(May 8, 2015 at 8:03 am)reasonablerob Wrote: Premise 2) An infinite regress of finite, impermanent causes seems logically impossible...
I dunno. Mathematics is chock full of infinite recursion and infinite series that manage to converge toward something.
I don't know that quantum mechanics obviates causality as the wave function is completely deterministic. Only the place where the particle pops an interaction remains uncertain. That thing where we get all the way back to the Planck era, just a wee 10^-43 seconds after the shit hit the fan, but that wee little moment is separated from t = 0 by as vast a gulf as the one between our time and the Planck era. Leaving us in the Dark Ages.
Nonetheless, Archimedes had his lever he could move the Earth with. He just lacked something to stand on. I haven't seen a good "cosmological" argument for deity or no deity; they seem to be unrelated subjects. Even if a first causal event were established, however, why would we suppose anything we might call a "deity" would have to be this event?
