After consulting with several of the main contributors to the forum and this thread, I've decided to give this another chance. I'm interested in civil discussion of these topics as are the overwhelming majority of the people on this forum. However, I won't put up with the kind of hostility found in iwpoe's last comment. It would be unacceptable from any member of the forum, but from a moderator it is disgraceful.

I'm going to try to pick up the thread from here on causation in cosmological arguments and then put up a summary of what I take to be some of the most fruitful lines of discussion overall.

Timotheos wrote:

But you're not a reductionist about the sciences, so while your talk about theoritical physics might indeed prove that causation is a non-fundamental concept in that field, why should that example generalize to all of the sciences, unless one is inclined to reduce say biology to physics? Causation might not be fundamental in physics, but it might be in biology, and it doesn't seem nearly as viable a possibility to dispense of it in biology as in theoritical physics, to say nothing of experimental physics.

And showing that our intuitions are messy about it does not show that it is not useful, correct, or sensible, as I think quantum physics has well shown us.

Good point on causation in other sciences (besides physics). I haven't said anything to suggest that causation isn't essential to doing biology. But why should I need to? What version of the cosmological argument appeals to biology?  The cosmological argument is usually taken to turn on cosmology, and cosmology falls under physics.

You're right too about about utility of causal talk. It's super useful in lots of situations. I'm fine with that. But that's compatible with it being illegitimate in some situations.

Tomislav Ostojich wrote:

KevinScharp wrote:

Can you give an argument for how causality is supposed to determine a manifold?

The principle that causality should work everywhere in the universe puts a constraint on any Lorentzian manifold that it be an orientable manifold. So we can known from causality that any tensor theory of gravity that results in the manifold structure of the universe being non-orientable is not physically acceptable.

You're going to have to be more precise than this. What's 'causality should work everywhere' mean? When physicists talk about the causal structure of a Lorentzian manifold, they are talking about being able to distinguish time-like from space-like intervals. It has nothing to do with the universe obeying certain principles of causality like "every coming to be has a cause". So your point about orientability is not on topic.

First of all I would like to say that I am glad that you came back to discuss this important issue, I appreciate it. Having said that my initial impression on reading your comment about armchair reasoning was the same as iwpoe. You see, having been around New Atheist for so long as some of us have been we do see that as a rhetorical slur even though you may not have meant it that way. Hopefully, this is water under the bridge and we can get back to some excellent philosophical discussions.

So to get started I would like to reply to some of your comments about causality.

“KevinScharp” wrote:

Our intuitions about them can easily be led astray

True, but we can counter that with good philosophy, metaphysics and good old common sense

“KevinScharp” wrote:

for example, that causation is transitive—if a causes b and b causes c then a causes c. But it’s easy to come up with counterexamples to this—a hiker sees a boulder bouncing toward her and ducks to avoid it. The threat of the boulder caused her to duck and her ducking caused her to survive but the threat of the boulder didn’t cause her to survive

Here I would like to say that in giving the hiker example all you did was show that causation is not transitive in all cases. I agree that transitive causation may seem intuitive but we have other principles (e.g act and potency) that can help guide us in the right direction. The reason why transitive causation does not work in the hiker example is because the boulder cannot actualize any potential that it possesses to cause the hiker to survive. So in order for A causes B and B causes C then A causes C to be true then A must possess the potential at least that it can “transfer” to C.

“KevinScharp” wrote:

Moreover, there are other principles about causation that seem to go against this argument—causes are governed by natural laws, causes and effects are events, causes precede their effects. None of these is compatible with God’s agency causing the universe.

 

I do not see how you can say that natural laws or events are not compatible with God causing the universe. What other explanation do you have for it?

“KevinScharp” wrote:

Causation is not a conceptual tool of advanced scientific theories. For example, in the statement of Quantum Mechanics, the word ‘cause’ doesn't appear at all, nor does it in the statement of general relativity. Instead, what you have is a complicated mathematical structure (e.g., an infinite dimensional, separable, Hilbert space that has inner products—this is a particular kind of object commonly studied in the branch of mathematics called abstract algebra, one studies it typically as an advanced undergraduate in math or physics) and a way of interpreting it (e.g., various things that can be measured are associated with different aspects of the mathematical structure—e.g., time as an self-adjoint operator on the space). General relativity works the same way by applying tensor fields—a kind of mathematical structure studied in differential geometry, one studies it typically as a new graduate student in math or physics.

