Do things really happen for a reason?

[Seenthelight]

I would like to hear your opinion on if you think things happen to us for a reason and if you do believe that they do be glad to share an example. Thanks.

 

[Humanista]

Nothing is operating in a vacuum, and there are complexities which converge to "cause" things to happen.

But there is no guiding, supernatural presence that magically causes things to happen for an ulterior motive.

Example:
I stub my toe as I walk. Did that happen for a reason? Yes and no. Yes, I didn't pick up my foot properly, or I had on new shoes, or a rock was in my path. No, a god didn't cause me to stub my toe to teach me some sort of lesson.

I run into an old friend by chance in Germany while on vacation. What are the odds? There must be a "reason"! Statics show that million to one odds things happen every day. It was just chance.

Your boyfriend breaks up with you. You reason that "it wasn't meant to be".
No, he wasn't sufficiently devoted to you, met someone else, or some other logical reason. That's all.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

 

[Zadok001]

Seenthelight:

Your question isn't clear.

In a purely logical sense, every event must have one of two properties.

1. It happened for a 'reason,' i.e., it is a 'caused' event.
2. It did not happen for a reason, and is therefore uncaused. Such an event would be entirely random.

Our universe can consist of any combination of those two event properties, though no single event can have both. The universe may be entirely caused, entirely random, or mixed.

In a metaphysical sense, this question cannot be reasonably answered.

 

[undead1]

Originally posted by Humanista
Nothing is operating in a vacuum, and there are complexities which converge to "cause" things to happen.

But there is no guiding, supernatural presence that magically causes things to happen for an ulterior motive.

In so far as you comment about "magick", I would agree with you. Yet obviously you never read the book of proverbs. Its worth reading, because it give you a very clear conception of how God works out everything for his own ends:

Prov 16;4 "The LORD hath made all [things] for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil".

And no, I don't agree that you are always right.

 

[food4thought]

From a scientific perspective, the only events we can observe are 'caused' events. Nothing can arise from nothing (first law of thermodynamics). So you have to have an infinite # of caused events going back forever (even before the "big bang", because what caused it?). From a Christian perspective, God is acting in all the things that we can observe, and in even more things that we cannot observe, and we do not require a cause that conforms to the observed physical laws of the universe, because God transcends our universe and is not subject to them. Personally, I think that the existense of a transcendant Creator explains the evidense we can observe much better than a endless # of random cause and effect events.

Just my opinion...

 

[Suit of Lights]

Nothing can arise from nothing

Yes, which is precisely the reason that the universe is infinite in both time and space- it was never created, but has simply existed in some form for an infinite period of years into the past and an infinite period into the future. Nothing can be created or destroyed, but energy and matter can change form. If God created existence, then why did he limit himself to a predefined set of physical processes? Why has he chosen to to create the universe in just such a way that anyone who studies it will find evidence that contradicts his very existence? Seems that God is either not real, or playing a very elaborate trick on all of us.

 

[Rize]

Originally posted by Suit of Lights
Yes, which is precisely the reason that the universe is infinite in both time and space- it was never created, but has simply existed in some form for an infinite period of years into the past and an infinite period into the future. Nothing can be created or destroyed, but energy and matter can change form. If God created existence, then why did he limit himself to a predefined set of physical processes? Why has he chosen to to create the universe in just such a way that anyone who studies it will find evidence that contradicts his very existence? Seems that God is either not real, or playing a very elaborate trick on all of us.

Man, you have a lot to learn   It is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God by studying the universe.  There is no evidence that contradicts God's existence.  Not scientifically anyway.  And the universe strongly suggests both a beginning and a creator.  Do some research on the anthropic prinicple.  Their are some arguments which defeat this principle, but they require just as much faith as believing in God does.

It is also logically possible to demonstrate that the universe cannot be infinite.  It is impossible to have a physical infinte.  Even movement is not infinitely divisibible (i.e., if you pick two points in physical space, there is a finite number of locations between those two points where a particle of matter can exist.  Matter jumps between these discreet points when it moves!).  There is nothing infinite in our physical universe.

And who said God limited himself to any physical processes?  God set up natural laws to govern the universe, but He can (and does) interfere whenever he chooses).

 

[dnich163]

I can't think of anything I'd like to share right now but for me life definately happens to us for a reason.
Ultimately the reason and final objective is God. Everything else is part of the journey.

David

 

[Suit of Lights]

How can the universe have a beginning or end? That's not logically possible. What does the end of the universe look like? What was there before it was created? These questions are pretty much impossible to answer.

