Isn’t some sort of deism at least plausible and reasonable at this juncture? Is there a materialistic theory of what happened before the big bang that is worth putting any stock in? Or are we in an agnostic wait-and-see mode regarding pre-big bang events?
Isn’t some sort of deism at least plausible and reasonable at this juncture?
That would majorly depend on what “deism” means, as a concrete model, other than “here my other models break down”. After all, if you can postulate an intelligent and moral being, with exactly our own kind of intelligence and morality, with the power of creating a universe, then surely you can posit, with much more confidence, an unintelligent and amoral system with the power of creating a universe.
Is there a materialistic theory of what happened before the big bang that is worth putting any stock in?
There are many, but none of them are in the realm of testability due to the dependency to a flavor of quantum gravity. Let’s not forget that the Big Bang is a singularity, meaning a point where the model breaks down and cry. If you want to go ‘before’ the Big Bang, you need a wider model (that is, a theory of quantum gravity).
Or are we in an agnostic wait-and-see mode regarding pre-big bang events?
That is surely the most sensible approach at our point in time.
Time is a phenomenon inside the physical world, it is not something outside of it. It doesn’t make sense to take about time before the the existence of physical world.
Positing a hyper-powerful creative entity seems not that epistemologically reckless when the more “scientific” alternative is “something happened”.
Jumping from “something happened” to “a hyper-powerful creative entity happened” is not reckless? Especially when we have evidence that more complex things can arise from less complex things without a supernatural manager guiding the process.
What makes you look at the vast set of “somethings” that might have been responsible for the origin of the universe, and choose exactly the same thing that our ancestors considered a good explanation for the origins of thunder (and now we know they were wrong)?
Especially when we have evidence that more complex things can arise from less complex things without a supernatural manager guiding the process.
This isn’t being questioned. I’m asking about origins.
What makes you look at the vast set of “somethings” that might have been responsible for the origin of the universe, and choose exactly the same thing that our ancestors considered a good explanation for the origins of thunder (and now we know they were wrong)?
I don’t consider it a good explanation. But others have. And I don’t see why it’s necessarily bad. So far, I’ve seen no reason on this thread to update and make deism an awful explanation.
Positing a hyper-powerful creative entity seems not that epistemologically reckless
How about epistemicologically useless? What caused your hyper-powerful creative entity? You haven’t accomplished anything, you’ve just added another black box to your collection.
I suppose. Though I think saying “magical fairy” is just an attempt to use silly-sounding words to dismiss an idea.
I may be wrong (IF SO, PLEASE CORRECT ME WITH DETAILS), but from what I understand, the origin of the universe (“pre-big bang”, to the extent that phrase makes any sense) is an area where we currently have almost no knowledge. There are lots of very strange theories and concepts being discussed that have no real evidence supporting them. We’re often dealing with pure conjecture, speculating about the way things might be in the absence of the universal laws with which we are familiar.
Do you have a particular theory about how the universe came to be? If so, what makes you believe this?
I agree that the non-religious theories about origins of the universe are speculative. I could name a few, and perhaps say which ones I prefer, but I wouldn’t expect to convince anyone, probably not even myself on a different day.
(I suspect the correct answer is somewhere along: “everything exists in a timeless Tegmark multiverse, but intelligent observers only happen in situations where causality exists, and causality defines some kind of measure, so despite everything existing, some things seem more likely to the observers than other things”. And specifically for the origin of our universe, I suspect the correct answer would be that if you get too close to the big bang, local arrows of time start pointing in non-parallel directions and/or the past stops being unique. But that’s just a bunch of words masking my lack of deep understanding.)
However, religions also don’t have convincing answers for what happened before god(s) created the world, or how did god(s) happen to exist. So by adding religion you are actually not getting any closer to the answer. You have one more step in the chain, but the end of the new chain looks the same (or worse) as the end of the old one.
