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Originally posted by The sceptical Atheist:
QM says that things are not determined beforehand.

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I know what you mean, but QM does not say 'anything goes'. If I am perverse enough to choose a different operator, then the outcome is not determined, and I must expand my state vector into the complete set of the eigenstates, and do the dot products to get the coefficients corresponding to the probabilities.

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Originally posted by The sceptical Atheist:
Okay, I will come clean. This is my real view on the subject: I don't care. I am not concerned with what was before the universe.

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The preceding trucated quote is in the interest of avoiding overly-long posts.
Anyone who wants to refer back may do so.

S.A., please don't feel I'm trying to back you into a corner about this. It's just that when I toss this subject out, you throw it back so well.

To be honest, I am coming to the conclusion that Empiricism is an inadequate epistemology because, as we agree, one can't know anything about what happened 'before' the Big Bang. In other words, here is a fundamental question that empiricism cannot address.

I don't think it is sufficient to merely state that if we cannot observe something then it is irrelavant or non-existent, which is the basic dogma of empiricism. Whatever gave rise to the BB is surely neither.

Occam's Razor is applied to choose the simpler explanation. Does either an Uncaused Cause (God) or an Uncaused Effect (the Universe) really qualify?

So, on the question of the first cause, we have:

1. Something all Good, all Mercy all Love that you say existed before the universe.
2. A contiunuation of what we observe now and that we now occurred at least to a tiny portion of a second after the big bang to a point just before that second.

Given that there is evidence for 2. available to us now, and no evidence for 1. Which is the more possible explanation?

For 1. We need to work out how God came into being. He is greater than the universe, so saying "Empiricism isn't effective because you can't explain the first cause" is silly. You are proposing that a thing greater than the universe is the first cause. You then speculate that this entity is eternal, and so intelligence, goodness, mercy and love existed before the universe. That is totally unwarranted.

I say that a quantum fluctuation caused the universe and that there has been no such thing as intelligence, goodness, mercy and love until humans arrived. I claim that for the first 6 billion (roughly) years only physical laws have directed the evolution of the universe. I claim that when life started on this planet there was no intelligence existing. I claim that intelligence only arrived in the universe with the first multicelled animals. I claim that concepts such as goodness, mercy and love have only been around as long as humans have.

If you have no evidence to say that merrcy existed before life on earth, then citing God as a first cause fails.

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SA:
1. Something all Good, all Mercy all Love that you say existed before the universe.

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I'm pretty sure that I had taken care to explain that I am *not* arguing for Theism but am exploring the limits of Material Monism. I am no longer convinced that it is as cut-and-dried as I used to think. What I am suggesting about Theism and Athiesm are not mutually-exclusive.

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SA:
Given that there is evidence for (2.) available to us now, and no evidence for 1. Which is the more possible explanation?

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I believe that Alan pointed out that the only effects observable from the BB is post-inflationary? The rest is theoretical framework. And I think that each has internal contradictions which gives advantage to neither.

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SA:
I say that a quantum fluctuation caused the universe....

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Here is the heart of it. You posit that the empirical evidence and the theory derived from the study of QM is applicable to the state that gave rise to the BB. You also say that this chain of events is uncaused while cause-and-effect is at the heart of empiricism and rationality.

So, on the one hand, you are claiming knowledge of the First Event using empirical evidence of quantum fluctuation, yet on the other hand, you are denying the empirical evidence of cause and effect and positing an Uncaused Event. Why does one type of empirical evidence hold but not the other? Is this not contradiction? Is there any evidence whatsoever that what we have observed of QM is valid in the pre-BB state and that cause and effect is not?

All I am saying is that the basis of Atheism is as inherently contradictory as Theism and to accept either as a worldview takes faith. (that dirty word)

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SA:
the introduction of a hyper intelligence that begs the question "what caused that?" in a bigger way than a quantum fluctuaction does.

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Hmm, to digress down the theological path for a moment, anything eternal has no need of a cause. But that is one reason I consider both worldviews to be equally contradictory.

Thanks for the ride. If this isn't the direction you wish to take this thread I will desist. But, damn, it's fun.

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Debye:
(SNIPPED due to space and my inability to find anything wrong with what is said.)
However, even appealing to QM, the choice and reason argument remains. So now the bunch of atoms has some fuzzy probability of getting different answers. I'm sorry, I still don't see why 2 + 2 is 4. What do you mean you line them up and count them. You are atoms. How do atoms count atoms? Beats me.