 

 

[MartinM]

Originally posted by Rize
It is also logically possible to demonstrate that the universe cannot be infinite

Really? I'd be interested to see that.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by food4thought
From a scientific perspective, the only events we can observe are 'caused' events. Nothing can arise from nothing (first law of thermodynamics). So you have to have an infinite # of caused events going back forever (even before the "big bang", because what caused it?). From a Christian perspective, God is acting in all the things that we can observe, and in even more things that we cannot observe, and we do not require a cause that conforms to the observed physical laws of the universe, because God transcends our universe and is not subject to them. Personally, I think that the existense of a transcendant Creator explains the evidense we can observe much better than a endless # of random cause and effect events.

Just my opinion...

First, at the quantum level uncaused events happen all the time.  The continuous appearance of virtual particles from the vacuum is just one example.

Second, the FLOT only describes what happens within the universe, not how the universe got here to begin with.

Third, if you trace the series of cause and effect back long enough you are going to run into First Cause. The uncaused Cause that kicked the whole chain of cause and effect off to begin with.  We don't know what that First Cause was. You are free to believe it was deity, but there are other candidates and there is insufficient data to choose among them.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Suit of Lights Yes, which is precisely the reason that the universe is infinite in both time and space- it was never created, but has simply existed in some form for an infinite period of years into the past and an infinite period into the future.

Please post the citation from a scientific paper backing this point, particularly the "not created" part.  Since all the data shows that our universe had a beginning at the BB, I'm interested in where you get the "infinite in time" argument.

Nothing can be created or destroyed, but energy and matter can change form.

Within the universe.  Once again, FLOT does not apply to getting a universe to begin with.

If God created existence, then why did he limit himself to a predefined set of physical processes?

Perhaps this is the set of physical processes that will yield life and meaning for that life. See chapter 7 of Kenneth Miller's Finding Darwin's God. 

Why has he chosen to to create the universe in just such a way that anyone who studies it will find evidence that contradicts his very existence?

Again, please post the reference to the peer-reviewed scientific paper that contradicts the existence of deity?  I haven't seen one.  Where have you?

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Seenthelight
I would like to hear your opinion on if you think things happen to us for a reason and if you do believe that they do be glad to share an example. Thanks.

This looks like it should be in a theology forum, not a forum about science. 

Depends on what you mean by "reason".  There are two broad categories of causes -- proximate and ultimate.  Let me illustrate with an example.

You come into a kitchen and see a pot of water boiling on the stove.  What is the "reason" the water is boiling?  One answer is that heat is causing the increased motion of the water molecules to the point that they are moving fast enough to go from a liquid phase to a gaseous phase.  That is one reason.

Another reason is that my aunt is cooking spaghetti for dinner and has the water boiling so she can put the spaghetti in it.

Which is the "true" reason?  Both.  They addressing different aspects.  Obviously science works with the first explanation, the proximate cause.  It has nothing to say about ultimate causes.

 

 

[Evening Mist]

I don't know if things happen because of predetermined reasons.

I do believe that God uses everything that DOES happen to work toward the good of those who love him.

 

[Rize]

Originally posted by lucaspa
First, at the quantum level uncaused events happen all the time.  The continuous appearance of virtual particles from the vacuum is just one example.

Second, the FLOT only describes what happens within the universe, not how the universe got here to begin with.

Third, if you trace the series of cause and effect back long enough you are going to run into First Cause. The uncaused Cause that kicked the whole chain of cause and effect off to begin with.  We don't know what that First Cause was. You are free to believe it was deity, but there are other candidates and there is insufficient data to choose among them.

What if they only appear uncaused?  It is impossible to prove that something is uncaused.

 

[Rize]

Originally posted by Suit of Lights
How can the universe have a beginning or end? That's not logically possible. What does the end of the universe look like? What was there before it was created? These questions are pretty much impossible to answer.

Originally posted by MartinM
Really? I'd be interested to see that.

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-pigliucci1.html

There you are.  This is actually part of a larger debate about the existance of God, but as you'll see, everything I said is true.  Logically, there cannot be an actual infinite in the physical universe we know.  The only way to "solve" this problem is by positing a creating force (God basically), or trying to eliminate the time problem.  Both solutions require faith since neither can be tested.

 

[MartinM]

Originally posted by Rize
What if they only appear uncaused?  It is impossible to prove that something is uncaused.

Nothing in science can be absolutely proven. What is important is that the hypothesis is falsifiable.

 

[MartinM]

Originally posted by Rize
There you are.  This is actually part of a larger debate about the existance of God, but as you'll see, everything I said is true.  Logically, there cannot be an actual infinite in the physical universe we know.  The only way to "solve" this problem is by positing a creating force (God basically), or trying to eliminate the time problem.  Both solutions require faith since neither can be tested.

