Can there be real causation for a material atheist?

[harvey1]

Here is my argument against material atheism:

1. If a material atheist world exists, then there must be a material cause for every effect; there can be no effect without a material cause.
2. Slicing up time to the minimum slices of time, we see there cannot be material causes that materially connects time slice A to its effect in time slice B.
3. Therefore, a material atheist world does not exist.

Based on this argument, can anyone show that it is possible for a material atheist world to exist?

[bernee51]

Hi ya Harvey - been a while...not sure when I will get back to this but...

Here is my argument against material atheism:

1. If a material atheist world exists, then there must be a material cause for every effect; there can be no effect without a material cause.

Please define for me what you mean by 'material atheist'

[*] Slicing up time to the minimum slices of time,

How big is a "minumum time slice"?

How long is 'now'?

Is 'now' inside or outside time?

we see there cannot be material causes that materially connects time slice A to its effect in time slice B.

Are you sure this is what you meant to say?

[*]Therefore, a material atheist world does not exist.

If you say so.

[harvey1]

Hey Bernee,

Good to "see" you again. I hope all is well.

Please define for me what you mean by 'material atheist'

An atheist who believes that all there exists is a material thing. There is no God, or gods, or existing laws, or existing relations, or existing principles, etc.. Everything can be reduced to talking about particles, strings, branes, loops, etc., or whatever else fundamentally constitutes matter.

How big is a "minumum time slice"?

Whatever it is. If it is a planck moment (10-43 seconds), then it's that. If it is whatever makes further slices become Heisenberg "uncertain," then it's that. If it is an infinitesimal, then it's that. It can even be a slice that varies (over space and over time) which makes up a statistical value . The point being that a minimum time slice represents the minumum slice where it is physically impossible to slice it further for that particular minimum slice of spacetime. It might be an infinitesimally small region being sliced to an infinitesimally small segment of time.

How long is 'now'?

I don't know. You can consider all the conceivable possibilities with regard to a material description. (However, I request that we talk about only an inertial frame of reference (FOR). Special relativity (SR) introduces different FORs, but as long as we talk of only one FOR, we don't have to consider Lorenzian transformations. However, if you think SR is relevant to this issue, please be free to discuss it.)

Is 'now' inside or outside time?

If we are talking about a material, how can something be outside time? That seems to be saying, "if something is outside the material." If there is only material, no way to be outside of it.

If you say so.

Does this mean that you accept this argument?

[QED]

Hello harvey1. I'm glad you started this thread. I thought about starting it myself but concluded that the OP would be better in your own words.

The first objection I have is this concept you call material atheism. I think you are exaggerating a widely held world-view into something that nobody would dream of subscribing to. The world is obviously full of immaterial things. The significant fact is that the atheist understands such things to be the exclusive property of material interactions. As a result of this I believe that a useful distinction is that immaterial things can't interact directly with each other but require the mediation of the material.

My second objection is that time is a concept. It is not material, therefore talking about its smallest component is nonsensical.

[harvey1]

The first objection I have is this concept you call material atheism. I think you are exaggerating a widely held world-view into something that nobody would dream of subscribing to. The world is obviously full of immaterial things. The significant fact is that the atheist understands such things to be the exclusive property of material interactions. As a result of this I believe that a useful distinction is that immaterial things can't interact directly with each other but require the mediation of the material.

But, are there immaterial things when the exclusive property of such things are material? For example, ideas are the exclusive property of brain functioning, and the concept of ideas can be completely reduced to brain functioning (according to a materialist). It is required by the material atheist, I think, to say that an "idea" is equivalent to a long and extensive operation of the brain that occurs within seconds on a physical level. When we are talking in principle like this, there are no immaterial things to the material atheist. In fact, the term immaterial is non-sensible to the material atheist. It's like saying, "that apparently blue sign is completely yellow." That's what the term "immaterial" should sound like to a material atheist.

I think you need to show how a material atheist could believe in real immaterial things without it being a pure contradiction to what they believe.

My second objection is that time is a concept. It is not material, therefore talking about its smallest component is nonsensical.

By a material atheist world I mean material things existing in space and time. That is, matter requires spatial and temporal dimensionality. If it does not have space or time, in what way can it be considered a material thing? This is one of the arguments that material atheists make against the existence of God. They say God lacks those properties in principle that would make God to be able to exist.

Therefore, I think you do need to consider time as part of a necessary description and not purely as a concept. In order to refute it, I would ask that you provide a definition of matter that does not require us to refer to space or time in its definition.

[QED]

I think you need to show how a material atheist could believe in real immaterial things without it being a pure contradiction to what they believe.

