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One novel issue Craig brought up was the idea of a “cause” being simultaneous with its effect. One of his arguments appeared to hang on this, and he seemed to think it was generally agreed. I don’t agree, I don’t think. Does anyone?
To clarify:
To me what was really striking is that clearly Craig did not think his first premise was assailable, didn’t bother to defend it, and couldn’t defend it other than to keep repeating it, even when Carroll eloquently rebutted it. It’s like he simply could not get his head round the concept that it might not be true.
His Kalam argument goes like this:
And his talk was entirely a defense of the second premise (eloquently called into question in any case by Carroll). He seemed surprised to have the first questioned (though surely he can’t really have been).
The obvious counter-argument to it that if time is the “thing” in question that “begins to exist” (as in many cosmological models) then time must have been caused by some preceding event – but how can anything “precede” anything until time exists? To which his response was – but causes and effects can be simultaneous.
That was the one thing I don’t think Carroll responded to, but it seems to me that it isn’t true.
There are two problems I see with Craig’s argument:
1) What is a “cause”? In other words, where do we discretely draw lines to determine causal mechanisms for all phenomena? For example, does plate tectonics “cause” earthquakes? I would argue no and say that pressure causes earthquakes. The point is, the concept of causal relationships is both semantic and abstract, thus making bold assertions such as “all things that exist are caused” strikes me as both begging the question and offering the fallacy of the general rule (to say nothing of offering a genetic fallacy).
2) For a number of phenomena, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a causal relationship. What “causes” particles to go through both openings in a double slit experiment? What “causes” a tornadoes’ given path?
I can’t view the video at the moment, but did WLC give any other examples of causes and effects occurring simultaneously? In circumstances less exotic than at the ‘point’ where/when time originated? (and where he desperately needs to patch a hole in his argument, of course).
I’m sure there’s a good answer to the following objection — Craig is a decent-enough philosopher — but I can’t see what it might be.
The objection is that the argument rests on a fallacy of equivocation, wherein we replace both the premises with more explicit, better-supported premises that are more acceptable, but which spoil the conclusion.
(1*) All objects that exist within space and time that come into existence have a cause for their existence.
(2*) The totality of all space and time did not always exist.
But in those terms, it’s just not clear (and certainly not a matter of logic alone) that we know to be the case with regard to particular objects within space and time also applies to the totality of all space and time. The beginning of the universe was not an event in time but the beginning of time. (Of course, it is just the idea that time had a beginning which struck Aristotle as so obviously absurd that he concluded that the universe itself must be eternal.)
Lizzie, socle,
I don’t recall Craig giving any other examples during the debate, but I watched it live and that was a week ago. I may have forgotten.
Here’s one off the top of my head: My computer remains at a constant height above my floor. This is caused by the support provided by my table. The cause and effect are simultaneous.
Carroll is right to call Craig out on his prejudicial use of the phrase “popped into existence”. “Popping into existence” is something that happens within time: one moment it’s not there, the next moment it is.
If time itself begins at some point, and if the universe is in existence at that point, then it is wrong to say that the universe “popped into existence”. There was no previous moment of nonexistence. Craig is wrong to accuse naturalists of believing that the universe “popped into existence” from nothing.
However, I also disagree with Carroll on a fundamental point. He seems to be saying (and I hope I’m representing his view fairly, because this is from a week-old memory) that because modern cosmological models are self-contained, referring to nothing outside of the universe/multiverse, then it is incoherent to talk about whether the universe/multiverse itself is caused.
I don’t think that’s true. The fact that a model is self-contained does not guarantee the existence of the things it models. Otherwise every self-contained model would correspond to a reality Somewhere Out There.
My own take on the question is that contingent phenomena really do need to have an ultimate, non-contingent cause (or else there is an infinite regress of contingent causes). However, I don’t see why the non-contingent cause needs to be anything remotely like what we would call “God”.
The universe/multiverse might itself be non-contingent. Or if the ultimate cause is further removed, it might just be an impersonal substratum of reality that bears no resemblance to a god, much less the God that WLC worships.
In that case, the word “cause” when used to mean “simultaneous causation” has a slightly different meaning, and doesn’t help Craig’s case.
You table also keeps the floor off your computer, and the reason it does so can be drilled down to fundamental forces of attraction and repulsion, they are not things that cause anything to begin to exist, nor does any one, as far as we know, cause another (why we call them fundamental).