Well, that was somewhat anticlimactic. I was hoping for a logical proof that infinities do not occur in reality, and that spacetime is not infinitely divisible. What I actually found was argument from authority (David Hilbert said it, so it must be true) and silly questions like 'what is infinity minus infinity?'. Since infinity is not a number, 'minus' is not a well-defined concept in that context. So of course it doesn't work. Infinities are, however, open to manipulation. Hence the entire field of transfinite arithmetic.

 

[Rize]

I think you are too quick to reject WLC's arguments.

What did you expect a logical argument to be?  Of course it's going to contain a lot of abstract things.

And I'm not sure what I linked you to.  WLC has a few different debates regarding the existence of God.

The problem with infinity is that for something to have existed forever, it cannot change.  Why?  It's intuitively obvious, but not easy to prove (at least, I don't know of an easy way).

If something has always existed in time, you have to be able to trace it backwards through time.  As you trace it backwards, you realize that with an infinite amount of time having already passed, you cannot trace it all the way back.  Now try to trace things forward.  The universe is expanding.  If it continues to expand then it would have already expanded as much as it will expand (since an infinite amount of time has already passed), and so we shouldn't be here.  If the universe will eventually contract into a point (the big crunch theory), then it should have already happened as well.  And the time-less singularity that it exploded from should have never exploded.

Infinity implies lack of change.

Look at it another way.

Imagine that God uses the earth as a sort of "angel breeding ground" and when he's done, he'll make another one that's a lot like this one.  And he's been doing this for all of eternity (infinity in other words).  Do you see the problem?  All of eternity would be "full" of angels.  There would be an infinite amount of angels around, but not an actual amount.  infinity doesn't exist in our universe or way of thinking.

The only way that God could get around this is that He is not inside our universe.

As Lucaspa (an anti-creationist at least, I don't think he's Christian either) said, there is no scientific evidence that the universe is infinite.

As for the indivisibility of space, that's been established by physics experiments as far as I know.  Maybe I can find out where (or someone else knows).
Anyway, listen to the other non-Christians including the ones responding to all of WLC's debates!  None of them (that I can find) contest that the universe had a beginning!  So I cannot find more info on that argument at the moment (but I know I've read it there before).

 

[MartinM]

Originally posted by Rize
What did you expect a logical argument to be?  Of course it's going to contain a lot of abstract things

But infinity minus infinity isn't abstract, it's meaningless.

The problem with infinity is that for something to have existed forever, it cannot change.  Why?  It's intuitively obvious, but not easy to prove (at least, I don't know of an easy way)

Depends what you mean by 'change', I suspect.

If something has always existed in time, you have to be able to trace it backwards through time.  As you trace it backwards, you realize that with an infinite amount of time having already passed, you cannot trace it all the way back.  Now try to trace things forward.  The universe is expanding.  If it continues to expand then it would have already expanded as much as it will expand (since an infinite amount of time has already passed), and so we shouldn't be here.  If the universe will eventually contract into a point (the big crunch theory), then it should have already happened as well.  And the time-less singularity that it exploded from should have never exploded

This all seems to rest upon the assumption that infinite -> changeless. If change is possible, then it is invalid to extrapolate backwards or forwards infinitely. Nevertheless, I don't claim that the Universe is infinitely old, only that an infinitely old Universe is a logical possibility. So expansion and contraction don't enter into it. I will, however, claim that a Universe infinite in spatial extent is possible, both physically and logically.

Imagine that God uses the earth as a sort of "angel breeding ground" and when he's done, he'll make another one that's a lot like this one.  And he's been doing this for all of eternity (infinity in other words).  Do you see the problem?  All of eternity would be "full" of angels.  There would be an infinite amount of angels around, but not an actual amount.  infinity doesn't exist in our universe or way of thinking

But the (infinite) set of angels, of cardinality aleph-0, will fit neatly into the (infinite) continuum set, cardinality aleph-1. So the problem never arises.

As Lucaspa (an anti-creationist at least, I don't think he's Christian either) said, there is no scientific evidence that the universe is infinite

Nor is there any that it isn't, at least in spatial extent.

As for the indivisibility of space, that's been established by physics experiments as far as I know.  Maybe I can find out where (or someone else knows)

I suspect you refer to the phenomenon of 'quantum leaps', where (for example) an electron jumps from one atomic orbital to another. This happens because for that particular potential the position operator has a discrete eigenvalue spectrum. A free particle can have a continuous eigenvalue spectrum - so there is no general rule that states that particles leap from one point in space to another. And even if there were, that certain locations are forbidden in certain potentials in no way implies that space itself is indivisible. Quantum mechanics treats spacetime as a classical manifold, as far as I am aware.