Cosmologic philosophy: Egnor on Big Bang, etc. (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 18, 2021, 22:02 (1224 days ago) @ David Turell

Egnor refutes a mechanical cause for the universe:

https://evolutionnews.org/2021/07/is-the-universe-causally-closed/

"The Big Bang: The Big Bang is clearly a physical effect — it is the ultimate physical effect (the beginning of the universe) — but it is just as obvious that it has no physical cause, because the whole notion of a physical cause is difficult to apply to the beginning of time. The singularity that gave rise to the Big Bang is prior to the universe not in time but in the sense of a causal chain. And the singularity is not itself a physical cause, because in general relativity is undefined.

"Materialists will and do argue that the universe is the ground of existence and needs no cause, but this is wrong on two accounts. First, as Thomas Aquinas clearly showed in his cosmological arguments in the first Three Ways, the ground of existence needs to be pure actuality without any potentiality and needs to be self-existent without any contingency. But the universe and everything in it is full of potentiality and contingency and could not be the ground of existence.

"Second, if one accepts the assertion that the entire universe exists without cause, science and even everyday life are rendered nonsensical. If all that exists came into being without a cause, why infer that anything in daily life or in scientific investigation needs to have a cause? If one accepts the principle that the entire universe needs no cause, one accepts magic and incomprehensibility in all of life and of course in science.

***

"Remember that the doctrine of causal closure states that every physical effect has a physical cause and consider that the acquisition of a discrete spin in an entangled electron is most certainly a physical effect. But the cause of that physical effect — measurement of its entangled partner — cannot be transmitted more rapidly than the speed of light because no physical entity or effect can have superluminal velocity.

The simultaneity of quantum entanglement precludes causal closure.

***

"The field equations of curved space-time: It has been recognized since the early 20th century that the field equations of general relativity when applied to curved space-time violate the principle of conservation of energy. In fact, cosmologists have even developed a mathematical tool — called pseudo-tensors — in an attempt to rig general relativity in accordance with conservation laws. Whatever the value of pseudo-tensors in cosmological investigation, they are ad hoc and only serve to emphasize that general relativity itself entails violation of the conservation of energy in the observable universe.

"Of course, if energy is not conserved in our relativistic universe then one can make no sense of the statement that “every physical effect has a physical cause,” because energy can be created and destroyed without account and the bookkeeping between physical effects and physical causes falls apart.

General relativity in curved space-time violates causal closure.

***

"There are undoubtedly more examples of violations of causal closure in modern physics, but the Big Bang, black holes, the field equations of general relativity, and quantum entanglement are sufficient examples of the lack of causal closure in nature to render the causal closure argument against dualism in the mind-brain problem ineffectual.

"The immaterial mind — that is, formal and final causes — can violate causal closure (understood in a materialist sense as the requirement that every physical effect has a physical cause), just as general relativity and quantum mechanics in modern physics violate causal closure.

"The materialist invocation of causal closure to deny dualism of mind and brain is a refuted argument, and it is ironically refuted by the same modern science that materialists claim is the basis for their ideology. Materialism is a woefully inadequate framework for modern science — it offers nothing of value to cosmology, quantum mechanics, or neuroscience, and it does not in any way preclude the dualist understanding of the mind."

Comment: I'm sure all his arguments are well-known. We know of no material cause for the Big Bang, specifically because it requires the start of time.. Somebody who could design a universe fine-tuned-for-life, and begin time, is required.