Monday, November 4, 2013
No Brute Facts -- the Principle of Sufficient Reason
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?
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This prompt is asking the following question: does everything need a reason for its existence or can things pop out of nowhere? Can something be created out of nothing? As far as we can tell, no; that is, everything needs a reason for its existence. Many people are familiar with the scientific law “matter cannot be created or destroyed”. This is saying that things need to come from something else. If this crystal sphere were to magically appear, it would go against all our notions of the physical universe. The important thing is to note that everything needs to have a reason; we cannot simply ignore it and say “it happens because it happens”. Knowing this is true, let us rewind time as far back as we can go. Once we get to the “beginning”, what is there? Honestly, we don’t know, but we must figure there is SOMETHING from which everything else is created up to this point. Notice how I did not say “something that creates everything else up to this point”. The reason I did this is because we do not know what this something was. Through our line of logic, we say that either we must continue on forever in our chain of cause and effect, or we have something that is definitely there at the beginning. This necessarily existing something however, does not have to be god. We have no reason to believe that this necessarily existent being can feel, think, see, smell or even sense. That is, we cannot necessarily prove that god exists. In conclusion, we know that everything must have a reason. If something does not have that created it, it must have been there from the beginning. However, this being that was always there does not have to be god in the way that we imagine god. For all we know they could have been chemicals that reacted in such a way that just so happened to create out universe.
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ReplyDeleteThe scenario of the odd glowing sphere speaks to the overarching questioning of our observable reality. Does matter have a reason for existing or does it “just exist”? Does it have to have a creator or can it “just come into being”? To me, there has to be some cause to everything, no amount of anything can just come into existence out of nothing, the spontaneous creation of matter just doesn’t make any sense. In our society, the current argument over the cause of the universe is between creationism and raw science. The creationists argue that the entire universe was created in 7 (really 6) days by a celestial higher power, and the scientific community argues that there was a monumental explosion of condensed matter that is constantly expanding and shrinking over billions of years. But both theories share the improvable beginning of something creating the universe, whether that be the collision of multiverse “branes” or a celestial higher power that is omnipotent. However, what created those original multiverses. What created the creator? And if there is something, what created that? The mind-boggling chain of existential succession seems to go on infinitely. Eventually one must come to the conclusion that something came out of nothing. There is literally no other explanation. At one point, nothing existed. And then there was something. But how is that possible? What created that something? I think there are indeed cases, with the knowledge of the universe that we currently have, that we just have to accept our surroundings and move on to things we can solve.
The orb scenario presents an interesting dilemma. It begs the question of whether or not things can just appear or if a reason explaining these things absolutely 100% has to exist. At first glance, the answer to the question "Can things simply appear out of nowhere?" seems trivial. Intuition would tell you that of course not – something can't just appear from nothing. Even classical science will tell you that there are a fixed number of particles in the universe and matter can not be created nor destroyed. What classical science doesn't tell you, however, is that a particle of matter and a particle of anti-matter can simultaneously blip into existence, even if only for an instant, before disappearing again. There is some underlying profundity to this statement that transcends the physical and scientific world and leaks into philosophy. For example: this analogy ties directly back into the scenario with the orb of flashy colors in the clearing. Can such an object simply not have an explanation? I would answer that question in two ways.
ReplyDeleteThe first answer is affirmative of the question. In this case, I would agree with the aforementioned physics that essentially states that stuff can appear out of no stuff. On the other hand, the second answer, negating the question, is a more curious approach. It wants to explore the possibilities of the universe and insist that there is a reason for everything. Following this conclusion, I have absolutely no idea what this explanation for the shining orb of light may be, but I suppose it must exist. God, therefore, could or could not exist due to the first answer (god may not because the universe could be explained by science) or likewise could or could not exist due to the second answer. So essentially we STILL know nothing about the existence of god.