Invitation for Atheists to Debate a Christian via Skype

[SenseMaker007]

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

Among quantum field theorists, this is the overwhelming consensus, and the sources are numerous, HRW for one.

No, it isn't. The consensus is that acausality works by laws different to causality. Not that it just happens for no reason at all. Chaotic and unpredictable doesn't imply zero laws. If the consensus was that there were no more laws to be discovered on the matter then scientists would just give up searching for them. The whole point of science is to search for explanations.

[Anomalocaris]

Among quantum field theorists, this is the overwhelming consensus, and the sources are numerous, HRW for one.

No, it isn't. The consensus is that acausality works by laws different to causality. Not that it just happens for no reason at all. Chaotic and unpredictable doesn't imply zero laws. If the consensus was that there were no more laws to be discovered on the matter then scientists would just give up searching for them. The whole point of science is to search for explanations.

I think the consensus is the concept of causality does not closely reflect any actual fundamental mechanism, it only empirically describe highly probable sequences of macroscopic appearances.  

At the deepest level, things literally happen just because of nothing.  It just happens.   But the outcome of happens follows interrelated probabilities and do so by no discernible mechanism.   Hence no cause, but property.    When enormous numbers of these properties occurs and are viewed over large scale, they take on the appearance of larger events that appear to be strongly inclined to occur in particular sequences.   Our cognitive mechanisms than assign the earlier evens as causes of latter ones.   That framework in fact is pretty good and predicting things.   But not perfect.    But that framework will eventually break down if larger events are interatively broken down into their consentient subevents

[Belacqua]

In The Physical Review Letters (I think, Section E), one can find models of eternal cosmologies, namely, that of the Cosmos that has no beginning or end.  That should settle the matter; anything beyond that is in the same category as appealing to the motion of stars and planets as being due to angelic beings pushing on them.

Again, this addresses the idea of a temporal First Cause. 

But Aristotle believed in an eternal universe, with no beginning or end, and also believed in a First Cause. Because his First Cause was first in an essential chain, not a temporal one. (And Aquinas agreed that a temporal beginning to the universe couldn't be proven by logic.) 

So the authority you cite here doesn't address the standard First Cause argument.

[brewer]

Apparently the more humans grow and learn the less applicable Aristotle and Aquinas become.

[Belacqua]

Apparently the more humans grow and learn the less applicable Aristotle and Aquinas become.

To make this apparent to everyone, I think you'd have to do two things:

1) Address the actual arguments they made, and not the very different Kalam argument, and 

2) show why modern science proves that their arguments on this matter are wrong. I've seen metaphysical and ideological arguments against them, but never anything from science.

[Jehanne]

In The Physical Review Letters (I think, Section E), one can find models of eternal cosmologies, namely, that of the Cosmos that has no beginning or end.  That should settle the matter; anything beyond that is in the same category as appealing to the motion of stars and planets as being due to angelic beings pushing on them.

Again, this addresses the idea of a temporal First Cause. 

But Aristotle believed in an eternal universe, with no beginning or end, and also believed in a First Cause. Because his First Cause was first in an essential chain, not a temporal one. (And Aquinas agreed that a temporal beginning to the universe couldn't be proven by logic.) 

So the authority you cite here doesn't address the standard First Cause argument.

Aristotle also believed that heavier objects fall faster than do lighter ones.

[LadyForCamus]

Apparently the more humans grow and learn the less applicable Aristotle and Aquinas become.

To make this apparent to everyone, I think you'd have to do two things:

1) Address the actual arguments they made, and not the very different Kalam argument, and 

2) show why modern science proves that their arguments on this matter are wrong. I've seen metaphysical and ideological arguments against them, but never anything from science.

When someone can describe to me how a thing can act or exist atemporily, I’d be happy to listen.

[Jehanne]

No, it isn't. The consensus is that acausality works by laws different to causality. Not that it just happens for no reason at all. Chaotic and unpredictable doesn't imply zero laws. If the consensus was that there were no more laws to be discovered on the matter then scientists would just give up searching for them. The whole point of science is to search for explanations.

I think the consensus is the concept of causality does not closely reflect any actual fundamental mechanism, it only empirically describe highly probable sequences of macroscopic appearances.  

At the deepest level, things literally happen just because of nothing.  It just happens.   But the outcome of happens follows interrelated probabilities and do so by no discernible mechanism.   Hence no cause, but property.    When enormous numbers of these properties occurs and are viewed over large scale, they take on the appearance of larger events that appear to be strongly inclined to occur in particular sequences.   Our cognitive mechanisms than assign the earlier evens as causes of latter ones.   That framework in fact is pretty good and predicting things.   But not perfect.    But that framework will eventually break down if larger events are interatively broken down into their consentient subevents

As you know from QM, the probability that a bound electron in a hydrogen atom can be found in certain locations is zero, while at the same time transitioning "across" that region without any issues.

[Belacqua]

oops replied to the wrong thing

[Jehanne]

To make this apparent to everyone, I think you'd have to do two things:

1) Address the actual arguments they made, and not the very different Kalam argument, and 

2) show why modern science proves that their arguments on this matter are wrong. I've seen metaphysical and ideological arguments against them, but never anything from science.

When someone can describe to me how a thing can act or exist atemporily, I’d be happy to listen.

The same people who can explain why that dead angel is hanging in my basement, who committed suicide after Donald Trump won the 2016 election. And, especially, how do I get rid of the thing? (I have a feeling that the actual motive for their death was due to a Dr. Jill Stein supporter who prayed to the angel, who, mistakenly, offered an atemporal swan sacrifice instead of a white dildo.)