it has no place in “His” kingdom.
‘God’ can be a lot of things, to a lot of different people.
To me it is all micro organisms in all realms at once, and its shell is the non living energies and materials, which are everywhere.
Also it is eternal.
I can’t really contribute as you ask.
It seems to me that the hypothesis is, ultimately, reasonable.
It can be developed, possibly, beyond the concept of “linearity”. I mean that, regardless linearity or other “categories”, after the XX century we should acknowledge that the old Hegelian motto “what is rational is real and what is real is rational” can’ t longer hold. It does - or doesn’t - so because it is no longer clear neither what is real, nor what is rational, nor even what is is.
Linearity or not, there is no knowledge of being - the problem of its beginning is just a corollary. It doesn’ t mean that all enquiries need to be abandoned, quite the opposite, because knowledge is a powerful tool to bend being (or, rather, becoming) to our will (well… actually also in the case of will it is no longer clear what it is - thou I happen to know about a German madman who had some strong opinions about it).
Ultimately theoretical science strives to remain consistent and enable a grip on the world. That does not happen because we have this miracle-worker faculty of reason that opens the sesame, it’s done thorugh endless tinkering (during which reason is a precious part of the toolkit) and… it is as good as it gets - but it gets good, it really does. Conversely, direction, sense, even beginning… if one thinks about it, there is no element to think they have to be properties of the real. They are not real, they are projections, they are human all too human (in this respect Parmenides was not such a fool).
I am not sure that I understand it as you mean it, but, yes, evolution may fix the problem.
It’s not that our minds are necessarily linear, it’s that our explanations are. I mean, we make art, but works of art aren’t typically seen as a form of explanation - for better or worse.
Uccisore: If the human brain can’t escape linearity, what evidence is there (or could there be) that linearity isn’t the correct way of looking at things?
I can only grasp at supposition seeing as I don’t see a more rational answer. But it’s really a similar concept to pointing toward the fourth dimension. If the human finger can’t escape the third dimension, what evidence is there (or could there be) that the third dimension isn’t the correct way of pointing to things? Through mathematical models I know that a fourth dimension could hypothetically exist. The parallel I draw is of course not so simple. In terms of nonlinear time-frames, I still can’t escape the paradox. Suppose I can time-travel to any which way future or past, I become “timeless” . . . I’m still asking what mechanism or intelligence gave me that ability to time travel, and created that time-frame which I travel in. I can only suppose that several centuries ago the fourth dimension in most communities would be simply incomprehensible. And here, it would be perhaps centuries later that a “nonlinear” solution could be comprehensible.
I’m eager to see anyone eclipse that supposition with a more clear solution to an age-old question.
Dan: ‘God’ can be a lot of things, to a lot of different people.
To me it is all micro organisms in all realms at once, and its shell is the non living energies and materials, which are everywhere.
Also it is eternal.
Doesn’t resolve my question. But beautifully poetic nonetheless.
attano: direction, sense, even beginning… if one thinks about it, there is no element to think they have to be properties of the real.
Reality can be an illusion. But I can be satisfied with a possible illusion if I have some mathematical or conceptual model which the illusion is nested in. In this paradox, I come to the old idea that the world sits on top of a turtle, and that turtle is on a turtle. Eureka, it’s turtles all the way down.
anon: I mean, we make art, but works of art aren’t typically seen as a form of explanation - for better or worse.
Art is like our primordial rationale for more complex subjects. The answer will probably not originate in analytical philosophy.
This problem is among those somewhat delightful to be stumped at . . . but present an eerie existential fear. Where do I place my faith in things I can’t understand?
I remember the joy of getting drunk with you. It’s been great! Life (and attitudes and demeanor) have changed a lot.
Sure, it’s a circle. But here’s the tricky rabbit you can never catch. Suppose time loops back unto itself. The future leads to the past, whatever way that can be managed. Well . . . who made the loop? Who made the time-line to make into a loop? Or what did? There still needs an origin. If I can’t solve it - what does my inferior human brain lack in solving such a puzzle.
I don’t think your brain lacks anything. I think it’s a matter of perspective, background assumptions, etc. For example, I think when you want to talk about the structure of time, you have to come at it from an atemporal framework. You have to be outside time in order to build a model of time. In that context, the question of temporal origins becomes a question of foundations. What is the basis of time as a loop if it can’t be found in any temporal origin? What underlies time such that we can finally understand it.