Instead of “universe has simply existed since ever” you have “god has simply existed since ever”; instead of “time only exists within universe, so it is meaningless to ask what was before that” you have “god has created time together with universe, so it is meaningless to ask what was before that”; instead of “the universes exist in an infinite loop of big bang and big crunch” you have “god keeps creating and destroying universes in an infinite loop”; et cetera.
Can you explain how a simulated universe, for instance, is more useful than deism? Doesn’t it also simply move the question of ultimate origins back a step?
This is essentially what username2 was getting at, but I’ll try a different direction.
It’s entirely possible that “what caused the big bang” is a nonsensical question. ‘Causes’ and ‘Effects’ only exist insofar as there are things which exist to cause causes and effect effects. The “cause and effect” apparatus could be entirely contained within the universe, in the same way that it’s not really sensible to talk about “before” the universe.
Alternatively, it could be that there’s no “before” because the universe has always existed. Or that our universe nucleated from another universe, and that one could follow the causal chain of universes nucleating within universe backwards forever. Or that time is circular.
I suspect that the reason I’m not religious is that I’m not at all bothered by the question “Why is there a universe, rather than not a universe?” not having a meaningful answer. Or rather, it feels overwhelmingly anthropocentric to expect that the answer to that question, if there even was one, would be comprehensible to me. Worse, if the answer really was “God did it,” I think I would just be disappointed.
It makes a lot of sense that the nature of questions regarding the “beginning” of the universe is nonsensical and anthropocentric, but it still feels like a cheap response that misses the crux of the issue. It feels like “science will fill in that gap eventually” and we ought to trust that will be so.
Matter exists. And there are physical laws in the universe that exist. I accept, despite my lack of imagination and fancy scientific book learning, that this is basically enough to deterministically allow intelligent live beings like you and I to be corresponding via our internet-ed magical picture boxes. Given enough time, just gravity and matter gets us to here—to all the apparent complexity of the universe. I buy that.
But whether the universe is eternal, or time is circular, or we came from another universe, or we are in a simulation, or whatever other strange non-intuitive thing may be true in regard to the ultimate origins of everything, there is still this pesky fact that we are here. And everything else is here. There is existence where it certainly seems there just as easily could be non-existence.
Again, I really do recognize the silly anthropocentric nature of questions about matters like these. I think you are ultimately right that the questions are non-sensical.
But, to my original question, it seems a simple agnostic-ish deism is a fairly reasonable position given the infantile state of our current understanding of ultimate origins. I mean, if you’re correct, we don’t even know that we are asking questions that make sense about how things exist...then how can we rule out something like a powerful, intelligent creative entity (that has nothing to with any revealed religion)?
I’m not asking rhetorically. How do you rule it out?
My disagreement isn’t that it’s implausible for such an entity to exist, but that it’s extremely implausible for it to matter in any decision or experience I anticipate. The chain of unsupported leaps from “I perceive all this stuff and I don’t know why” to “some powerful entitiy created it all, and I understand their desires and want to behave in ways that please or manipulate them” is more than I can follow.
Right. And regardless of what’s written about the rest of the cluster of religious belief regarding souls, creator-pleasing morality, etc., I have yet to actually meet anyone who assigns a high probability of a conscious thinking Creator without also bringing the rest of it in.
The chain of unsupported leaps from “I perceive all this stuff and I don’t know why” to “some powerful entitiy created it all, and I understand their desires and want to behave in ways that please or manipulate them” is more than I can follow.
Why is the bold necessary, or necessarily relevant? Are you referencing revealed religion?
There’s the burden of proof thing (it’s the affirmer, not the denier, who has to present evidence) and the null hypothesis thing (in absence of evidence, the no-effect or no-relationship hypothesis stands).
It makes a lot of sense that the nature of questions regarding the “beginning” of the universe is nonsensical and anthropocentric, but it still feels like a cheap response that misses the crux of the issue. It feels like “science will fill in that gap eventually” and we ought to trust that will be so.
I think that’s one question that science probably won’t be able to answer. But that’s no reason to just make something up! Maybe we can’t rule out a ‘powerful, intelligent creative entity’ – but why would you even think of that? And of course it just shifts the question to the next level, because where would that entity come from?
