Invitation for Atheists to Debate a Christian via Skype

[Peebothuhlu]

Nothing in modern physics demands a cause for all phenomena; the spontaneous transition of an electron to a lower or ground state isn't caused by anything; it just happens.  Ditto for radioactive decay of an unstable atom into its daughter elements.

Basic logic demands a cause for all phenomena, really, because a so-called "acausal" explanation for existence is still an explanation for something existing, of course, and is therefore actually causal in a wider sense. It may not be causal in a scientific sense ... but if X explains the existence of Y then it's certainly causal in a philosophical sense.

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the spontaneous transition of an electron to a lower or ground state isn't caused by anything; it just happens.  Ditto for radioactive decay of an unstable atom into its daughter elements.

I highly doubt that any knowledgeable scientist thinks that acausal proccesses mean that things just happen for no apparent reason.

No apparent cause, sure, but no apparent cause doesn't mean no cause at all. It's far far more likely that some explanations are unknowable than it is that some things don't have explanations ... considering that there are so many things that do have explanations and there are so many things that were previously thought to have no explanation but were later found to have one. What's more likely, that the universe operates in two completely different and completely incompatible ways or that humans are faulty creatures that aren't always competent enough to see the way it operates? I'll stick with parsimony.

"It just happens for no reason" isn't an explanation for anything. It's no different to "God did it". But I doubt that any esteemed indeterminist scientist describes acausality and indeterminism as "it just happens".

After all, in science all indeterminism means is quantum unpredictability. Scientists just aren't able to predict certain things ... it doesn't mean there is nothing to predict.

Hello!

You have to remember though that reality doesn't have to care about a human's logic. Or anything human's might or might not think about the reality surrounding us.

Electrons effectivly 'teleport' between energy states. One minute (Second?) they're at one level. The next *Bamph!* they are at a different level. Nothing in between. This also gives us the weirdness that is 'Electron tunneling' Where electrons simply 'Pop' though other matter.

Then we have Hawking radiation. Basically the closest thing we know of of 'Something' just suddenly being in reality. A partical 'becomes' real where before there was no partical before.

I'm sure folks will be along with a far better grasp of nuclear physics than my lay-man self to explain the "Why we can't know the certainty of partical physics as opposed to the 'We, they don't know yet so it's acausal.'

Which leads me back to my question of; "If something in reality can be 'Acausal' why can't all of reality itself just be 'Acausal'?"

Cheers.

Not at work.