Craig is equivocating, if that’s what he mean – between “cause” as in “this event is the result of some previous event” – which is scuppered by noting that the beginning of time can’t be the result of some temporally earlier event – and “cause” as in: “this phenomena can be explained in terms of fundamental forces for which we have equations that make good predictions of data” – which is scuppered on the grounds on which Carroll scuppered him.
Lizzie,
But that’s precisely why Craig brought up the notion of simultaneous causes. He posits God as a simultaneous cause of the universe/multiverse at t=0, thus obviating the need for a temporally prior cause.
Which raises the question, why this particular set of fundamental forces? The Standard Model answers that forces are mediated by the exchange of force carrier particles. Why these particular particles? They are quantum excitations of particular fields. Why those fields? The questions go on.
Either you reach a point where your answer is non-contigent, or you go on forever seeking deeper and deeper causal explanations.
I think Craig is right to ask about an ultimate, non-contingent cause. I just think he’s mistaken in ruling out the possibility that the universe/multiverse itself is non-contingent, and in leaping to the conclusion that the ultimate non-contingent cause is something that warrants the name ‘God’.
I watched only parts of the debate when it occurred. I find Craig quite boring after about two sentences.
On the issue of “simultaneousness;” the term is meaningless without a concept of time. The concept of time is intricately interwoven with the existence of matter and energy and the exchanges of matter and energy among the constituents of the universe. Time has no meaning without a clock, and a clock cannot exist without matter and energy. And none of this would mean anything if matter did not interact with matter.
Marking time means using some subset of matter as a reference for the spatial positions of other subsets of matter. While it is not strictly necessary to use periodic phenomena as clocks, (After all, what does periodic mean without the existence of other material systems for comparison?) we usually do. Note that “comparison” implies interaction of matter with matter. It also implies the existence of “memories,” and the existence of memories implies the existence of matter and its interactions.
This then raises the next question about which periodic phenomenon is best; and that can be answered only by repeated comparison of “clocks” against each other an against other motions we wish to measure against those clocks. What falls out of this process is that the laws of physics are simplest with the “best” clock.
If Carroll didn’t address the “simultaneous” comment by Craig, it is probably because it is a meaningless comment; and Carroll would know this.
God is modelled, by most people, as very much a thing of this universe, not outside it. Something that makes decisions is necessarily temporal (Think I’ll make a universe today. Whales would be nice). People talk of its being ‘outside everything’, but the properties it has resemble closely those of the within-universe entities that are modelling it, albeit a bit more powerful. It reacts to causes within the universe – irritation at the free will exercised by its minions, for example. They have the effect of pissing it off.
It’s not a novel thing for Craig, and I believe it has been called into question before. He has some metaphysical theory of causation in mind, which makes some things or states of affair responsible for other things or states of affairs in a way that doesn’t necessarily match the more familiar concepts of event causation. For instance, if a chain is holding up a chandelier, the chain causes the chandelier to stay where it is, even though there is no obvious way to describe this situation in terms of succeeding events.
Causation is a big can of worms though. No one seems to agree on what it is or what role it plays. Just to give you a taste, here are a couple of reviews from the SEP: The Metaphysics of Causation, Causal Processes.
Of course, this muddle doesn’t make Craig’s job any easier, since he has to defend a very strong and specific claim about causation.
If causes can be simultaneous with their effects, the universe can create itself. No need for god.
As I’ve quoted many times, from Herbert McCabe’s book God Matters:
To me, that’s a more rigorous version of Craig’s argument – but not an argument as that the question as to why “the universe is there instead of nothing” should be anything resembling conventional ideas about a deity.
But then McCabe doesn’t claim we can know what God is, only what God is not.
I suggest that we can know that Craig has it wrong.
Sean Carroll’s post-debate reflections are here. (Probably many people have read them, but I only just did.)
It seems to be it has to do with potentiality and actuality I dont know the philosophical jargon but it seems right anyway).
What I mean is for example, the space shuttle. What is the cause of the space shuttle? It it the work of thousands of material vendors, architects and engineers?
Or is the cause a thought?
If it is a thought, then cause and effect can be simultaneous in that the shuttle begins to exist simultaneously with the thought of the shuttle. The physical actualization of the shuttle proceeds with time, but its existence begins simultaneously with the thought.
