Just to be clear...

It was suggested that every event has a cause.

I have two counters to this.

The first is that particular quantum events do not have a cause. It would be an error to talk of cause in discussing why an individual electron traveling through a slit veers right and not left. Similarly, it would be an error to ask why this particular uranium atom emitted an alpha particle now, or why an electron-positron pair appeared here rather than there.

The second is an issue of logic. "Every event has a cause" is an all-and-some proposition and hence can neither be proved, nor disproved. It's best treated as a methodological assumption, legitimising the search for a cause for any given event. It is certainly not one of the laws of thought.

The upshot, for the purposes of this thread, is that we are not compelled to agree that every event has a cause.

I'm not sure who said "every event has a cause," but they are wrong. Everything that undergoes change has a cause, yes, but that is very different from saying everything has a cause.

Another resource everyone should check out is this blog post discussing the cosmological argument (and clearing up lots of misconceptions about its premises) http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/so-you-think-you-understand.html

Furthermore, there is a difference between something being uncaused and something having an indeterministic effect. As someone in the comments to that blog post says: "what does happen in the realm of quantum processes, is that a cause does not have a deterministic effect anymore, but a probabilistic effect."

In other words, there is a big difference between "random effect" and "uncaused effect". Just because scientists can't predict which direction a particle may go in does not mean it is uncaused anymore than the fact that I don't know which side a dice will land on means that it is uncaused.

Everything that undergoes change has a cause, yes, — Michael Nelson

I disagree; or at the least, this is unproven. It seems to me that my counterpoints still apply.

I'll have a read of your link.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/so-you-think-you-understand.html — Michael Nelson

That's very good. Taking it as the basis for a thread on the Cosmological Argument would lead to a far more interesting discussion than is usually the case here.

So I would still say that "what comes into existence has a cause" is at best unproven, and hence any argument stemming from it would be unconvincing.

The first is that particular quantum events do not have a cause. — Banno

This is a statement of speculative physics, of which there are many varieties and no one commonly accepted version. We just aren't there yet. Therefore this statement is not a firm foundation from which to draw conclusions.

Every event has a cause" is an all-and-some proposition and hence can neither be proved, nor disproved. — Banno

Most would agree that an uncaused event is inconceivable. This is why "God" is sometimes used as a name for it. That word connotes, among other things, an insurmountable mystery.

So when speculating that we are not bound to accept causation for all events, one is asserting that the world may be beyond our capacity to imagine except with a placeholder.

Once that is accepted, the door has been opened to a far reaching skepticism.

This is a statement of speculative physics, — frank

Sorry - what? Are you still hoping for hidden variables?

Most would agree that an uncaused event is inconceivable. — frank

inconceivable?

Too strong. You conceive of it in writing that very sentence. So...?

This is why "God" is sometimes used as a name for it. That word connotes, among other things, an insurmountable mystery. — frank

Nah. It connotes a guy sitting on a cloud in charge of stuff. "God help us!", "God knows!", "Pray to God that doesn't happen", "God loves his children", "God said to Abraham..."... This ineffable mystery crap is just tacked on post hoc when we look at the top of the cloud and find it glaringly unoccupied.

You lost me. Not following how what you said relates to the bit you quoted. — Banno

Sure. You claimed that those who demanded every event have a cause were holding such antiquated views because their religion required it, despite current scientific views holding otherwise.

My point was that most mainstream Western religions hold that every event does NOT have a cause as a central tenant of their theological system. The concept of ex nihlio holds that creation came from nothing.

Nah. It connotes a guy sitting on a cloud in charge of stuff. "God help us!", "God knows!", "Pray to God that doesn't happen", "God loves his children", "God said to Abraham..."... This ineffable mystery crap is just tacked on post hoc when we look at the top of the cloud and find it glaringly unoccupied. — Isaac

This is a straw man. @frank specially presented a definition of God that he was working under, but you changed it so that you could offer this criticism.

SO there are uncaused events. Cool. I agree. — Banno

The second is an issue of logic. "Every event has a cause" is an all-and-some proposition and hence can neither be proved, nor disproved. — Banno

Has your view changed over the course of this thread? You seemed to go from a true disbeliever in causation to an agnostic.

frank specially presented a definition of God that he was working under — Hanover

No, he associated it with feelings "most" people have about the inconceivability of uncaused events. He claimed that it was the reason why God was used as a name for it, because of the connotations the word has. I'm denying that there's any evidence the word has those connotations for "most" people and therefore its very unlikely to be the reason why it is used in that way.

