(April 13, 2016 at 1:43 am)robvalue Wrote: I would love to see a credible citation that states "The probability that our reality began to exist is above 50%".
I would be very surprised. But I'm always happy to be corrected. As far as I know, no one is in a position to perform such a calculation with any accuracy. Even if it did begin to exist, just announcing that it must have "a cause" is speculation too, however you're using the word. It's a word that can mean many things. No one knows. I find it astonishing how people think they know more than the expert scientists who study this stuff for a living. Again, trying to apply observations within our reality to reality itself is the fallacy of composition. Some people just don't seem to care about this. Entities do not necessarily adopt all the qualities of their contents or component parts.
Cosmological rubbish garbage nonsense fuck-brigade bastards. It's so totally broken and pointless. Even if you grant the whole thing, it's of no consequence. An "uncaused cause" could be almost anything. At the very best, the whole thing is a tautology of definition based on speculative premises. Well done.
Also, I'm sick of people saying, "God created the universe". If the universe is everything that exists, then either God created himself or God doesn't exist. If the universe isn't everything that exists, and there's a bit of other stuff too, then continuing with this language to imply "god made everything" is an equivocation. This is why I prefer to say "Our reality". It allows for there to be other things to exist, or not, whatever the case may be.
The singularity as the beginning of our universe seems to be the standard model. This is not a thing. It is a boundary point. What caused all space-time/matter/energy to explode out of a single point is not known. Because space-time is the arena in which all matter and energy exist, the beginning of space-time is also the beginning of all matter and energy. It’s the beginning of the universe.
Even if you want to theorize that some quantum field resulted in the singularity, then that would be the beginning of the universe.
WLC has addressed your objection regarding the fallacy of composition:
"The reader apparently is under the impression that one justifies seeking a cause of the universe by arguing compositionally – that because everything in the universe has a cause, therefore the universe as a whole has a cause. That is just manifestly incorrect. That is the fallacy of composition. But if you read my work I think you will find nowhere in anything that I've ever written or published or said have I defended the causal principle or there being a cause of the universe by composition. That would be obviously fallacious. Rather what I argue is that the principle “everything that begins to exist, everything that comes into being at some point, must have a cause which brings it into existence.” This is rooted in the metaphysical truth that something can't come out of nothing. Moreover, I think that this principle is constantly confirmed in our experience. So I would not think to try to justify the kalam cosmological argument's conclusion by arguing from composition. That would just be wrong, but he is setting up a straw man here which no one has defended." http://www.reasonablefaith.org/more-obje...z45ihBzsDh
If it can be "almost anything", describe an uncaused cause.
The universe is not everything that exists.
