THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE! ‘X’ LISTENER QUESTION!

Stefan Molyneux

"If we accept the principle of non-contradiction as the foundation of logic how do you resolve the apparent contradiction of an uncaused cause?"  Stefan Molyneux examines the philosophical principle of non-contradiction and the idea of an uncaused cause through Aristotelian and Augustinian lenses. It questions whether the universe can exist without a starting point, introducing the "unmoved mover" concept. The discussion transitions to scientific theories like the Big Bang, while contrasting humanity's finite view with the eternal nature of matter. He critiques the welfare state from a Christian ethical perspective, emphasizing that true morality stems from voluntary choice. Ultimately, the lecture advocates for a philosophical approach to ethics, suggesting it may better serve societal well-being than traditional religious frameworks.  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00All right. Question from a fine listener on X. If we accept the principle of non-contradiction

00:09as the foundation of logic, how do you resolve the apparent contradiction of an uncaused

00:16cause? That is a fine question, and I appreciate it, and I will...

00:24He said rather redundantly as he's answering the question, do my best to answer it.

00:28All right. So, here we go. So, non-contradiction, the uncaused cause. So, this is an Aristotelian

00:37argument, a St. Augustine argument, and the argument is everything that happens has a prior

00:47cause. Since everything that happens has a prior cause, right, there is no baby without

00:53pregnancy, there is no pregnancy without insemination, there is no insemination without sex, there

00:58is no... Right? You get this. So, everything that is has a prior cause. Domino's going all

01:03the way back to, back to, back to, right? This is sort of the question. It's back to what?

01:08Back to where? Back to how?

01:10Now, is it possible to have an infinity of prior causes? It's kind of hard to imagine how that

01:19could be the case, but let us endeavor as best we can. Let us endeavor. So, when it comes to prior

01:28causes, all the way back, can there be an infinity of prior causes, or must there be something that

01:35sets things in motion? So, think of, I mean, let's talk about literal dominoes, right? If you've ever

01:40had kids, you set up these dominoes, right? So, you set up these dominoes, and then you flick the first

01:46domino, and they go down. Can we imagine an infinity of dominoes going back with no first

01:53course? If everything that moves has something that moves it, right? A ball just sits on the

02:01ground, but if you play marbles, right, you roll the ball, the ball moves, but you have to get the ball

02:06in motion. It's a sort of business cliche, is get the ball in motion. So, can we have an infinity of

02:14dominoes going all the way back? And it seems kind of hard to imagine. Now, of course, one of the big

02:22challenges when looking at the natural world is we have a habit or a tendency to anthropomorphize

02:31the universe. We have a life and death. We are not infinite or immortal. The atoms are perhaps,

02:40but we are not. And so we think that the universe, like us, is born and lives and dies. And we have

02:51a prior cause, and the prior cause goes back all the way through evolution, 4 billion years of life,

02:59and 14 billion years of the universe, and so on. So, Aristotle refers to it as the unmoved mover,

03:07or something which causes things to happen, but which is not itself caused. Now, the choice that we

03:19have when we flick a marble is not an automatic process, right? So, the dominoes, they go up and

03:27down. They go falling down. The dominoes go falling down, and they have no choice in the matter,

03:34obviously, right? But a human being may choose to flick the first domino or not. That's a choice.

03:44So, if the universe is the dominoes, it is not the case that the dominoes go back to infinity.

03:52That's hard to conceive of. Again, with the caveat that that which is hard to conceive of

03:57as infinite by beings like ourselves that are decidedly finite, that's a limitation of our

04:05thinking. So, the atoms that make me up, or make up me, are eternal. I am not. I am mortal.

04:16The atoms are eternal. Now, if the atoms are eternal, and matter and energy are two sides of the same

04:25coin, this is the old E equals MC squared thing, if matter is eternal, then you do not need a first

04:33cause. Now, again, I'm obviously no physicist, but my understanding is that there's this theory of the

04:39Big Bang, infinitesimally small origin to the universe, because you can see the galaxies moving

04:44and this and the other, right? And it does seem a little counterintuitive that if the universe

04:51were eternal, then there would be a problem if the universe is expanding and everything is getting

04:58further and further away from everything else, then it would be a little hard to conceive of

05:04how the universe is. If it didn't have an original starting point that blew outwards from a central

05:11point, it's hard to imagine what the universe is. If it was static and everything kind of hung in

05:17place, you could understand that, or stayed relatively the same distance from each other.

