The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.

[polymath257]

I've come upon an interesting question in a sidestreet of some thinking about God and contingency today, and I'd just like to put it to the forum to solicit comment on it.  It occurred to me that while, even if one accepts that there had to be a first cause, the argument gives no reason why there need be only one first cause.  It would seem possible that there could be multiple first causes so long as the multiple first causes originate simultaneously, and all first causes perform the same initial causative action simultaneously.  Under these constraints, there could be an infinite number of first causes.  But this presents a problem.  According to general relativity, there is no such thing as absolute simulteneity.  Whether or not two events appear simultaneous to an observer is dependent upon their movement relative to the two things occurring and such, so that from one observer's perspective, two first causes might be simultaneous with the observer, who is also a first cause, but another first cause who may be moving with respect to the other three first causes would not see them as simultaneous.  So, while an infinite set of first causes seems possible from the perspective of classical physics, it's not clear that the idea is even coherent from a relativistic perspective.  Thinking about it just now raises another wrinkle, as if the first cause is postulated to be God, from one perspective, God would precede the effects which he causes; however, it's not clear how to define the notion that God as first cause precedes his effects as there is no such thing as an absolute frame of reference in relativity, so while God may appear to precede an effect from one observer's perspective, the causal arrows may not be as readily apparent from another in which an effect of God appears to precede God causing it.  I'm not sure what to make of all this.  It seems to open up a whole can of worms with no ready resolution.

@Nishant Xavier : What are your thoughts?

I think the  problem is in the word 'first'. The usual argument only gives the existence of an *uncaused* cause. As you point out, there is nothing that says that uncaused cause is unique.

There is also nothing that says that multiple uncaused causes have to be simultaneous in any reference frame. This allows for a resolution to  your paradox.

I'd also like to point  out that, in cosmology, there *is* an absolute frame of reference for each event: that in which the universe looks isotropic and expands to retain that isotropy. The difficulty, of course, is that absolute framers at different events are not the same.

[polymath257]

Ok.

So since most of the objections from our Atheist Friends come down to the Infinite Regress issue, let's illustrate with a simple example: Your friend, let's call him Friend 1, wants to borrow something from you, it can be a ball or a loan or anything, that's not important. Now, he says he will give it to you, but there's a condition; he himself will borrow it from Friend 2, to give it to you. Friend 2 in turn does so from Friend 3, and so on and on and on. Now, Three Conclusions follow:

Step 1: If in fact this goes on till infinity, you will never get the ball/money.
Step 2: If in fact you ever got the money, the series did not go on forever.
Step 3: Indeed, it would have terminated with someone who had the money without having to borrow it.

All three are wrong conclusions. The correct conclusion is that if you get the money, and if the sequence goes back infinitely, then there was always someone giving money to the next person. In other words, that the chain of giving never started.

I trust the analogy is clear: He who gave being to you, if he received it from someone else, cannot be the Ultimate Cause of All Being. Thus, if every being who gave being to another were itself contingent on another being, the series would go forever, and thus no being at all would ever exist (just like you would never get the money in the above example); but granted that contingent beings exist, dependent on other prior beings, it clearly follows (similar to step 2 in the above example), that the series of contingent beings did not go on forever. Rather, it terminated with a Supreme Being, who had Being in Himself, without having to receive it from another. And this, as the Angelic Doctor of Theology (St. Thomas) says, is whom everyone calls Almighty God.

[Please note, we don't believe St. Augustine, or St. Thomas, or any Saint, except only Lord Jesus and Mother Mary, to be Inerrant, Impeccable or Infallible; we do however believe St. Augustine and St. Thomas were Deep Thinkers, Great Philosophers, and Beautiful Theologians, as they clearly were; but more important than either of them personally is the certain knowledge of Almighty God, from logic and reason, to which they lead the sincere seeker of Truth; something St. Paul also mentions in Romans 1, God has revealed His attributes in Creation and Nature: "20 For since the Creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Rom 1:20)].

