Or as a knowledgeable physicist told me, this theory was going to explain how something happens without cause. The unconscious belief formation was strong with that one.
Sorry, if something happens without cause, there is no explanation for it. Might as well start dreaming about unmarried bachelors, and if you say it often enough you might start to believe in them.
You won’t know until you pursue it.
We already see things that happen without cause in our universe. Why are you stuck on this?
Sorry, but you’re wrong. Nuclear decay happens without cause, and we have an explanation for it.
Nuclear decay happens because the atoms are unstable? And don’t we know why? We just cannot know when a particular atom will decay.
Really? You never can tell, and at some point the universe is no longer regressing, but starts to appear like it is progressing.
This is what I am stuck on, this idea that a theory can explain how something happens without cause. It’s like a dream to explain the dream.
Kind of like a chaotic sea
Then I would suggest you spend time on the concepts until you do understand it.
If something happens without a cause, then by definition it cannot have an explanation.
What if it happens, and it is not able to be determined what the cause is/was? In the case of things happening in this universe, such as the nuclear decay of atoms, there are limits on what we are able to observe, including the velocity and position of any subatomic particle, and there are even limits on the shortest length of time we can observe. There could very well be causes that are not observable, but the outcome of many events can be predicted statistically without identifying detailed cause of each event. I hope you are only saying that the cause of the event is unexplained; it is “intuitively obvious to the most casual observer” (quote from the college science professor, who for other reasons was a major influence in me not continuing to get instruction in science at a religious college) that we can explain a whole lot about the event for which we do not know a cause, based on real observations of the event, and anything that happens subsequently, and even some inferences about that may shed real light on what the cause may, or may not, have been. I think you will find that most of us scientists (even those, like me, who have gone over to engineering in the hope of finding real solutions to real problems that can help real people) do not accept the presumption that just because we don’t know “something” (the cause), that doesn’t mean the “something” is eternally unknowable.
That’s a perfectly legitimate position.
However, the event that happened may be explained by another event that happened, even if it happens in non-classical spacetime, or it may have happened without cause, or it may have been caused by something that doesn’t happen.
The problem I see with your “deceptively simple mapping” is that the limits of our ability to measure (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, e.g.) make it impossible to empirically verify which of the three options is true. For us scientists, we will not accept something as absolutely verified just because it appears to be the most reasonable option out of a set of possibilities. And any non-scientist who insists that a choice can be made on other grounds is not talking with scientists in a way that will ever be convincing, and might well not even be heard.
Yes Mike, I’m aware that’s what you said.
Asking them if they think science can explain the world is a good question to ask, but not a good question to start with. There is an optimal time for asking questions like that and right at the start of the conversation is not it. Going in with all guns blazing is never a good idea and only ends up doing more harm than good. Just let the conversation flow naturally, get to know them first, and start asking questions such as this when it fits naturally into the discussion.
This may surprise you, but only a minority of scientists work in areas that concern big existential questions about the origin of the universe. Most scientists are working on subjects of more immediate concern. They may be researching conservation, or cancer, or superconductors, or artificial intelligence, or robotics, or energy sources, or Internet security. The latest theories about cosmology or what happened before the Big Bang or the nature of infinity will be interesting things that they might read about from time to time in this week’s New Scientist on the train on the way in to work, but once they get into the lab they’ll have other things to think about.
Thing is, some of these other subjects might be every bit as interesting to talk about, and even better conversation starters than deep philosophical ones. One good question to ask them at the moment is what we should make of artificial intelligence—ChatGPT and all that. It’s getting a lot of press at the moment with some people asking if we’re on the cusp of artificial general intelligence others asking if the robots are coming for their jobs, and others asking if they could end up being put to use in situations where they could cause a lot of damage (e.g. the military). Then there’s the question of whether any of these AIs could be considered conscious, and that leads on to questions about what is consciousness anyway. There are a lot of interesting discussions you could end up having if you headed off down that rabbit hole.
For what it’s worth, it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of scientists find discussions about the big existential questions rather boring. When you’re busy working on Getting Things Done, and your view of science is primarily as a set of tools to enable you to Get Things Done, spending time discussing big highfalutin questions doesn’t exactly line up with that objective.
In the software development world, we have a word for people who get into highfalutin discussions that don’t contribute to the bottom line. We call them “Architecture Astronauts.”
When great thinkers think about problems, they start to see patterns. They look at the problem of people sending each other word-processor files, and then they look at the problem of people sending each other spreadsheets, and they realize that there’s a general pattern: sending files. That’s one level of abstraction already. Then they go up one more level: people send files, but web browsers also “send” requests for web pages. And when you think about it, calling a method on an object is like sending a message to an object! It’s the same thing again! Those are all sending operations, so our clever thinker invents a new, higher, broader abstraction called messaging, but now it’s getting really vague and nobody really knows what they’re talking about any more. Blah.
When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all.
These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts. It’s very hard to get them to write code or design programs, because they won’t stop thinking about Architecture. They’re astronauts because they are above the oxygen level, I don’t know how they’re breathing. They tend to work for really big companies that can afford to have lots of unproductive people with really advanced degrees that don’t contribute to the bottom line.
It really depends on the look in your eyes and the tone in your voice.
What about the problem of how the immediate effect of an uncaused cause will appear to come from nothing?
I mean, sure after you’ve become their best friend, how significant do you think that is for a scientist thinking he or she will confirm a final theory?
If you think a multi-verse is a scientific possibility, or that this universe formed as a result of some process in another universe, should it be possible for there to be an infinite number of universes?
In my experience with one philosopher, he supposed whatever will be said, has been said already.
I can’t think of any look or tone that would make that anything other than an odd question from someone I’d just met. There might be some contexts in which it would be natural.
I’d regard it as a syntacticly correct but semantically empty question. As an opening question from someone I hadn’t met, it would cause me to make polite noises while looking for an excuse to talk to someone else.
As a kind of introduction to the forum, me asking about it made for a decent thread. But it quickly turned into a question about whether an infinite number of objects are philosophically possible.
You do realise that there’s a difference between Internet forums and Real Life, don’t you?
Yeah, I’m working the “real life” angle as much as I can without coming across as a weirdo. Had a meeting with Paul Copan 7 years ago and he got me turned on to EPS. I presented one of my reworked papers from university at a regional meetup. I also got an email response from Alvin Plantinga when I wrote him about my story with Paul Draper.
What can I say, I’m working it the best I can 
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.