05:21But if everything is expanding from a central point, that does indicate something that started,

05:27or an origin point. And I don't believe that the galaxies moving away from each other

05:33indicate a slowdown, right? Because one of the things that you could think of with regards to the

05:40universe was that it would be a giant heartbeat, you know, like it blows out, but there's a central

05:44mass that causes everything to slow down and fall back, although that's hard to imagine given how

05:49far the galaxies are away from each other, but that there's a point that it blows out, and then

05:55it comes back in, in the same way that you throw a rock up into the sky, it goes up, it slows down,

06:02hits its meridian, and then falls back to Earth. So, it would make sense if there was a central

06:09gravitational mass that, you know, the universe collapses in and of itself, causes a massive

06:16explosion, hurls everything back out, but there's still a central mass that causes things to collapse

06:23back in. But again, I don't know that there's much, if any, evidence for the fact that there's a central

06:27gravitational mass. There's this sort of theoretical dark matter, and there's supposed to be some

06:32gravitational mass at the center of a galaxy that keeps everything swirling around in that lovely

06:39spiral manner, but I don't believe that there's any particular evidence for that with regards to

06:47the universe as a whole. So, if the universe is just expanding, it does seem like, okay, well,

06:53there must have been an origin point. But if there, if matter is eternal, then why would there be an

06:59origin point? Again, unless there's some massive gravitational center that is going to pull even

07:05the most distant galaxies back into a sort of heartbeat of collapse and explosion, that seems,

07:11again, I mean, I'm not even, I'm not even within my sphere of expertise at all, I'm just trying to

07:17sort of puzzle it out, that it wouldn't make any sense to me that, you know, that the galaxies are so

07:21far apart that the idea that they would slow down their expansion because of some amazing central

07:27gravitational mass that would be billions of light years away, doesn't seem to make much sense to

07:31me. But again, I mean, I don't know, there are comets that orbit back out through the Oort cloud.

07:40And so, right, so, so we don't know. The Big Bang, it was actually a derisive term given for this sort

07:47of explosion origins of the universe stuff. And so, if the universe is expanding from a central point,

07:56and the expansion is going to continue forever, then what? I mean, eventually, what? We only see our own

08:05galaxy, which again, if it has a central mass, then the galaxy will hold on to the, what, hundred million,

08:12hundred billion stars in the galaxy. It always blows my mind, these numbers. Honestly, it absolutely

08:17blows my mind, like a hundred billion galaxies, each of which, each of which has a hundred billion

08:22stars. It's like staggering, the staggering numbers beyond comprehension. I remember my friend in my

08:32early teens, the one who later died, his mother used to date a baker who lived in northern Ontario in a

08:41town called Paris Sound. And occasionally, we would go up to his fairly crappy, I think it was a cottage,

08:48but we would go up to his place, and I guess his mother wanted to go up to date him. She couldn't

08:54leave for a son alone. Her son didn't want to go up without a friend. I was his best friend, so I would

08:59go up, and I remember lying in front, at the age of twelve or so, lying in the snow, in a snowsuit on the

09:09front of his, either crappy place. He had a nice little train set down there, though, but a fairly

09:16crappy place. And looking up, and it was a strange combination of things, because I could see the

09:23distant stars, but snow was also coming down. Now, of course, in hindsight, it might have been just

09:27blowing off the trees or whatever, but it gave me a really three-dimensional sort of star radius for the

09:32Atari 800 feel, that the stars were flowing down over my head as if I was zooming through the

09:40universe and the static stars in the background. Like, the Superman movie had the same sort of

09:44effect, the Richard Donner movie, with the original. For me, not the George Reeves, but the

09:50Christopher Reeves. George Reeves? Steve Reeves? Christopher Reeves? Anyway, Christopher Reeves.