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From a study of simple animals, we know how simple nervous systems control the sense data that they receive and motor functions of the body parts. In higher animals, such as insects we are aware that behaviour is controlled by nerves, hormones and pheromones. In higher invertebrates (such as molluscs) we can see how the brain works when learning a maze. This also shows that memory is possible. We can measure intelligence in vertebrates and study the hand/brain co-ordination in apes. We can use MR scanners to see the physical parts of the brain that are used in tasks and we can study brain damaged people to see what effect brain damage has on different parts of the brain.

We know that mathematics and spatial awareness is processed in one half of the brain and that linguistic ability is processed in the other.

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Willburger:
S.A., please don't feel I'm trying to back you into a corner about this. It's just that when I toss this subject out, you throw it back so well.
To be honest, I am coming to the conclusion that Empiricism is an inadequate epistemology because, as we agree, one can't know anything about what happened 'before' the Big Bang. In other words, here is a fundamental question that empiricism cannot address.

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Don't worry, Willy. This is the best way to see if my system is worth holding onto. If it can't stand up to a little criticism, then it is worthless.

Okay, so I am honest. I say that the evidence goes this far and no further. You say this is a flaw, I say this shows the system can be trusted as far as it can make any claims. It makes no claims that cannot be justified. You say that before the universe a hyper-intelligence existed. You cannot back up this claim in any way at all. That is an unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable (neologism alert) claim. Any epistemological system that requires claims that are, in principle, impossible to refute in any possible way is flawed. My explanation can be falsified. There are tests that can be done that can ruin my position. There is none for yours. That means my system has survived empirical tests. Yours is not capable of dealing with one. No possible test could show your system is wrong. That is a major flaw.

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Occam's Razor is applied to choose the simpler explanation. Does either an Uncaused Cause (God) or an Uncaused Effect (the Universe) really qualify?

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Willyburber:
So, on the one hand, you are claiming knowledge of the First Event using empirical evidence of quantum fluctuation, yet on the other hand, you are denying the empirical evidence of cause and effect and positing an Uncaused Event.

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Willy, don't give up on me now. I think we are talking past each other, I am not quite sure what you are getting at. What you are claiming could be very important, but I am trying to make it clear in my own head.

We have empirical evidence that suggests all the energy in the Universe cancels out. That means the sum total energy of teh universe as seen from outside is zero. That is evidence for a quantum fluctuation.

What we know is that QM says virtual particles have been around as long as we can measure the universe. That takes us back to a tiny fraction of a second after the BB.

So, we have two pieces of empirical evidence that suggest a quantum fluctuation. I am not saying this is a theory. This is a hypothesis.

Are you saying that the materialist worldview is contradictory because we may never know what happened before the BB?

I agree that good science produces theories which are in principle falsifiable, although it may be that the data to actually prove/disprove them may never be available. A theory of the early stages of the Big Bang, say, might predict what conditions existed before inflation, but inflation itself smoothed out the data that would verify that theory; if we could go back in time to before inflation we could test it, but that hardly seems likely. I would say such a theory is still good science (unless someone comes up with another pre-inflation theory which makes testable predictions of post-inflation effects). Which reminds me, scientists also use working hypotheses which may not necessarily be falsifiable but help guide experimentation to gather data that will, hopefully, eventually lead to the development of falsifiable theories; this is also good science.

Data usually isn't 100% objective, and reproducibility of laboratory experiments doesn't help if all the scientists involved have the same subjective component in their thinking when devising those experiments. Having said that, reproducible laboratory data is probably the closest we get to objective data. Other data has a larger subjective component; for example measurements of weather conditions depend on the location and type of measuring equipment used which depends on the judgement of the meteorologist as to where the best place for the weather station is and what are going to be the most useful things to measure.

Data which is less than 100% objective may introduce bias to the theories built on or tested by that data. To take the weather station example; if the meteorologist decides that access to the weather station is an important issue in where to site it the stations may be placed predominantly near to urban areas and roads, which may result in very slight differences compared to what would be measured at less accessible locations. The resulting theories of weather patterns will be slightly biased by this effect, and any attempt to model that bias will probably introduce other subjective elements. Thus, theories contain subjective elements resulting from the data used.

Although I agree that 100% objective, falsifiable theories are the gold standard of science in practice these are not achievable. Good theories are falsifiable (in principle), but are almost always less than 100% objective.

The problem with only accepting 100% objective, falsifiable theories is that a lot of good science gets relegated to "pseudo-science". An obvious example (well, obvious to me at any rate) is evolution; this is a theory that can not be expressed mathematically (which as I mentioned in my last post is as close any theory can get to be objective - in fact I would say any theory that progresses to being a law has to be expressed mathematically) and is dependent on data, particularly the fossil record, that is by it's very nature incomplete and that can never be complete. And some of the data supporting evolution contains a potentially important subjective bias, for example it may be assumed by all geologists/paleantologists that a particular rock type can never contain fossils so is always ignored when found in the field, yet if those rocks do contain fossils we may be missing vital data. But despite this, you and I both agree that evolution is a good theory; it explains the observed data very well, has made predictions about transitional forms (some of which have been found) etc.