Immaterial is far too useful a word for it to be denied to people of a particular worldview. It neatly describes the products of material processes without having to resort to the long-winded, reductionist, descriptions of those processes. It also reflects the humanity of the user who is likely to have just as much appreciation for the gestalt as the next man. Ideas are an obvious example of the immaterial but are clearly bound to the material mind in which they reside. I deliberately mentioned the fact that immaterial things cannot interact with other immaterial things in order to underline their limited scope.

For example a Jaguar motor car has a certain 'spirit' which is perceptible to a mind that knows its history. This immaterial spirit can influence other immaterial things - such as happiness, but only via the material mind that encompasses both. The sort of direction that I think you're trying to take us in depends on the immaterial having unlimited scope and this I think is wrong as it lacks a material intermediary. Because of this you propose a metaphysical agency which while being necessary for your theory, it should not be confused with being a necessary part of the cosmos.

Therefore, I think you do need to consider time as part of a necessary description and not purely as a concept. In order to refute it, I would ask that you provide a definition of matter that does not require us to refer to space or time in its definition.

Time doesn't appear in equations, units of time do. This is the same as length or weight. Time is purely a measure of change. If nothing in the universe changed, time would not exist. You could just as well ask the same question of length that you are asking of time.

[harvey1]

Time doesn't appear in equations, units of time do. This is the same as length or weight. Time is purely a measure of change. If nothing in the universe changed, time would not exist. You could just as well ask the same question of length that you are asking of time.

Units of time is a measurement of how much time has passed relative to events that we regularly witness (e.g., one earth rotation, one earth revolution around the sun, etc.). However we measure it, we are measuring the passage of events (or flow of time). Material atheism is based on matter having this property to pass such that events can be referred to as being in the past, occurring right now, or something to be expected in the future. It is integral to the definition of what it means for something to be material.

If we zoom in on narrower and narrower durations of time to the smallest increment conceivable (e.g., millenia to centuries, centuries to decades, decades to years, years to months, months to weeks, weeks to days, days to hours, hours to minutes, minutes to seconds, and so on...), then we can conceive of a point to where one moment in time is not materially connected to the next moment. What I want to know is why would you think that there can be material cause given the lack of explanation feasible in terms of connecting one shortest moment to the next? It seems you don't want to face the consequence of material atheism being wrong since you won't give a possible, conceptually pleasing answer to this very important question. Why?

[QED]

If we zoom in on narrower and narrower durations of time...
...then we can conceive of a point to where one moment in time is not materially connected to the next moment.

Really? From where I sit it seems like all moments in time are materially connected to the next moment.

[harvey1]

Really? From where I sit it seems like all moments in time are materially connected to the next moment.

So, are you saying that time could be infinitely divisible into a infinitesimal? If so, then what connects one infinitesimal moment of time to the next? Why do you avoid this issue?

[Curious]

If we zoom in on narrower and narrower durations of time...
...then we can conceive of a point to where one moment in time is not materially connected to the next moment.

Really? From where I sit it seems like all moments in time are materially connected to the next moment.

I think this is the crux of it. Harvey1 contends that material existence is determined from one moment to the next and this determinism must be shown to have a determinant. QED seems to believe that the determinant need not be infinitely applied from moment to moment but that the material itself is it's own future determinant. Obviously this is a rather long winded way of saying something very simple but it does highlight a significant conceptual difference between the two.
Harvey1, you argue, it appears, that time is required to pass information from one moment to the next concerning the material but from the materialist perspective, time, as QED says, could be thought of as a measure of the change of the material. While this is not strictly true, it is true of the perception of time. There could be a vast positional change of a photon but the time would not change for the photon, only for the observer of the photon. There could be absolutely no positional change at all for an object when viewed externally from a super fast moving observation post (I mean no absolute position change of the observed object and not relative change), but from the point of view of the observed object, the time would fly by relative to all other time (although it would seem exactly the same in essence to anyone experiencing it. ie. 1 relative minute would still seem like one minute irrespective).We do know that the passage of time is determined by physical considerations such as the motion in space of the observer. If we were to accelerate the observer towards the speed of light then such a passage of information from one moment to the next ( if determined by the time relative to the observer) would require greater and greater amounts of additional content in respect to position (ie.change) until eventually, as in the case of the photon, there would be no change in time at all but the position undergoes a huge change in absolute position. For the photon there is absolutely no infinitely small time slice at all other than the here and now. It should also be understood that this here and now, to the photon, is also infinitely long.
Now previously, Harvey1, you really didn't want me to bring this argument into it but I can't really see how we can discuss time seriously in the absence of special relativity. SR does open up a number of philosophical considerations. If we are to conclude that time should be measured then from the point of an external observer or that it should be from the subjective perspective of the universe as a whole we see that these "infinitely small time slices" are really just different perspectives of the "singular" nature of the universe. As such, it could be the nature of the universe that does not change and requires no passage of information, but your perspective of this nature is restricted to "snapshots" of a reality far too complex to be understood in it's totality.