Matter

[Brother Adam]

I am trying to find an answer for how atheists explain the existence of anything. I understand the concept of the universe cycling in on itself for eternity, but I don't understand how it is reasonable to believe in the existence of the matter cycling through the universe for eternity as an uncaused cause. What is the cause of anything? And if nothing causes it, how is that reasonable?

[AccountDeleted]

What you have to understand is that atheists/agnostics (I was raised as one) are actually proud of NOT knowing. There is a feeling of superiority (undeclared of course) in being able to handle the not knowing, as opposed to those who 'need religion as a crutch' to help them deal with the fact that we don't or can't know everything. I often heard that 'religion is the opiate of the masses' said in a way that made me feel proud that I didn't need a religion because I accepted that there were always going to be things that I couldn't explain away through 'blind faith'.

But despite all my parents good intentions or training or whatever, I found myself searching for meaning in life, and investigated a lot of religions (Christianity was last because my parents were most opposed to it) looking for an experience of God. It wasn't until I became a Catholic that it all made sense, and it became so obvious that there has to be a God! And what a God!

The truly ironic thing is that my mother was a deeply spiritual woman herself (although I didn't know this until I was an adult) and not only did my father attend my Catholic baptism in 1977 and know all the prayers (turns out he went to a Catholic boys military academy when he was young which I never knew), but just before he died he asked to have a Cross put on his headstone and I was asked to speak at his memorial service and say some prayers! And one thing he told me just after my baptism, when I asked him point blank if he believed in God, he said 'There are no atheists in fox holes.' So even though atheists proclaim their independence from a creator, I believe that deep in their hearts, many of them are secretly like my own Mom and Dad.

[xSilverPhinx]

If you're wondering how the cosmologists and physicist are explaining how the universe came into existence, there are some interesting books and video lectures on YouTube.

I just found this one, though I didn't watch it myself yet: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv2gBjQ8xIo[/media]

As for the uncaused cause, assuming that the universe had a beginning and a cause, I find it reasonable to not assume that the cause is a cause consciously capable of creating a universe but is instead a mindless cause.

[stevil]

[quote name='nunsense' timestamp='1309491917' post='2261411']
What you have to understand is that atheists/agnostics (I was raised as one) are actually proud of NOT knowing. There is a feeling of superiority (undeclared of course) in being able to handle the not knowing,
[/quote]
I am an Atheist and the proud emotion is not what I would associate with my position of not knowing the answer. I am not ashamed of not knowing either. I think it is a great mystery and it is exciting thinking about the possibilities, I am also fascinated by the developments that the scientific and cosmological communities discover. With regards to having a feeling of superiority over theist, this is untrue in my case. My world view is my personal stance with regards to my understanding of the world. I do not expect others to align with my understanding. I am all for tolerance, compassion and respect for others and their views. I have not walked in their shoes and hence I do not have the right to suggest how they should think.

With regards to the original question, although I do not know the answer, I feel that it is entirely possible that the properties of space and the phenomena of quantum fluctuations could have created all that exists. Space itself could be the uncaused cause, it is eternal and everywhere. The confusion with most people is that nothing is entirely nothing, but science has shown that nothing is not nothing at all. (yup, that's confusing, but taking a look at the universe, looking under the hood and kicking the tyres has revealed much fascinating stuff, we should continue to look, to observe and measure)

[Laudate_Dominum]

I had this debate playing in the background while I was working one day and it was pretty distracting (in that it's amusing). Quite the cast of characters.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYeN66CSQhg[/media]

I think it is important to mention the tentative and often quite speculative nature of the QG models and theories that are being pursued. On of my pet peeves -- which is encountered constantly on teh interwebs -- is when people say something like, "Science says..." and then proceed to give some poor description of a fringe scientific hypothesis or one of a dozen highly debated models as though it is a scientific fact. When it comes to QG, GUTs, teh multiverse, etcetera, there is a diverse ecology of approaches, all of which may prove misguided, and I think presenting this process of discovery is more epic than speaking of science with an air of dogmatism. I imagine you agree anyway. I vaguely recall a post not too long ago which presented Smolin's (one of the characters in the above vid) outlandish cosmological natural selection idea as though it were a doctrine of science.

Anyway, I am hopeful -- and very much pray -- that within my lifetime many of these huge questions will be resolved; and maybe some currently unimaginable new physics will be uncovered, as a bonus. ;-) Given the mountain of rad scientific insights that have been gained thus far in my life I don't see this as an unreasonable hope.