I hope that clarifies things a bit more.

Alan

I see what you mean about the positioning of the weather site. What I would say is that if anybody went there to measure the windspeed there, they would all read the same figure. I agree, though, that data collection is less than perfect.

I would say that any theory that is non-falsifiable at the moment would be classed as a hypothesis. So, we have the inflationary theory, but anything before it is hypothetical.

The ToE, I would say, is actually good science (I know you think so too, I mean as opposed to what you say about it).

A theory does not need to be mathematical and not all the data needs to be in to make an excellent scientific theory. The ToE does exactly what you claim is necessary for a theory. It explains the past data ('saves the phenomena' is one way of putting it). It predicts the future. Just date a band of rocks and by using the ToE you can predict the types of fossils that will be found there. What is most important, it is falsifiable.

Yes, there is the opportunity for subjective ideas to get in. One example that is illustrative of what can go qrong and how it hardly ever does is Icthyostega's five toes. The original discoverer said it had five fingers on both feet. The problem was he was the only person allowed to work on it and it waas the only example of its kind.

Now other specimens have been found, it is known that Icthyostega had eight toes. Why teh original finder said five will never be known.

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SA:
Are you saying that the materialist worldview is contradictory because we may never know what happened before the BB?

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I'm saying it is contradictory because it uses the empirical evidence and theoretical framework of QM to hypothesise the 'how' of the BB yet falls back on the idea of an Uncaused Cause, in all contradiction to empirical evidence, to satisfy the 'why.'

Please note that I am not arguing for Theism here.

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In the end, Occam's razor compels me to put my money on design, but, as always in matters of metaphysics, the decision is largely a matter of taste rather than scientific judgement

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I'm just starting an essay called "The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe" by Quentin Smith. I'll see where that takes me.

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So, let us assume that reality is all in my mind. There are two parts to my mind. The 'internal' part where I can imagine flying and the 'external' one where it is impossible. I can distinguish between the two. I label the external part of my mind "reality" and the internal part of my mind "mind."

This actually shows that there is a reality out there, separate from my mind. This is not a linguistic trick, just by labeling it "reality" doesn't make it so, but the fact that I can distinguish between the two and need separate labels to describe to others what I mean shows that, at some level, there is a necessary distinction.

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Actually this is pragmatism this theory works hence I shall use it.

Isn't Occam's Razor potentially flawed? What if someone ('Ms X') held a belief about - I dunno, how babies were made. And rejected the truth because it was more complex than her own theory (the stork brings them for example.) Okay, in such a case, there is a possibility of proof. But in many cases there aren't (I remember a Physics lesson where the teacher told us how much of Physics is still based on theories - they work so far, but they're theories).

All I'm saying is, that as a rational (ish), intelligent woman, I find God to be the simpler explanation, and therefore for me Occam's Razor comes out in favour of God.

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All I'm saying is, that as a rational (ish), intelligent woman, I find God to be the simpler explanation, and therefore for me Occam's Razor comes out in favour of God.

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That's what I've been trying to get at. Science doesn't provide a good explanation of the spiritual world, at least not for a lot of people. Now if someone, like our good friend, SA, doesn't find the spiritual world significant to him, it's not surprising that he'll cut it out with Occam. However, for many people, it cuts out much of their existance. For some people, the spiritual world may be more real than the physical.

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Originally posted by Gill:
I have this niggling feeling I've missed a point somewhere...

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Gill,

Haven't you just analogized a belief in God with the stork? And didn't Mrs. X prefer the simpler explanation rather than the true one?

Sorry to be a pill. I think the problem with your analogy is that for Occam's Razor to cut cleanly, both explanations have to be reasonable to reasonable people. Then you can use it to identify the simpler solution.

The gist of my discussion with S.A. is that I don't see spiritualism or materialism as having provable first premises. In fact, I presently think that neither really qualifies as an explanation under Occam's razor, so that in the end, both must be taken on faith.

Did somebody kiss that boo-boo?

1) The universe is the result of an uncaused event resulting in a Big Bang and cosmic expansion. This universe is governed by physical laws (although why these, or any laws, is inknown) and forces with just the right properties for intelligent life to appear on at least one planet within the universe. There is no purpose or aim in the development of the universe, nor any ultimate source for morals and ethics that the intelligent creatures on the one planet we know of feel are important.

