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).
> 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.
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.
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
> 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.
1. is obviously false