RE: The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.
August 12, 2023 at 2:36 pm
(August 12, 2023 at 2:23 pm)GrandizerII Wrote:(August 12, 2023 at 9:44 am)LinuxGal Wrote: If believers can assert the creator of the universe is a necessary being whose existence we are to take as a brute fact to satisfy certain metaphysical worries, then I can also assert that the universe itself is necessary and to be taken as a brute fact, with the advantage (to the delight of the shade of William of Ockham) of making a creator redundant. I can support this by pointing out that we don't know how to create or destroy energy, only change its form. This makes the total quantity of energy necessary even as the guise it takes on (matter, motion, light) is malleable.
As for the universe. If you believe that the universe can only be one way, then that's logically fine, but be aware that this probably means you hold to an extreme view on modality. Because it goes against intuition to say it is not possible that our planet could have been one mile closer or further away from the sun (for example).
Actually, every Fourth of July the planet spends the next six months drawing 3.1 million miles closer to the sun, and just after New Year's Day it starts crawling back out again. It is not possible for out planet to be very much different than this, simply because it wouldn't be "our" planet, in that case, would it? This would be the planet of a different species adapted to those conditions.