Maybe we can’t rule out a ‘powerful, intelligent creative entity’ – but why would you even think of that?
Others have thought of it. I’m asking why I ought to dismiss it. I think we have good reasons to dismiss, for instance, Christianity, because of the positive claims it makes. I don’t see the same contradiction with something like deism.
And of course it just shifts the question to the next level, because where would that entity come from?
This isn’t a compelling argument to me. Can we rule out an intelligent prime mover with what we know about the universe? If so, what do we call the events that first caused everything to be?
I have thought a lot about why there is something rather than nothing. It seems (to my brain at least) that the prime numbers have to exist, that they are necessary. I have speculated that perhaps after we understand all of physics we will come to realize that like the prime numbers, the universe must exist. I admit that I’m giving a mysterious answer to a mysterious question, sorry.
Interesting. I’m ignorant of math, but aren’t numbers just abstractions? And prime numbers exist within those abstractions?
Can you help me understand the parallel to the physical reality, and ultimate origins, of the universe?
...
I admit that I’m giving a mysterious answer to a mysterious question, sorry.
I have thought a lot about why there is something rather than nothing. It seems (to my brain at least)...
I appreciate your reply, as it pretty well sums up where I’m at. Can you take a stab at articulating why you (presumably) reject something like deism as an explanation for why there is something instead of nothing?
I also believe a perfect knowledge of physics will ultimately allow us to see clearly “why” and “how” the universe is the way it is, solving questions of origin in the process. But, in the meantime, I’m having a hard time dismissing the idea of a powerful intelligent creative entity a la deism, as it seems just as plausible as the other ideas I’m aware of.
On other note: It seems deism gets saddled with connotations of religion in discussions like this, and I don’t think this is fair or helpful in the discussion. If you would be intentional to avoid this in your response, I would appreciate it.
Look into the ideas of Tegmark, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. The central idea is that all possible mathematical structures exist. What we view as “the Universe” is just one set of equations with a particular set of boundary conditions, out of an infinite space of valid mathematical structures. The Universe exists because its existence is logically valid. That’s it.
Yes, this is my best guess as well. I reject deism because of Occam’s razor—the computational complexity of a conscious creator is rather high, although I think this might all be a computer simulation, although then the basement reality doesn’t have a conscious creator.
Isn’t some sort of deism at least plausible and reasonable at this juncture? Is there a materialistic theory of what happened before the big bang that is worth putting any stock in? Or are we in an agnostic wait-and-see mode regarding pre-big bang events?
That would majorly depend on what “deism” means, as a concrete model, other than “here my other models break down”. After all, if you can postulate an intelligent and moral being, with exactly our own kind of intelligence and morality, with the power of creating a universe, then surely you can posit, with much more confidence, an unintelligent and amoral system with the power of creating a universe.
There are many, but none of them are in the realm of testability due to the dependency to a flavor of quantum gravity. Let’s not forget that the Big Bang is a singularity, meaning a point where the model breaks down and cry. If you want to go ‘before’ the Big Bang, you need a wider model (that is, a theory of quantum gravity).
That is surely the most sensible approach at our point in time.
Time is a phenomenon inside the physical world, it is not something outside of it. It doesn’t make sense to take about time before the the existence of physical world.
Yeah. Okay. Is there any consensus about what caused the big bang? Like, how it happened?
It seems to me abiogenesis is super tricky but conceivable. The “beginning” of everything is a bit more conceptually problematic.
Positing a hyper-powerful creative entity seems not that epistemologically reckless when the more “scientific” alternative is “something happened”.
Jumping from “something happened” to “a hyper-powerful creative entity happened” is not reckless? Especially when we have evidence that more complex things can arise from less complex things without a supernatural manager guiding the process.
What makes you look at the vast set of “somethings” that might have been responsible for the origin of the universe, and choose exactly the same thing that our ancestors considered a good explanation for the origins of thunder (and now we know they were wrong)?
