New member question about philosophy

[Darfius]

(1) It has been demonstrated that an infinite series of causes is possible. Actual infinities are a complete closed set and possible and used in physics to describe possible attributes of black holes. Our physical existence is possibly potentially infinite without regard to any actual infinity.

(2) The physical existence is possibly uncaused in and of itself as possibly eternal. and natural laws are possibly eternal.

You just said that something has been demonstrated and then failed to demonstrate it. You reverted to using "possibly's".

[37818]

(1) It has been demonstrated that an infinite series of causes is possible. Actual infinities are a complete closed set and possible and used in physics to describe possible attributes of black holes. Our physical existence is possibly potentially infinite without regard to any actual infinity.

(2) The physical existence is possibly uncaused in and of itself as possibly eternal. and natural laws are possibly eternal.

Your items are both metaphysical arguments.

[37818]

That an infinite series of causes is impossible is not an assumption. An infinite series of causes would require an infinite series of events. Another way of stating an infinite series of events would be infinite finiteness. It's meaningless gibberish.

An infinite series of causes with no first cause is metaphysical argument. And from a metaphysical point of view cannot be disproven to be a physical possibility. Expand collapse rebound expand with no beginning of the series. If that is what has always happened, it is beyond our current understanding of physics.

[Darfius]

An infinite series of causes with no first cause is metaphysical argument. And from a metaphysical point of view cannot be disproven to be a physical possibility. Expand collapse rebound expand with no beginning of the series. If that is what has always happened, it is beyond our current understanding of physics.

You're not understanding. I'm not sure what a "metaphysical argument" is, but logically, an infinite finite cannot exist. Just as a yes no cannot exist or a black white. It's either/or. Pretty simple to grasp, but as I said, some people who hate God like to pretend otherwise. "Well maybe we don't need logic if it means I can avoid God." Sorry, kiddo, facts don't care about your feelings. (That last part is to the "atheists", 37818, not you).

[37818]

You're not understanding. I'm not sure what a "metaphysical argument" is, but logically, an infinite finite cannot exist. Just as a yes no cannot exist or a black white. It's either/or. Pretty simple to grasp, but as I said, some people who hate God like to pretend otherwise. "Well maybe we don't need logic if it means I can avoid God." Sorry, kiddo, facts don't care about your feelings. (That last part is to the "atheists", 37818, not you).

Thank you. Metaphysical is beyond physical empirical testing.

Logically an infinite series can exist. They do exist mathematically. Show the logic where an infinite series of causes cannot exist. It is a metaphysical argument. [Theologically our heaven and earth has a unique beginning. Genesis 1:1. And such an infinite past is not in evidence. If it were in evidence John 1:3 would cover it.]

[Darfius]

Thank you. Metaphysical is beyond physical empirical testing.

Logically an infinite series can exist. They do exist mathematically. Show the logic where an infinite series of causes cannot exist. It is a metaphysical argument. [Theologically our heaven and earth has a unique beginning. Genesis 1:1. And such an infinite past is not in evidence. If it were in evidence John 1:3 would cover it.]

I know what metaphysical means, but an argument is either sound or not, not "metaphysical" or not. Infinities can exist in mathematics precisely because neither time nor space is involved. The infinite cannot be bound into a "series" like a chain of cause and effect would represent.

[37818]

I know what metaphysical means, but an argument is either sound or not, not "metaphysical" or not. Infinities can exist in mathematics precisely because neither time nor space is involved. The infinite cannot be bound into a "series" like a chain of cause and effect would represent.

You are merely asserting that an infinite series of causes are not possible. You have provided no sound argument that that is so [not possible].

Now God could either have made an infinite set of creations or one unique one. The latter is in evidence. For us that is settled. [Issue: God always has created, there being no first creation (having never changed in that way). Or God never created, then did, causing a beginning of created things (changing from not creating anything to creating all created things.]

What is not settled is that an infinite series of causes with no first cause is impossible. There is no logical reason that can not be possible. [except for the fact that seems not to be the case.]

