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goout
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That was a thoughtful read thanks.
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Wesrock
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That’s fine. I was just wondering if you were doing any specific reading in a book or an article or something on the First Cause argument, so I could get the gist of the argument you were specifically learning about.FiveLinden:
There are different versions? Now I’m really getting out of my depth. I think I’ll just stick to my personal testimony!
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Wesrock
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The First Cause arguments do make a case that they are required for a first cause and something could not be a first cause without them.
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Mmarco
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No, the properties of matter are determined by the laws of physics and consciosness is not among the properties of matter. Therefore, according to our scientific knowledges consciousness cannot be “a responce to matter”.Mmarco:
I found your post very interesting Mmarco. Thank you. I will respond to a few of your points. Here’s the first: Consciousness is nothing but a response to matter acting according to the laws of physics. Our consciousness reacts to light, sound and other sensations.
It is also wrong to say that “our consciousness reacts to light, sound and other sensations” because sensations are themselves part of consciousness.
Besides, counsciousness does not react to light, sound etc. ; in fact, cosnciousness has no direct contact with light or sound; if you analyse the process which leads to the generation of our sensations, you discover that every external stimulus determines successions of electric impulses which are the only stimula reaching our brain. The point is that the properties of electric impulses are well known and consciousness is not one of these properties. Actually, there is no differences between the electric impulses in our brain and the electric impulses in any other conductor or device, for example a washing machine.
By no means consciousness can be explain by biochemical processes. This is absolutely false. All biological and chemical processes are a direct consequences of the laws of physics and consist only in successions of elementary physical processes.
There is no scientific explanation of consciousness. All we know is that there is an interaction between cerebral processes and consciousness, butscience is totally unable to explain the existence of consciousness.
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IanAG
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Sorry Wesrock, I amended my post above…please take a look for the link.
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Wesrock
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No apologies needed. I’ve found myself to be rather brusque, lately, and I think I may have come across that way. Thank you for the link. So this one is for the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I’m more partial to the Thomist argument which takes a different tact than the KCA and has different premises, but I won’t be negative about it. I’ll give the article a read through, and I’ll try to advocate for it where I can.
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IanAG
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Thanks. And no, you didn’t come across as brusque. Maybe you could return the favour and let me have a link to the Thomist argument?
To explain, I’m not doing this to argue anyone into faith, although that would be good, but so that I can show that faith doesn’t mean without reason, as it says in the Bible ‘be prepared to give a defense’.
To explain, I’m not doing this to argue anyone into faith, although that would be good, but so that I can show that faith doesn’t mean without reason, as it says in the Bible ‘be prepared to give a defense’.
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MPat
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Did you seriously claim that the group of material universes is immaterial?!
Um, “multiverse” does come with contraries of those attached. So, not exactly a neutral choice.
For example, “Summa Theologiae”, second question of the first part (Summa Theologica) has “Five Ways”. There’s also “Summa Contra Gentiles”, Chapter 13 of Part one (Thomas Aquinas: Contra Gentiles: English), “De Ente et Essentia” (Thomas Aquinas: De ente et essentia: English) that have more arguments (or more versions of arguments).
Oh, what great strength of faith unsupported by any evidence is demonstrated here!Mmarco:
so far…
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FiveLinden
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This is a classic ‘god of the gaps’ argument. The things we don’t know about consciousness are things we don’t know ‘yet’. ‘Consciousness’ is not well-defined but to the extent that it is defined I can see nothing to indicate that it is non-material in origin or that anything can be ‘non-material’ in origin. After all, if you drop someone with consciousness from a height the laws of physics appear to operate to eliminate consciousness. You may think it continues in an unseen and unmeasurable way but that is not a falsifiable proposition, and therefore not something relevant to your scientific understanding.
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MPat
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Then “scientific understanding” is not going to lead to that knowledge.
And why should anyone care about what you “see” or do not “see”…?
For that matter, why should you?
Is that your “seeing” or “not seeing” supposed to be a kind of that “scientific understanding”?