Just watched Craig’s opening statement. Craig puts himself in a silly position of attempting to arbitrate a live debate in a developing field, where neither he nor the overwhelming majority of the audience have anywhere near enough competence to even understand the issues, let alone have an opinion of their own. Frankly, I don’t care what Craig has to say about cosmology. And in any case, unless one is already well familiar with the context and the specific works that he cited, it is impossible to evaluate the scientific arguments in a 10-minute aural presentation.
I agree with Lizzie that Premise 1 in the Kalam argument is the more interesting one to consider. Though as I already indicated above, the situation here is more complicated than one might suppose.
As for what was new in Craig’s argument, his appeal to Boltzmann’s brains was new to me (not the idea itself, but Craig’s use of it in an argument – though I admit, I am not a Craig scholar ;)).
Mike,
Craig believes that the cause (God creating the universe) and the effect (the universe coming into existence) are simultaneous in time. It’s just that they both happen at t=0.
He also believes that God created time itself.
I think he runs into a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there. The creation of time itself would have to be at least logically prior to the creation of the universe in Craig’s scheme, because the creation of the universe happens within time, even if at the t=0 boundary.
But since time is an integral part of the universe in most modern cosmological models, Craig’s scheme would have time itself coming into existence logically prior to the universe of which it is a part, which is incoherent.
He would be have been wiser to argue that God causes the universe timelessly, rather than that the cause and effect are simultaneous at t=0.
Allan,
Though it is possible for a timeless entity to timelessly desire that things unfold in a certain sequence within time.
From outside of space, it is possible for a God to desire that Long Island and Curaçao both exist, but at different places. Likewise, from outside of time, it is possible for a God to desire that whales appear during a certain period of time, but not before or after.
Rumraket,
The fact that a cause and effect are simultaneous does not imply that the relationship is symmetrical. In my earlier example, the table is holding up my computer, but my computer is not holding up the table.
Lizzie,
I don’t buy McCabe’s argument that a God could not interfere in the universe.
Take the claim that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. A believer could see this in either of two empirically equivalent ways:
1. God interfered in the world, overriding the previously dictated laws of physics so that Lazarus would be brought back to life.
2. God arranged the laws of physics so that they would operate differently at the time and place of Lazarus’s resurrection.
At best, McCabe’s argument points to #2 as being the metaphysically better explanation. It doesn’t show that a genuine resurrection would not be a reason to adjust our priors regarding the possible divinity of Jesus.
keiths:He would be have been wiser to argue that God causes the universe timelessly, rather than that the cause and effect are simultaneous at t=0.
Is it possible to create timelessly? Some Christians avoid this dilemma by using the Incarnation as the means that allows God act within time. He is both within time as the Son and outside time as the Father.
velikovskys,
It depends on the meaning of ‘create’, which is why I chose the word ’causes’ instead:
That’s interesting. Do they think that Jesus remained within time after his death? Is he still within time?
How do they explain God’s interventions in the world prior to Jesus’s birth?
keiths,
The very concept of desiring something requires a concept of time. You haven’t got it now, but you’d like it at some point in the … er … future.
Indeed, the very concept of existing depends on time – and its relative, space. I think the concepts ‘outside time’ and ‘outside space’ are incoherent, like real objects with negative dimensions. We export our sense of what it means to exist – to occupy space and/or time – and imagine (though I can’t) something with existence outside the universe/bubble in which we exist.
And?
The computer is holding down the table.
keiths:That’s interesting. Do they think that Jesus remained within time after his death? Is he still within time?
I think they view the Incarnation,if I remember , as the cause of the divine nature of Jesus rather than the embodiment of that nature in human form. God could cause in the immaterial realm as evidenced by the angels, but apparently it required the workaround of the Incarnation to cause materially.
Since most Christians believe that Jesus ascended into to heaven His body materially still exists somewhere waiting for the Last Judgement. Both His body and of course His divine nature exist in time.
As for the Holy Spirit, I never got that far. Perhaps Gregory has some insight.
So basically the cause of the universe was the Incarnation,so a lot of stuff happening at T=0
How do they explain God’s interventions in the world prior to Jesus’s birth?
Redefining Incarnation as the cause of the material world.