If anyone wants to challenge 1 or more of the above 3 steps, pls explain which and why with reasons of your own.

OK, just did.

Now, to address Polymath:

So you are assuming that the set of causes is indexed by the natural numbers? What supports that assumption?

Yes, I am assuming that. Natural Numbers are Numbers that exist in Nature. How can there be being -3 (the -3rd being in existence) for e.g? There can be First Being in existence, 2nd Being in existence, and so on. And also, regarding 0, unless you want to say "there are 0 Elephants in the locker" is a meaningful statement, 0 would not be a natural number; certainly there is no such thing as a "zeroth being". 

Are you claiming a zeroth being could exist in Nature? A -10th being could naturally exist? I trust not. But pls explain if you are. You said: "if, for example, the index set is the set of integers, the 'proof' you have given fails", hence I said the above.

I am saying that if you label any current being, it is quite possible that you need to order a previous being with a negative number. And, if the integers are a valid model, there was no 'first', simply a sequence going back infinitely into the past.

So, for example, if you assign a cause today as cause number 100, there may well be more than 100 previous causes, and so some causes will have to be labeled with negative numbers. once this is allowed, you can see that having every negative number associated with some label is completely possible. The label at this time is completely arbitrary since there is no first cause (in this case).

My proof is valid for all Natural Numbers N, no matter whether N is 2 or 100 TN. Granted that N is Finite, a First Being exists, a zeroth being does not exist, and the First Being therefore is not contingent or dependent on a prior being but exists necessarily, without beginning or end.

From several sources, it is clear that complex numbers exist in nature as much as the natural numbers do. And yes, we can talk negative numbers in many contexts (charge, for example).

Your 'proof' artificially relies on the use of natural numbers and fails for other systems. It is not required that the numbers actually count, but simply that they order the causes. Also, it fails if you have a tree-like structure of causes (again assuming some infinite sequence of causes).

Then there is  the ambiguity of the term 'dependent'. Typically, it is equivalent to 'caused by', which assumes some sort of natural law. But it can also mean 'logically follows from', which is a very different thing.

Dependent here includes any kind of dependence, but mainly your first category of causal dependence. I am including both personal and impersonal causes. Whatever caused contingent beings, even if it was entirely impersonal, but contingent, was dependent upon other things. And so on and so forth, till infinity. Which is another way of saying, that's not how things actually came about.

How, specifically, does that follow? It seems like it allows for the possibility of no first cause at all: no start.

Now, i will agree that *if* there is a start and if causes take at least a certain amount of time to produce their effects, then an infinite amount of time would be required and that is problematic.

But, it is quite possible for an infinite sequence of smaller and smaller time intervals add to be only a finite time interval (imagine  each is half the length of the previous one).

From what i can see, you are relying on a very old and outmoded conception of the infinite that was full of confusion and falsehoods.

Let me give an example: an increasing number of Atheists (more than 55% according to a recent poll) believe in Aliens, and some even hold to the hypothesis that Aliens created life on Earth; while Christians could be open to the possibility that God created intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, we deny absolutely that any supposed "alien creator" could be the Absolute First Cause of anything. Why? Because this alien, by definition, is contingent upon the alien planet it exists in; and thus would require another alien creator, contingent upon another alien planet; and so on and so forth forever; which is another way of saying, that's not how things actually came about.

Again, that only follows under very specific assumptions that you have  not verified. The most basic one is that an infinite regress of causes implies none of them occur.

And the same applies to the other Atheist Sophism alleged earlier in this thread; let's assume our universe came into being from alleged other universes, and that said other universes came into being from others; now these other universes, being contingent, because they begin and cease to exist, came into being in turn from others, and so on and so forth forever. Which means, that's not how things actually came about.

