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An attempt to reject the cosmological view

שו”תCategory: faithAn attempt to reject the cosmological view
asked 7 years ago

In the cosmological view, one of the deductions for the ancient universe is as follows (as I understood from the booklet):
Just as everything in our world has a reason, the universe also has a reason. If you say that the universe is ancient and goes back an infinite number of reasons – that is infinite regression. If you say that the universe as a whole has something in it beyond the details that makes it not need a reason – I will call that something God (but there is also a problem with that, hey, it is quite pantheistic, and we are Jews, aren’t we?)

I will try to reject this taste from several angles.
A. On orderly infinite regression
The Rabbi referred several times to the principle that an infinite regression of causes is essentially meaningless, as it is more of an evasion of providing an answer than an answer in itself. I agree, but I think it should be qualified.
It is clear that if we ask the child who broke the window, and he says it was the monkey that escaped from the moon, that a spaceship arrived there…. And so on, endless excuses – it is clear that this is nonsense, he makes up every excuse on the fly and avoids giving an answer rather than giving a real answer. For reason A, he gives reason B, and for reason B, reason C, and so on, each time inventing a new excuse. It is clear that this is nonsense.
But what about the infinite number of excuses, which have an order? Like the egg that came before the chicken, which came before the egg, which came before the chicken.
The main difference between this series of excuses and the series of excuses of the boy with the window is that although there are an infinite number of excuses, there is an order to the excuses here.
The real and fundamental problem with infinite regression, as I understand it, is that instead of finding order, and understanding what the law and pattern are for the cause of a certain thing – instead we got a chaos of nonsense. But what about an infinite series, when this infinity has a law? The series is infinite, but the order is preserved. Like an infinite line – we cannot describe the line and tell you what all the points are on it, but that does not bother us, because the equation (=’law/order’) of the line gives us the possibility that anywhere on the line you want, we can tell you all the points.
So it is with the chicken and the egg – even though there are infinite reasons here – but since we know ‘everyone’ and we know what the series is, order is maintained, chaos has fallen, and the damned regression is not here. Even though there are infinite reasons here, it doesn’t bother me because there is infinity in this order.
If you say (and you probably will) that there is a problem with this argument because in the end, if you ask me what the reason for the chicken is, I won’t really give you an answer, because I would now have to tell this entire infinite series for the explanation to be plausible. And since this is impossible (because it is infinity), then I actually didn’t give an explanation for the chicken, and I’m asking a question about the dogma.
I don’t agree with this statement so much, because it implicitly refuses to accept primacy. After all, when you ask what the cause of the chicken is, you can ask it in two ways: a) What is the direct cause of this chicken b) What is the overall cause of this chicken. A – it’s clear what the answer is. B – the answer is that there is none! This is the primacy claim itself (more or less) – there is no first cause!
I’ll try to organize this into a two-dimensional circle of causes.
What is the cause of a certain point? The point before it. And what is its cause? The one before it, and so on to infinity. And if you ask what the first cause is – then there is none! There is no beginning in the circle! And if it is difficult for you to accept this – your problem. I do not have a problem of chaos here regarding a cause that arises from nothing – every cause has a cause. But what is ‘the’ cause? You assume that there is one, but perhaps that does not really require that the reality is like that.
And so with the chicken and the egg – every chicken and egg has a reason, but what is ‘the’ reason? Is it any alpha chicken? No! This is the very claim of primacy, there is no beginning.

on. On the universe and the tastes of details
One of the arguments against a primordial universe is that just as every detail in the universe has a cause, so why wouldn’t the universe itself need a cause?
One must look into the matter. Does this mean that we say that everything in the universe has a reason? The point is that if we landed on Mars and found a vehicle there, it would be unthinkable to say that this thing had no reason, and that it simply grew there on the trees a million years ago. After all, it is clear that such a thing has a reason.
But we wouldn’t ask that about stones, would we? We don’t think about, or are we concerned so much with, the initial cause of matter itself, as we are concerned with the initial *form* of matter.
And now for the general rule: every *form* of matter in the universe needs a cause, but the universe itself – the primordial matter – itself does not have a cause, and there is no problem with saying that it is primordial.


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0 Answers
מיכי Staff answered 7 years ago
A. I didn’t understand how you talk about an infinite chain of causes, even if it is arranged in some order. Even an ordered mathematical series doesn’t really talk about infinity in a concrete sense, but rather potentially. It “aims” for some place and doesn’t reach it. What difference does it make whether the chain is ordered or not? Even a chicken and an egg, alternatively, is a well-ordered chain. I don’t understand what this “order” you are talking about is, and even if you define it, why it allows you to talk about a concrete infinity. By the way, your circle example is an example of a contradiction. There, it’s a sequence of points that you can’t arrange in a sequential order and determine who is the cause of whom. In a chain of discrete points (infinity is a part of a whole), we return to the fact that it is potential. The bottom line is the question of what is more plausible in your opinion. Every proof is based on assumptions and you have to form a position on them. If you accept a concrete infinity then this evidence really doesn’t have much persuasive power in your opinion. The question is whether it is plausible in your opinion or not. B. You are mixing up the cosmological and the physico-theological perspectives. In the cosmological perspective, a question is also asked about stones. In the physico-theological perspective, perhaps not because a stone is a simple thing. But when you delve into the structure of the stone and the physics that underlies it, you will see that it is also complex, and you also need to ask what its cause is.    

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דוד replied 7 years ago

A. I'll say it differently:
There is a problem because of concrete infinity, if you really assume that the universe has a beginning somewhere, and therefore every chain of causes must start there.
But what if we reject this assumption altogether! Let's say that the universe itself has no cause, and therefore its chain of causes can be potential and it doesn't matter, because we don't expect a starting point (as in concrete)

דוד replied 7 years ago

B. But even when you ask about the stone, in the end you ask about the form, but it can be said that the hyolic material is ancient, and only forms were created and therefore all forms need causes. But not the material itself

מיכי Staff replied 7 years ago

A. I have already told you that the desired assumption is a sure way to reach the conclusion you want to reach. If you assume that there is no need for a cause for the universe, then there is no argument. Now you just have to decide whether you think it is reasonable. Every argument depends on its premises. There is no argument without premises.
B. Ditto.

דוד replied 7 years ago

So why don't you stop at the universe?
What is the difference between the universe (or any other material thing) as a first cause and God?

mikyab123 replied 7 years ago

Because the universe is something I know and it is unlikely in my opinion that it is a necessity of reality/always was and without a reason. Explained in the notebook.

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