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rossum
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No. I claimed that the cause of at least one material universe is immaterial. Seems to me that I am not the only one doing that.
Why is benevolence required for a First Cause? Why is intelligence required for a First Cause. We can observe unintelligent causes and non-benevolent causes.
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MPat
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Then you are not talking about the “multiverse”.
For “multiverse” is supposed to be just that: a group of “universes”.
For example, see Wikipedia (Multiverse - Wikipedia): “The multiverse is a hypothetical group of multiple universes.”.
Perhaps you should study what the big, sciency word means a bit longer before using it…
For trying to substitute “multiverse” for “God” is about as silly, as trying to substitute “a cup of coffee”. Well, technically, one could try to do that too. It would also be “just” silly and confusing, perhaps mildly insulting.
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Wesrock
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I said the arguments go over it. That doesn’t mean it’s simple to go over without some prerequisites. To make a hasty sketch, I’m going to divide benevolence into two categories: perfectly good and loving. The former is an immediate consequence of the First Cause’s pure actuality. We don’t have a time for a discussion on the metaphysics of goodness, but Thomist metaphysics in this area argue that what is good is the actualization of the perfections of a being. “Perfections” being an easily misunderstood word, what it’s getting at is that goodness is an actualization that fulfills a nature. The First Cause as pure actuality (which is the first conclusion shown in one of the arguments) is by definition, therefore, perfectly fulfilled in his nature, and therefore perfectly good. And one can reflect on that further on morality, virtue, etc… Loving, likewise, on an intellectual (rather than sensitive/feeling) level, willing the good of another. Insofar as the First Cause is at all times willing the being of all things, it is willing some fulfillment of their nature (otherwise it wouldn’t exist at all), and the First Cause does this without being more or less fulfilled than it would be otherwise (since it is Pure Actuality), so in a sense this giving of goodness is the most selfless example of an action as possible. This is all the basis of what it is to love, and so the First Cause is loving. And it of course wills its own goodness regardless of whether it wills anything else.Wesrock:
Why is benevolence required for a First Cause? Why is intelligence required for a First Cause. We can observe unintelligent causes and non-benevolent causes.
Continued in next post.
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Wesrock
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Continued from previous post.
That it is necessarily intellectual could be argued for in a few different ways. One of the ways St. Thomas does is on the basis that to be immaterial is to be an intellect; an immaterial existence is necessarily an intelligible one. There’s a bit more to it which I won’t really sketch out here. The way I’m more familiar with is based on the principle of proportionate causality. Whatever is in the effect must in some way be in the cause. But if the First Cause is demonstrated as not being material, then the effects cannot be in the First Cause materially. Ultimately they must all be in it, and all their relations be in it, in some way that is immaterial. But that (and we would support this normally with more discussion of philosophy of knowledge) is really just what it is for concepts and thoughts to be in an intellect (albeit in an unchanging, eternal way). The things have an intelligible existence in the intellect they do not have a physical existence in their own natures. The Fifth Way also demonstrates that the First Cause must be an intellect insofar as there must be a sufficient explanation for it to determine itself towards its end without (a) being determined by something else (in which case it’s not a First Cause) or (b) an ontological brute fact that it just is this way and not another (lacking sufficient explanation for its own existence). The arguments (which I’ve only given the most hasty of sketches of without defense) go so far as to that the First Cause is its own intellect, and that his intellect is not simply an attribute or an operation of the First Cause which could be distinct from the First Cause’s essence.
But you’d need a much longer review of the topic to really present it and defend it against counter arguments. An off the cuff post doesn’t really cover it. But the cosmological arguments in their full form and their corollaries do discuss why these “attributes” are identified as all one with the essence, and why that which is a First Cause must have them.
