First Cause

Christians wanting to prove the existence of god often resort to a quaint argument called First Cause or Prime Mover. They assert that everything must have a cause, so there must have been a First Cause to get the universe jump-started. Then they leap to the conclusion the First Cause was supernatural, wore a white robe and called himself Jehovah, favoured Israelites and impregnated a virgin without breaking her hymen. He was necessarily omnipotent and omniscient. The way I see it, this First Cause needs only one property, having the ability to jump start the universe. It need not even be supernatural. All the rest is fanciful decoration hoping you will let the non-sequitur slide.

This sort of thinking dates back to Sir Isaac Newton born in 1643. A lot has happened since. In the 1800s we discovered radioactivity. We discovered that radioactive decay occurs without cause. Listen to the random clicks of a Geiger-counter. There is no pattern or predictability to them. If things can happen without cause, then surely they can also happen without a First Cause.

In 1920 we discovered quantum mechanics. We discovered that particles pop in and out of existence randomly all the time. We discovered that is there is no causality in the realm of the very small, just probability. Since the early universe was smaller than a proton, quantum effects cannot be ignored.

Christian tend to ignore any science discovered after 1900. Further, even when we science buffs explain it to them over and over, they keep rehashing arguments based on the science of Newton’s day. They refuse to learn atoms, black holes, DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid), elements, evolution, exoplanets, expansion of the universe, galaxies, gamma rays, germ theory, gravity, ions, metallurgy, Newton’s laws of motion, plate tectonics, quantum mechanics, quarks, radioactivity, relativity, spectroscopy, speed of light, stars, String theory, thermonuclear reactions, X-rays…

If you look at even more recent and more tentative science, it may well me there are multiverses, and ours formed by budding off existing ones when they bumped into each other. If that is so, there is nothing special all about our big bang.

The notion that the universe appeared out of nothing is a Christian idea. They claim God created the universe out of nothing by thinking it into existence. Science does yet know that detail. Christians falsely keep asserting that science agrees with them.

The Christians are peddling a fallacy argument from incredulity. They are saying I cannot understand how a universe could get jump-started by natural means. Therefore my god Jehovah must have done it, and Jesus was tortured and rose from the dead to atone for my sins that Adam committed on my behalf. I, with my lack of scientific training, cannot think of any other possible way it could have happened. 

Creationists usually have a less than grade two understanding of science. They don’t even know the sun is a star. So it would be quite astounding if a Christian could understand even the most elementary cosmology. They have done zero study because they consider such study wicked and because it takes work. What they are doing is as idiotic as saying Calculus makes absolutely no sense to me. Therefore it must be wrong. Mind you, I have not studied any arithmetic beyond addition.

~ Roedy (born:1948-02-04 age:68)