[AccountDeleted]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1309506497' post='2261456']
I am an Atheist and the proud emotion is not what I would associate with my position of not knowing the answer. I am not ashamed of not knowing either. I think it is a great mystery and it is exciting thinking about the possibilities, I am also fascinated by the developments that the scientific and cosmological communities discover. With regards to having a feeling of superiority over theist, this is untrue in my case. My world view is my personal stance with regards to my understanding of the world. I do not expect others to align with my understanding. I am all for tolerance, compassion and respect for others and their views. I have not walked in their shoes and hence I do not have the right to suggest how they should think.

With regards to the original question, although I do not know the answer, I feel that it is entirely possible that the properties of space and the phenomena of quantum fluctuations could have created all that exists. Space itself could be the uncaused cause, it is eternal and everywhere. The confusion with most people is that nothing is entirely nothing, but science has shown that nothing is not nothing at all. (yup, that's confusing, but taking a look at the universe, looking under the hood and kicking the tyres has revealed much fascinating stuff, we should continue to look, to observe and measure)
[/quote]

Stevil, I offer you my sincere apologies for my own personal arrogance is stating a generalisation about atheists like that. I should know better because although most of my family are still agnostics, they are also very respectful of my faith and despite thinking I am a bit of a religious fanatic, they support my desire to be a nun as well.

I think my view of atheists have been coloured recently by another forum, one which consists of ex-cult members who were were once sincere seekers of truth themselves, but through being burnt by a charlatan who claimed to be God Incarnate, they are now hostile to almost any theistic thoughts, especially Christianity it seems. They have become what they used to hate --closed minded people. And I guess they reinforced an old belief I had about atheists and so-called agnostics (sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between the two). I was basically warned off the other forum, despite sharing many past experiences with other posters, simply because, instead of becoming an atheist, I became a Christian!

Once again, apologies for my generalisation, I have been correct and I appreciate that. The fact that you read and post here shows that you are hardly the typical atheist though.

Edited July 1, 2011 by nunsense

[xSilverPhinx]

[u]Edited to add disclaimer: she doesn't answer the OP's question. I was swayed by the title. [/u]

To to add to my previous post so that I can point out what and when she talks about the notion of causality at the quantum scale:

Up to about 31 mins she gives a explanatory background on classical physics, Einstein's general relativity and the uncertainty principle (atomic model).

At around 31 mins she goes into causality at the quantum scale, which is of interest because the singularity that expanded into the macroscopic universe was quantum (planck length). It's possible that at that scale, causality does not happen and effects can happen without being caused. Causality is a so far not violated rule of the macroscopic world, which is what we're used to and what underlies our intuitive understanding. What happens at the quantum level is so far removed from our experiences of the world that people can't really [i]understand[/i] it.The idea that some uncaused effect can happen seems impossible to us, but it might not be.

At around 33 mins she goes into wormholes, which are postulated to exist at the quantum scale.

[spoiler]At around 39 mins: thinking in portals... (I've been playing too much Portal and Portal 2 lately)[/spoiler]

At around 45 mins she goes into how wormholes could theoretically be used to travel back in time and the grandfather paradox*, which would violate causality (cause must precede effect)

*a person goes back in time and kills their grandfather before he met their grandmother, so how could that person exist to go back in time?

At around 47 mins she mentions quantum gravity, which would be needed to create a wormhole. She also mentions that there are problems for arriving at a theory of quantum gravity, which so far have not been able to make any predictions about the macroscopic world, though can be mathematically used to describe to some extent the macroscopic world.

At around 51 mins she talks about what physicists have called the 'holy grail', which means trying to arrive at a unified theory (uniting quantum physics with the macroscopic world of general relativity).

At around 55 mins to the end she talks about quantum gravity and 'causal dynamical triangulation' in which space-time is broken down into sub-planckian triangular building blocks in order to better visualise the explanatory model for quantum fluctuations. She goes on to explain that some occurrences at the quantum level such as wormholes could influence the macroscopic world but the rest of the video is more about unifying than talking about quantum causality. Still interesting though, if you like the subject.

Anyways, to summerise, she doesn't say much about causality at the quantum scale, the title is slightly misleading.

***

Nunsense, out of curiosity, which forum was it?

Edited July 1, 2011 by xSilverPhinx

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309512937' post='2261473']
To to add to my previous post so that I can point out what and when she talks about the notion of causality at the quantum scale: ....
[/quote]
I'm about an hour into the vid (playing in the background) and I'm still not quite sure exactly how you mean this to be an answer to Adam's question. I haven't heard a lot of pertinent discussion so far and I'm almost done.

P.S. I'd say anyone with a basic layman's familiarity with the concepts of physics ought to skip most of the vid.

Edited July 1, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1309508439' post='2261460']
I had this debate playing in the background while I was working one day and it was pretty distracting (in that it's amusing). Quite the cast of characters.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYeN66CSQhg[/media][/quote]

Neil deGrasse Tyson can make just about any subject interesting.

