infinite regress
Offline ok, i'm wondering if I could get a little help on this one. I don't know what to say really. I was in a class today and we were talking about thomas aquinas's 5 "proofs" that god exists. I had my copy of the god delusion right there infront of me, and argued that the first 3 of his proofs were all the same thing just stated another way, that all dealed with infinte regress. However the professor when talking about aquinas's first "proof" used the example of dominos. He said that if we were looking at a single domino on a line of dominos that went forever in both directions, the falling dominos at one end would never reach the domino that we were looking at. Yet since something has moved in our universe (the big bang i guess you could say) the line of dominos could not be infinite, therefore there must have been something that knocked the first one over (god). He pointed out that this "proof" just shows that there was a being that set everything in motion at one point in time, but does not give any reason to believe that being is still around. (deism if you will) I didn't know what to say to this. When I criticize theists for just wielding in god to end the infinite regress, they ask me the same question about the big bang. "So, where did that matter come from?" All I can think to say is "I don't know, but the difference between science and religion is that science will one day know, where as religion trys to stop any logical thinking by saying 'god did it'. "
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I think you've answered your own question. What is more logical? To state that this is a mystery which we should strive to find out. Or attribute it to a magical being, supposedly outside space and time.
Aquinas' infinte regress as attributed to the classical theistic God fails the Occam's Razor test so many times, attaching so many non sequiters I do not know where to begin. Not only that, it is completely illogical. The theist expects ex nihilo creation which breaks the first law of thermodynamics, which is essentially stating that they believe in magic. It is absurd.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
The worst problem is that this argument doesn't make anything simpler. Why does the universe need a first cause but god does not? It is special pleading.
Also, in his example of the infinite string of falling dominoes, he makes an error of assuming there is a first cause, by starting with the first domino. But for cause to be an infinite regress, there would not be a first cause. You could work backwards from any given point, but you would never reach any beginning.
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
Aquinas' first mover argument bases its dismissal of the possibility of infinite regress on a broken model of physics. Most people handle the idea of inifinity very poorly and have trouble seeing the problem with dismissing it outright.
Additionally, even if there was a first cause, it does not automatically become the Christian god.
And if a theist asks where matter came from, ask them where god came from. They'll likely say "he's eternal" and you can say "matter/energy is eternal". Claiming that everything needs a cause, then giving god a free pass on the requirement is special pleading.
-Triften
-Triften
I was thinking about this not too long ago. The theory of relativity came to mind. I thought about how matter bends spacetime and how, because of that, time is actually slower on the surface of a planet (like earth) relative to space at a distance from it. Then I thought about black holes. If you could get close to a black hole without having to worry about being spaghettified, time would slow rapidly as you grew nearer. At the center, at its singularity, time stops.
There are billions of black holes in the universe, and far more matter than could be held within all of them. At the beginning, before the big bang, if all that was concentrated into that one singularity, what would time be? Spacetime would be bent so much that time would essentially not exist within it. Outside of it, however, spacetime would be a flat plain (having no matter to obstruct it). And without matter, the problem of an infinite regress is non-existent, but within the singularity, can there be an infinite regress? Is it still a problem? Without time, do we need a beginning? I have no idea.
But whatever the answer, you're still faced with the problem of the big bang. What caused the explosion (or that rapid expansion) from the singularity? That does indeed need a cause. But as time wouldn't be an issue up until this point, and if an infinite regress isn't a problem without time, then I guess we could call the big bang 'the' beginning. And, though we don't know what caused the big bang, that is no reason to invoke intelligence.
I don't know how valid this is. It's just something I was thinking about.
My understanding of these things may be off. If so, someone please tell me. I am no physicist... just someone bored on the way home from work.
But, on the subject of God; if God can simply exist, why can't the universe? I like to avoid Dawkins' approach - God must be far more complex than the universe to have been able to create it - as theists think it easily answered by saying, "God exists outside of natural law." There's a lot to be said about the absurdity of that claim, but when you say, "If God can just exist, why can't the universe," I feel it puts the question in a whole new light.
But anyway, any comments on whether I made any sense at all or am way off the mark would be appreciated.
Flying Spaghetti Monster -- Great Almighty God? Or GREATEST Almighty God?