quote:
We have been discussing your premise that "everything that hasn't existed for eternity must have a cause". Namely, we have been discussing that this is not an obvious assumption to make. It is perfectly reasonable and logical to recognize the possibility that there is something (such as the universe) that has not existed for all eternity but yet had no cause.
That's a pretty good premise. Science itself is all about understanding cause and effect. I'm trying to think of an example of an action which occurred with absolutely no cause but I'm coming up short. If you are proposing that this is possible (or even likely) then perhaps you should provide an example. At the very least I would find such an example interesting.
(EDIT: I should be more specific here and ask for a macro as opposed to micro example. I'd like to leave out quantum mechanics, for example. While the HUP allows for some strange behavior at small scales, the law of conservation of energy keeps these fluxuations from having any effect at a macro level. Also, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see HUP go through some major alterations. The fact that lasers contradict HUP seems pretty good evidence to me that it's fundamentally flawed. A good reference for this would be a recent book by Carver Mead: Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism. I highly recommend it if you're interested in a quantum description of electromagnetism.)
As far as the OP I found the question very interesting and I believe I can answer it with great certainty! The probability that God exists is either 0 or 1. There, I've ruled out an infinite number of values and reduced the field of choices down to two. I believe I've done my share of the work and I'll leave it to others to furhter narrow down the field.
This message has been edited by DrFrost, 05-03-2006 06:54 PM
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