2) The universe is the creation of a personal, moral, faithful uncaused being who built into the universe a reflection of his (personal male pronoun used for convenience not to reflect anything about gender ) character; thus faithfulness results in a predictable universe governed by physical laws, personality and morality result in a universe fine-tuned to result in the development of intelligent beings capable of relating to him and having a moral sense. As he is faithful, this uncaused being acts through the physical laws he put into the universe.

Now, from a purely materialistic view both of these philosophies have the same effect - there is no reason to expect any difference in the laws, theories and data developed by scientists who accept both philosophies. However, if fields outside the purely materialistic the second philosophy has greater explanatory power (why does the universe exist?, why is it governed by laws that can be expressed mathematically?) whereas under the first philosophy these are simply given.

(1) talks about what (form)

but

(2) talks about what + why (form + purpose/meaning)

I can dig that. The form of the world is interesting to me, but I have a burning desire to know what is the meaning and purpose of life. God seems to provide a much greater explanation of meaning. That being said, it seems awfully presumtuous to say that atheists don't have any purpose to life. Perhaps the meaning is in sustaining life itself because it is "neat". Howevever, the SA said that the whole meaning question was unimportant to him anyway. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I've posted some objections to the validity of the materialist viewpoint on the reason thread. I would be very interested in your take on this.

I came into these debates not to champion theism (which I don't feel qualified to do), but to explore alternate philosophical viewpoints.

I started out with a vague acceptance that there were a number of different viewpoints, some of which could be shown to have validity. I assumed that materialism would be one of these. To my great surprise, the more I examine it, the more flawed it appears!

I guess that this could have something to do with the dictum that "the more dominant a belief is in society, the less challenged, and therefore the more suspect that belief is"?

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Originally posted by The sceptical Atheist:
I say that a quantum fluctuation caused the universe

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A quantum fluctuation in WHAT?

I am awed by your succinct question. I would have required a couple of paragraphs....

I am content to say "I don't know."

But why does 'meaning' have anything to do with this debate?

Why does everything require a 'meaning'?

Now then, the quantum fluctuation in what? question.

In the not-even-nothingness that was before the Big Bang. Or the other universe that is eternal, or the pink unicorns collarbone. We cannot know at the moment and we may never be able to know, but the fact that teh total energy on the universe appears to be zero requires an explanation. A good one is that the universe was caused by a quantum fluctuation. That explains the evidence very well.

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Originally posted by The sceptical Atheist:
But why does 'meaning' have anything to do with this debate? Why does everything require a 'meaning'?

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If given a choice between meaning and no meaning I would choose meaning.

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Now then, the quantum fluctuation in what? question.

In the not-even-nothingness that was before the Big Bang. Or the other universe that is eternal, or the pink unicorns collarbone.

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Everyone knows that unicorns are mauve.

SA:

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We cannot know at the moment and we may never be able to know, but the fact that teh total energy on the universe appears to be zero requires an explanation. A good one is that the universe was caused by a quantum fluctuation. That explains the evidence very well.

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Hmmm, you'll pardon me if I'm skeptical, but....fact? What total energy? How was it measured? What assurance do we have that our attempts to measure something so large is in any way accurate for such a quantification? Is the dark energy that cosmologists presently are disagreeing about included in this tally?

Quantum fluctuations as described by present theory, arise from the well-defined, if not well-understood framework of our own space-time. To postulate that the "not-even-nothingness that was before the Big Bang" fill this bill seems contradictory and appealing to an infinite superspace has only changed the subject of the question, not answered the question.

"I don't *know* seems to be as much as anyone can say on the subject.

All I was trying to do was show that there is a reasonable materialistic alternative, not saying that this is exactly how it happened.

As this is reasonable, it does not require faith to accept it as a possibility. It is supported by some evidence, but not much.

What is important about my idea is that it is falsifiable. New measurements could destroy it straight away.

The non-materialistic beginning requires the existence of this creator before anything exists. We are now many billions of years further on and we still have zero OF evidence for this creators existence (and no self respecting unicorn would be seen in mauve!). So, in order to take the non-materialistic view, one must first show that the creator exists or did exist.

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Originally posted by The sceptical Atheist:
All I was trying to do was show that there is a reasonable materialistic alternative, not saying that this is exactly how it happened.

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You are right that there is a reasonable materialistic alternative for the origin of the universe.

My only problem with this alternative is that it does not satisfy my desire for meaning and purpose, which may or may not be important to everyone.

It is certainly reasonable to choose the materialistic alternative. Nor is it unreasonable, coming from that perspective, to look for materialistic evidence for God's existence.

