Here's the biggest issue of all, that still hasn't been covered in pages of debate.

Poking holes in a theory does not prove anything other than possible holes in a theory.

You've given no evidence whatsoever for the existence of atemporality, a rather extreme claim.

"I can't explain this" is always and forever insufficient proof of a person's pet bias. If you're going to postulate atemporality, you need to do it thoroughly. What is the nature of the atemporal in relation to the temporal, and what evidence do you have for that statement? If all of existence needs a primal cause, what is the cause of our primal cause? Does the Law of Causality really need to be extended back infinitely? Are any problems solved by a model that better fits the empirical evidence by extending it back farther? Are any new problems created? What alternatives are there to the problems other than postulating atemporality, and why did you choose atemporality as a better fit? (If your answer to the previous question is "there are no altenatives," you're back at the "I can't explain this" phase.)

What about the example I gave? Your claim about the time it takes for information to pass isn't really valid - let me go into more detail:

1. Fish flexes muscles
2. Fin pushes against the water
3. Water pushes back

1 comes before 2, because it takes some time for the information to pass. However, no exchange of information is required between 2 and 3, so your problem of waiting for the exchange of information is not valid. #2 and #3 are exactly simultaneous. Also, I have not found any physicists (or websites related to physics) that agree with you that simultaneous causality is not possible.



I think that this is a demonstration of another bias. Here's the problem: we don't know. So, we each have to accept some conclusion - none of them can be proven. Was there a singularity? Maybe. Was there an external cause? Maybe. Does the universe permanently cycle? Maybe. Is it possible that spacetime really had no beginning and that all of our scientific laws are wrong? Maybe. All of us have to accept one of these conclusions, and there is little experience for any of them. You cannot approach this as an absolute, experimental science like you can with other questions - the best we can do is list the possibilities, and examine which is most likely.

My goal is not to absolutely prove anything; it can't be done. I am out to examine the possibilities and talk about which is most likely. I am arguing that the theory that something exists outside of spacetime is more likely than the theory that the laws of science did not apply to the beginning. We both know that I can't provide evidence or descriptions of atemporality, since we clearly have no related frame of reference or experience. However, you also cannot provide any evidence for a singularity, evidence that the laws of science should not apply, nor really any convincing evidence for any of the possible theories. What we can do is provide evidence that suggests or supports one of these theories. We then compare the evidence for each theory, and decide which is the most likely.

I am arguing that, based on evidence, the theory I've outlined here before is more likely than any other theory I've heard. I am asking you to post evidence for your theory of choice, if you believe it is more likely, or explain in any other way why the theories I'm talking about are somehow less likely than any other theory. I could make a list of possible theories and explain why I believe they are each unconvincing, but I thought that was overkill. If you're interested I could work on compiling one - there are several possibilities, but none that I found satisfying.

As for your statement about causality...I have actually addressed that a few times, but I'll recap again. Things do not require causes, only events require causes. The Universe does not require a cause, but the beginning of the Universe requires a cause - the Law of Causality applies to this. Anything that exists outside of spacetime does not require a cause. Any such entity could not have a beginning (the concept is nonsensical without time), so there is no "beginning" event requiring a cause - so, the Law of Causality would not apply to any entity outside of spacetime.

I'm still utterly unconvinced by your argument. You've failed to overcome Occam's Razor, for starters - What was the external cause to your external cause? And that can go on ad infinitum. There need be either 1) an external cause that can be positively demonstrated, or 2) a theory that posits no more elements than necessary. The best theory becomes, then "We don't know, but it's safer to assume as few entities were involved as possible." Which basically amounts to "The Universe just happened."

Anyway. You sounded like you had a neat twelve-step plan against atheism. Right now it seems to go something like this:

1 - Accept that the Universe needed an external cause.
2 ~ 11 - ???
12 - Accept Jesus as personal saviour = Profit!

Since I'm bored, I'm going to ask you to make your point #2, because I get a kick out of skewed logic being employed to back-handedly justify pre-existing conceptions.

Hmm, two choices, which is the easier one to grasp?

1. For a few brief moments, after an event, the laws of physics were different from they are now, but some few microseconds after the event and for the next 15 billion yeras, those laws were unchanging.

2. There is something outside of the physical universe created a physical event, but itself is not bound by physicality.

You don't have to demonstrate what created the creator, because the whole idea is that the creator does not exist within the physical universe which the laws of causality are meant to explain.

I think if your argument relies on somewhere/something else where causality doesn't work, then yes, the former scenario becomes simpler. You DO still have to ask the same question of the place/whatever the non-causality-working thing comes from.

EDIT: Or rather, you have to ask why there's a place/thing that causality doesn't work. It's less simple than something wherein more factors than "it just is" determines how the laws of physics are.

Number 2 basically amounts to "There is an entity which ignores the laws of physics as we know them." Number 1 can easily be read as "The laws of physics as we encounter them emerge from much simpler sets of behaviours the universe partakes in. At some point in the Universe's existence, a different set of behaviours than the ones we're used to emerged."

Number 2 is utterly unsupported by evidence, and involves postulating a completely unnecessary entity. Number 1 is pretty much what all of physics seems to obnoxiously point towards - that the Universe is fundamentally simple, but emergently complex. Besides, there are lots of places where physics doesn't behave as we are used to - Black holes, for example.

