(July 19, 2017 at 6:04 pm)Jehanne Wrote:(July 19, 2017 at 4:48 pm)SteveII Wrote: 1. No, virtual particle fluctuations are weakly caused by the energy shifts in a quantum vacuum. The fluctuations are not deterministric, but that does not mean wholly uncaused. There is no warrant to extrapolate this oddity to universe generating cause/effects.
2. Again, how can there be an infinite number of physical causes/effects when an infinite number of physical objects/changes is not possible? Do you not understand that we would never have gotten to today in an infinite causal chain of events? Your only defense (I'm being generous) seems to be abstract objects that a naturalistic worldview can't account for.
3. Is there a point in there?
4. Your conclusion follows from your premise. See #2 for a defeater to your premise.
#1: What does "weakly caused" mean? What causes the energy shifts in a quantum vacuum? And, what is the cause of the causes of the energy shifts? And, so forth? We are not talking about determinism here versus indeterminism but causality. You have still not answered my question.
#2: If the Universe is infinite in spatial extent, how could there not be an "actual infinite" of physical things, especially, given what you have said in #1. If you reject the FLRW metric, then, please, stop quoting the BGV Theorem!! And, please, stop talking about physics! No physicist (even the believers) agrees with you (or Craig)!
#3: The existence of actual infinities is accepted within the physics and astronomy community. Read The Physical Universe by Professor Frank Shu (published in 1981, but still in print). Professor Shu discusses actual infinities all throughout his textbook, which is seminal within the astrophysical community (which is why it is still in print).
#4: You reject the existence of actual infinities; scientists don't. As Professor Morriston has pointed out, the existence of actual infinities is hardly a logical impossibility, because God, if he/she/it exists, could create those:
http://spot.colorado.edu/~morristo/NewKalamCritique.pdf
Please read the above; it will hep you!
Best,
Dawn
1. The conditions must be present. We do not know if there is a cause or not. It is certainly a whole different thing than talking about uncaused universes springing up here and there from nothing than what might be causing quantum fluctuation where all the moving parts are present in a closed system. Do you think that quantum scientist have thrown up their hands and declared "no cause" or is this a case of atheism of the gaps!
2. The universe is not infinite in any way.
3. In mathematics it is a useful tool. No one believes that there are actually an infinite amount of anything physical.
4. Please type or cut and paste the paragraph where you think someone can show there can be an actual infinity of objects or events. All I see in any of your links is equivocating between potentially infinite and actually infinite and "well, we don't know". Until then, I (and most people who are NOT trying to avoid the problem of an uncaused cause) will rely on logic, reason, and observation--which many atheist want to set aside when inconvenient.
From Morrison's paper (your link), quoting your favorite philosopher:
Quote:To say that the infinite past could have been formed by successive addition is like saying that someone has just succeeded in writing down all the negative numbers,
ending at 0. We could ask, why didn’t he finish counting yesterday or the day before or the year before? By then an infinite time had already elapsed, so that he
should already have finished. Thus at no point in the infinite past could we ever find the man finishing his countdown, for by that point he should already be done!
In fact, no matter how far back into the past we go, we can never find the man counting at all, for at any point we reach he will already have finished. But if at
no point in the past do we find him counting, this contradicts the hypothesis that he has been counting from eternity. This shows again that the formation of an
actual infinite by never beginning but reaching an end is as impossible as beginning at a point and trying to reach infinity (Craig 2008, 124).
What was Morrison's response?
Quote:This is much too quick for me. Given beginningless time, our man has indeed always already had enough time to complete his count of all the negative numbers, but it does not follow that he must have done so. It’s true that we have been given no reason why he is reaching zero just now rather than at some earlier time. I’m not sure we couldn’t build a reason into our story, but that is a side issue. The important point is this: from the fact that we know of no reason why something is so, it does not follow that it is impossible for it to be so.
What??