Sorry - what? Are you still hoping for hidden variables? — Banno

My hopes aren't the issue. Until we have QT that agrees with relativity, we have incomplete speculations and therefore no basis for metaphysical pronouncements.

You conceive of it in writing that very sentence — Banno

No, I didn't.

I am not sure having a cause and coming from nothing are the same things. That's one. I think an area where virtual particles can arise is a something. There are rules or patterns. There is potential. There's a somewhere. I am not so hinged to causes. In fact, I think this relates to another post of yours where cause is presumed. We'll know it's true if we notice me responding there.:grin:

I am not sure having a cause and coming from nothing are the same things. — Coben

If we take as a given that event X arose without a cause, then it would necessarily follow that event X arose from nothing, right?

I don't think so. But I do feel it is speculative either way. If virtual particles can suddenly arise in a complete vaccuum, i don't think that area was nothing. It has qualities, potentials, rules, tendencies. It's an area where these things happened. Perhaps that means there must also be a cause, perhaps stuff just happens THERE because of the qualities potential of that piece of space.

No, nothingness does not exist. Nothing to something is not possible by definition

Random thoughts:

• Why is there something rather than nothing? Because there has to be something to have nothing of.
• Nothing is the lack of anything. It can be conceived, understood, and communicated. It is something.
• But nothing doesn't exist. It is the necessary non-existent that allows reality.
• But nothingness exists—it is everywhere, in fact. Wherever one may find something, there is nothingness, hiding what isn't there.

Also, physicists don't know nuthin' bout nothing. :roll:

I don't think it is right to say that that contingent things are uncaused. — Michael Nelson

Certainly, "uncaused things" are contingent.

It's more like something from a virtual negation; a complete negation would result in a dead eternity.

My thoughts are that it's basically intractable at this time. "Something from nothing" makes no sense, but neither is it an answer in itself. I don't understand the compulsion some have to declare such fundamental questions "solved" (in a not very convincing fashion).

To elaborate:

Our understanding of a phenomenon is a function of what correct predictions and inferences we can make about it. When it comes to existence itself, it's clear there's an explanatory gap; we can understand how one entity transitions into another (e.g. water becoming ice) but how anything existed in the first place we don't know.

I'm careful to phrase it this way, because from this it's clear that

1) Whether time is finite, or infinite, or looped, or whatever doesn't matter. If I had an eternal golden calf in my garden, would its property of being eternal explain why it's there, and why you don't have one? Would it explain anything?

2) Saying "the universe just is" isn't an understanding either; it amounts to the claim that an explanation is impossible. That's completely compatible with -- not a retort -- to the claim that we don't have an explanation.

3) Saying "god did it" or whatever just kicks the can down the road; the same explanatory gap would exist for God. Which I think many believers would concede. If they accept that being eternal doesn't in itself explain anything, they would probably just say that God's existence is something beyond our comprehension.
That's fine, but for non-believers like me, that leaves me with no reason to invoke God. The same explanatory gap would remain, except we now have a job for Occam's razor.

As an aside, one thing to be aware of, is that there is a language issue here with English... And a few other languages, basically any language that concatenates "no" and "thing" into a noun like "nothing".
Because you get a lot of nonsense statements like "nothing is still something" and "there's no evidence of a nothing existing"...statements like this can't even be meaningfully translated into languages like Mandarin; they're gibberish.
"Nothing" is not an ordinary noun and doesn't function in all the places that you can put a noun. It's a concatenation of "logical not" and "some/any-thing".

Saying "god did it" or whatever just kicks the can down the road; the same explanatory gap would exist for God. — Mijin

I agree with you that eternity itself is not an explainer.

My understanding of Aquinas is that: even if the universe itself is eternal, if anything in the universe (e.g. movement, causation, generated beings) requires a first member, then there would be an explanatory gap for those elements of the universe if not for God.

I think material things can arise out of nothing material, but something cannot come out of absolute nothingness.

Thus begins somewhat of an inquiry as to what exactly is meant by nothingness, and the nature thereof. — CorneliusCoburn

Where did nothing come from?

Where did nothing come from? — Corvus

One might argue, "nothing" is merely a descriptor that refers to the absence of, well, any thing. It doesn't "come from" anywhere. It's the result of either a time before "things" or the result after which all "things" are removed. Now there's a good litany of pseudo-intellectual "gotcha" phrases associated with the idea (superficial depth, often semantics, typically leading to pseudo-"revelations") so be careful not to fall into any.

