Infinite causal chains follow immediately from having continuous time. It's unclear if the actual world has continuous time, but there are certainly internally consistent physical laws that do, so the idea that these are metaphysically impossible seems very dubious to me. The ostensible paradoxes here all seem to arise from discontinuous events, rather than infinite causal chains per se.
Time is not continous - there exists a smallest possible time period, which is the Planck time. Both time and space seem to be discrete (against everyday experience) according to our current understanding of physical laws.
That is a common misunderstanding - quantum field theory, taken on it's own, has continuous time and space, as does general relativity. The Plank scale isn't a discretization of space-time, rather, it's the scale at which the conflicting predictions of the two theories become unavoidable. We can strongly expect to encounter new physics at or below that energy level, but that doesn't mean the new physics will have discrete space-time. Further, AIUI, discrete space-time contradicts special relativity. If there's some kind of "space-time grid" rather than a continuous manifold it can't remain invariant under Lorentz transformations (this is one of the things that make QFT hard, because it means you can't have toy models with only finitely many degrees of freedom).
>When we observe a thing, we ordinarily suppose it has a cause. It seems reasonable to ask, for anything, why it exists, and this will usually be given a causal explanation.
...Which is a fine thing to do, because causality is a heuristic humans use in talking about the world. Quantum mechanics doesn't use a notion of causality, it only posits an initial state and forward time evolution to explain the universe. This is also a perfectly fine way to talk about the world. It would be felicitous to infer from the success of either of these ways of description that God must be a cause or the initial wavefunction of the universe, for the simple reason that these are heuristics with a nonglobal/nonabsolute/nonuniversal domain of applicability.
> Positing an infinite succession of causes doesn’t explain anything, because there’s no explanation of the chain itself. If a dragon appeared in my room, even if it was birthed by an earlier dragon, itself birthed by an earlier dragon going infinitely far back, there would still be something unexplained—it would be surprising that there’s this infinite succession of dragons. That would need a cause.
It has several serious advantages. First of all, its inductive. Secondly, citing myself from another post:
"Infinitely old tiger is weird, but it is less weird then uncausable tiger. In the former case I can just say, okay it seems that my limited brain is just unable to comprehend the full causal chain of tiger existence because its infinite, so the problem may be on my end, while infinitely old tigers are completely valid. In the later it feels as some kind of semantic trick and the whole situation is even less satisfying."
Same thing with chain of dragons. If the dragon suddenly appears in your room for no reason - it's surprising. If a population of dragons has inhabited a room since the dawn of times and the only thing that prevents you from tracking down the causal history of every dragon is the limitations of your own mortal body - then its seems like you problem, while the infinite chain is fine.
> The chain of infinite events is concrete—causally efficacious
Not really? The chain itself doesn't causally affect anything, only elements of the chain do.
> the theist can deny that God is a thing
But then I can say: "Gotcha! Made you acknowledge that God is not a thing!" Which obviously makes me an instant winner in the argument and everyone claps.
Jokes aside, the reason why we can meaningfully say that chain is not a thing because it can be reduced to its elements and doesn't have separate existence beyond them. But God is irreducible, so this doesn't work.
That said, I agree that infinite causal chains are unlikely to be real, on the ground of a general stance against actual infinities, but if you do not share such sentiment, then you have much harder time dismissing them.
Point of clarification: the core cosmological argument of the “unmoved mover” is usually taken to mean that the Deity created the universe, but what it actually means in its original design is that the Deity is, continuously, the cause of the universe exist in an ordered and logical form. Aquinas would not argue that God created gravity, but that the continuous existence of a static gravitational constant for no discernible reason is because God has determined it will have a static form. In the traditional theology, God is more like a fabric of reality with will and desires, not some kind of big wizard who makes things happen.
This reminds me of a point I made to a friend in a conversation about cosmology. The core function of statistics applied to chemistry dictates that entropy must always increase. This is not just an idiopathic law of science, it’s an observable mathematical truth of physics. Therefore:
1. The universe has a finite amount of matter
2. Entropy always increases over time
3. Observation: Entropy is still increasing as the universe is not in a purely disordered state.
4. Conclusions: The observed matter must have begun to exist a finite length of time in the past
This leaves us with a choice between the universe starting a finite amount of time in the past, being subject to some periodic remission of entropy, or including an infinite amount of matter such that entropy may never reach an infinitely disordered state.
Any of these conclusions would functionally shatter the core view of “secular” cosmology, hence why even the Big Bang was considered a theological argument when it was first put forward
Clever observation and reply!
Every *natural* thing needs a cause. The whole point of the concept of the supernatural that it does not need a cause.
But apparently motives are in play.
"Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think."
Werner Heisenberg
So we should be good to each other.
Infinite causal chains follow immediately from having continuous time. It's unclear if the actual world has continuous time, but there are certainly internally consistent physical laws that do, so the idea that these are metaphysically impossible seems very dubious to me. The ostensible paradoxes here all seem to arise from discontinuous events, rather than infinite causal chains per se.