Craig seemed unprepared for Carroll’s rebuttal to the first premise of his “Kalam” argument. Following Lizzie’s link to Sean Carroll’s blog, I note Carroll’s remark in the comments:
.
Also I don’t see where Craig’s Kalam argument gets him, were I to be convinced by it. The argument would result in the need for an entity (?) whose sole attribute is/was the ability and inclination to create the observable universe. Calling it God does not link it to any particular one of the many possible human versions of god on offer.
Reification of the purely conceptual, i.e. typical theology.
Allan,
Only if you insist that a desire must (at least initially) be unfulfilled. In the topsy-turvy world of an atemporal and omnipotent deity, timeless desires are timelessly fulfilled. An unfulfilled desire is a logical impossibility.
I think the problem for theists is to explain why a perfect God would desire — timelessly or otherwise — to create a universe at all.
The phrase ‘outside space’ is misleading, because the word ‘outside’ itself suggests that the deity occupies a location — but a location that differs from all of the locations within space.
Ditto for the phrase ‘outside time’.
A better way to think of it is that God is omnipresent in both space and time, but not confined to either.
Rumraket,
I was disagreeing with this statement of yours:
That’s like saying “If the cause (the support provided by the table) is simultaneous with the effect (my computer remaining at its current height), then the computer can support itself. No need for the table.”
keiths:
Neil Rickert:
Neil,
Absent the table, the computer will not remain at its current height. Absent the computer, the table will remain at is current height (unless it is very light and helium-filled).
Cause and effect are simultaneous, but their relationship is not symmetrical.
I would argue that with omniscience, knowledge and existence would be the same thing.
petrushka,
That would conflict with omnipotence.
If God’s knowledge of a possible world implied its existence, then every possible world would exist, whether God wanted it to or not.
The problem with “causation” is that it carries the notion of time implicitly; there are sequences of states connected by interactions that include “before” and “after”. And the notions of “before” and “after” imply that there is a hierarchy of memory somewhere in the universe that can record and sort sequences of events.
Memory generally requires condensations of matter in order to store records of events in some relatively stable form; and condensations of matter require the release and spreading around of energy. The spreading around of energy is the second law of thermodynamics.
Modern cosmological models take into account general relativity and its concepts of time. They also refer to quantum mechanical configurations of the universe as “states.” If a modeled “state” includes the possibility of the condensation of matter, then there is a second law of thermodynamics, and a concept of time becomes possible.
Theology retains nearly all of the Newtonian and pre-Newtonian ideas of time and space; thus there is no meaningful correspondence between theological notions of time and space and those of modern physics.
I don’t quite follow — it makes sense that
(1) there are certain conditions that must be satisfied in order for the flow of time in a universe to be measurable to someone in that universe;
and also,
(2) there are certain conditions that would have to be satisfied in order for the flow of time in a universe to be measurable to someone in that universe, if there were any observers at all.
but unless time itself is nothing other than our concept of it, there would still be a flow of time in a universe even if the conditions necessary for observing it were not satisfied.
Or maybe I’m just fundamentally confused about the relation between the second law and time’s arrow. I mean, is the claim that time has no arrow if the second law doesn’t obtain, or is the claim that time’s arrow cannot be measured if the second law doesn’t obtain?
I hope it’s clear what I’m asking, and that is a genuine request for clarification in a conversation where I’m quite out of my depth.
Time is not completely independent any particular creature’s concept of it; but in order for “something” in the universe to record causal relationships – as distinct from “before” and “after” – that “something” would have to have a hierarchy of working memory that can sort sequences of events.
The reason I say that causation is distinct from “before” and “after” is that energy from, say, two events has to appear at a single point that is the space-time location of the “something” that has memory. At that location, “something” records those other events as “simultaneous” or as one “following” another, if that “something” system has a working memory. It can then distinguish among “simultaneous” and “before” and “after.” However, in general relativity, that does not imply that the events being “witnessed” by a recording system are causally related.
That’s basically it.
We exist in a state of the universe in which matter is still condensing; and that process of condensation requires that energy be released in order for particles to become bound together. That’s the second law.
In a universe in which matter doesn’t condense – or in one in which all condensation has ended – there are no longer asymmetrical events; there is no longer any “time” asymmetry. It’s similar to the ideal gas or of two billiard balls colliding; you can’t determine what is “before” and what is “after.”
