Uncreated Creator Argument

It's extremely difficult for people to see past their own bias. People can hold completely contradictory opinions simultaneously and not even realize it.In this case, your confusion is caused by your observation that the "uncaused cause" argument relies on special pleading. Those who actually make that argument do not (and to a degree cannot) see how special pleading is invoked.Positing that therefore while simultaneously positing that is the very definition of special pleading. Most theists simply refuse to see it as such, or rationalize it away by saying "God is special."

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It never occurs to them that their definition of God as a "special case" is completely arbitrary, and could just as easily be applied to the universe itself for a more parsimonious worldview.

Not everything that has an end has a beginning. This ray:<----------------------------*has no beginning, but it has an end (assuming that time moves from left to right).Your assertion that "an eternal God is the only thing that really makes sense" is pretty flimsy. By whose standard of "sense?" Why does an eternal god have more validity than a finite god? Why does any god have more validity than no god at all? Why do you believe that "making sense" to a human being has anything to do with reality?Further, how does causality apply outside of the Universe? Time is an aspect of the Universe, just as North and East are aspects of a globe. Causality requires a "before," an earlier point in time for the cause to occupy so that the effect can follow. How does this apply when no "before" exists? It's like asking what's farther North than the North Pole - the question is self-contradictory. How then can something "cause" that which itself encompasses causality?What reason do you have to assume that the Universe has a cause?What allows you to assert that everything has a cause, yet simultaneously assert that "God" has no cause? If "God" can be an exception to causality, why then cannot the Universe? If you have no objective reason, then are you not engaged in special pleading? If not, why not?

You're still assuming that the Universe "was brought into existence."Time is a component of the Universe. Thus, the Universe has literally existed for all time - at every time coordinate, the Universe exists.The Universe simply exists. If there is a "cause" behind the Universe, either our concept of time is completely off, or there is an additional time-like dimension in which our Universe rests. In any case, asking what "caused" the Universe assumes that there is anything other than the Universe, which is an unfounded assumption. The Universe can simply be.

How is it special pleading? I never claimed that all things required a cause without exception.All of the objects we observe exist as the end (so far) result of a chain of causality reaching back to the beginning of time.The Universe itself, so far as we know, may or may not exist in a time-like dimension allowing for any such chain of events.Remember, our perception of time is illusory, based on the fact that the electrochemical reactions in our brains that collectively form our consciousness require increasing entropy over the dimension of time. This is why we experience time as a chain of events in the direction of increasing entropy. But time is just another dimension, like width or length. The Universe exists at all points of time, and adjacent points are related - this gives us the illusion of causality, because we experience those points sequentially.Why does the Universe then require a "cause," if there is no earlier coordinate of time to provide a causal event? Why does causality apply to the very structure that results in the concept?Let's use the usual globe example that we use all the time for creationists. In this case, let's use one that has raised features representing mountains. As one moves North to South (representing time), you'll notice that the globe has different features at certain coordinates of space and time, and that these features seem to be related to one another - the textures mountains do not suddenly go from sea level to their maximum height instantly, but rather are preceded by similar features at previous coordinates in space and time. If you could only experience time in that single direction, you might say that the textured areas represented chains of causality. From the "outside," we see that the structure simply exists, and each point is related to adjacent points.I don't think all things require a cause. I think that all things inside of time adhere to causality, because since matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so long as lesser and greater coordinates of time exist, each unit of matter/energy has a past and a future.Since the universe does not exist inside of time any more than a globe exists inside of longitude, causality ceases to have meaning.Special pleading requires that I arbitrarily choose to exclude something from a mechanism that applies to other functionally identical somethings. In this case, there is nothing arbitrary about it - the Universe itself is demonstrably not the same as the matter/energy that partially comprise it. Causality may apply (if our concept of time is incorrect, or if additional time-like dimensions exist "outside" of the Universe), or it may not. We have insufficient information to make such a determination, and so to assert that the Universe itself necessarily must adhere to causality, a concept that makes absolutely no sense without the dimensions of the universe itself, is completely unfounded. It's akin to insisting that latitude and longitude exist "outside" of the globe, and that there is something farther North than the North Pole.This, of course, is all my understanding of time. cavediver or Son Goku are more than welcome to point out any errors in my comprehension.