09:56Star Trek. The Christopher Reeves? Superman. Sorry, not Star Trek. So, maybe we hang on to the stars in

10:04our galaxy, but the galaxies just get further and further away, to the point where it's, I mean, it's

10:10pretty much impossible to get there anyway, because you'd lose too much time traveling between the

10:14galaxies. And I honestly think that, I think that when you go from star to star, you'll find

10:23three things, I think, in general. You will find nothing, like a poisoned soup air planet like

10:32Venus, or a half-baked sauna like Mercury, or a mostly dead, maybe some residual bacteria like

10:42Mars, or a gas giant like Jupiter, or an exploded one like the asteroid belt, and so on. So, you'll find

10:48nothing. It's just, you know, accidental gravitational blobs of stuff. I think you'll find

10:55a whole lot of nothing, which, you know, wouldn't be uninteresting. It would be interesting to go and

11:00see another planet, but I think we'll find a whole lot of nothing, because, you know, there's not that

11:04many planets in the Goldilocks zone and so on. So, I think we'll find either nothing, or if you sort

11:11of throw a dart over the last four billion years, then you would find some single-celled organisms,

11:20some amphibians, some fish, I doubt mammals. You know what's that line from The Sopranos?

11:28If the history of life was the Empire State Building, humanity's part of that would be a postage stamp,

11:39horizontal width on the top. So, I think we'll find a whole lot of nothing, and I think we'll find a

11:45whole lot of primitive stuff. Again, not uninteresting, but not very exciting either. And then, I think we

11:52will find a whole lot of radioactive, dead former civilizations that weapons of mass destruction

12:02destroyed themselves. They called it the nuclear crossroads, that a society that has governments

12:10and weapons of mass destruction, that governments will use those weapons of mass destruction against

12:14their own citizens, and life will be destroyed. And maybe you'll find a couple of off-world places,

12:21but I think it would be kind of weird to be living on Mars when the Earth was dead. I think it would be

12:27very depressing, and very, I mean, obviously, very foreign. Very foreign. It would drive you mad,

12:32I think. Suicidal. So, I don't honestly think there'll be much out there. Certainly,

12:38the odds of finding any contemporaneous civilization are so close to zero as to be functionally impossible.

12:47So, 14 billion years history of the universe, 4 billion years history of life on Earth,

12:52and even if you were to go 100 years back, which is a tiny time slice out of, a minuscule time slice

13:00out of 4 billion years, even if you got 100 years back, there wouldn't be that much to offer from

13:05a civilization 100 years back. So, this sort of Star Trek idea that there's the Romulans and the

13:10Klingons and the Vulcans and the humans and so on, and that they're all at sort of similar stages of

13:15development. I mean, it's a fun idea, but there's just no way. There's no way we're going to find

13:20civilizations contemporaneous to our own. I do, and it's funny, you know, I do kind of like

13:28the idea, in a way, that there are space aliens out there, you know, cloaked up, invisible to us,

13:37but are going to intervene if things get really crazy. I don't believe that that's true, but it's

13:43a sort of nice idea, like having some portable sci-fi teleporting angels to solve our challenges.

13:50Or to prevent us from doing the worst to ourselves. But, I mean, there isn't anything out there,

13:55because if there were space aliens, they either want to be seen or they don't want to be seen.

14:00If they don't want to be seen, they're being seen a whole lot. If they do want to be seen,

14:04they're not being seen consistently. So, sorry, it's a bit of a sidebar, a bit of a side quest here, but

14:10the question of the origins of the universe is only important with regards to morality.

14:19It doesn't matter what the origins of the universe are when it comes to, say, something practical.

14:27Like, what is the origins of the universe? Does that matter if you're building a building,

14:30or a bridge, or writing a business plan? It doesn't matter. The origins of the universe

14:37don't matter when we're talking about mathematical equations, or physics theorems, or things like

14:43that. The origins of the universe simply don't matter. The only reason that the origins of the

14:48universe matter is that if our morality comes from God, then that which supports the existence of God

14:55supports the virtues and values and universality of morality. But here's where I have my problem.

15:03And I've really been thinking about this over the last couple of days, maybe a week or so. Doesn't

15:08matter. Anyway, so I look at, let's just say, one big issue right with the modern world has been the

15:16welfare state. And I did a show many years ago when I was taking over for Peter Schiff at times,

15:21the welfare state, Spenum land, ancient Rome, it's been done a bunch of times before. And it fails.