What is unreasonable is when someone fails to acknowledge that a reasonable choice between alternatives is possible, each with its own strengths and drawbacks - and that belief in God is therefore not an irrational choice.

The evidence for God is by definition not material or measurable, since He is assumed to be a spiritual being. Observable phenomena might be taken as evidence, such as near-death experiences, the remarkable self-similarity and order of the universe, or the exquisite feelings connected with romantic love. But all of these have alternative materialistic explanations.

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My only problem with this alternative is that it does not satisfy my desire for meaning and purpose, which may or may not be important to everyone.

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I am curious about how satisfying a desire should have any bearing on whether there is a meaning and reason to the universe.

Either there is a meaning or there isn't. If there is, we should be able to determine it (because an unfathomable reason is so close to no reason to make them indistinguishable).

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I am hoping that we can all acknowledge that belief in God is a logical choice between reasonable alternatives, and not simply a leap of faith.

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I see the creation of the universe as being impossible, according to scientific laws, without control.

Let me summarise:

Thermodnamics
1st Law - Energy is never created or destroyed
2nd Law - All physical systems when left to their own devices will move in a direction from Order to Chaos
3rd Law - Order is max. at -273C, adding raw (uncontrolled...) energy only increases disorder.

Also
The Principle of Conservation of Angular Momentum.

This tells us that that motion in a straight line from an explosion could never give way to spinning motion, as seen in planets, solar systems, galaxies etc.

Or try:
Cause and Effect. (Every cause must have a superior effect)

and

Law of Biogenesis - Life only comes from life.

I'm not going to go into Evolution v's Creationist because this is neither the time or the place. I am just showing you the evidence that I can see for a belief in God to be SCIENTIFICALLY superior to a belief in no God.

You can't have OF evidence for God, but you can have it for scientific beliefs. When these beliefs can only be held to be true in relation to a higher being, I see this to be good evidence.

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As this is reasonable, it does not require faith to accept it as a possibility. It is supported by some evidence, but not much.

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To consider something as a possibility may not take faith per se, but to postulate that the universe came out of nothing and without cause, and to argue that is a reasonable, explanation, smacks of faith.

SA:

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What is important about my idea is that it is falsifiable. New measurements could destroy it straight away.

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Again, pardon my scepticism, but if there is no empirical way to observe or measure "whatever-was-before," it will remain an unprovable hypothesis and therefore unverifiable.

Cosmologists tell us that physical laws, constants, space and time have no validity or meaning before the Big Bang. How then can measurements taken within our space-time framework be seriously considered as empirical evidence for "whatever-was-before?"

"remain an unprovable hypothesis and therefore unfalsifiable."

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Originally posted by The sceptical Atheist:
Either there is a meaning or there isn't. If there is, we should be able to determine it (because an unfathomable reason is so close to no reason to make them indistinguishable).

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Great point. And maybe that is really the problem.

My particular hypothesis can be falsified. If there is a new measurement that shows the energy isn't in balance (this is Paul Davies's idea, which I am borrowing) then my hypothesis gets blown out of the water.

Describing it as a theory is my mistake, it isn't one. It is a hypothesis. There is reason for accepting it as a hypothesis.

I see the alternative to a natural beginning a supernatural one. There is no evidence for the supernatural, so a natural explanation is more reasonable.

I really don't understand why people have such a problem with this. I am not saying that I am right or that anyone else is wrong, just that, if there is no evidence for anything but "ordinary" things, then it is reasonable to say that it was started by some "ordinary" thing. If there is no evidence for anything "extraordinary" then to invoke it as an explanation when one does not know the answer is a cop-out.

I don't know what is around other stars in this galaxy. I suspect there are planets around some. This is a reasonable position to take. It is not a position of faith, even though we do not know the answer. I suppose we could say that there are Gods circling them just as easily.

This is what you are claiming about before the universe, we cannot know, but we have no evidence that anything supernatural exists, but because we don't know the answer, it is unreasonable to invoke natural processes an explanation, and so it could just as well be somrthing supernatural.

I think the pivot is causation. You are willing to throw that away to avoid the supernatural. I am willing to consider the possibility of the supernatural to avoid throwing out causation.

What caused the supernatural?

To return to your falsifiability argument: Check my work here. You are saying that because the total energy hypothesis is theoretically falsifiable that makes it valid?

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Originally posted by The sceptical Atheist:
By supposing the supernatural the causation question is still not answered.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
but by being supernatural, does the natural order of cause and effect still hold?

Alan

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If that is so, then there is no contradiction in an Uncaused Event, and no objectionto be raised to the hypothesis of an uncaused beginning to the Universe.

Which makes asking the question, "Why is there anything?" a meaningless exercise.