RE: Pineapples disprove Big Bang
June 15, 2013 at 1:29 am
(This post was last modified: June 15, 2013 at 1:47 am by Pandas United.)
(June 13, 2013 at 11:33 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: And the basis for claiming that everything that begins to exist has a prior cause is what, besides it being convenient to the desired conclusion?
The only thing we've ever observed beginning to exist is virtual particles, and they begin to exist without a cause. Everything else we've observed 'beginning to exist' was actually a transformation of something that existed previously.
Unless you can prove the universe, or perhaps the multiverse, is not eternal, you're using special pleading. Yes, the universe as we know it had a beginning, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist at all until it expanded. If it didn't exist at all before it expanded, that doesn't mean that it didn't arise from a quantum foam substrate that births universes. Interestingly, QF seems to have the property of necessarily existing. And I didn't just define it as eternal to make an argument, that's what known physics and the math point to.
Several things wrong with your post.
When you say, "Everything else we've observed 'beginning to exist' was actually a transformation of something that existed previously." You are simply trying to play word games. Contingent beings are dependent on other beings outside of themselves. Being does not come from non-being. This is the utmost basic metaphysical truth at which we establish our scientific understanding of the universe.
Virtual particles aren't created out of nothing without a cause, they are fluctuations of the energy in the vacuum. The quantum vacuum is not "nothing." It is a roiling sea of energy. It has causal dependence just like every other quantum mechanical process.
You say, "Unless you can prove the universe, or perhaps the multiverse, is not eternal, you're using special pleading." Yet go on to admit the universe had a beginning. It seems as though you've answered your own objection. Leaving the scientific evidence aside for a moment, it is philosophically inane to say the universe is eternal. How could we possibly traverse an infinite amount of past time to get to "now"? Far too many philosophical paradoxes in an infinite universe for me to give it a legitimate shot.
(June 13, 2013 at 11:45 am)Doubting Thomas Wrote: All you've done is make another special pleading argument. Why does the universe have to have a beginning? So Christians can claim that it had to have been created by God.
Why does it have to have a beginning? Because science and philosophy say it does-
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0110/0110012v2.pdf
http://www.logika.umk.pl/llp/1834/5-1834zw.pdf
All generalizations are false.
