The unmoved mover

Yakuda said:
Lol the multiverse hypothesis is nothing but invoking luck or infinitesimal probability.
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Not really. It's an attempt to solve the implications of quantum theory. As opposed to say the Copenhagen Interpretation.

Yakuda said:
The presence of a highly tuned universe presents major problems for people seeking to dismiss the unmoved mover that is God.
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The real "hit" on the unmoved mover is the nature of the unmoved mover themselves. We posit the first uncaused cause because we ONLY know of things which have a predicate cause. But the reason the argument hits a speed bump is it inherently contains a thing which explicitly VIOLATES that "rule".

As for the "highly tuned universe" argument, this assumes we have some way to compare and contrast a highly tuned and non-tuned universe. It's one of the reasons that Intelligent Design tends to fail in biology. We have no real way to assess what "design" looks like.
 
Daylight63 said:
But we can all agree that that a "purposeful" "unmoved mover" must have come into existence in order to make the universe, correct? Or is it "eternal"?

What is the "nature" of this organizing principle? Is it a "being", does it have "a will", does it make "decisions" and "choices"? Or is it merely, for instance, the "nature of math" or some such non-being concept?

I can see that if one were to say "the nature of the physical laws is eternal and that organizes the universe" that's pretty reasonable, but those things don't have a "will" or make "choices".

I think that brings the discussion back to the nature of the proposed God. If it has a "will" then the questions get a lot more complex.
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IDK, but have a few guesses.

What are your thoughts on the bolded black parts, DL?

Disagree on the red bolded part since "physical laws" are not eternal. They are finite and limited to the Universe with no evidence they exist beyond it. Eternal usually means outside the Space-Time continuum within which we exist and label the Universe....all four dimensions of it.

www.iflscience.com

What Is The Space-Time Continuum?

We experience space and time as quite separate, but thinking about conditions close to the speed of light reveals the necessity to connect them.
www.iflscience.com www.iflscience.com
The “space-time continuum” is one of the concepts that came out of relativity theory that most people have heard of, but do not fully understand, like the related formula E=mc2....

...In one sense the idea is simple – instead of there being three dimensions of space, with time being something completely different, spacetime is a four-dimensional thing. Events are represented in spacetime by four coordinates: three based on where something occurs, relative to a defined point of origin, and the fourth being the time at which it happens.

Although Einstein made the concept of spacetime essential through relativity theory, physicists had been toying with the idea of a unified spacetime in which time was treated as a fourth dimension for some years before, including coining the name. They are united by the speed of light (in a vacuum), which ensures that the effects of an event take time to be experienced in other places.
 
Daylight63 said:
Not really. It's an attempt to solve the implications of quantum theory. As opposed to say the Copenhagen Interpretation.



The real "hit" on the unmoved mover is the nature of the unmoved mover themselves. We posit the first uncaused cause because we ONLY know of things which have a predicate cause. But the reason the argument hits a speed bump is it inherently contains a thing which explicitly VIOLATES that "rule".

As for the "highly tuned universe" argument, this assumes we have some way to compare and contrast a highly tuned and non-tuned universe. It's one of the reasons that Intelligent Design tends to fail in biology. We have no real way to assess what "design" looks like.
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It's nothing but a blind guess.
 
Daylight63 said:
Ah but i f we had someone who had never heard of the Big Bang. They could still find evidence of the event. Maybe not the nature of exactly what was happening but it could be detected by independent observers.



Not a huge fan of poetry (LOL :) ) but thanks for providing this



It is a beautiful bit of writing. No doubt. I'm just curious if Lao Tse had not written it would I also come to the conclusion that there is this "additional" bit that is something that I cannot describe and has no form?

This is an interesting bit:

Humans follow the laws of Earth
Earth follows the laws of Heaven
Heaven follows the Laws of Tao

I see how the first one works. And I'll assume that the "laws of heaven" are a proxy for "natural laws" like gravity etc. (?) but I'm uncertain what the Laws of Tao are.

And more importantly how can one confirm independent of Lao's words the existence of this?

One more bit to add: what if I were to propose that there is something which I'll call the "Super-Tao" which resides above the Tao and is that which generates the force that is the Tao (forgive me if I'm messing up the language, it is hard to nail down a real meaning in this) but I think you can see the question I'm asking.

Let's introduce the Tao to Occam's Razor. Is it necessary for the Tao to exist? If not then it is more parsimonious to assume it doesn't exist unless there is some reason to assume it does.

(I know that sounds a bit convoluted but it gets to the heart of my question about something like the Tao, for example).




Might just do that. (Gotta answer some e-mails first but it sounds like fun. I had a friend in college who got heavily into the Tao at a time when I was a young dude who was kind of a jerk and I really didn't give much attention when he went on about the Tao. It's taken me a long time to grow up and become more open to the larger world. I hope I can continue this growth).