The correct conclusion is not that parallel Universes or Creators cannot "just be," The correct conclusion is that there is no reason to think they do exist without evidence supporting such assertions.Saying that the Universe "just is" is simply an application of parsimony - we know that the Universe exists. We don't know or even have evidence suggesting that a "Creator" or parallel Universe exists. So even though we can say that any of these can "just be," parsimony requires us to use the fewest necessary terms, and so unsupported assertions are discarded. "It just is" is a viable explanation for those things that we cannot yet explain with greater detail. Such an explanation in this case is not meant to imply that no further investigation is warranted; quite the opposite. It is, however, intended to point out that when we say "we don't have enough information to say more," that's exactly what we mean. Contemplating extra-Universal forces essentially requires discarding all of what we think we know about reality. That the Universe exists does not imply a Creator - it could simply exist. It could be impossible for the Universe to not exist. It could be possible for any other number of speculative assertions...but none of them are actually implied because we have insufficient information to discuss such implications.We don't know what "causes" Universes to exist, or if such a term even makes sense. Within the dimensions of the Universe, we know that they certainly don't. Asserting that the Universe requires a "cause" requires knowledge about the Universe that, quite frankly, we just don't have. It assumes, for one, that non-existence is a possibility. Is it? How do you know?Most of these debates come down to the question of whether existence or nonexistence is preferable, or the "default state." If the "default state" is nonexistence, it would seem that some event would be required to "cause" existence. This fits with human common snese - at our scale, a chair does not exist until a person makes the chair. But what if existence is the "default state?" What if it's impossible for the Universe to not exist, that the perturbations of the quantum field that collectively manifest as dimensions and matter and energy are inevitable? The answer is that we simply don't know - and that attempting to ascertain the facts accurately using human "common sense" and notions that necessarily only apply in a dimensional construct that includes a linear time-like dimension is foolhardy.

That's why science is tentative. We can't tentatively conclude that extraneous entities definitely do not exist - that would require proving a negative. We simply acknowledge that there is no reason to think that one of those unsupported possibilities is true, because to pick one of several unsupported possibilities is arbitrary and requires special pleading.We do, however, have one basic piece of evidence: the Universe exists. We don't know that is "just is," we simply know that there is no rational reason to conclude that causality necessarily applies to the Universe itself in the same way that it applies to objects in the Universe, since the dimension of time that gives causality meaning is a property of the Universe.There may not even be an "outside" to the Universe at all.So, given that we don't have enough information to support any extraneous entity "outside" of the Universe, the explanation with the fewest terms is simply that the Universe "is." This explanation should be tentatively preferred pending additional information. It's not that stuff "outside" of the unvierse doesn't exist - it's that those particular questions don't make sense.In the set of numbers:{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8...}which number comes before 0?That doesn't mean that this number set is all that exists - it simply means that the question is invalid, just like asking what is "North" of the North Pole.It also means that, given that the numbers in this set are all we are aware of or have evidence for, it is irrational to conclude that there is a "cause" (or preceding number) for 0, despite that all of the remaining numbers have a number preceding them.With the Universe and T=0, we also have to deal with the curvature of spacetime, and that further complicates matters to a degree that I'll defer to cavediver and Son Goku for any sort of explanation. When the warping of space and time approaches the infinite...well, that's part of the reason we have a singularity at T=0. Why would you conclude that?I don't see any information that allows us to conclude that there is more to existence than our Universe. If the "default state" is existence, that doesn't necessarily mean that other things must exist as well - our Universe may encompass all of existence.Or it may not. We don't know...but we do know that our Universe exists, and that additional entities without supporting evidence violate parsimony.

Inaccurate, at least with regards to this discussion. Consider the following:

quote:

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A

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{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}

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What number comes before 0 in the number set?The question doesn't make sense, because there is no number below 0 in the number set.Does nothing exist other than the number set?I see an A.Asking "what came before the Universe" is a nonsense question because it attempts to use the parameters of the Universe to apply to things outside of the Universe. To continue the analogy, within the number set there are only numbers, no letters, and the question asks specifically for a number - in the question of a "cause" for the Universe, you're asking for an event in a time coordinate that doesn't exist.It's true that existence and non-existence are mutually exclusive, either/or, black/white binary descriptors. But you have to ask the right question to get the right answer. The question "what caused the Universe" is the wrong question, because it requires things like "events" and "time" that don't necessarily apply in the same way "outside" of our Universe.What number comes before 0 in the number set?That question doesn't make sense. You could say that no number exists before 0 in the number set.Does anything outside of the number set exist?Yes. There's an A.We don't know enough about reality as a whole, or even just our own Universe, to say much of anything about the possibilities surrounding the Universe and its origins; the Big Bang, remember, is not a theory of origins but rather a model of the Universe immediately after T=0 and of its continued expansion. Our Universe may be unique, or it may be one among many, or even an infinite number of other Universes. Our Universe may or may not exist "in" some sort of "super-Universe" with a time-like dimension that allows for an analogue of a "cause" for our Universe, or it may not.We're at the point where we're speculating, and our guesses are barely-educated. When someone says "there must be a cause for the Universe," they're placing a restriction on the properties of the Universe with no basis for such a restriction. It's even more important to acknowledge what we don't know than to make assumptions based on what we think we might know, and we do know from advanced physics that relying on human "common sense" and experience is unlikely to result in accuracy.The Universe may simply exist, and there could be nothing else at all. There may be some "cause" of some sort. There are any number of speculative possibilities, and we simply don't know enough to be able to pick one. The most parsimonious answer right now is "the Universe exists."