Why?

Why does anything outside of the known universe have to come from somewhere?

The only reason we say that everything within the world needs a cause, is because everything we see inside of this world has a cause. What makes you think there is even a starting point to know what to ask about things that are outside of our system? To ask about the cause of the first cause, is to say that the first cuase is still inside of our known system.

Because you're avoiding something that might appears to be causeless by postulating something to have created it that is itself causeless. Just because it's "outside the universe" doesn't really make the question any less redundant. It's an unnecessary leap of faith compared to what Verithrax said.

That is not at all a restatment of what I said.

"There is an entity which ignores the laws of physics as we know them." should read
There is an entity outside of our known system which does not require the laws of physics as we know them." (I find the whole concept that the creator would create the laws, and then needs to ignore them is silly);

"The laws of physics as we encounter them emerge from much simpler sets of behaviours the universe partakes in. At some point in the Universe's existence, a different set of behaviours than the ones we're used to emerged."

This should read:

"The laws of physics as we encounter them emerge from much simpler sets of behaviours the universe partakes in. At some early point in the Universe's existence, the set of behaviours that we're used to emerged, and have not changed since."

These are fairly drastic differences.

There is no "something."

There are no properties that it has other than it is the cause of the first thing that happened within the universe.

I find it to be a larger leap of faith that X changed once, but then never changed again. Or that something within our system, could ignore the rules of the system.

The first is an unnecessary (and unsupported) distinction. "ignores" is a perfectly good word for it.

As for the second, technically you're right that his wording was slightly off ("the set of behaviours that we're used to emerged and have not changed since" is right) but it isn't a drastic difference.

EDIT: I guess that's where the disagreement lies then. I see no reason why something cannot change once and then not change again. There are many examples of exactly that in chemistry and physics - like, say, the law of entropy.

Ignores implies that the laws of physics exist and are not being used.

Outisde of our universe, the laws of physics do not exist at all. If the p-brane theory is correct, then the definition of our universe has expanded, but nothing can be said about what is outside of it.

It would be like saying that you ignore the 10 billion goblins that sit on your shoulder while at the computer.

Well those questions are exactly why organized religion is -necessary- within any society.

Which answer is the "easiest" to your problems? Well, there you go.

The questions change, from explaining weather and other natural events to the ancients, for example, to whatever questions those that will follow us can't comfortably put their finger on. Death and creation have always been chief amongst these, and likely always will be.

As for the primordial substance that would have led to the Big Bang... to assume that this could have happened, I personally feel that the equalizing forces that maintain our universe would have -had- to have acted differently to keep something like that stable. I heard theorized somewhere (precisely where eludes me) that perhaps everything (gravity, the nuclear forces, etc) acted as one to maintain all of existence and then that somewhere gravity broke off from the others, and a fraction of a second later you had the Big Bang and "rules" to the universe resembling those we currently perceive. I don't give that theory justice at all and will try to dig it up somewhere, but I don't think it's impossible that the universe hasn't always acted as we currently believe it does.

Again - You still don't overcome the Razor. "An entity created the Universe" postulates one more entity than "The Universe just exists." In the absence of positive evidence for said entity, it can be declared an unneeded phantasm and shaved off.

Besides - It's not that the laws of physics change. It's rather that we're used to them behaving in some ways. We live in the middle world of objects moving at reasonable speeds and reasonable energy states. You push a little further, and things start getting vastly weird - Very cold matter behaves in odd ways, as does very hot matter, or very fast matter. We're used to time being an universal constant everywhere, but we know that's not true. At the beginning of the universe, the extremely high energy states would have lead to a situation in which the laws of physics as they emerge from the current state of the universe to simply not function.

It's like a rock suddenly being dropped at a high point on a hill. At some early point in the rock's life there, its position changes to the most stable point - the bottom - and then ceases to change. You can say there is external agency at work; or you can simply realise that the system has moved to the most stable state possible (Although the rock will set in further, perhaps grow some moss - there is an initial, sudden stabilisation and then the slowly accruing effects of random deviation and slower processes that also lead to a more stable state.)

Saying that "the universe just exists" postulates one more behaviour for the universe that has no positive evidence for it. It can be declared an unneeded behaviour and shaved off.

Also, I would not say that the existance of a non physical reality has no positive evidence for it. Though clearly the evidence for it can not be demonstrated using universally acceptable methods.

I hope you're saying you're a solipsist with that statement. Because otherwise I'm going to laugh long and hard at you.

I don't see the connection.

Again, saying that just the universe exists, means that you also have to postulate that the known laws of nature, which have applied for 13 billion years, did not apply for 10^-43 seconds, and yet these are the within the same system.

Also you don't have to postulate an entity to postulate existance outside of the universe.

I give up!

On what basis do you say that the laws of physics did not apply for any length of time? I'm fairly certain that the cosmologists got there by using the known laws of physics. If it's the singularity you're griping over, rest assured that models exist that don't include a singularity.

And Veri's non-reply is correct. Sure, it exists, but it doesn't need to have being? I realize that you've never been on speaking terms with our old friend Occam and you rather enjoy taking opportunities to take cheap shots at him, but you might want to just let Mitbulls run with this one.

Then define what you mean better, because the connoation of an entity is something which would be similiar to something within the Universe.