You are hiking in a remote wilderness, miles from the nearest building or even cell phone tower. You come upon a clearing and see a crystal sphere hovering over you and emitting colorful light pulses in some seeming order: red, blue, green and the pattern repeats. Should there be an explanation for this odd phenomenon or is it acceptable to shrug our shoulders and mutter "Stuff happens"? Can we extrapolate from this case to a general principle of the universe? If so, can we prove that God (or a reasonable facsimile) exists?
I think that there should be and is an explanation for everything that happens to us or in the world around us. There is usually a reason for something happening and usually they don’t happen out of nothing. For example if my dog is crying that means he's hurt. We can easily find that reason and explanation for how he's hurt and get it fixed. That has a reasonable and easy explanations. However if there is a floating orb in the middle of the field that is made from matter that’s not of this world that’s harder to explain and find a reason for and may be impossible to do with our technology. It could be a robot made my scientists, or maybe whoever saw it is sick and is having hallucinations. If these aren't the reasons and there is no other explanation then in those instances I think it's okay to say that sometimes unexplainable things happen and that it could be a miracle or God. I think we apply this idea to the universe and to most scenarios. However, I feel like this isn't a solution for the question, does god exist? I feel like there are exact reasons for most things happening and I feel like if God does exist he would be the reason for everything. He would be pulling all the strings and be the cause for everything. Maybe he is and we just aren't aware of it and think science is the answer. But I feel like saying that "God is the reason" is the same as saying "stuff happens" because we in both instances there isn't a real explanation and we are just passing it off without really explaining it.
ReplyDeleteI believe that everything that happens or exist has a cause or explanation. It would not be logical to me for there to be anything without a cause or reason; I am unable to realize why, if a cause cannot be given for a thing, would that thing exist rather than not exist. In the case of the strange hovering orb, it seems that the question posed, however, is not of the existence of a cause, rather, our interest in finding that cause. I think to ever choose not to pursue knowledge would be to do a disservice to the field of philosophy, even if the cause seems incomprehensible. This principle applies to the case of the strange hovering orb as well. If this scenario were to happen to me, I would not be able to accept what I had just seen without understanding the reason it happened. It would be vitally important to me to understand what I had just seen. In part IX of Hume's dialogues, it is said that this principle of sufficient reasoning leads to two possibilities: an infinite chain of causes, or an original cause. Demea then claims that if we were to consider the former, the infinite chain itself must have a cause, which is inexplicable, therefore, the latter must be true, that there is a self-existent original cause. I disagree with the proposition that the infinite chain must have a cause. This is because I consider the chain not to be a thing, rather, an idea. The existence of an infinite number of causes does not necessitate the existence of a thing (or set) that describes or includes this infinite regression. Therefore, I say that the infinite chain only exists as an idea in the mind, and its cause, therefore, is the mind in which in exists.
ReplyDeleteIf I came into a clearing whilst hiking in the woods one day and witnessed a crystal sphere hovering over me emitting colorful light pulses in a red, blue, green order. I believe it is not an acceptable answer that stuff just happens. I personally believe that everything has a cause and I wouldn't be able to shrug it off as my senses deceiving me because stuff like mirages exist and they have definitive reasons for their cause. I think that if said thing happened to me I would spend my entire life trying to find the cause or the reason behind why the chose me and what the pattern means. However, even though I believe everything has a cause I think its hard to find a general rule for the universe because the universe is many things more than I can comprehend and there's always going to be an exception. Every rule is bound to have some exception especially when the possibility of things is infinite. Seeing as our universe is infinite it is impossible for us to define one rule for the universe or a general rule of thumb because there will be at least one exception. I also do not believe we can prove a higher being exist just that there are infinite chains like discussed in class and I think itd be too hard to get high enough up a chain to come close enough to defining or finding a deity. I think as a whole trying to find general rules for the universe and finding out if god is real is impossible.
ReplyDeleteIf I witnessed the floating, colorful, crystal sphere, I don't think I would be able to accept it as just "stuff happens'. I do think that sometimes there are things that occur that are very difficult to explain, so we use the phrase 'stuff happens', but just because it is difficult to explain, doesn't mean that there isn't an explanation. So, there would either be an explanation that I simply don't know, or an explanation that I am unable to know. For example, if I were crazy but didn't know that I was crazy, and I had hallucinations, then I would believe that some weird stuff was happening, yet the reason for the weird things I see would be caused by my craziness. In this case, if I am unaware that I am crazy, then the cause of the weird things I see would be unknown to me, yet they definitely still have a cause, they wouldn't be there if I weren't crazy. Not knowing the cause of something would be like the floating orb, I have no idea what the cause of it being there would be, yet its there for a reason, and that is a cause. Then, me being unable to know would be something that is too complex for me to understand the reasoning behind it. For example, I think that people are very complicated beings, only they know their own thoughts, and so only they know the reasoning behind their actions. So even though their actions have a cause, their thoughts, I am unable to know their thoughts, therefore I am also unable to know the cause of their actions. Using the example of the floating light orb, I think that it can be applied to the universe. I don't believe that anything would exist without a cause, as if there was nothing to cause it, it wouldn't exist. This would lead to the chain that we talked about in class with the universe being created by something, but then something would also need to cause whatever made the universe to exist and so on. Therefore I think that the principle of sufficient reason works for the most part, but there can also be some exceptions.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIf as a hiker, I came upon such an occurrence I would be forced to shrug it off. This is because absent that disavowal of care it would drive me insane. If I devoted my entire life to figuring out why that happened to me, I would certainly be deemed a looney. There are much more important things like getting a job, having basic bodily security, making sure I am healthy. This analogy can be used to sum up how I think we should approach the issue of God. Shrug our shoulders and go about our merry way.