Thus, even postulating trillions of unseen universes, which seems to blatantly violate Ockham's Razor, does not suffice to avoid the logically inescapable conclusion of the Necessarily Existent Non-Contingent First Cause. Only such a Being can explain why anything exists at all.

On the contrary, it only shows that taking 'existence' (in other words, the universe as a whole) as the only uncaused entity is completely reasonable.

Wait a minute. You only showed that there exists a non-contingent entity (the term 'being' usually implies that it is alive). You did NOT show that it is unique. How do you know that there are not multiple non-contingent entities? How do you know that there are not multiple such that appear every second?

Yes. To answer that, I would have to establish Property IV of the First Cause, namely Divine Simplicity, another distinct Augustino-Thomistic Doctrine. I will do that in the subsequent post. Once we understand what God really is, we will understand why there can be only One God. 

God Bless.

OK, so at this point, the issue has not been addressed. Correct?

[polymath257]

3. As for the Universe allegedly being the Necessary Being, GN, the Universe cannot be because (1) it began to exist and (2) can cease to exist. Do you deny (1) the Big Bang or (2) the Big Crunch? Not to mention doesnt demonstrate (3) non potentiality and therefore is contingent.

[/quote]
The 'Big Crunch' is very unlikely given our current understanding. The universe is accelerating in its rate of expansion, not slowing.
Whether the Big Bang is the actual start or just a phase transition is still very much being debated, especially by those doing quantum gravity.

Also, the issue isn't a 'necessary being'. The issue is an 'uncaused being'. You have not shown those to be equivalent.

[Pat Mustard]

<snip>

Your argument boiled down to its essentials:

1) First assume god exists
2) The universe needs a creator (why? No need to explain!)
3) If god exists then it must have created the universe
4) God exists. QED!

Of course your argument is defeated by asking that if everything needs a creator, then what created god?

[Angrboda]

I've come upon an interesting question in a sidestreet of some thinking about God and contingency today, and I'd just like to put it to the forum to solicit comment on it.  It occurred to me that while, even if one accepts that there had to be a first cause, the argument gives no reason why there need be only one first cause.  It would seem possible that there could be multiple first causes so long as the multiple first causes originate simultaneously, and all first causes perform the same initial causative action simultaneously.  Under these constraints, there could be an infinite number of first causes.  But this presents a problem.  According to general relativity, there is no such thing as absolute simulteneity.  Whether or not two events appear simultaneous to an observer is dependent upon their movement relative to the two things occurring and such, so that from one observer's perspective, two first causes might be simultaneous with the observer, who is also a first cause, but another first cause who may be moving with respect to the other three first causes would not see them as simultaneous.  So, while an infinite set of first causes seems possible from the perspective of classical physics, it's not clear that the idea is even coherent from a relativistic perspective.  Thinking about it just now raises another wrinkle, as if the first cause is postulated to be God, from one perspective, God would precede the effects which he causes; however, it's not clear how to define the notion that God as first cause precedes his effects as there is no such thing as an absolute frame of reference in relativity, so while God may appear to precede an effect from one observer's perspective, the causal arrows may not be as readily apparent from another in which an effect of God appears to precede God causing it.  I'm not sure what to make of all this.  It seems to open up a whole can of worms with no ready resolution.

@Nishant Xavier : What are your thoughts?

I think the  problem is in the word 'first'. The usual argument only gives the existence of an *uncaused* cause. As you point out, there is nothing that says that uncaused cause is unique.

There is also nothing that says that multiple uncaused causes have to be simultaneous in any reference frame. This allows for a resolution to  your paradox.

I'd also like to point  out that, in cosmology, there *is* an absolute frame of reference for each event: that in which the universe looks isotropic and expands to retain that isotropy. The difficulty, of course, is that absolute framers at different events are not the same.

The problem is that simulteneity is required to avoid a first, for if there is a first from some reference frame, the rest are contingent from that perspective.

