Rosenberg: Cosmogony, Causality, and Argument

In presenting an argument, it is helpful to list the premises and state the conclusion like this:

Premise 1

Premise 2

Premise 3

.

.

.

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Conclusion

Be precise and explicit. This is how we present arguments. For one thing, the reader will know exactly what the argument is. And secondly, the argument is easier to evaluate when made explicit. I say this because this is something that you have not done and therefore, I am left to decipher your reasoning. This task has been difficult for me because your reasoning is not all there. These two arguments are what I have been able to figure out from your posting.

Argument 1:

P1. Nothing in the universe creates itself.

P2. ???

C. God exists.

Argument 2:

P2. Everything that exists is the result of a process.

P4. The universe exists.

P5. The universe is the result of a process. (from P3 and P4, modus ponens)

P6. ????

C. God exists.

These two arguments are the best that I can make out from your posting. And neither of them work.

Consider this second argument. Assuming P3 - P4, what follows is P5 that the universe is the result of a process. You want to conclude that God exists but this conclusion does not follow directly. There are additional assumptions that you must make in order to reach this conclusion of God’s existence. And these assumptions need to be made explicit. You need to connect the dots so to speak. Now, I am not saying that these premises need to be shown to be true with 100% certainty. You do not need to “prove” your conclusion in this way. It is not expected, and most likely, is not even possible. Your failure is at a level much more basic. You fail to provide these necessary lines of argument to begin with! IDo you see the question marks in place of your missing premises? Aside from this, you have two additional complications. First, I don’t think you can accept the truth of P3 that everything that exists is the result of a process. This is because P5 would apply to God as well. Do you believe that God is a result of a process? Probably not. Second, you have P5 that the universe is the result of a process. But this is not consistent with another one of your beliefs, namely, that the universe began to exist. Here is why. In order for a process to occur, time is needed. Perhaps not all processes need to be physical (i.e. mental processes), but indeed all processes need to be temporal in nature. So if the universe (including time) had an origin, then it is not possible for the universe to be the result of a process.

So now let’s look at your attempted first argument. We have P1 that nothing in the universe creates itself. Again, you have this problem connecting the dots. How do you get from this premise to the conclusion that God exists? I do not follow. Even if this proposition is true and nothing in the universe creates itself, so what? What now? This says nothing about the creation of the universe itself.

It might be worth mentioning that there are cases in which it is acceptable to leave out necessary lines of argument. I’ll give a couple examples:

• Socrates is human, therefore, Socrates is mortal.
• All metals expand when heated, therefore, iron expands when heated.

The necessary premises in these cases are left out of the argument. But they are also BLATANTLY OBVIOUS! We know what is missing-- the proposition ‘all men are mortal’ for the first one argument and ‘iron is a metal’ for the second-- and we accept the truth of these propositions. In contrast, the premises which are missing from your arguments are not at all obvious. This is the third posting of mine where I ask you to provide reasons for your your position. In doing so, I was hoping to get a structured argument, i.e., a list of premises and conclusion. If I was unclear about this in the past, I apologize. I hope you take note of the three main points that I’ve tried to emphasize:

• In order to have a case, you need to have an argument.

• An argument is a list of premises and a conclusion.

• There are missing premises in you argument.

I hope now that you can see why this has been so frustrating for me!!

I’ll move on. Even though you did not formulate your argument as such, I think the following is what you are trying to argue. In any case, this is the most popular version of the cosmological argument and I will attempt respond against it:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

It is then argued that this cause is God.

In the past, I dealt with the philosophical a priori defense of this argument. I will try, this time, to respond to the scientific defense of this argument. In responding to this argument, I hope to shed some more light the issue that you are concerned about.

The first thing we can ask is whether this is a valid argument. One standard response is that this argument fails because of equivocation. What does it mean for a thing to begin to exist? Well, there are two senses in which a thing can begins to exist. First, a thing can begin to exist in time. And second, a thing can begin to exist with time. These are two distinct concepts. In the first sense of the term, a thing begins to exist in that it is result of a mass/energy transformation. Cheez Whiz, to take an example from you, is of this type. We start with pre-existing stuff like cheese, oil, salt, etc. The ingredients are then mixed together and processed in order to create the product- i.e. Cheez Whiz. So Cheez Whiz did begin to exist, but only in the sense that it is a transformation of pre-existing stuff. All causes that we experience in ordinary life are ultimately causes of this type. I feel I need to repeat this. Ordinary causes are mass/energy transformations that occur within our ordinary context of space and time. Now consider the creation of the universe. According to the standard Big Bang model, time/matter does not come into existence until the occurrence Big Bang which took place sometime between 12 and 15 billion years ago. It should be clear that if it is the case that the universe began to exist, then its ‘beginning to exist’ is of a type that is completely different than anything we are used to. In premise 1 (whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence), the ‘begins to exist’ is of the first sense. And in premise 2 (the universe began to exist), the “begins to exist” is of the second sense. If it is supported by evidence that whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence, it is supported only in the first sense of ‘begins to exist’ and not in this second sense. This would leave, unsupported, the claim that the universe itself has a cause of its existence.

You might argue that this equivocation in the notion of ‘begins to exist’ is not fatal to this argument. Perhaps the knowledge of premise 1 rests on a priori grounds, rather than on empirical evidence. If this is the case, then the argument stands regardless of the sense in which we use ‘begins to exist.’ However, I do not believe this to be the case.