[Darfius]

You are merely asserting that an infinite series of causes are not possible. You have provided no sound argument that that is so [not possible].

Now God could either have made an infinite set of creations or one unique one. The latter is in evidence. For us that is settled. [Issue: God always has created, there being no first creation (having never changed in that way). Or God never created, then did, causing a beginning of created things (changing from not creating anything to creating all created things.]

What is not settled is that an infinite series of causes with no first cause is impossible. There is no logical reason that can not be possible. [except for the fact that seems not to be the case.]

I have provided the argument, you just don't understand it. Infinite and finite are mutually exclusive terms. There cannot be an infinity of finites for the same reason there can't be a yes no or a black white. It's either/or.

[37818]

I have provided the argument, you just don't understand it. Infinite and finite are mutually exclusive terms. There cannot be an infinity of finites for the same reason there can't be a yes no or a black white. It's either/or.

Yes. Finite and infinite are indeed mutually exclusive terms. From an infinite past (no beginning) would require infinite finite causes. There would have been no first finite cause. All causes are finite. Your argument that infinite finite causes cannot have taken place for the same reason black cannot be white at the same time is a non sequitur. The series of causes do not take place at the same time. They are a sequence of causes. Only a current effect would be present at any one time.

[Darfius]

Yes. Finite and infinite are indeed mutually exclusive terms. From an infinite past (no beginning) would require infinite finite causes. There would have been no first finite cause. All causes are finite. Your argument that infinite finite causes cannot have taken place for the same reason black cannot be white at the same time is a non sequitur. The series of causes do not take place at the same time. They are a sequence of causes. Only a current effect would be present at any one time.

I doubt this made sense to you, let alone to the rest of us. Kindly explain what "sequence" took place before time began to exist. The infinite cannot be broken up into "sequences." Sequences, segments and generally anything to do with time are inherently and exclusively finite functions.

[Sparko]

I hate to do it but I agree with Darfius on this. You can't have an infinite series of causes and effects.

From William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument, discussing an infinite series:

Ghazali has a second, independent argument for the beginning of the universe. The series of past events, Ghazali observes, has been formed by adding one event after another. The series of past events is like a sequence of dominoes falling one after another until the last domino, today, is reached. But, he argues, no series which is formed by adding one member after another can be actually infinite. For you cannot pass through an infinite number of elements one at a time.

This is easy to see in the case of trying to count to infinity. No matter how high you count, there is always an infinity of numbers left to count.

But if you can’t count to infinity, how could you count down from infinity? This would be like someone’s claiming to have counted down all the negative numbers, ending at zero: . . ., -3, -2, -1, 0. This seems crazy. For before he could count 0, he would have to count -1, and before he could count -1, he would have to count -2, and so on, back to infinity. Before any number could be counted an infinity of numbers will have to have been counted first. You just get driven back and back into the past, so that no number could ever be counted.

But then the final domino could never fall if an infinite number of dominoes had to fall first. So today could never be reached. But obviously here we are! This shows that the series of past events must be finite and have a beginning.

Ghazali sought to heighten the impossibility of forming an infinite past by giving illustrations of the absurdities that would result if it could be done. For example, suppose that for every one orbit that Saturn completes around the sun Jupiter completes two. The longer they orbit, the further Saturn falls behind. If they continue to orbit forever, they will approach a limit at which Saturn is infinitely far behind Jupiter. Of course, they will never actually arrive at this limit.

But now turn the story around: suppose Jupiter and Saturn have been orbiting the sun from eternity past. Which will have completed the most orbits? The answer is that the number of their orbits is exactly the same: infinity! (We can’t slip out of this argument by saying that infinity is not a number. In modern mathematics it is a number, the number of elements in the set {0, 1, 2, 3, . . . }.) But that seems absurd, for the longer they orbit, the greater the disparity grows. So how does the number of orbits magically become equal by making them orbit from eternity past?