[polymath257]

Angrboda. Did you watch your own video? Around 20-30 seconds, Dr. Lincoln says: "the Big Bang, which is the Beginning of the Universe itself". Lol. And again, the description in the video: "The Big Bang is the term that scientists use to describe the beginning of the universe. In this video, Fermilab’s Dr. Don Lincoln clears up many common misconceptions about this fascinating topic."

This is from Alexander Villenkin: "Loosely speaking, our theorem states that if the universe is, on average, expanding, then its history cannot be indefinitely continued into the past." He also wrote: "the answer to the question, “Did the universe have a beginning?” is, “It probably did.” We have no viable models of an eternal universe. The BGV theorem gives us reason to believe that such models simply cannot be constructed ... my own view is that the theorem does not tell us anything about the existence of God"

OK. Now, what assumptions was Vilenkin (and company) using to get that theorem? Have you actually read the paper? or are you simply taking someone else's word for what it says (perhaps WLC)?

In actuality, the assumptions that Vilenkin made were classical assumptions based in general relativity. But, it is no surprise to anyone that GR is wrong when it comes to the quantum mechanical aspects of gravity. In fact, we still do not have a tested theory of quantum gravity.

So, while Vilenkin's result (and similar results by Penrose and Hawking) are very relevant to the models based on general relativity, we *know* that such models are not going to be the end of the story.

And, in fact, in some of the models of quantum gravity, there is (wait for it) and infinite regress of time in an anti-deSitter space (do you know what that is?). The Big bang is merely a type of phase transition in one smallish part of the whole of spacetime.

Look, I get that you don't like the clearly Theistic implications of the Universe's having a Beginning. Even those who are Neutral or Undecided on the particular question of God's Existence quite openly say that the Universe had a Beginning is quite certain. The Big Bang is a Theory first proposed by a devout and highly learned Catholic Priest, a Master of Science, Fr. Georges Lemaitre; it was criticized in the early days by those who believed it was a Creation Theory. Ultimately, it essentially is one, as Physicists are discovering more and more.

Maybe you should take the advice of the theologian that actually came up with the Big bang model? Lemaitre roundly criticized the Pope for saying the BB model was a support for theology.

You, Angrboda, are conflating or misunderstanding two things (1) Given the current state of physics, our measurements break down at around an infinitesimal time after the Big Bang, and (2) We cannot therefore, allegedly, know the Universe had a beginning. Your conflation of the 2, or your allegation that 2 is a necessary consequence of 1, is a simple non sequitur on your part.

Actually, it goes further than that. We *know* that general relativity breaks down at some  point in the early universe. Our best hypotheses for what *does* happen at that point are, by necessity, theories of quantum gravity. And, in at least some versions of quantum gravity, the BB is NOT the start of existence.

Physicists reason like this, as the above excerpt also shows: (1) the universe is constantly expanding, (2) extrapolating backward, said expansion could not have been indefinitely continued in the past (3) Therefore, the universe had a beginning. Planck time, etc, is irrelevant to this conclusion.

Unless there was a bounce, or a phase transition, or an uncaused event based on quantum effects, or any number of other things that get in the way of your preferred conclusion.

Since Eternal Happiness is not formed by successive addition, nor is it a collection like an alleged infinite number of balls, that's another non sequitur. Rather, it's a Spiritual State of Perfect Bliss, that comes from God's Free Choice to allow us to participate in His Divine Presence in Heaven.

Bucky, I didn't study in a Catholic College, I studied in a Secular One, NIT, Trichy, the best Engineering Institutes in India after the IIT's. I did Engg. in Undergrad, and Mgmt in Post-Graduation, quite a common combination in B-School. Anyway, some don't like the implication that the observed Expansion of the Universe cannot be continued indefinitely in the past, which itself is like the Thomistic Argument; so they try to evade the conclusion. Other Astronomers and Physicists say it quite explicitly and openly, yes, the Universe had a beginning, and is not infinite in the past

At least partly this is because most cosmologists are not familiar with the conclusions of quantum gravity as well as the  fact that such conclusions cannot be tested currently. There is also the issue that if the BB was a phase transition, it would *still* be the beginning of our universe (the expanding part) even if not the beginning of all of existence.