I think I want some reason to believe that this "something" is objectively real. That it could be discovered by someone who had never heard of the Tao.

Have you ever heard of the concept of "Carcinization" in biology? It's basically the observation that crab-like features have developed in life multiple times independently. We don't necessarily know exactly why it happens but it certainly shows the existence of some driver for the process. Perhaps it is due to some efficiency in the design. But it is still an indicator of some unknown "force" (if you will) that has an observable effect.

I am looking for somethign about the Tao or Qi, etc., that says "Hey, something is going on here and we all see it, what is it?"



This is where the conversation gets super deep and I'm not sure it will necessarily lead to any insight. Does the Pythagorean Theorem really have an independent existence apart from triangles (or as an extension multidimensional vectors which can still be solved using the same type of approach)?

Apart from a triangle (or the other multidimensional vectors) is there a necessary reason that a^2 + b^2 = c^2?



Oh for sure! But it still feels like the math describing it doesn't exist apart from the thing described.
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That's why I specifically said there is no precise narrative definition of the Big Bang, because our interpretations of it keep changing at the level of physics and cosmology.

Socrates famously pointed out how clumsy people are in defining concepts. Wittgenstein famously tried to show how language has real limitations, and it doesn't give us any kind of real ultimate truth.

If you genuinely want to know what the Taosists thought about the Tao, you should read Lao Tzu. It is a very short book.

Thet Taoists, the Neoconfucians, the Aristotlieans logically surmised from very fact that we exist, the very fact that there is something rather than nothing, the very fact that the cosmos is a rationally organized and orchestrated symphony that there was a rational first principle, and unmoved mover, a Tao, a purposeful first cause.

That is a perfectly sane and logical deduction.

It's the same deduction billions of people for thousands of years have been making.

You don't have to agree with it. It might be wrong. But it is sane and reasonably follows the rules of formal logic.


Experimental confirmation does not apply to the immaterial, the incorporeal, the metaphysical. There is no scientific experiment you can do to prove justice, prove the origin of reality, prove why there is something rather than nothing.

You don't even use experimental science and experimental confirmation in your own life most of the time. Everything does not reduce to physics. Most of your beliefs, actions, values are based on intuition, circumstantial evidence, inference, and educated guesses.

Your life would be paralyzed if all your actions and beliefs required experimental confirmation and proof.
 
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Dutch Uncle said:
IDK, but have a few guesses.

What are your thoughts on the bolded black parts, DL?
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I will freely admit to being kind of adrift in all this conversation. I've probably cycled through every conceivable thought on this to the point that I have trouble figuring out what it is exactly that I "believe".

Dutch Uncle said:
Disagree on the red bolded part since "physical laws" are not eternal. They are finite and limited to the Universe with no evidence they exist beyond it. Eternal usually means outside the Space-Time continuum within which we exist and label the Universe....all four dimensions of it.
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I can definitely agree with that.

Dutch Uncle said:
Although Einstein made the concept of spacetime essential through relativity theory,
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Everytime I see those explanations of gravity being a "curvature of spacetime" and they show a rubber sheet being deformed by a bowling ball at first I think "Ah, I've got this! I can actually UNDERSTAND THAT" then I start thinking about it and realize I haven't actually got a clue what that means. When it gets to "space-time" I have to "let go and let God" as they say! LOL

 
Cypress said:
I don't think an infinite universe rescues us from the questions Aristotle, Lao Tzu, and the Hindu philosophers were asking.

We still wouldn't have an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing.
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Aristotle never asked that question. Seems to be an invention of Christianity.
 
Cypress said:
I agree our human minds create the need for a first cause.

I think you could remove humans from the universe and the question would still remain: why is there something rather than nothing and what caused it?
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No. Aristotle's argument is that we know there is motion. The question is whether there is a first motion, or cause of motion itself.
One can disagree, but it is perfectly rational question.
 
Hume said:
No. Aristotle's argument is that we know there is motion. The question is whether there is a first motion, or cause of motion itself.
One can disagree, but it is perfectly rational question.
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I see what you're saying - but time is probably an emergent property of motion, and motion is a consequence of interactions or forces.

Without time and motion it is meaningless to talk about the cosmos.

So to me the distinction between creation ex nihilo and initial motion from first cause isn't that important.
 
Cypress said:
I see what you're saying - but time is probably an emergent property of motion, and motion is a consequence of interactions or forces.

Without time and motion it is meaningless to talk about the cosmos.

So to me the distinction between creation ex nihilo and initial motion from first cause isn't that unrelated or important.
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For Aristotle, there is no creation. World always existed. Prime mover is just cause of motion, not of existence of the universe.
 
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