Time is not continous - there exists a smallest possible time period, which is the Planck time. Both time and space seem to be discrete (against everyday experience) according to our current understanding of physical laws.
That is a common misunderstanding - quantum field theory, taken on it's own, has continuous time and space, as does general relativity. The Plank scale isn't a discretization of space-time, rather, it's the scale at which the conflicting predictions of the two theories become unavoidable. We can strongly expect to encounter new physics at or below that energy level, but that doesn't mean the new physics will have discrete space-time. Further, AIUI, discrete space-time contradicts special relativity. If there's some kind of "space-time grid" rather than a continuous manifold it can't remain invariant under Lorentz transformations (this is one of the things that make QFT hard, because it means you can't have toy models with only finitely many degrees of freedom).
Interesting, I’m not sure why I was confused about this. I think a lot of popsci books are ambigous or straight misleading on this.
Popsci is very misleading on this point
>When we observe a thing, we ordinarily suppose it has a cause. It seems reasonable to ask, for anything, why it exists, and this will usually be given a causal explanation.
...Which is a fine thing to do, because causality is a heuristic humans use in talking about the world. Quantum mechanics doesn't use a notion of causality, it only posits an initial state and forward time evolution to explain the universe. This is also a perfectly fine way to talk about the world. It would be felicitous to infer from the success of either of these ways of description that God must be a cause or the initial wavefunction of the universe, for the simple reason that these are heuristics with a nonglobal/nonabsolute/nonuniversal domain of applicability.
> Here is an argument that, as defenders of the cosmological argument emphasize at great length, has never been made
I've personally seen a person come up with this argument. And I'm fairly certain she wasn't the first.
Also you were essentially making it in these posts (a bit modified version but the core reasoning is the same):
https://benthams.substack.com/p/god-best-explains-the-world
https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-new-cosmological-argument
> Positing an infinite succession of causes doesn’t explain anything, because there’s no explanation of the chain itself. If a dragon appeared in my room, even if it was birthed by an earlier dragon, itself birthed by an earlier dragon going infinitely far back, there would still be something unexplained—it would be surprising that there’s this infinite succession of dragons. That would need a cause.
It has several serious advantages. First of all, its inductive. Secondly, citing myself from another post:
"Infinitely old tiger is weird, but it is less weird then uncausable tiger. In the former case I can just say, okay it seems that my limited brain is just unable to comprehend the full causal chain of tiger existence because its infinite, so the problem may be on my end, while infinitely old tigers are completely valid. In the later it feels as some kind of semantic trick and the whole situation is even less satisfying."
Same thing with chain of dragons. If the dragon suddenly appears in your room for no reason - it's surprising. If a population of dragons has inhabited a room since the dawn of times and the only thing that prevents you from tracking down the causal history of every dragon is the limitations of your own mortal body - then its seems like you problem, while the infinite chain is fine.
> The chain of infinite events is concrete—causally efficacious
Not really? The chain itself doesn't causally affect anything, only elements of the chain do.
> the theist can deny that God is a thing
But then I can say: "Gotcha! Made you acknowledge that God is not a thing!" Which obviously makes me an instant winner in the argument and everyone claps.
Jokes aside, the reason why we can meaningfully say that chain is not a thing because it can be reduced to its elements and doesn't have separate existence beyond them. But God is irreducible, so this doesn't work.
That said, I agree that infinite causal chains are unlikely to be real, on the ground of a general stance against actual infinities, but if you do not share such sentiment, then you have much harder time dismissing them.
Cause and effect gearwork
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwork_universe
Here's the best I've seen yet on the subject. Including a PhD student
https://youtu.be/vgLzMkxhEiQ?si=mh1U0_WDZ_Gbby6F
Point of clarification: the core cosmological argument of the “unmoved mover” is usually taken to mean that the Deity created the universe, but what it actually means in its original design is that the Deity is, continuously, the cause of the universe exist in an ordered and logical form. Aquinas would not argue that God created gravity, but that the continuous existence of a static gravitational constant for no discernible reason is because God has determined it will have a static form. In the traditional theology, God is more like a fabric of reality with will and desires, not some kind of big wizard who makes things happen.
1. is obviously false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_law#Conservation_laws_as_fundamental_laws_of_nature
This reminds me of a point I made to a friend in a conversation about cosmology. The core function of statistics applied to chemistry dictates that entropy must always increase. This is not just an idiopathic law of science, it’s an observable mathematical truth of physics. Therefore:
1. The universe has a finite amount of matter
2. Entropy always increases over time
3. Observation: Entropy is still increasing as the universe is not in a purely disordered state.
4. Conclusions: The observed matter must have begun to exist a finite length of time in the past
This leaves us with a choice between the universe starting a finite amount of time in the past, being subject to some periodic remission of entropy, or including an infinite amount of matter such that entropy may never reach an infinitely disordered state.
Any of these conclusions would functionally shatter the core view of “secular” cosmology, hence why even the Big Bang was considered a theological argument when it was first put forward
Not true under loop cyclic cosmologies.
Sure, but loop cosmologies are wild conjecture at this point