[quote]I think it is important to mention the tentative and often quite speculative nature of the QG models and theories that are being pursued. On of my pet peeves -- which is encountered constantly on teh interwebs -- is when people say something like, "Science says..." and then proceed to give some poor description of a fringe scientific hypothesis or one of a dozen highly debated models as though it is a scientific fact. When it comes to QG, GUTs, teh multiverse, etcetera, there is a diverse ecology of approaches, all of which may prove misguided, and I think presenting this process of discovery is more epic than speaking of science with an air of dogmatism. I imagine you agree anyway. I vaguely recall a post not too long ago which presented Smolin's (one of the characters in the above vid) outlandish cosmological natural selection idea as though it were a doctrine of science.[/quote]

If it's what I posted the the Uncaused Cause Proof thread, if you must know, I have a special liking of the multiverse hypothesis or theory in the colloquial sense because I really like sci-fi . I think it and other hypotheses are interesting to show that since we don't have access to whatever is outside the universe, if there is an outside, then the same reality could be explained with other views. Defenders of M theory say that the cosmic microwave background could also be used to explain what a brane colliding against another brane would cause. Others say that the lack of uniformity in energy distribution is evidence for gravitational influence coming from another universe or brane. It's largely a mystery and some hypotheses lack stronger proof, but they're are interesting nonetheless.

[quote]Anyway, I am hopeful -- and very much pray -- that within my lifetime many of these huge questions will be resolved; and maybe some currently unimaginable new physics will be uncovered, as a bonus. ;-) Given the mountain of rad scientific insights that have been gained thus far in my life I don't see this as an unreasonable hope.
[/quote]

I wonder what the Large Hadron Collider has in store...I think it's a cool age we live in.

[quote]I'm about an hour into the vid (playing in the background) and I'm still not quite sure exactly how you mean this to be an answer to Adam's question. I haven't heard a lot of pertinent discussion so far and I'm almost done.

P.S. I'd say anyone with a basic layman's familiarity with the concepts of physics ought to skip most of the vid.[/quote]

It was a bit of a disapointment in that sense, she doesn't really mention anything about it other than acausal effects could exist at the quantum scale (yep, that's all). I was taking notes as I listened before knowing that it wouldn't answer his question but decided to post it all anyways, in case anybody is interested.

Edited July 1, 2011 by xSilverPhinx

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309514992' post='2261479']
If it's what I posted the the Uncaused Cause Proof thread, if you must know, I have a special liking of the multiverse hypothesis or theory in the colloquial sense because I really like sci-fi . I think it and other hypotheses are interesting to show that since we don't have access to whatever is outside the universe, if there is an outside, then the same reality could be explained with other views. Defenders of M theory say that the cosmic microwave background could also be used to explain what a brane colliding against another brane would cause. Others say that the lack of uniformity in energy distribution is evidence for gravitational influence coming from another universe or brane. It's largely a mystery and some hypotheses lack stronger proof, but they're are interesting nonetheless. [/quote]
I'm partial to multiverse hypotheses as well, I'm just not crazy about Smolin's idea as put forth in [i]The Life of the Cosmos[/i]. I skim over arXiv just about every day and that idea of Smolin seems pretty irrelevant to the active multiverse discourses. As an aside, a curious paper from Susskind (sort of a rival of Smolin; check out their intense debate on [url="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smolin_susskind04/smolin_susskind.html"]The Edge[/url]) appeared a while back, you might dig it. [url="http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.3796"]The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics[/url]

Sean Carroll had an amusing post about it on his blog: [url="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/26/are-many-worlds-and-the-multiverse-the-same-idea/"]Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea?[/url]

I'd better stop. This is a topic that I'm pretty passionate about and I'm tempted to go nuts with link dumping.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309514992' post='2261479']
It was a bit of a disapointment in that sense, she doesn't really mention anything about it other than acausal effects could exist at the quantum scale (yep, that's all). I was taking notes as I listened before knowing that it wouldn't answer his question but decided to post it all anyways, in case anybody is interested.
[/quote]
I haven't watched it yet, but maybe this vid is pertinent to the point you want to make. Krauss gave a talk on the subject at an AAI conference a couple years ago and I imagine the talk in this video is similar.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdvWrI_oQjY[/media]

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1309516341' post='2261481']
I'm partial to multiverse hypotheses as well, I'm just not crazy about Smolin's idea as put forth in [i]The Life of the Cosmos[/i]. I skim over arXiv just about every day and that idea of Smolin seems pretty irrelevant to the active multiverse discourses. As an aside, a curious paper from Susskind (sort of a rival of Smolin; check out their intense debate on [url="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smolin_susskind04/smolin_susskind.html"]The Edge[/url]) appeared a while back, you might dig it. [url="http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.3796"]The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics[/url]

Sean Carroll had an amusing post about it on his blog: [url="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/26/are-many-worlds-and-the-multiverse-the-same-idea/"]Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea?[/url]

I'd better stop. This is a topic that I'm pretty passionate about and I'm tempted to go nuts with link dumping.
[/quote]

Me too, and this thread is dangerously close to being hijacked. Reality can be extraordinary whether a deeper understanding of it can be known or not.