[polymath257]

I think the  problem is in the word 'first'. The usual argument only gives the existence of an *uncaused* cause. As you point out, there is nothing that says that uncaused cause is unique.

There is also nothing that says that multiple uncaused causes have to be simultaneous in any reference frame. This allows for a resolution to  your paradox.

I'd also like to point  out that, in cosmology, there *is* an absolute frame of reference for each event: that in which the universe looks isotropic and expands to retain that isotropy. The difficulty, of course, is that absolute framers at different events are not the same.

The problem is that simulteneity is required to avoid a first, for if there is a first from some reference frame, the rest are contingent from that perspective.

Why would that be the case if there was no causal link? And, in fact, it is quite easy in a relativistic scenario, to have multiple events, even ordered in some reference frames, that have no causal links.

[Angrboda]

The problem is that simulteneity is required to avoid a first, for if there is a first from some reference frame, the rest are contingent from that perspective.

Why would that be the case if there was no causal link? And, in fact, it is quite easy in a relativistic scenario, to have multiple events, even ordered in some reference frames, that have no causal links.

I'm simply going by the common definition that contingent things do not exist in all possible worlds but necessary things do. Not that I have any love for any of these definitions as my general reaction to the notion of necessary existence is, "What does that even mean?"

[The Grand Nudger]

A thing may come after, by some (or even an absolute) frame of reference, but so long as the thing that comes after does not terminate in any causal chain to the thing that came before, they would both be the first cause in their respective causal chains. Multiple concommitant causality.

So FC1 is responsible for properties a-d FC2 maybe only e, FC3f-0. Then we look at ourselves, noticing all of these properties a-o (and then some) and we say that we are contingent on all of these things which are not contingent upon each other. AKA, how the world actually appears to work. I don't want to belittle what we do know, but I'm going to call it scratching the surface. We hope, for any number of reasons, that these things all resolve into one thing. A theory of everything. It would be nice if they do - but they don't have to, that's not necessary. Positing a first cause -of everything- is highly motivated reasoning, short circuits any responsibility to figure out how any of this actually works. It also gives up the game. as positing that sort of first cause is mechanically identical to positing the existence of the universe..or the existence of existence. That these nuts took that to be their god is unsurprising - they think every flooded bank and every burnt bush and every five dollar bill laying on the sidewalk is their god at work. Spinozan substance monism lays a prettier veneer for that belief, imo, and is what you end up if you deeply commit to aristotlean theology. Which saint tommy could not, ultimately, being christian.

[Paleophyte]

Physicists reason like this, as the above excerpt also shows: (1) the universe is constantly expanding, (2) extrapolating backward, said expansion could not have been indefinitely continued in the past (3) Therefore, the universe had a beginning. Planck time, etc, is irrelevant to this conclusion.

No, physicists don't because step 1 isn't shown and step 2 doesn't work.

(1) The observable universe is currently expanding and that expansion is accelerating. There is nothing constant about it. What the overwhelming majority of the universe that we can't observe is doing is something you'd need to discuss with a serious cosmologist.

(2) If you extrapolate quantum mechanics and general relativity backward in time you get absurd results. Worse, the two models produce different absurd results. That's unsurprising, because we know that these models break down at the extremes. And the beginning of the universe is about as extreme as it gets. So no, you can't just run it all in reverse and get to a beginning.

What we know is that roughly 13.8 billion years ago the universe was in an extremely high energy, high density state commonly referred to as the "Big Bang". Prior to that... Well, that might be like talking about what's North of the North Pole. If not then I guarantee you it's going to be more interesting than anything concocted by a bunch of priests with a nasty penchant for burning anybody who tried to tell them that the Earth wasn't at the center of it.