And the elementary question is whether that process occurs or does not occur.
If it’s a ‘singularity’ that can affect change without changing, then it’s either aware of its action or it’s not.
I’ve talked with atheists that jump out of their seat at the idea of something like this that is not aware of its action. But then get quiet when the obvious point is made that you are now aware of your action, but the cause of the universe is not.
I wouldn’t say it’s not possible, but neither do I think they know what it is they are wanting.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
22
Theism in the sense of divine intervention can only be true as the ground of being, incarnation and otherwise ‘by the Spirit’ of course. [And it cannot be true where it denies nature.]
How about theism in the sense of the cause of the universe being aware of its action and naturalism as the cause of the universe being unaware of its action?
As for analogical language, Sproul’s book Defending Your Faith has a wonderfully succinct chapter on the subject.
Included in the chapter is a brief intellectual history, and without getting into specifics, the parallels to today’s discussion are striking.
This was a good quote:
“Words or things have an analogical relationship when they are partly alike and partly different—neither univocal nor equivocal.They share a relationship of similarity but not identity between the meaning of a term when attributed to one subject (“This chili is good”) and the meaning of that term when attributed to another subject (“God is good”).”
Please take my points in order. The first one was whether the process occurs or it doesn’t. In considering that, I think it then leads into the next one.
It looks like just the opposite to me. You start with this crazy stuff about awareness and changing because you seem to think its some sort of gotcha. From that point onward, you just try to figure out how to get to your gotcha.
You are entitled to that suspicion. I’m telling you that the first point is significant for me in a dialogue about this.
Now, will you admit the process that caused the universe may have occurred or it may not have? I don’t see any other possibility, other than maybe saying that it is in state of occurring.
Whether or not that allegation is true with regard to the specific individual about whom you are making/saying it is, for my purpose, irrelevant. However, right there, in those two succinct statements, IMO, you purty much sum up presuppositional apologetcs. I, for one, think that’s darn remarkable. It may take me a while to find the appropriate quotes, but–if memory serves me at this moment–presuppositional apologists of great fame and reputation have said as much, … in less pejorative terms, of course.
Whether he can’t or won’t, until he does the unexpected, presuppositionalists maintain the upper hand. What they are completely unable to effectively respond to is this “bald claim”.
Let’s look at a real world process. Some atomic nuclei are unstable, and they will decay at some point. For this to occur, particles have to get past what is called the Coulomb barrier. In classical mechanics, the particle would have to climb over that barrier, but that is not what actually happens. Instead, the particle tunnels through the barrier. At one moment the particle is in the atomic nucleus and the next instant it is outside of the nucleus. It is never in between. This is called quantum tunneling. More to the point, nothing causes this to happen other than the probability that it can happen.
So how does this fit into your questions and ideas? If the universe came about in a similar uncaused fashion as we see occurring in real time in the real world, what does that mean for this discussion?
I’d have to consider that example further. My comments dovetailed off your initial comment about how a natural process might be uncovered that explains the universe.
Another topic that may be worth discussing is virtual particles. These are particles that just pop into existence, and then pop back out of existence. There is nothing causing this other than it just being a property of the universe. In fact, these particles occur in pairs, and if they pop in close to the event horizon of a black hole one of the particles in the pair can be pulled into the black hole. This allows the other particle of the pair to radiate away from the black hole. This is called Hawking radiation.
Yeah I don’t feel very concerned about the universe’s making sense. After all making sense isn’t anything a universe is likely to attempt. It is we who try to understand stuff but I wouldn’t expect answering these strange questions to increase my understanding of anything. Apologetics as one encounters it on the internet always feels like an internal conversation looking to rope in onlookers. I prefer not to gawk if someone wants to do something like that in public.