I think “placed” faith is a kind of counterfeit faith - that’s just hoping that something or other turns out to be the case. Faith isn’t hope. Faith is letting go of the need to hope (or fear) like that. Then again, it’s not faith if it’s just not thinking about things. Unless I’ve misunderstood you question, in which case feel free to ignore me. And yeah, mine is an unusual take on it I think. Others may say I’m full of shit - you may - and that’s fine of course.
Of course you’re full of shit, Anon. You physically produce a constant supply of decaying organic matter . . . of course assuming that you are human. You could perhaps be a software program inputting text through its IP address.
Well the response from everyone brings an interesting twist. I believe we have a general consensus that theism and atheism are based on linear, temporal thinking. There are arguments (mine) that thinking atemporal would require a change in the human brain. And others (Gib) that thinking atemporal may only require a change in perspective - mainly a lack of perspective insofar as preconceived notions. So suppose this . . .
I tell you that there is a God because there has to be in order for anything to exist. For there to be creation requires a creator. What do you say to me?
I tell you that there is no God. Nothing needs an intelligent designer, because if everything had to originate from intelligent design, then even the intelligent designer would need an intelligent designer. What do you say to me?
I tell you that the fact is there is neither no God, nor is there a God. Logical syntax of my phrase is now: ~((~p) v p) – a contradiction! What do you say to me?
Stop thinking that this kind of abstract logical ‘proof’ or argument is Worth very much. Some people might immerse themselves in the experience of a religion or spirituality and see what 10 years of this does. Some might be atheist and pleased as punch About that. I Think there is something odd about approaching the issue this way at all. It’s not a good way to find out if love is real or if Johnny Porcelin, the golf coach, can improve my game. If you have no interest in golf, it doesn’t matter. If you do, well, there are steps one can take beyond staring at propositions.
I can see one arguing that there must be a cause Before the Big Bang, and then saying that God was around forever and needs no prior cause. That’s a linear answer that does not create a paradox. You’re just suggesting different ontologies for the universe and God. But I don’t really see why one needs to try to prove anything here. From my perspective that is possible, but I can’t write some sentences and prove it. It also seems possible to me, though far fetched, that stuff just began our of nothing. I mean ,what do I know about what is possible. But that’s all an aside.
I say, no. The universe could have been around forever, or it could be circular, or it could have come out of nothing, or any number of alternate possibilities.
I say that’s a good argument.
I say you’re right–that’s a paradoxical state of affairs.
While number 3 is a paradox, I don’t think the whole line of questioning is. As I pointed out, I think number 1 is flawed.
So you suppose it all just came to be. What made it possible for it to be. Maybe the big bang was energy released from a black hole created in another universe, which warped its inner space or ploughed through 3 + n dimensional space to expand into our universe. What universe did it come from? If it was a sea of universes, each bursting life from a previous universe - what enacted this sea of universes?
Are we not conscious? Do we not come from a heritage of consciousness?
It’s certainly possible that our universe came out of the other end of a black hole in another universe, and that universe from much the same, ad infinitum, but that leads us to the question of how this entire time structure came to be in the first place–and I say we are, once again, dealing with an atemporal context. The question is not what came before, but what grounds it all? And to that I have no answer, but if there is an answer out there somewhere, it shows that we aren’t irrevocably caught in a paradoxical conundrum–we don’t have to say there has to be a beginning yet at the same time there can’t be a beginning. A static atemporal foundation for the universe can work with both a temporally limited and a temporally infinite universe.
I think of a static atemporal foundation for the universe as just an explanation for how it can be in the first place–not how it came about, but how it is possible that it exists now. It’s like knowing the conclusion of an argument without understanding the premises–we are prone to ask “What grounds the conclusion?” and if we are then enlightened about the premises, we say “Ah, now I understand.” But the relation between the premises and the conclusion is not a temporal one–the premises don’t “cause” the conclusion–rather, they entail it. If we could figure out what underlies the existence of the universe in this static atemporal context, we probably would drop the need to look for origins at some first moment in time.
Somehow, I feel unsatisfied as though the original post was not really further progressed toward an answer . . . and accepting that it’s a pretty old question in the first place . . . and quite enlightened by some of the beautiful prose and insightful response being born from the question.
At the very least, this helps me re-think the question that I am asking. I want to know the static atemporal foundation for the universe. Not the “origin”
I try this thought experiment. Bob is a time traveler and he discovers how to go to just about any time he wants. Bob has no real limit, he can go anywhere in the future or past, and do it as much as he wants. Bob then discovers how to travel dimensions. So now it seems Bob can really travel anywhere.