15:29And we know it fails. Now, the welfare state is designed to make the domestic population addicted

15:38on it so that when it starts being exploited by foreigners, that it can't be repealed. I mean,

15:44if only foreigners were exploiting the welfare state, then it could be repealed. But once you get enough

15:49domestic citizens addicted to the welfare state, it can't be repealed. And therefore,

15:54it can be exploited by foreigners for nefarious reasons we've talked about before.

15:59So, let's give the very greatest support to, again, a religion that I know best, Christianity,

16:11let's just give the greatest support to Christianity. And we'll say that it cannot be

16:16dominos for eternity. There has to be an unmoved mover. There has to be an original said emotion

16:25thing. And that is God. And that original first mover, the prime mover, the unmoved mover,

16:35that that is the Christian God. And that means that Christian morality is true. I'm willing to

16:44grant all of that at the moment for the sake of a very important argument. Let's run through it

16:51again. I just want to make sure I'm clear. The prime mover is the Old Testament God. It validates

16:57the Old Testament. The validation of the Old Testament validates the New Testament because

17:01it's all written by God. And therefore, God's morality, the Ten Commandments to Moses, the Sermon on

17:08the Mount, Jesus' injunctions, they're all valid. The dominoes from the first course end up with the

17:15universal, God-given validity of Christian ethics. And let's say that is all true. Well, the problem is,

17:28of course, if you look at something like FDR's Great Society, if you look at the 1930s,

17:37the origins of social security, if you look at the 1960s in Canada, the imposition from left-wing

17:46Tommy Douglas of the socialized medicine, the welfare state in the 60s. So all of this occurred

17:52at a time, just to confine ourselves to England and Canada, though, sorry, to the U.S. and Canada.

17:59That's just U.S. and Canada. You could include England, but let's just say the U.S. and Canada.

18:05They weren't as traumatized and brutalized by the Second World War from a manpower standpoint

18:09to some degree, but they weren't bombed, really. So if we say that if we borrow all the way back

18:16to the origins of the universe, we get the unmoved mover, which is the Old Testament God,

18:23which validates the New Testament, which validates all of God's commandments and Jesus'

18:28commandments. Okay? Say that's all the case. It hasn't been enough. It has not been enough.

18:37Now, you say the welfare state. Okay, so the welfare state, from a Christian standpoint,

18:43the welfare state, I'm not saying it's a total slam dunk, but it's not that difficult a case

18:48to make the Christian case against the welfare state, right? Because the Christian case against

18:54the welfare state goes a little something like this. Thou shalt not steal, number one. Now

18:58I know there's render under Caesar, blah, blah, blah. But that's for the military and the police,

19:05the law courts, prisons, and so on. So Jesus says, all who would follow me, sell everything

19:13you own, give your money to the poor. He didn't say, get Caesar to impose a welfare state. He didn't

19:19say that at all. For an action to be moral, it must be chosen. I don't think that there are many people

19:27who would approve of the occasional practice of converting people and then cutting their throats

19:38so they could not lapse in their conversion. So for morality to be a value, for a moral choice

19:46to be a value, it must be chosen. When the adulteress was going to be stoned to death,

19:55Jesus did not say, let the government handle it. He appealed to the conscience and humility

20:00of every individual who was about to stone her. Let he was without sin cast the first stone

20:04and he said to her, go forth and sin no more. So for an action such as helping the poor

20:11to be virtuous, it must be chosen. It cannot be forced. If an action is virtuous when it

20:21is forced, then there is no such thing as thou shalt not steal. In other words, if giving

20:29to the poor is virtuous whether it is compelled or not, then if a poor person sticks a gun in

20:38your ribs and says, give me your money, then that is as virtuous as you deciding to give

20:43money of your own voluntary free will to somebody less fortunate than yourself. And so the free

20:48will that is necessary for virtuous actions ceases to exist if compulsion is applied and

20:56God says, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not steal means that the

21:00transfer of property that is not voluntary is a sin. And since Jesus says, sell everything

21:06you own and give it to the poor, give, not pass the law, not create a welfare state. Jesus is

21:12clearly saying that virtue is not virtue if it is compelled. This is not, you don't require reading