This isn’t being questioned. I’m asking about origins.
I don’t consider it a good explanation. But others have. And I don’t see why it’s necessarily bad. So far, I’ve seen no reason on this thread to update and make deism an awful explanation.
How about epistemicologically useless? What caused your hyper-powerful creative entity? You haven’t accomplished anything, you’ve just added another black box to your collection.
It is a progress from “here is a black box and I don’t know what is inside” to “here is a black box and I believe there is a magical fairy inside”.
I suppose. Though I think saying “magical fairy” is just an attempt to use silly-sounding words to dismiss an idea.
I may be wrong (IF SO, PLEASE CORRECT ME WITH DETAILS), but from what I understand, the origin of the universe (“pre-big bang”, to the extent that phrase makes any sense) is an area where we currently have almost no knowledge. There are lots of very strange theories and concepts being discussed that have no real evidence supporting them. We’re often dealing with pure conjecture, speculating about the way things might be in the absence of the universal laws with which we are familiar.
Do you have a particular theory about how the universe came to be? If so, what makes you believe this?
I agree that the non-religious theories about origins of the universe are speculative. I could name a few, and perhaps say which ones I prefer, but I wouldn’t expect to convince anyone, probably not even myself on a different day.
(I suspect the correct answer is somewhere along: “everything exists in a timeless Tegmark multiverse, but intelligent observers only happen in situations where causality exists, and causality defines some kind of measure, so despite everything existing, some things seem more likely to the observers than other things”. And specifically for the origin of our universe, I suspect the correct answer would be that if you get too close to the big bang, local arrows of time start pointing in non-parallel directions and/or the past stops being unique. But that’s just a bunch of words masking my lack of deep understanding.)
However, religions also don’t have convincing answers for what happened before god(s) created the world, or how did god(s) happen to exist. So by adding religion you are actually not getting any closer to the answer. You have one more step in the chain, but the end of the new chain looks the same (or worse) as the end of the old one.
Instead of “universe has simply existed since ever” you have “god has simply existed since ever”; instead of “time only exists within universe, so it is meaningless to ask what was before that” you have “god has created time together with universe, so it is meaningless to ask what was before that”; instead of “the universes exist in an infinite loop of big bang and big crunch” you have “god keeps creating and destroying universes in an infinite loop”; et cetera.
Can you explain how a simulated universe, for instance, is more useful than deism? Doesn’t it also simply move the question of ultimate origins back a step?
Right, which is why I don’t postulate a simulated universe as the explanation for existence.
This is essentially what username2 was getting at, but I’ll try a different direction.
It’s entirely possible that “what caused the big bang” is a nonsensical question. ‘Causes’ and ‘Effects’ only exist insofar as there are things which exist to cause causes and effect effects. The “cause and effect” apparatus could be entirely contained within the universe, in the same way that it’s not really sensible to talk about “before” the universe.
Alternatively, it could be that there’s no “before” because the universe has always existed. Or that our universe nucleated from another universe, and that one could follow the causal chain of universes nucleating within universe backwards forever. Or that time is circular.
I suspect that the reason I’m not religious is that I’m not at all bothered by the question “Why is there a universe, rather than not a universe?” not having a meaningful answer. Or rather, it feels overwhelmingly anthropocentric to expect that the answer to that question, if there even was one, would be comprehensible to me. Worse, if the answer really was “God did it,” I think I would just be disappointed.
It makes a lot of sense that the nature of questions regarding the “beginning” of the universe is nonsensical and anthropocentric, but it still feels like a cheap response that misses the crux of the issue. It feels like “science will fill in that gap eventually” and we ought to trust that will be so.
Matter exists. And there are physical laws in the universe that exist. I accept, despite my lack of imagination and fancy scientific book learning, that this is basically enough to deterministically allow intelligent live beings like you and I to be corresponding via our internet-ed magical picture boxes. Given enough time, just gravity and matter gets us to here—to all the apparent complexity of the universe. I buy that.