Bob then has a family of time-and-dimension-travelers, and they go anywhere - and soon enough they go to Bob’s past wherever he was going in his travels. And they too proliferate into a whole heritage of time-and-dimension travelers. Because they are aware of each other’s abilities, they realize that they really have no certain end, no certain beginning, no certain “place” to exist, no certain way of being that they define as “us” . . . because it is all changeable.
Here I have all these infinite loops in which the actual origins begins to escape me. Somehow I know that there is still this place and time where all of these time-and-dimension travelers began. I wonder if the multi-verse is really this elaborate paradox of changes like the one above. Still, I feel unsatisfied to think that this does not have one origin.
I have another way I try to comprehend this.
It seems that as humans we think of oblivion as the default of the cosmos. If you eliminate a thing, or if you look for the origins of any single thing, you find a point of its nonexistence. But really, it has existence in only a different form.
Is the concept of oblivion ingrained in us simply because we have evolved to look at our surrounding night sky, which seems so much colder and darker than our earthly surroundings? If the default of the cosmos is . . . “stuff” or ever-expanding stuff . . . what convinces me so?
In this scenario, I would say the “origins” of all these time-and-dimension-travelers is Bob’s birth. It isn’t a temporal origin (although it does have a place in time when it happens), but a causal one–it is the first event which occurs that causes all the other events (children being born, time/dimension traveling, etc.) to occur.
This might be like the scenario of the cyclical universal in which the Big Bang causes a universe to expand out, and then under the influence of its own gravity, begin to contract again until it collapses in what scientists are predicting will be called the “Big Crunch”, and from there the whole thing starts over… but not exactly. In the cyclical/Big Crunch scenario, the original “cause” of the universe is itself caused by something that it caused. I.e. The Big Bang caused the Big Crunch (eventually) which in turn caused the Big Bang, etc. So there is no one cause which we can say started it all. There is one quite significant and unique cause within the chain, but we loose the right to call it a “first” cause when it causes other causes that in turn cause it.
In your scenario of Bob’s time-and-dimension-traveling family, if you had said that some of his grandchildren went back in time, introduced Bob’s parents to each other, and from there they fell in love, got married, and had Bob, then I would have to retract my statement that Bob’s birth counts as the original event which started it all. Then, I’d have no idea which event started it all.
Going with this, and assuming that the universe was predestined to have this temporal structure–these loops in time that Bob’s family travels through–then again, I would have to look for the underlying reason for this structure in trying to imagine some static atemporal foundation, something that explains why the universe has to have this structure.
And then, maybe you want to say that some of Bob’s children go back in time and kill his parents, rendering it impossible for Bob to even be born. Then what? Well, then we might have something like in Back to the Future: a change in a past event causes time to skew into a parallel dimension. So from the event of Bob’s grandchildren killing Bob’s parents, time splits into one path in which Bob’s parents remain alive and Bob is born, and another path in which Bob’s parents die and Bob is never born. These time travelers who kill Bob’s parents still remain alive in this splintered time path (they don’t have to disappear like Marty McFly does from his photograph) because they still have a causal reason for being there. Bob’s being born in the original time path still counts as the cause of why they’re there even if “there” is in new time path–that is, if you think of it in a static atemporal context, with time lines looping, bending, and splitting.
This is another can of worms altogether. I think we have the concept of nothingness or oblivion (as you call it) simply as a means to contrast things with. If we conceive of “apple”, then mentally we have also invented the category of “non-apples”. And if we take the ultimate substance of the universe to be “stuff”, then our minds will invent “non-stuff,” or nothingness.
Now there comes a point when some thinkers fall for a trick. When our minds invent these categories, they invent them as what I call “objectified”. That just means that we think of them as like objects–not that we take this literally, as in the idea of “friendship” is literally an object–we understand that some concepts are really abstract or immaterial–but we nevertheless like to think of them as “things” in some sense (you can see this in the way they take the position of the noun in our languages–as the noun, they are the “things” we’re talking about). But sometimes, some philosophers goof up and trick themselves into actually taking the objectification of their concepts literally. Thus, they end up imagining nothing to be a something–that empty space, or existence before the Big Bang (if there were such a thing) as being a something that is (or was) actually there.
It’s been great! Life (and attitudes and demeanor) have changed a lot.