You give the example of Cheez Whiz. I agree with you here. It is obvious that Cheez Whiz cannot not simply pop into existence uncaused out of nothing. But why is this so obvious? Perhaps it is because we happen to live within the context of this world and have experience and knowledge of the nature in which it operates. We know where Cheez Whiz comes from and it doesn’t come into existence uncaused from nothing. Now think about the universe and ask yourself this. Is it intuitively obvious that the universe did not simply pop into existence uncaused? I do not think this is obvious. Unlike the Cheez Whiz case, we have no context in which we can relate the coming into existence of the universe. The origin of the universe is a special case completely unrelated to the origin of Cheez Whiz.

What part do you find unintuitive about Cheez Whiz popping into existence uncaused out of nothing? Is it just the fact that something began to exist without a cause? Or might it be the fact that it came from nothing? We can try to figure this out by separating these two concepts. Imagine a God who, instead of creating our universe, created Cheez Whiz. Cheez Whiz just popped into existence out of nothing. If this is a violation of your intuition here, then it would not be because something came into existence uncaused. It would be because something came into existence out of nothing. Now imagine the universe beginning to exist uncaused out of nothing. If this is counter-intuitive, might it be because it came from nothing or that it has no past?

Premise 1 is also rejected on scientific grounds. It is believed that there are quantum events that don’t have causes, i.e., quantum vacuum fluctuations, radioactive decay, etc. Perhaps this sounds ridiculous but it may just be the way that the world is. It’s also not the only crazy consequence of modern science. From Carl Sagan:

As I walk along, time—as measured by my wristwatch or my aging process—slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: Matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the Universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: Once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunneling, they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe. (The Demon Haunted World, p302)

If anything, I think this should tell us that our intuitions on the matter are not at all reliable.

It is also worth pointing out, once more, that there is no violation of the conservation of mass/energy. Once we take the negative energy of gravity into consideration, we see that the total energy of the universe is zero. A universe from nothing is not a violation of the laws of physics.

There is another sense in which it might be thought that the universe needs an explanation. There is this idea that the natural unadulterated, spontaneous state of the universe is a state of nothingness. The fact that the universe began to exist would then need an explanation. But if we remove this assumption, then the existence of the universe becomes less puzzling. Perhaps the natural spontaneous state of the universe is one in which something exists.

In a past posting I presented a case from Quentin Smith. Given that I think this is a possible solution worth consideration paired with the fact that you failed to give an appropriate response, I will restate this here. Consider, at this moment, we live in a state of the universe. What is the cause of this present state of the universe? The answer would be, of course, that this present state of the universe is the result of the previous states. We can then ask, what is the cause of some previous state? The answer would be that this previous state is the result of the states prior to it. We can say, that for any moment in the past, there are prior states of the universe which explain it. Of course, the soundness of this reasoning depends on which interpretation of the Big Bang cosmology is the correct one. There are two sets of interpretations. The first group assumes that the singularity is an actual state of the universe and the second group denies that this singularity is an actual state of the universe. So which is it? Well I think the current consensus is that there is no actual singularity. An actual singularity would imply an impossible state of affairs with infinite density and with zero volume. Instead, we should think of the singularity as being a limit to which the universe approaches as we look back in time. The first temporal interval of the universe is therefore open on one end. And so there we have it: the answer to our problem of the cause of the universe. The universe is a set containing an infinite number of instantaneous states and each one of these states is the result of previously existing states. You want to ask about the cause of the universe as a whole, i.e, what is the cause of this set of states? Well, there is no extra cause. Similarly, if Jack and Jill are each caused to exist then there is no need for an extra cause of the set [Jack, Jill]. What is the cause of the set [Jack, Jill]? Well, it is precisely the same as the cause of Jack and the cause of Jill.

I have shown reasons to doubt premise 1. The truth of premise 2 can also be questioned. What if there was something before the Big Bang? Scientists are now beginning to ask this question and new theories are starting to emerge in which the Big Bang is not the beginning.

Here is one model to consider:

http://www.science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2007-news/Bojowald6-2007.htm/

I don’t know enough about the physics to evaluate all these different theories. What I do know is that the tables are turning within the scientific community. What came before the Big Bang? This used to be a question which we couldn’t even ask. Sir Roger Penrose, in 2007, recalls a time when this used to be the case:

You see, there shouldn't be anything before the Big Bang. In fact, if anybody has asked me, say, two years ago what happened before the Big Bang I would have given the official answer which was the same answer which was given by Stephen Hawking about a year and a half ago... before the Big Bang there wasn't any time and so you couldn't even talk about 'before', it didn't make any sense. So that's probably what I would have said too.

So the fact that I'm going to say something different this time indicates that...well, as a scientist you're allowed to change your mind from time to time. (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1984044.htm)

Scientists are now reconsidering. They are beginning to ask this once forbidden question. It might turn out that the universe did not begin at the Big Bang. Or perhaps it did. The jury is still out.

There is a need to modify the standard Big Bang theory. This standard model is based on Einstein's general theory of relativity which does not apply to the quantum level. This is a defect of the theory because at the earliest stages of the universe, quantum effects are crucial. What is needed is a theory that unites both quantum mechanics and general relativity. Until such a theory is developed, we cannot know whether or not the universe had a beginning.

Also, Dr. Avalos pointed out earlier that the bible does not support creation ex nihilo. If the universe arose from some pre existing stuff, then there is a transformative cause of the universe, not a divine cause.

The last leg of the argument is to show that the cause of the universe is God. There is more to be said here. I'll leave this for next time.