(October 8, 2021 at 4:23 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Thank you, Happy Skeptic. Perhaps you could elaborate. One of my points is that 1, 2, and 3 are misunderstood to be about linear time. They are about logical contingency. So unless you give me a reason why they must involve time then you share that misunderstanding. Also, how is relying on causation an error? What is the misunderstanding about beginning to exist?
As for the 5W, I specifically refered, not to complex systems, but to the most fundamental laws of physics. So again, you seem to partake of the very misinterpretations this thread is meant to confront.
Yes, I misinterpreted 5W. Let me summarize the 5:
1) Movement needs a prime mover.
2) Causation implies a first cause.
3) Creation of things requires a first creator.
4) The existence of Goodness must resemble maximal goodness, which is God.
5) Natural law requires an intelligent law-giver.
For 5,
Why does non-chaos need an intelligence behind it? We find no such rule in complex natural phenomena, but I suppose we know of that they are underpinned by fundamental natural law. Who is to say there are not even more basic fundamental laws (perhaps unknowable) underpinning the basic ones, and so on, until we land on something so fundamental it simply must be so? Or, perhaps our laws come from an evolutionary process within the multiverse.
I see this as an argument from ignorance. Natural "law" is simply order, not something purposefully directed. Order does not necessarily require intelligence.
As for 1-3, they are about logical contingency, though I doubt Aquinas would think this any different than linear time (not knowing modern Physics).
Quantum causation means that some quantum states affect the probability of a particular future event, and some do not. That type of causation is deals with probability, not determinism. It may be that all events actually happen, but that somehow one timeline of macroscopic events wins out from our perspective.
What caused time and the initial quantum state? According to some theories, they formed together from some earlier state - where time and space weren't differentiated, and causality couldn't be described in our current terms. If we can't even describe what causality means, then arguments that rely on causality break down.
So,
1) Movement happens even without cause - though symmetries in spacetime do result in conservation laws. Conservation of energy allows the entire energy of the universe to be zero (negative gravitational energy, and positive mass-energy).
2) Causation as we know it breaks down when time breaks down.
3) The universe doesn't just go around creating "things". Things just change form. As far as Aquinas' argument is concerned, he has never seen a single thing "beginning to exist". Even anti-particle pairs "coming into existence" are associated with negative energy dip in the background. It adds up to nothing, and nothing caused it (beyond the structure of the universe itself).
4) This one doesn't need refutation. It is just silly.
5) If non-chaos requires intelligence to create it, how does an intelligent non-chaotic creator exist? That seems a bigger mystery to me than why there is something rather than nothing (perhaps that is impossible) or why is there there order instead of chaos (perhaps chaos reigns some when/where else, but who would be there to know about it?)
