thoughts on first cause, ideas concerning evolution, life, motion, big bang, and origins

[first posted 06/20/12]

[this is a copy/paste of a comment(s) I made on a post, but only a few remarks should seem out of place for that reason, everything else should be straightforward; there's a correction at the end, as originally posted, so preferably read the whole thing.]

Thanks for the references.

I think the difference between creationists and evolutionists is on a philosophical level, which I think could be reflected in whether or not one thinks the world can explain itself.

I think that seeing how the world is now can help us to understand what something is, which can help us understand how it could be what it is.If one only sees the world as matter and form then one might seek to understand the nature of that matter and the cause for its form.In this case we don't seem to have experience with observing matter being created or destroyed, but we observe the creation/destruction of form. (perhaps with a sentiment of exception with living things- a little twig in the ground becoming a huge tree, you may say that wood is matter and in this case we could at least say it grew, but might have difficulty saying it was created- in the sense of matter coming to be from non-matter)Seeing life as matter and form we may seek to understand the cause of life starting with what we have experience in perceiving cause of- form.We could say that life is cyclical, and so the pattern we see of a life coming from its parent has always occurred without beginning (so there being no beginning to form); but the difficulty with this is that it seems impossible for there to be a real infinite progression as the preceding explanation for the current form of matter, since changing form is motional and this does not account for the cause of motion.If the cyclical paradigm is impossible then we search for origins, the cause of change of form (motion).Evolution may seek to explain the processes of change back to this point (whether correctly or not), but motion (change of form) is part of life- if you only have matter and form and no motion then you have a static object which can't be accounted as a cause for other objects (objects which come to be).

And this may be where an essential aspect of the argument lies; matter could conceivably be thought to always exist- to just be, form would just be the shape/position that the matter takes, and in this sense the two would seem to be an inseparable whole (albeit composed of parts) that could've always existed (if it could be conceived to be a self-explained object, something not caused, only things that come to be, that have an origin/beginning, are caused, being the effect of the nature and conditions of the thing preceding (you could say that the cause and effect are just the same object, so it's just the nature of that object being what it is, which is motional, but I've already tried to explain why it doesn't seem that a motional object can be eternal, because it will always have effects preceded by causes which can't have gone on forever, there's a beginning to sequences- if the parts of the sequence are causally related, and all of which ultimately abide or come from a cause that is not itself part of the causal sequence or object)). But motion is not the sort of thing that is self-explained; it seems, by its nature, to be causally-related and contingent and thus not a part of an origin.Here I'm not really even talking about evolution anymore except to explain that the concept of evolution is itself a concept of change which demands a higher explanation for what's causing it (and if you say that it's simply the nature of the object acting itself out, as it gains nutrients and grows, that's fine but that doesn't explain where the motion is coming from- unless you would say that there is a spirit/will in that object that causes some of it's some of its movements; but take a plant for example, take a seed that is in the ground, assuming that it doesn't seem to have any will/spirit what causes its motions? It seems there is something about the seed- the matter and mechanism of it- it's structure in such a way that when it is in soil and gets enough water then that mechanism is set into motion somehow- so there is something about the objects involved- the structure and matter of the seed and the matter of the soil and water, and when they interact there is a motion that occurs in the seed. And in this case motion occurs, by nature of the objects, but occurs when they're put in order/connected; so this would explain complex motion but still depends on the motion of whatever caused the seed, the soil, and the water to be moved into that relations, so albeit complex it still backs up the question of motion to another cause and, perhaps, a first cause).So, going back to origins, the explanation of motion, it seems that there would need to be an object which was not motional (so as to actually account for the origin of motion, if motion is involved in the original object then you're not talking about the first motion, and the other option is to say there was no first motion and that motion is eternal, but I've already offered a concern for that. So the cause of the first motion cannot itself be motion, so I'll just call it the cause).Some scientists have attempted to answer this in terms of the Big Bang- dense matter as the cause that expanded into being the motional universe. But this explanation doesn't seem to be self-explainable; first, you can't say that something motional from without or within caused this occurrence, or else you're no longer talking about the first motion and we should instead talk about that object and not the Big Bang. You can say it just happened; but was there a moment preceding this happening? If not then there is no origin- origins talk about the beginning of something that was once not; to say there was no state preceding the Big Bang's explosion/expansion is to go back to saying that motion has always been. If so, then some conditions changed so as to implicate the motion of the Big Bang, something made a difference such that a difference occurred- going from static dense matter to expanding/exploding matter. But again, those conditions can't be physical or else they are a preceding motion and the Big Bang would thus not be the first motion since there is a prior motional cause. So there is something that implicated the conditions for motion, without itself being motion, and this would then be a non-physical cause (since if physical, and without motion involved, either no Big Bang could then occur and thus no motion ever occur or there could be no state prior to the Big Bang and thus you're left with there always having been motion- which I strongly suggest as impossible, especially in this consideration since the Big Bang is a singular event and would defy the concept of eternal flux/motion). If a non-physical cause, yet a cause, you then begin to wonder what sort of being (being as opposed to thing, things are contingent, or else have no power to act; and an act is a word I'm using to express the reason for the difference between the conditions/nature of things preceding the Big Bang and those implicating it; if the Big Bang, as such, even occurred; I know of some Christians who believe so, but have a different view of it in terms of this explanation of it's cause as the first motion (referring to William Lane Craig), but whether the Big Bang as we know of it occurred or not the point I'm making about a first motion and the relation to its cause is the same. And in considering this first cause it seems to be a being with a will and also an eternal being- since I'm not talking about the first cause of motion concerning Earth or it's living parts which might suggest another contingent being such as an alien, but the first cause for the first motion, the origin of motion.


*In rereading the first part so far I made a mistake, or incomplete point- the problem of an infinite progression of cause/effect to get to where we are now is not impossible by virtue of accounting for where motion comes from but by virtue of the impassibility of infinity. In a causal sequence you can't have an infinite series of causes and effects to get to a particular cause/effect; if illustration is helpful, it's like asking "how many left turns did you make before making a right turn?" and the answer being "an infinite number of left turns"; infinity is by definition inexhaustable, without end, if there is no end to the measure of the cause it will never be complete so as to sufficiently bear its effect.