In cosmological models, one can set up “parameters” that relate various parts of the model to other parts; but those parameters are not necessarily designated as “time” in any explicit sense. “Time” can emerge as a relationship between subsets of matter in the model. One can do this, for example, by singling out a bound system that has a finite number of configurations (states) and call it a “clock.”
One then maps those configurations onto the configurations of other subsets of the model and those other subsets can be said to be “time dependent” in relation to the “clock.” Whether or not any other system within the model is “aware” of that “time dependent” relationship depends on what kinds of systems can form.
But if no system can become bound, it is not clear what can be a clock and what can be a memory. It is still possible to map subsets of matter onto other subsets; and “clocks” don’t necessarily have to be a finite set of states. But without something more complex that can form a hierarchical set of bound states, it is difficult to say how a memory can exist that can recognize and “remember” a set of “temporal” relationships between other subsets of the universe.
For a discussion of the relation between entropy and time’s arrow, I can highly recommend (for us non-physicists) Sean Carroll’s book From Eternity To Here.
It’s a very good book; however I wish he had been more careful about associating entropy with “disorder.” I’m not sure if Carroll is aware of the history of pedagogical confusion that association has caused. But it all works out in the end.
I would also recommend his other book, The Particle at the End of the Universe.
(It seems that both Sean Carroll and Peter M. Hoffmann (Life’s Ratchet) have read Douglass Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.) 🙂
Mike,
I don’t see that. Could you explain why you find the idea of timeless causation to be incoherent?
Dave, Mike,
I agree. From Eternity to Here is a great book. Definitely worth a read.
On the other hand, all I know about From Here to Eternity is the beach scene…
Unless one has some other definition of “causality,” in physics it means that a given event in space-time can be influenced or modified by the transmission of energy or particles from another event within its past light cone. Matterial particles have to interact in some way; and for such interactions to occur, these particles have to have properties that will then be detectable and measurable within that universe.
This has to do with the travel of energy along the geodesics of the space-time that pertains to that universe.
If one has a universe in which one maps states of a designated “clock” onto states of other matter in the universe, one can employ various functions to that mapping. For example, you could “retard” the “time” of an event of some state of matter by making the “time” reading applied to that state delayed in proportion to the spatial distance between the state of matter of interest and the “clock.”
In the universe we know, causality depends on matter-matter interactions, i.e., what are called fields. Fields extend throughout space-time and propagate with a finite velocity. That is the way we see it as observers embedded within the universe. Most cosmological models try to take what we know from observation and use this knowledge to construct something that produces those observations as seen from within. The space-time models of general relativity and quantum mechanics try to do that.
But whatever you want to label “causality” has to involve the exchange of energy between systems. It doesn’t mean that events that occur at the same “time” are causally related; they may have nothing to do with each other because no interaction occurred between them.
In fact, events that occur at the same time are “observed” by a system with memory that can be triggered by energy coming from other locations and arriving at the system at the same time as judged by the memories of the measuring system. You can do this by requiring an ANDing of the energies coming from separate locations. That is what is meant by “simultaneous” in physics. But “simultaneous” does NOT mean causally related, it just means the result of the ANDing process at the “receiver.”
Mike,
Theists speak of a timeless cause outside the universe, so the laws of physics and the limitations imposed by the speed of light do not apply. The question is whether the idea of a timeless cause is logically coherent, not whether it conforms to the laws of physics.
I think that timeless causation is a logically coherent idea. Where the theists go wrong is in identifying it as a necessarily divine phenomenon.
Unfortunately, I can’t make any sense of it.
One can speculate on the characteristics of just about anything one can imagine “outside” the universe, and even what it means to be “outside” the universe.
But once an interaction occurs with stuff within our known universe, then whatever it is ceases to be something “outside;” and it should presumably be detectable in principle.
As near as I can tell, theological discussions appear to be all over the map with definitions and speculations depending on what one wants to assert or “make reasonably possible.” They depend on which deity or deities one is defending and on which particular sectarian view of such deities one holds. But all of them seem to retain outdated notions of space and time.
In comparison, physics is much simpler and more straight-forward; and it doesn’t depend on any particular deities. Nature eventually settles any puzzles over which models apply; and I find that quite fascinating. The fact that matter condenses into sentient beings that contemplate their existence and the existence of the universe is interesting all by itself.