 

Even in general relativity and quantum field theory we are presupposing causality to work before we even begin any experiment in them. What causes spacetime to bend? what causes planets to move around their star or even a black hole? What causes virtual particles to come into and out of existence? All we are doing in any empirical science inquiry is to find out how things are working (i.e. processes used) and ultimately see what is “causing” them to work the way they do. So causality is of utmost importance.

“KevinScharp” wrote:

Very roughly, scientists observe the world, feed their measurements into a mathematical model, use the model to calculate predictions and then try to test those predictions. Using the concept of causation need not come into it.

Scientists observe the world which causes them to feed their measurements into a mathematical model which causes the model to calculate predictions which in turn causes scientists to test those predictions. I do not see how causation does not come into it.

“KevinScharp” wrote:

Instead, the point is that the concept of causation is dispensable in mature sciences that rely heavily on mathematical models. Using causes to make predictions turns out to be vastly less precise than using mathematical models. Remember, causal concepts by themselves provide much in the way of understanding or predictive power. Cause and effect aren’t scientific concepts. Moreover, causation isn’t just dispensable, it’s easy to show that using it all to reason about certain aspects of scientific theories leads one into contradictions. Causation, it turns out is part of a way of thinking about the world that dominated for a long time, but is now slowly being replaced by much more precise ways of thinking about the world.

The cause of how mathematical models even work is because mathematics emulates nature astoundingly and the effect of that is that it can make predictions. The inputs to these mathematical models become the cause of the predictions we make, because if we do not cause those inputs we will not be able to make the predictions. Ultimately these mathematical models (however accurately) are predicting either the cause or causes of what is occurring or predicting the effect(s) of a cause or causes based upon the measurements. That is what empirical science inquiry is all about.

“KevinScharp” wrote:

“If a cause is sufficient to produce its effect, then if the cause is there, the effect must be there, too. For example, the cause of water’s freezing is the temperature’s being below 0 degrees Celsius. If the temperature has been below 0 degrees from eternity, then any water around would be frozen from eternity.” This is a perfect example of the imprecision of using the concepts of cause and effect to try to reason about the existence of anything much less gods or Christianity. The cause of water’s freezing is the temperature being below 0 degrees C. If a cause is sufficient to produce its effect then if the cause is there, the effect must be there. But anyone who takes an intro to chemistry class knows that water can be below 0 degrees C and still be water. In fact you can take liquid water down below -50C if you don’t allow crystals to form. You can also experience this supercooled water in the form of freezing rain. So although you might all nod your head and say “yeah, that sounds really obvious” when asked if having a temperature below 0C is the case of water’s freezing, it isn’t true. Or maybe it is true that that’s part of a cause or whatever

Firstly, as far as I know, WLC is not even talking about Christianity in the Kalam cosmological argument, so lets get that out of the way. That is not the purpose of the argument at all. The purpose of the argument is to show a First Cause who is timeless, spaceless, All Intelligent, All Powerful, Creator of the universe (if you do not want to call this God then that is another discussion altogether). Also as far as I can tell WLC is not even using science for his first premise, he is using science only to support his second premise. By the way we here are interested mostly in Aquinas five ways arguments with the second way (causation of existence) argument is something relevant to our discussion here.    

Secondly, the cause of water freezing is a combination of temperature and pressure but when I am talking generally I can say as an example that the cause of water freezing is temperature below 0 degrees and people will understand the meaning behind it but even in a scientific setting people will generally say the same pre-supposing the cause of pressure as being part of it. That is just the way people communicate, I do not want to spend time explaining people the exact science behind water freezing when I am talking about causality in general.

Thirdly, I do not think anyone is implying in any way that causality is totally deterministic. Contingent things in the world can be non-deterministic and that is fully compatible with causality.  

“KevinScharp” wrote:

The point is that causal talk is not very precise and totally inadequate for the uses of science, which is ultimately measured by predictive success.

Yeah, again the effect of predictive success is on the cause of the input in the mathematical model and that cause will only be imprecise and totally inadequate if the cause of the measurements were imprecise and inadequate.

How many of you are interested in / moved by the appeal to religious experience?