Just because cause and effect can be used to understand the world does not mean that the world is casual or acts in such a narrow way. I mean, the history of cause and effect is heavily, heavily related with the history of Newtonian Physics, as your example demonstrates very well. Now, Newtonian Physics is a purely false model of the world, in it's true form. We know this, and yet we still use and teach Newtonian physics because it still does describe much of our every day experience.
I mean, when you get down to it, the concept of "time," which we experience and which we know, doesn't seem to really have much to do with reality. The fact that time is experienced as an arrow, in one direction, is a complete mystery to physics - it cannot explain it according to reality. On the quantum level, things certainly don't follow an arrow-like time reality. Then there's special relativity, and the physical merging of space and time.
I'd just like to point out something, from WLC:
If they pose your question in reply, Andrew, then point out that God never began to exist and so doesn't need a cause. Indeed, in thinking that God must have a cause, aren't they admitting what they at first denied, namely, that causation is applicable outside of space and time after all?
So basically, god doesn't exist. I mean, the argument is for why god exists, and to never begun existing, means, by definition, to not exist. To exist, entails being in space and time. He commits the same kind of pitfall that he claims other people are making, and undermines his own argument in the process of trying to defend his own argument. I don't think he has fully analyzed the conceptions of existence, or the human mind and how it works, and doesn't fully deal with the philosophical baggage the words he uses come with. Specifically, the word cause. He's using the word, but it should really be in quotations, because he's not actually
using the word. He opens up the can of worms about causality, and how improper our conceptions of it is, yet he still wants to use the word
very specifically in his analytical argument for the "existence."
By the way,
argument from ignorance. That's the feeling I get after reading WLC. He points, validly, to points of human ignorance, and brings up possibilities, and describes the problem of existence quite well, but he tries to use that as an argument
for God's existence, and apparently a very specific conception of God, and his existence, which is a fallacy.
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To wrap up the first part of the post, with the last part of the post, the true mystery of life seems to be not that the universe exists, but that we are conscious of it at all. If time is not an inherent property of reality, which there isn't really any evidence to say it is, then we run into even weirder questions, and the problem of trying to explain the existence of the universe gets overshadowed by the problem of our own conscious experience. And scientifically (physically and psychologically), those two things start to merge to such a degree, that to even start talking about the World around you, you must first acknowledge your own bodies role in creating that World around you.
Topic: Can causality be used in arguments regarding "timeless" scenarios? (Read 5421 times)