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Originally Posted by asaris
Let me introduce a distinction. I've been speaking of the universe as 'all there is', purposefully to include other 'universes' there might be. But it seems like, from Martian's comments, it might be useful to use the word 'universe' to speak of this particular space-time that we're in. But I still want to be able to refer to 'all there is', so lets call that the 'world'.
It's true, as Martian argues, that other universes might have different physical laws that what our universe has. But he goes on to argue that they might have different logical laws as well, and that's just impossible. Let me look at two possibilities: either the laws of logic apply to all universes, or they do not. If they do, then QED. But if they don't, we can't possibly say anything useful about them. The laws of logic are a prerequisite for us being able to talk about anything at all. So if we're actually going to talk about these other universes, we have to assume that the laws of causality apply to them, or any assertion we might make about them will be meaningless.
None of the above should be taken to entail that the laws of causality entail a 'before' and 'after', simply because causality as such doesn't require it. But we can still speak of a logical ordering. We might say, for example, that before God created the world, he surveyed all the possible worlds, and picked this one. We don't mean that he did so before creating the world, because God is (probably) outside of time and because there's no 'before the world was created', as many have pointed out. If you like, you can say that this occurred 'simultaneously' with the creation of the world. But there's a logic to talking about things in this order, and because we are inside of time, it's natural for us to do it that way. So it's not the cause that asking what caused the world is the same as asking what came before the world.
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I'm sorry, I might have oversimplified. It's not that cause and effect are the same as before and after, simply that the way we perceive them is dependent on the way we perceive our universe.
Let's go with a common theory that the reason we perceive time the way we do is because of the universe's expansion. Now imagine, if you will, that the universe were to begin to collapse inward upon itself. If we reverse the expansion of the universe into a contraction, we can similarly reverse the flow of time. Before becomes after and vice versa. In the way we perceive the world now, cause always precedes effect. There is a definite temporal distinction between the two. However, if we were to reverse the flow of time, the order of cause and effect would likewise be reversed. The reaction would precede the action; or for a more concrete example, an egg would shatter and then be dropped (only all in reverse, so that in being dropped it would actually propel itself upwards - think of a VCR on rewind).
Now, working with the same temporal theory, let's imagine that the universe were to suddenly cease any sort of movement. Abruptly, it is neither expanding nor contracting. If we stop the expansion of the universe, we similarly stop the flow of time. The result becomes that cause and effect are meaningless, because we can only understand them in a temporal sense - effect comes after cause.
The universe, if we accept the big bang theory, began as an infinitely dense mass that was also infinitely small; what's generally referred to as a singularity. This object in such a form is incapable of expanding or contracting; it simply exists. Therefore, because there is no expansion of space-time, there is no before and after. Without before and after, cause and effect lose meaning. And if they lose meaning, so too does the question of what was the cause of the universe. It may have been God, or giant space slugs, or who knows what else - we're incapable of ever knowing such a thing. It's outside the bounds of time.
I should also correct a slight bit of creative license on my part in the above post. It's not just difficult for us to know what form other universes take, it's currently impossible. They're outside our space-time and therefore outside the bounds of our perception. Quantum theory seems to indicate that an infinite number of universes exist in parallel, but according to what we know now there's no real way of bridging the gap from one to the next (aside from the Heisenberg principle, which by it's very nature disallows any observations to take place).
You might picture this as a ball pit at an amusement park. There's a massive number of balls in the pit; now imagine we and all we know are trapped inside one of these balls. We may some day theorize that there are other balls out there somewhere, but we have no way of ever observing them, because we're limited by the walls of our own sphere.
And yes, I suppose you could break the containing ball, but that's where the analogy breaks down. After all, how does one break the universe?
EDIT - In being a windbag, I forgot to point something out. Nimetic, what I stated was that we can't know whether any other universes follow the same laws as ours or not - therefore, as you aptly pointed out, any conjecture about them is absolutely meaningless.