????? writes:
quote:
HOw can you have somthing without a cause? Things don't just happen for no apparent reason.
If you read the quote carefully you would understand what Dr. Branden, and myself by proxy, are trying to say. Besides the gist of the rest of the post, which Percipient picked up on and already explained to you, this quote speaks specifically to the contradiction involved in demanding a cause for all existence. Note that 'all' here refers to existence in its entirety and not each object that exists individually.
Here is the larger context on the quote. It really isn't that difficult to understand.
quote:
Within the universe, the emergence of new entities can be explained in terms of the actions of entities that already exist. All actions presuppose the existence of entities that caused their emergence. All causality presupposes the existence of something that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of existence is to demand a contradiction: if the cause exists, it is part of existence; if it does not exist, it cannot be a cause. Causality presupposes existence, existence does not presuppose causality. Existence-not "God"-is the First Cause.
- Dr. Nathaniel Branden
It goes something like this:
Question: What is the cause of all existence?
Answer: X is the cause.
Question: But for X to be a cause, X has to exist. How can X be a cause if it doesn't yet exist?
If you think about this you will more than likely come to the following conclusion: either something exists or existed that didn't have a cause or 'existence' has always been (i.e infinite regression or something having always existed).
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He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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