+JMJ+
wayfriend wrote:Let's consider that proposition that every event has a cause.
It is the definition of the Big Bang that it occurred when there was no Space, no Dimension, no Time -- no Universe. People have even gone so far as to say that laws of physics don't hold at that time.
We hold true the Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy. But we know at this asymptotic event that even athese Laws do not hold. Matter and Energy came into being from nowhere.
If all this is true, then would the statement "every event must have a cause" (The Law of Conservation of Causality?) have to be true at that time? Might it not be?
Logic is a tricky thing. It's imperfect. There are any number of paradoxes that can be proven as true and false simultaneously using logic. To my mind, it works generally, but breaks down "at the edges".
And the Big Bang is a big edge.
And if it wasn't true at that time, then there need not be a "first cause".
Sorry for the gap before the response, but I had to condense some rather nuanced material into a succinct and — with the help of a couple of quickly-cobbled visual aids — a (hopefully!) easy-to-follow form.
I should preface by noting that the convo is now centered around two-ish different fields: 1) Science and 2) Philosophy/Theology. And also by noting that the Science does not pass seamlessly into the Philosophy/Theology and vice-versa.
Though the two fields may touch on some common themes, the Scientific speculation — even if current models were to be flatly taken as given — would not exhaust the need for the Philosophical heavy-lifting. The same can be said
mutatis mutandis for the Philosophy with regard to the Science. The two disciplines simply don't answer equivalent sets of questions.
The upshot is that, while the Big Bang may well be a "big edge", this Scientific Edge is not the same as the Philosophical Edge demanded by Classicalism and Catholic Theology.
=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
Part 1: Chronological Priority
The Scientific Edge, when applied (as it often is in popular discourse) to a generalized Creation Narrative, yields a Cosmology in which God's Creative Action is part-&-parcel with the Causal Chain.
To wit:
One could call this schematic a "Narrative of Chronological Priority".
In this schematic, God is one-of-a-piece with the Universe and, by causing the Big Bang, kicks off the rest of the series akin to the first action in a Rube Goldberg Machine:
God is the duck which lays the egg of the Big Bang which rolls the cart which trips the lever which … yada-yada … and the boot finally kicks the switch actuating the lightbulb of the Entropic Heat Death of the Universe. IOW, this schematic portrays God as being fully implicated in the Chain-of-Causes. With God being portrayed as the First Cause in a Chronological sense, this Narrative is ever-susceptible to charges of question-begging as to what caused God.
But this is unacceptable for Catholic Teaching. Catholicity demands a certain element of incommensurability — a caesura or rupture — between the Creator and His Creation. God can't be nothing more than a bigger version of us.
=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
Part 2: Ontological Priority
Rather than this scientifically-flavored Chronological Priority, Classicalist Philosophy insists on what one might call a "Narrative of Ontological Priority", such that God's Creative Action is
ontologically prior to the Causal Chain in its entirety.
Like this:
In this schematic, God is First Cause, not by being caught-up as just another link in the chain-of-causes, but rather, by being the Cause of Causality.
Here, God is "prior" to us living in The Now in the
exact same sense as He is "prior" to the Big Bang and, again, in the
exact same sense is "prior" to the Universe's Entropic Heat Death. IOW, God is immediately prior to the whole shebang all-at-once.
=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
Conclusion
To sum it all up, you could very well be completely correct regarding the astrophysical conditions and logical puzzles obtaining at the Big Bang (I'm not particularly competent to say either one way or the other), yet this would still not obviate the philosophico-theological need for a First Cause in the Classicalist sense. God's Creative Action would still be crucial for upholding the whole: i.e. for the wonky physics of the Big Bang, for the living conditions of "the We" flourishing in the Here-&-Now, and for the Entropic Abyss of the Universe's unravelling.
While my unsurety on the Astrophysics made me initially hang back from engaging deeply, F&F's use of the "Uncaused Cause" terminology piqued my ears, since that's precisely the sort of lingo with which I'm conversant. Having gotten my concerns cleared-up (I hope!), I can now quite easily return to silent-mode and let the science resume, if that's to people's liking.