But whether the universe is eternal, or time is circular, or we came from another universe, or we are in a simulation, or whatever other strange non-intuitive thing may be true in regard to the ultimate origins of everything, there is still this pesky fact that we are here. And everything else is here. There is existence where it certainly seems there just as easily could be non-existence.
Again, I really do recognize the silly anthropocentric nature of questions about matters like these. I think you are ultimately right that the questions are non-sensical.
But, to my original question, it seems a simple agnostic-ish deism is a fairly reasonable position given the infantile state of our current understanding of ultimate origins. I mean, if you’re correct, we don’t even know that we are asking questions that make sense about how things exist...then how can we rule out something like a powerful, intelligent creative entity (that has nothing to with any revealed religion)?
I’m not asking rhetorically. How do you rule it out?
My disagreement isn’t that it’s implausible for such an entity to exist, but that it’s extremely implausible for it to matter in any decision or experience I anticipate. The chain of unsupported leaps from “I perceive all this stuff and I don’t know why” to “some powerful entitiy created it all, and I understand their desires and want to behave in ways that please or manipulate them” is more than I can follow.
The OP is talking about deism.
Right. And regardless of what’s written about the rest of the cluster of religious belief regarding souls, creator-pleasing morality, etc., I have yet to actually meet anyone who assigns a high probability of a conscious thinking Creator without also bringing the rest of it in.
Have you met anyone who self-identifies as a deist?
Why is the bold necessary, or necessarily relevant? Are you referencing revealed religion?
There’s the burden of proof thing (it’s the affirmer, not the denier, who has to present evidence) and the null hypothesis thing (in absence of evidence, the no-effect or no-relationship hypothesis stands).
I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m asking specifically about the process people who are smarter than I use to rule a proposition out.
I think that’s one question that science probably won’t be able to answer. But that’s no reason to just make something up! Maybe we can’t rule out a ‘powerful, intelligent creative entity’ – but why would you even think of that? And of course it just shifts the question to the next level, because where would that entity come from?
Others have thought of it. I’m asking why I ought to dismiss it. I think we have good reasons to dismiss, for instance, Christianity, because of the positive claims it makes. I don’t see the same contradiction with something like deism.
This isn’t a compelling argument to me. Can we rule out an intelligent prime mover with what we know about the universe? If so, what do we call the events that first caused everything to be?
Could the prime numbers not exist? Somethings, such as our universe, might have to exist.
Please elaborate. The universe is necessary?
I have thought a lot about why there is something rather than nothing. It seems (to my brain at least) that the prime numbers have to exist, that they are necessary. I have speculated that perhaps after we understand all of physics we will come to realize that like the prime numbers, the universe must exist. I admit that I’m giving a mysterious answer to a mysterious question, sorry.
Interesting. I’m ignorant of math, but aren’t numbers just abstractions? And prime numbers exist within those abstractions?
Can you help me understand the parallel to the physical reality, and ultimate origins, of the universe?
...
I appreciate your reply, as it pretty well sums up where I’m at. Can you take a stab at articulating why you (presumably) reject something like deism as an explanation for why there is something instead of nothing?
I also believe a perfect knowledge of physics will ultimately allow us to see clearly “why” and “how” the universe is the way it is, solving questions of origin in the process. But, in the meantime, I’m having a hard time dismissing the idea of a powerful intelligent creative entity a la deism, as it seems just as plausible as the other ideas I’m aware of.
On other note: It seems deism gets saddled with connotations of religion in discussions like this, and I don’t think this is fair or helpful in the discussion. If you would be intentional to avoid this in your response, I would appreciate it.
Look into the ideas of Tegmark, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. The central idea is that all possible mathematical structures exist. What we view as “the Universe” is just one set of equations with a particular set of boundary conditions, out of an infinite space of valid mathematical structures. The Universe exists because its existence is logically valid. That’s it.
Yes, this is my best guess as well. I reject deism because of Occam’s razor—the computational complexity of a conscious creator is rather high, although I think this might all be a computer simulation, although then the basement reality doesn’t have a conscious creator.