21:20the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ancient original language in order to make this case. God gives us free

21:27will because God wants us to make more moral choices, better choices, virtuous choices, and you

21:33cannot make virtuous choices if they are compelled. That is saying that lovemaking and rape are the

21:40same because both is sexual activity. One is compelled, which is evil, and one is voluntary, which is not

21:46evil. So the welfare state, all of the forced transfers from the wealthier to the less wealthy, the welfare

21:59state should have been significantly opposed as a great evil by all Christians. Now, of course, you can

22:09say, ah, yes, but not all Christians are perfect and not all, and I get that, and I'm not saying it'll be

22:14100% of all Christians have to go to extremes, but it should have been and should still be a very robust

22:22change. And it has not been enough. Foreign aid should be chosen, not compelled. So, UPB deals with this. Now,

22:49again, whether UPB would have as strong a set of adherents remains unknown, but we do know that the

22:59religious solution to moral problems, even though it promises heaven versus hell for your immortal soul

23:11is not enough. It's not enough. Now, if you were to say that you wanted sick people to get better,

23:21right? If you wanted to say you wanted sick people to get better, and you prayed mightily for them,

23:27but it did not make them better, no matter how mightily you prayed for them, they did not get

23:31better, then you would have to look for something else to make people better. And the something else that

23:37you would look for would be science, modern medicine, antibiotics, washing your hands before

23:42operating on people, and so on, right? Various medicines. So, you would give up on the religious

23:48approach to sickness, and you would take a scientific approach to sickness, and as it turns out, the

23:56scientific approach to sickness is, I would say infinitely better, it's massively better. I mean,

24:03I think that prayer and positive thoughts and feelings do help with illness, they do help

24:10remediate illness, but obviously prayer is not enough. There was some crazy, was this Australian

24:17woman, young woman, who basically said that she cured cancer by switching her diet, and it's like,

24:23I remember there was a woman in the documentary who was like, no, no, no, no, you cannot cure cancer

24:29with a salad, right? So, you would switch out of the religious mode, and you would switch to the mode

24:39of science, of reason, of evidence, rationality. In the same way, if you prayed to God for prosperity

24:48for your people, it would not be provided without a free market, thou shalt not steal, right? Without

24:56property rights, without property rights in a free market, a price system, and so on, right?

25:00These things would not, they would not come to pass, they would not come to be, right?

25:06Now, so you would have to switch to something rational and objective, universal. I wouldn't say

25:12is the free market scientific? Not exactly, right? But it certainly is universal in terms of thou shalt not

25:18steal. So, when it comes to wealth, when it comes to health, you would turn to reason and objectivity,

25:25and certainly science for medicine, rather than religious beliefs. When it came to building a

25:34bridge over a river, you would not pray to God for inspiration. You would go to an engineer for a

25:42blueprint, and the engineer would use his expertise to make that work. So, the process has been to not

25:50trust in God, but rather to shift to more objective, scientific, rational, empirical, and universal

25:56disciplines, such as math and physics and biology, and the free market, and so on, right? You can't get

26:01wealth without a free market and price discovery. There was no one who prayed. Well, I shouldn't say

26:07that. I shouldn't say there was no one. There's not much of a tradition in the history of theology,

26:11as far as I understand it. When people said, well, we prayed for prosperity, and God told us to get

26:18rid of slavery, so that labor-saving devices would be economically valuable. So, if things aren't

26:25working, and they've been in the religious sphere for a long time, moving to science, objectivity,

26:30reason, evidence, philosophy, has been enormously productive in a wide variety of circumstances.

26:35And why would that not be equally true for morality, right? The idea that UPB is better than revelatory

26:48ethics, even when the torture or bliss of your eternal soul is on the line, saying, well, prayer has not

26:59worked for illness, let us turn to science. Well, religion has not worked for ethics,

27:04let us turn to philosophy. So, with regards to the origins of the universe, they only matter insofar

27:14as they validate Christian ethics or religious ethics. However, with UPB, we do not need Christian

27:22or religious validation of ethics, and switching virtue, morality, ethics from theology to philosophy

27:30will do as much good for humanity in the long run as switching physical cures for ailments and illness

27:37from prayer to medicine.

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