ReplyDeleteWhile I believe it is certain that there is a cause for everything (namely because I cannot think of anything without a cause). That belief can only take me so far. It can prove that there is a definitive start to the universe because of the cosmological argument for god. However, it cannot prove that god as we think of him is the progenitor of the universe. For all we know it has a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy style of beginning where someone kicks a boulder somewhere and it starts the big bang millennia ago. There is no reason why an original creator or even event must be omnificence omnipotent and especially omnibenevolent. In fact, some would argue the creator of the universe could not be omnibenevolent because the universe’s creation was itself a mistake (that is a much larger discussion for a much longer day).
What is important to note is that it does not matter. There are much more pressing issues in our time even philosophically than whether an omnificence omnipotent and omnibenevolent god exists. I refuse to think that we cannot act just like the hiker and shrug our shoulders and move on to more important things (poverty, government, ethics).
I believe that there is a cause or reason for everything that is happening in the world. However, I also feel that just because there is a reason doesn't mean that we know it. For example, there is a reason that I get out of bed or that I choose to sleep in on Sundays. this doesn't mean though that everyone around me knows why I slept in or why I got out of bed. The action having a reason doesn't force everyone to know the reason. If everyone had to know the reason, then there would be no reason for people like doctors or scientists to exist because everything is already known. in the case of the crystal sphere, it has a reason for existence however we are not currently aware of it. I know it has a cause of existence because it didn't just pop into existence. This means that someone had to have made it or caused it to be there. If neither of those are true, then that means that it is an issue with perception. And if it’s an issue with perception then we know the cause of it and the problem is solved. Because the answer to the problem is the sphere was either created by someone or that the person viewing it made a mistake then we know that it is impossible for the sphere to not have a reason connected with it. And if there is nothing without reason then we know that everything has a reason or cause even if we don’t currently understand it.
ReplyDeleteThere may or may not be an explanation for the crystal sphere. Even if there is an explanation for the existence of everything we perceive in the "normal and material" world, that doesn't mean that we, as limited and mortal humans, will be able to understand or prove the universality of this observation. For example, you can find 50 examples of where an anti-derivative of a function is equal to its integral, but it isn't until we prove it universally can we understand it as a theorem to be accurate applied in all instances. Similarly, we may not simply state that "anything and everything must have a cause, because we have seen many examples of this throughout our lives", because we can't prove the universality of that statement. To clarify, I am not saying that the Principle of Sufficient reason is correct or incorrect, only that we lack the means to prove it is true in every instance. Further, while we cannot think of anything right now that is the cause of its own existence, it's important to recognize that a) we can only draw analogies from the material world, which may not be applicable to a deity or the supernatural and b) we are human and our lack of knowledge is not reason to prove or disprove a universal theorem.
ReplyDeleteFurther, even if we presume the Principle to be true, the use of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is not an adequate way to prove that god exists. Using Hume's interpretation of "everything that exists must have a cause", we find the argument to be self-defeating. That’s because Hume uses an universal statement, "everything that exists must have a cause", to prove an example of something that does not have a cause. The mere existence of something not having a cause puts the entirety of the Principle of Sufficient reason at doubt, because it proves that it is POSSIBLE for something to not have a cause. That means that it is possible that the universe created itself, without a deity. Further, as discussed in class, an infinite chain of causes is still possible, which means that there are still alternative explanations for the cause of the universe that is not a self-causing being. Overall, even if we assume the Principle of Sufficient Reason to be true, I don't believe it is possible to use this Principle to prove that god exists, as the conclusion disproves the link.
The answer to these questions is not obvious. The standard scientific view is that everything has an explanation. There may be many explanations, but they all have to be consistent with the known laws of physics and mathematics. It's only when the explanations get too complicated that people start wondering if there might be something else going on. But what if there were no explanation? What if the world just happened by chance? This is where things get interesting.
ReplyDeleteI believe that this question can be answered in principle. We can show that given enough time and space, anything can happen by chance. In fact, we can prove that any event whatsoever can occur by chance. The proof is simple and elegant, but requires a bit of background knowledge. To make the proof work, we need to know about the concept of randomness.
There are two completely different kinds of randomness: true randomness and pseudo-randomness. True randomness comes from truly unpredictable events -- events that seem to have no cause and effect relationship. Pseudo-randomness is produced by deterministic processes which appear random because of their long periods of time. For example, the sequence of digits from a computer’s random number generator could be considered pseudo-random since it appears random but actually has a mathematical structure behind it; pseudo-randomness still relies on a cause and effect relation.
To understand if the universe has the possibility of creating every possible event given infinite time, we have to know if the universe is truly random. Under the proposition that the universe started from a point and that everything has a cause and effect, then there is no such thing as true randomness in the universe. But if that proposition is false, then technically any one event could be possible.
If the universe is only cause and effect, then the creator theory (an omnipotent being) could be possible. But if the universe is proven truly random, then there cannot be a proof made with absolute certainty that a god exists and was responsible for the creation of the universe.