Another illustration: suppose we meet someone who claims to have been counting down from eternity past and is now finishing: . . . -3, -2, -1, 0! Whew! Why, we may ask, is he just finishing his countdown today? Why didn’t he finish yesterday or the day before? After all, by then an infinite amount of time had already elapsed. So if the man were counting at a rate of one number per second, he’s already had an infinite number of seconds to finish his countdown. He should already be done! In fact, at any point in the past, he has already had infinite time and so should already have finished. But then at no point in the past can we find the man finishing his countdown, which contradicts the hypothesis that he has been counting from eternity.

Alexander Pruss and Robert Koons have recently defended an engaging contemporary version of Ghazali’s argument called the Grim Reaper Paradox. There are infinitely many Grim Reapers (whom we may identify as gods, so as to forestall any physical objections). You are alive at midnight. Grim Reaper 1 will strike you dead at 1:00 a.m. if you are still alive at that time. Grim Reaper 2 will strike you dead at 12:30 a.m. if you are still alive then. Grim Reaper 3 will strike you dead at 12:15 a.m., and so on. Such a situation seems clearly conceivable—given the possibility of an actually infinite number of things—but leads to an impossibility: you cannot survive past midnight, and yet you cannot be killed by any Grim Reaper at any time. Pruss and Koons show how to re-formulate the paradox so that the Grim Reapers are spread out over infinite time rather than over a single hour, for example, by having each Grim Reaper swing his scythe on January 1 of each past year if you have managed to live that long.

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writ...ical-argument/

[carpedm9587]

That post you linked to didn't debunk anything, even where it was coherent. First he calls cause and effect "intuition" rather than the foundation of all logic. Fail.

Cause preceeding effect is a reality of our physical universe, Darf - not a principal of logic (as far as I know). As a descriptor of our physical universe, we do not know if it applies outside our universe, and we are seeing indications that retro-causality (effect temporarily preceeding cause) may actually be a reality in quantum mechanics.

Then he says you "can't create the material from the immaterial", but that begs the question.

I would agree with that assessment.

The strength of the argument is that the material universe requires a personal Cause precisely to explain the ontological gap between the material and the immaterial. In other words, since all matter had a beginning point, what preceded that beginning point must have been immaterial, but personal so as to choose an effect ontologically different from itself.

All matter in our universe had a beginning point. That is what we have experience of. What we do not know is if there is anything outside our universe, and if those same principles apply there. That was part of the point of the author.

Then he tries to mumble about multiverses, but that only removes the problem of infinite regression a step back and doesn't solve it.

The problem with infinite regression is a metaphysical one - not necessarily a physical one. Indeed, I came up with a fairly simple mathematical equation that creates an infinite series in botht he positive and negative directions, so it would seem to me that an inifinite series IS possible.

So the reason the argument proves the God of the Bible rather than any other god is because the Cause must be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, immaterial and personal. In other words, He must be perfect. The Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't perfect.

I have never said anything about the FSM, so I'm not sure why that is relevant. And the god you describe a) doesn't appear to match the "god of the bible." and b) does not seem to be significantly different from Allah or the Judaic god (which doesn't include the trinity), and c) is, in many way, inconsistent with the universe we live in - which is why I do not believe it exists.

[carpedm9587]

The two assumptions the KCA makes: 1) An infinite series of causes to be impossible. 2) The then necessary first cause, uncaused cause to have the identity of God.

Actually - it does not do the second, AFAIK.

[carpedm9587]

Thank you. Metaphysical is beyond physical empirical testing.

Logically an infinite series can exist. They do exist mathematically. Show the logic where an infinite series of causes cannot exist. It is a metaphysical argument. [Theologically our heaven and earth has a unique beginning. Genesis 1:1. And such an infinite past is not in evidence. If it were in evidence John 1:3 would cover it.]

Actually, metaphysics means: "the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space."

[shunyadragon]

You just said that something has been demonstrated and then failed to demonstrate it. You reverted to using "possibly's".

Reread the post and respond coherently. A remedial English lesson may be in order.

In English it is possibilities.