I don't know if you've watched this PBS documentary called 'Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives', on Hugh Everett. Doesn't really go into the Many Worlds Interpretation in much depth, but it's entertaining. Here's part one:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnnA3sgMXCI[/media]

I also think Susskind's Holographic Principle is cool, though I'm not going to post anymore vids I didn't watch.

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1309516826' post='2261484']
I haven't watched it yet, but maybe this vid is pertinent to the point you want to make. Krauss gave a talk on the subject at an AAI conference a couple years ago and I imagine the talk in this video is similar.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdvWrI_oQjY[/media][/quote]

I watched it, a bit pessimistic about the future of the universe to say the least, but that's what all observations are pointing to. Nothing about causality, though.

[dairygirl4u2c]

i would point out a few points.
with the underlying point of course, 'so where'd God come from?'
one is that something 'just being', like the universe, is as plausible as something like God 'just being'. even if we didn't exist in a full fledged universe form, it could have been like a primordial soup just waiting to explode into the universe. it's possible. or that we exploded from a preexisting universe etc.
it'd be a lot easier for the atheists if there was no big bang and all we knew was that we just existed, cause the big bang makes it seem we came from nothing.

does the idea of an uncaused cause cause trump the idea of coming from nothing? i'd say yes, but. the other idea is that the idea of an 'uncaused cause' is not something we see in every day life. we can say, yes, things have causes, like bikes rolling have causes. but the idea on uncasued caused is not soemthign we see in every day life. why is us coming from something random then so unthinkable? i do admit though that something just existing even without a cause and then causing other things, is closer to what we see in everyday life and so more reasonable.

the other idea is that they say that at the level of 'nothing' existing, like between atoms and subatomic particles, there really is something, random popping 'things' that aren't things we normally think of. that could have existed all along, and gave rise to the universe. this is actually pretty close to the 'primordial soup' and preexisting universes etc idea... but the fact that it's scientifically based gives the idea its own power, and also of course supports those ideas too.

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' timestamp='1309561835' post='2261780']
i would point out a few points.
with the underlying point of course, 'so where'd God come from?'
one is that something 'just being', like the universe, is as plausible as something like God 'just being'. even if we didn't exist in a full fledged universe form, it could have been like a primordial soup just waiting to explode into the universe. it's possible. or that we exploded from a preexisting universe etc.
it'd be a lot easier for the atheists if there was no big bang and all we knew was that we just existed, cause the big bang makes it seem we came from nothing.

does the idea of an uncaused cause cause trump the idea of coming from nothing? i'd say yes, but. the other idea is that the idea of an 'uncaused cause' is not something we see in every day life. we can say, yes, things have causes, like bikes rolling have causes. but the idea on uncasued caused is not soemthign we see in every day life. why is us coming from something random then so unthinkable? i do admit though that something just existing even without a cause and then causing other things, is closer to what we see in everyday life and so more reasonable.

the other idea is that they say that at the level of 'nothing' existing, like between atoms and subatomic particles, there really is something, random popping 'things' that aren't things we normally think of. that could have existed all along, and gave rise to the universe. this is actually pretty close to the 'primordial soup' and preexisting universes etc idea... but the fact that it's scientifically based gives the idea its own power, and also of course supports those ideas too.
[/quote]

That's just the thing, a lot of understanding lies on the assumption that causality is universal and a law. A reality without causality would have all sorts of implications, and I think that much of science itself would be undermined. At the macroscopic scale, it's easier to infer causes from effects, but at the quantum scale, acausal effects could happen. That would be weird, to say the least.

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality"]Retrocausality[/url] is an interesting thought, especially in physics, though it isn't really employed by those in the field.

[Brother Adam]

So with my limited knowledge of quantum physics, it seems then that the first cause of anything is unknown, and that atheists have to accept not knowing the first cause to accept that there is no need for God. So you either accept that God is the cause of reality, who we can reasonably assume exists in a reality wholly other than the physical reality that we know and study. Or we have to accept that we don't know. It does not seem reasonable that matter, or reality can exist from nothing and came from nothing. It seems to me that is why some atheists assert that life on earth was planted by aliens (an unknown superior being) in some distant past (and alluded to in the latest Indiana movie).