The universe is quite interesting and exciting from the scientific perspective; and that provides most scientists – I included – plenty of pleasure and challenge to understand. And we can also enjoy the multiculturalism of religions and other traditions when subgroups aren’t fighting over them and trying to scold and convert others to their beliefs. Religion is a mixed bag, but so are the applications of science.
People belong to religions for many reasons; tradition, family and cultural unity, templates for behaving and living and for many other reasons related to our historical roots; and that is fine with me. But I am not sure what theological speculation accomplishes beyond repeating old notions of space-time that have long been superseded. Life is short, and I and most scientists would rather keep moving ahead instead of retracing old circles.
Mike,
And of course Craig claims that it is detectable, and that it points back to God.
I agree that theological discussions are often empirically untethered, but in this case Craig is at least trying to anchor his ideas in real observations. I don’t think he succeeds, but I give him credit for acknowledging the importance of reconciling one’s metaphysical beliefs with the discoveries of science.
I think there’s value in engaging with theists, as we do here at TSZ and as Carroll did in the debate.
Carroll’s take on causality in this debate (he reiterates it in his post-debate write-up) is similar to that of early Russell:
Russell adopted a more nuanced view later. John Norton makes, in my view, a convincing case in the same vein for causation as folk science (you can skip the rather technical chapter on “Norton’s dome” – it is not essential to his thesis). I have come across a review of a book that includes articles by Norton and several other contributors: Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality.
All in all, I wouldn’t underestimate the complexity of the issue, and for those interested, once again recommend overview articles from SEP, which cover many perspectives:
Causal Processes
The Metaphysics of Causation
I certainly don’t think he succeeds. It could imply deism and no involvement by deities in the subsequent evolution of the universe, or it could mean pantheism, or just about any notion of deities that reach in and tweak things from time to time.
Yet there is nothing in scientific observations of the universe that suggests it is anything other than an evolving system that condenses in some places into sentient beings; and that is a really neat process that seems within our grasp to understand.
The universe is fascinating and piques our curiosity because we are fragile and very likely ephemeral given what we know of the history of life on this planet and the evolution of stars. But that is all the more reason to cherish all life and try to make it better while it lasts.
keiths,
Nope, like timeless existence I can’t get my head round this one. Perhaps I’ve spent too much time in this universe, and need to get out more. Causality orders events in time. I could just about buy an uncaused beginning to time, but causal relationships necessarily include separation in time.
Simultaneity (such as computers being held up by desks) appear on inspection to be instances of continuity – the computer was lowered under gravity until it touched the table top, at which point it could go no further. The pre-existing table caused the effect – the halting of the computer’s downward progress, as an event. It continues to do so.
keiths:
Allan:
I hear the view is better out there.
Don’t forget to distinguish between a simultaneous cause-effect relationship and a timeless one. The former occurs within time and may change, while the latter occurs outside of time and can never change, because there is no time for it to change in!
Regarding the computer being lowered onto the desk, do you think it stops because the desk was there a moment ago, or because the desk is there now?
The problem gets really interesting if you take the analysis down to the atomic level and start considering electrostatic repulsion, which of course is ultimately the reason that the table supports the computer.
keiths,
That’s a distinction between something I can conceive of and something I can’t!
I see it as equivalent to a simple billiard-ball model. Two objects on a trajectory (a trajectory which evolves in time) eventually reach the same space.and have an interaction. The cause of a change in the trajectories post-collision (the effect) is the summed velocity vectors a Planck moment before the collision, which both balls experience simultaneously. From one ball’s perspective, the cause of a change is that the other ball is there ‘now’. But there is a prior history. The other ball brings something with it, which is necessary for the interaction to be one of cause-and-effect.
You can also argue part of the causal chain is the inability of the balls to pass through each other. If the balls did not interact, there would be no effect. But, as I say, that interaction is only part of the system. It does not have its effect until the prior conditions – getting the balls together – are met. And so it is with the computer/table. There was a temporally-evolving cause, the lowering of the computer, before the interaction. The table caused the computer to change its velocity, to 0. It’s not still causing that; they are now one system. The whole earth forms the ‘other ball’, and is hardly perturbed by the transfer of energy, while gravity overwhelms the rebound of the computer.
Both table and computer experience the initial interaction simultaneously, but without a preceding sequence of moments, they would not even get to that point.