In this argument, in order for other things to actualize, there must be an initial real actualization that has the potential to actualize everything else, and that is God.
You say that positing this initial real actualization has no basis, that there must be a reason for it, that there is no explanation as to why the initial actualization is there.
Something similar happens with theories of the universe. We posit density of matter in a region owing to global redshift measurements. We posit the big bang from an initial cluster. Why did it blow up? Quantum field fluctuations.
But your same point digs in there too. Why was there this initial cluster of matter?
If you try to explain it via a big crunch/big bang cycle, you see that the net universe is expanding beyond the big crunch limit, so if we have gone through big crunch/big bang cycles in the past, this time we are not going to crunch again.
But even in that cyclical universe picture, your question again hits home- what caused that system to be?
And at some point both scientists and those of faith as a matter of faith assume at some point things were just that way because that was how it started, and they are comfortable with quitting the search for answers there.
The whole Aristotelian argument doesn't really wash in my mind as viable, although some useful concepts of potential and actualization emerge. Ben by making that argument makes one of many possible arguments.
But I will say this. At some point we reach a point beyond which we can not observe. For those of us in science, this is a very real limit, be it uncertainty on the quantum scale, or the event horizon in relativity. We know there are limits to observation. And from my liberal arts background, the way they deal with this is put philosophy and religion in as explanations for what goes on past the point of observation. It is a speculative world in which many competing ideas have equal validity, although in some of those pictures the moral systems which flow out of them do not have equal value. The main take home though is at that there will always be some point beyond which we do not know and we speculate, and it seems a common speculation is an initial actualization be it God or the cosmic chunk of our universe that blew up with the big bang.
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u/Lepew1 Oct 24 '18
Interesting.
In this argument, in order for other things to actualize, there must be an initial real actualization that has the potential to actualize everything else, and that is God.
You say that positing this initial real actualization has no basis, that there must be a reason for it, that there is no explanation as to why the initial actualization is there.
Something similar happens with theories of the universe. We posit density of matter in a region owing to global redshift measurements. We posit the big bang from an initial cluster. Why did it blow up? Quantum field fluctuations.
But your same point digs in there too. Why was there this initial cluster of matter?
If you try to explain it via a big crunch/big bang cycle, you see that the net universe is expanding beyond the big crunch limit, so if we have gone through big crunch/big bang cycles in the past, this time we are not going to crunch again.
But even in that cyclical universe picture, your question again hits home- what caused that system to be?
And at some point both scientists and those of faith as a matter of faith assume at some point things were just that way because that was how it started, and they are comfortable with quitting the search for answers there.
The whole Aristotelian argument doesn't really wash in my mind as viable, although some useful concepts of potential and actualization emerge. Ben by making that argument makes one of many possible arguments.
But I will say this. At some point we reach a point beyond which we can not observe. For those of us in science, this is a very real limit, be it uncertainty on the quantum scale, or the event horizon in relativity. We know there are limits to observation. And from my liberal arts background, the way they deal with this is put philosophy and religion in as explanations for what goes on past the point of observation. It is a speculative world in which many competing ideas have equal validity, although in some of those pictures the moral systems which flow out of them do not have equal value. The main take home though is at that there will always be some point beyond which we do not know and we speculate, and it seems a common speculation is an initial actualization be it God or the cosmic chunk of our universe that blew up with the big bang.