What is a "begining"?

[Nightmare060]

Hey all.

After numerouse debates with a theist freind, one thing that he kept pushing was the goold old Kalam Cosmalogical argument and that everything MUST have a "begining" and that it's impossible for an infinate to exist.

And this is somethong I would like to discuss; When we talk in sceintific terms, what do we define a "Begining" as. Because the classic responce is that nothing has been observed to "begin" to exist because everything we have observed is currently just a re-arangment of matter that was already there. I would also say that the big bang was not the universe "Begining" to exist, because it is simply the begining of the universe as we currently see it now. There is no saying the universe wasn't the universe before the big bang (which we don't know about).

But then, do we have any use for the word "Begining" in science at all? And if so, when can we define something as "Begining" to exist? Also, another rebutal which my theist freind scoffed at was that any "begining" is based on observed experiance, but we have not "observed" the universe to begin to exist. But with that logic, doesn't that defeat the perpose of science compleatly? Because science is based off repeatable and observed facts which we construct our conclusions from. And so through track record the universe would also have a begining and will have an end, right?

I highly suspect an equivocation falacy on the part of the word "Begining", but I think this would make an interesting discussion.

 

[Case]

It's a spelling mistake. :mrgreen:
Plus - you have to define it everytime you try to make a point, exactly because it is so vague.

Because science is based off repeatable and observed facts which we construct our conclusions from. And so through track record the universe would also have a begining and will have an end, right?

That does not make sense. Also - we don't construct conclusions, we derive them from the facts. The Second sentence is a non-sequitur, it does not follow. The only valid conclusion we can draw is that we don't (yet) know. We don't even know if we ever can know.

 

[Nightmare060]

It's a spelling mistake. :mrgreen:
Plus - you have to define it everytime you try to make a point, exactly because it is so vague.

Because science is based off repeatable and observed facts which we construct our conclusions from. And so through track record the universe would also have a begining and will have an end, right?

That does not make sense. Also - we don't construct conclusions, we derive them from the facts. The Second sentence is a non-sequitur, it does not follow. The only valid conclusion we can draw is that we don't (yet) know. We don't even know if we ever can know.

I think I perhaps didn't quite make my wording clear enough. So I'll rephrase;

Yes, we do draw conclusions based on experiance and evidence in science. The theist argument is that, if we have a track record of things "begining" to exist, then we can safley say that the universe did "Begin" to exist. Is it logicly sound to suggest that something is very probable because of the track record of what we have observed so far?

Like, if we can safley asume that if we drop a ball off a building, it will fall. We can observe this in a regular basis. The argument is that we can do the same for things "Begining" to exist. However I have heard the argument that every time we know something "Begins" to exist, we have observed it. We have not observed this with the universe, so we can't reasonably say it did "Begin" to exist. It's this line of reasoning which I find flawed, because if we can observe something to more than likley be true on a regular basis, shouldn't it at least be very likley that we can predict that other things can also fallow the same process? Just as we dropping a ball tells us that other objects that we don't already know have properties that enable for it not to fall (I.E; Flight mechanisms of birds), then can the universe not fall into the same line of reasoning that it most likley began to exist?

I hope this has been more clear. I'm really just playing devils advocate to fine tune my reasoning skills, so to speak.

 

[Nelson]

The theist argument is that, if we have a track record of things "begining" to exist, then we can safley say that the universe did "Begin" to exist. Is it logicly sound to suggest that something is very probable because of the track record of what we have observed so far?

Well there is a big inductive leap here from "we have seen some things begin to exist" to "therefore the universe began to exist", but I am not even willing to concede that "we have seen some things begin to exist". And it seems the concept of "beginning to exist" is almost entirely undefinable. Before we move forward at all with a discussion like this, I think that would have to be nailed down. For example:

A an electron/positron pair is formed from a photon of sufficient energy, did these particles begin to exist? An electron transitions to a lower energy orbital around some nucleus and releases a photon, or the same positron/electron pair annihilate and release a photon, did these photons begin to exist? In both of these cases we just have energy/matter changing forms, so the energy/matter can be considered to already exist.

William Lane Craig seems to think that matter/energy changing form constitutes something beginning to exist, so perhaps he believes that even if energy and matter have existed forever, the fact that the universe has taken some 4-dimensional space-time form for the last 13.7 billion years can be constitutes something beginning to exist as well. I think this then raises the question of why he believes energy/matter changing form requires a conscious designer as every single observation we have for this requires no design at all to explain it.

I think anyone who believes that concept of whether things begin to exist or not is so obvious that they can immediately generalize this idea to the entire universe is, quite frankly, a moron.

AndromedasWake has a good video about this premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument here:

 

[Nightmare060]

Ah yes, I've seen that video, deffinatly is usefull. This just leads me back to my origional question of wether we can give any solid defanition of a "begining" that applies in science.

 

[Case]

Seriously, it's "beginning". Please correct that... I get all worked up if I see the same mistake made again and again.

Maybe offtopic too, but there's a saying in Germany that goes like this: "Alles hat ein Ende nur die Wurst hat zwei." ("Everything has an end, but a sausage has two.") which is funny to think about in this context. Beginning is not something that is definitive, I think, it's inherently relative - it depends on your perspective. Say you grab a sausage and are asked where the sausage begins... you might be inclined to say "here" and point at the end closest to your mouth, or to your left, whatever... now if someone else grabs the other 'end' of the sausage... where does the sausage begin now, and where does it end? Is the end the beginning? The beginning the end? Without defining what you mean, this sort of 'discussion' is pointless.

 

[Nelson]

This just leads me back to my origional question of wether we can give any solid defanition of a "begining" that applies in science.

Then I think the answer is, no. The word "beginning" by itself is entirely useless in any sort of scientific dialog. You would have to further define the term before using it in any meaningful way. I think Case already made this point here.

Plus - you have to define it everytime you try to make a point, exactly because it is so vague.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Ah yes, I've seen that video, deffinatly is usefull. This just leads me back to my origional question of wether we can give any solid defanition of a "begining" that applies in science.

Yes, we can. What we can say about beginnings is that, as far as we can tell, they're prohibited by the first law of thermodynamics.

All we have as yet been able to observe is changes in state. Energy/matter cannot be created nor destroyed, which means that that which is, is. Changes in state can lead to conceptual beginnings, but not true beinnings. A true beginning must of necessity be ex nihilo, which is impossible. In other words, the word 'beginning' is itself conceptual, and doesn't even enjoy a Platonic existence, let alone a real one.

 

[Nightmare060]

Ah yes, I've seen that video, deffinatly is usefull. This just leads me back to my origional question of wether we can give any solid defanition of a "begining" that applies in science.

Yes, we can. What we can say about beginnings is that, as far as we can tell, they're prohibited by the first law of thermodynamics.

All we have as yet been able to observe is changes in state. Energy/matter cannot be created nor destroyed, which means that that which is, is. Changes in state can lead to conceptual beginnings, but not true beinnings. A true beginning must of necessity be ex nihilo, which is impossible. In other words, the word 'beginning' is itself conceptual, and doesn't even enjoy a Platonic existence, let alone a real one.

Perfect, that clears up what I was wondering. Thanks for the info, to you and the previouse posters