Q&A: The Cosmological Argument and the Law of Conservation of Energy
The Cosmological Argument and the Law of Conservation of Energy
Question
A question about the cosmological argument: if energy has always existed (according to the law of conservation of energy), why can't one say that the singular point is the sufficient reason, and therefore God is unnecessary according to Occam’s razor? Or that God is the substance, as Spinoza says in the Ethics?
Answer
I explained the principle of sufficient reason in the third notebook. An event cannot serve as a reason. There has to be an entity at the base of the matter.
Discussion on Answer
I’m not sure everyone claims that energy was in fact conserved at the beginning. In any case, see more here as well:
One question that arises with Rundle’s view is whether there could have been more or less matter/energy than there is. That is, if there is n
amount of matter/energy in the world, could there be a possible world with +n or −n amounts of matter/energy? We do not know how much matter/energy existed in the first 10^-35 seconds of the universe. Even if the universe currently operates according to the principle of the Conservation of Matter and Energy, Rundle’s thesis depends on the contention that during the very early phase of rapid expansion, a period of time we know little about, this principle held.
A second significant problem concerns what follows from the existence of necessary beings. If the matter/energy nexus constitutes the necessary being, what causally follows from that nexus is itself necessary, and contingency, even in the composing relations within the universe, would disappear. Everything in the universe would be necessary, which is a disquieting position.
Third, O’Connor (2004) argues that since the necessary being provides the ultimate explanation, there is no explanation of the differentiation of the kinds of matter or of contingencies that matter/energy causally undergo, for example, in terms of space-time location. Perhaps one way to rescue Rundle’s thesis would be to invoke an indeterministic presentation of quantum phenomena, which would allow contingency of individual phenomena but not of the overall probabilistic structure.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/
As far as I know, the common claim is that at the beginning of the Big Bang, the principle of conservation of mass-energy was not preserved.
And see more here as well:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/:
One question that arises with Rundle’s view is whether there could have been more or less matter/energy than there is. That is, if there is n amount of matter/energy in the world, could there be a possible world with +n or−n amounts of matter/energy?
We do not know how much matter/energy existed in the first 10^−35
seconds of the universe. Even if the universe currently operates according to the principle of the Conservation of Matter and Energy, Rundle’s thesis depends on the contention that during the very early phase of rapid expansion, a period of time we know little about, this principle held.
A second significant problem concerns what follows from the existence of necessary beings. If the matter/energy nexus constitutes the necessary being, what causally follows from that nexus is itself necessary, and contingency, even in the composing relations within the universe, would disappear. Everything in the universe would be necessary, which is a disquieting position.
Third, O’Connor (2004) argues that since the necessary being provides the ultimate explanation, there is no explanation of the differentiation of the kinds of matter or of contingencies that matter/energy causally undergo, for example, in terms of space-time location. Perhaps one way to rescue Rundle’s thesis would be to invoke an indeterministic presentation of quantum phenomena, which would allow contingency of individual phenomena but not of the overall probabilistic structure.