True Nothing may not have ever existed, or perhaps it did and something did indeed come from nothing. That—while "trippy" enough to fully occupy the full thought processes of the mortal mind for 1,000 lifetimes—ultimately becomes secondary to the larger, or at least more relevant, question: "can nothing really ever be reached from our current something" ie. (a true vacuum)?

so be careful not to fall into any. — Outlander

Something, nothing and true nothing, they all are just words i.e. semantics. You need to demonstrate what those each words stand for in the real world. What do you mean by something, nothing and true nothing? What are they in material objects in the physical world?

How can there be true nothing, when nothing doesn't exist?

What do you mean by something, nothing and true nothing? What are they in material objects in the physical world? — Corvus

Exactly what you would expect them to be, in the context of the physical world. "Nothing" obviously being as close to a "true vacuum" as physically possible, and perhaps "True Nothing" or a "true vacuum" not being possible (either by current scientific standards or simply by nature of the physical world).

Relevant tidbit:

A vacuum is defined as a space with as little energy in it as possible. Despite the name, the vacuum still has quantum fields. A true vacuum is stable because it is at a global minimum of energy, and is commonly assumed to coincide with the physical vacuum state in which we live. It is possible that a physical vacuum state is a configuration of quantum fields representing a local minimum but not global minimum of energy. This type of vacuum state is called a "false vacuum". — Wikipedia (False vacuum)

"Something" obviously being any form of discernible matter (a speck of dust or a blue whale, for example). Which, sure, there will always be "something" in whatever environment we try to make as close to "nothing" as possible. Especially if we count quantum activity or waves and particles (ie. magnetic or other "force" influence).

So True Nothing would be... well, it's in the word. Truly nothing. This may or may not be (currently) possible in practice (but perhaps in posit). However, note it once was impossible to reach things such as Absolute Zero and other previously unknown/"impossible" concepts that are now reached/obtained somewhat easily.

I'm not a physicist so anything deeper would be speculation/guesswork. Which is fine, in moderation.

Nothingness entails non-existence. The notion that nothingness preceded somethingness is nonsensical: it suggests non-existence existed - which is self-contraductory.

I suggest that a finite past is feasible; it would entail an initial state, not an event - an event is a point in time, which means there were both a prior and a later states.

An initial state would have to be uncaused, because causation entails a temporally prior cause.

An initial state raises the question of what time is. I don't know what it is, but I do know that time is not as it appears to be- special relativity proves that. So does the Page-Wooters* mechanism.

The Page-Wooters* mechanism, suggests the experience of time is localized, and due to quantum entanglement. From the point of view of an external observer, there is no passage of time in an observed quantum system. But observers within that system experience time as a sequence of events. At minimum, this demonstrates that we don't understand the nature of time, so we ought not to draw conclusions based on a traditional view of time.

*
"In this paper we provide an experimental illustration of Page and Wootters' quantum time mechanism that is able to describe two-time quantum correlation functions. This allows us to test a Leggett-Garg inequality, showing a violation from the "internal" observer point of view. The "external" observer sees a time-independent global state. Indeed, the scheme is implemented using a narrow-band single photon where the clock degree of freedom is encoded in the photon's position. Hence, the internal observer that measures the position can track the flow of time, while the external observer sees a delocalized photon that has no time evolution in the experiment time-scale." - https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.00707

Exactly what you would expect them to be, in the context of the physical world. — Outlander

That's why talking about something or nothing or true nothing has no meaning. They are just words.
When you say something exists, it doesn't say anything at all. Someone will ask you what is something? Then you have to give answer what the something is. Well, a cup exists. The something you uttered first, was a cup. Then you will be told, why do you utter a meaningless sentence? Why didn't you just say a cup exists?

Likewise nothing and true nothing doesn't mean anything at all. Because you need to present what the nothing and true nothing is in the physical world. They don't exist. They are just words. You talk about vacuum or near vacuum is nothing, but that is wrong. As soon as you say vacuum is nothing, it is something. So it is not exactly nothing. There is no such a thing called nothing, hence there is no such a thing called true nothing.

why do you utter a meaningless sentence — Corvus

They are just words — Corvus

This is meaningless:

"Something" obviously being any form of discernible matter — Outlander

This isn't:

As soon as you say vacuum is nothing, it is something. — Corvus

There is no such a thing called nothing, hence there is no such a thing called true nothing. — Corvus

Why is that? :chin:

Edit: I get what you're saying as far as "once you talk about anything it's 'something'". That said, explanations like that will make the average person go :roll: (if you're lucky)

Why is that? :chin: — Outlander

Something and nothing are semantic place holders for objects. Until you put actual objects in there, they don't mean a thing.