That it is necessarily intellectual could be argued for in a few different ways. One of the ways St. Thomas does is on the basis that to be immaterial is to be an intellect; an immaterial existence is necessarily an intelligible one. There’s a bit more to it which I won’t really sketch out here. The way I’m more familiar with is based on the principle of proportionate causality. Whatever is in the effect must in some way be in the cause. But if the First Cause is demonstrated as not being material, then the effects cannot be in the First Cause materially. Ultimately they must all be in it, and all their relations be in it, in some way that is immaterial. But that (and we would support this normally with more discussion of philosophy of knowledge) is really just what it is for concepts and thoughts to be in an intellect (albeit in an unchanging, eternal way). The things have an intelligible existence in the intellect they do not have a physical existence in their own natures. The Fifth Way also demonstrates that the First Cause must be an intellect insofar as there must be a sufficient explanation for it to determine itself towards its end without (a) being determined by something else (in which case it’s not a First Cause) or (b) an ontological brute fact that it just is this way and not another (lacking sufficient explanation for its own existence). The arguments (which I’ve only given the most hasty of sketches of without defense) go so far as to that the First Cause is its own intellect, and that his intellect is not simply an attribute or an operation of the First Cause which could be distinct from the First Cause’s essence.
But you’d need a much longer review of the topic to really present it and defend it against counter arguments. An off the cuff post doesn’t really cover it. But the cosmological arguments in their full form and their corollaries do discuss why these “attributes” are identified as all one with the essence, and why that which is a First Cause must have them.
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EugeneCharles
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I’m not a philosopher and not an expert, please pardon if I make these things wrong! I’m trying to do my best.
This argument is quite unsupported/not enough because it could refer to somebody else or another god, that philosophers like Kant dissolve it. But we’re referring to the Abrahamic God or YHWH
Nothing exists without a reason and all things that exist have a reason to exist (Sufficient Reason) Now, we’re living in the universe, there should still be someone who causes things inside the universe and he/she should be uncaused. If there’s no uncaused cause or “First Cause” there should be a never-ending regress of all that had been caused.
If it happens that there’s something eternal being who’s created by someone else, caused or sustained by someone he/she is not the uncaused cause or the First cause but if there’s an explanation or a basis for it to exist, then he/she is not the first cause and the uncaused cause of all things.
In the Bible, Revelations 22:13, Jesus said that “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” therefore there is there’s no another first cause who exists except God because He’s referring to Himself alone.
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Freddy
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I’m sure that you’ve come across the term ‘emergent property’. We can’t find ‘consciousness’ in a neuron but it’s a property of a specific arrangement of neurons (and synapses and chemicals and electrical charges etc).FiveLinden:
No, the properties of matter are determined by the laws of physics and consciosness is not among the properties of matter.Mmarco:
I found your post very interesting Mmarco. Thank you. I will respond to a few of your points. Here’s the first: Consciousness is nothing but a response to matter acting according to the laws of physics. Our consciousness reacts to light, sound and other sensations.
Similarly we can’t find the property ‘wet’ in a hydrogen or oxygen molecule. But it’s a property of a specific arrangement of said molecules.
Looking for consciousness in the composite parts of the brain is like looking for the property of ‘home’ in a house brick and then complaining that you can’t find it.
In any case, we can propose that consciousness is an evolved characteristic. You certainly are conscious. And your great great etc grandfather was. But keep going back and we’ll reach a point where your far, far distant ancestor in the very deep past wasn’t.
So did it simply turn on at some point like a light switch? That doesn’t seem to be the case in life as it presents itself today. We can go from apes down to bacteria and see consciousness slipping away as we travel ‘down’ the food chain. The only other option is that it evolved. In which case it’s no more puzzling than any other aspect of that process.
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Freddy
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If that’s not the most circular of circular arguments we’ve seen in some time then I missed the last one.IanAG:
Because He is the cause of all things and He is uncaused. No one created God and He exist in the beginning and forever.
You can’t answer a question by changing it to a statement, Eugene.
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EugeneCharles
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You do have a point, Freddy. I also find my answer as not evident. I was trying to revise it recently and up to now. Thank you very much for your suggestion, Freddy 
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OrbisNonSufficit
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Basically way I understood that argument is…
First, forget any definition of God you know.
Now we define God as “cause without cause”. Nothing about love, mercy or any sort of personhood yet. God is simply what caused everything into existence but nothing caused God into existence. This is also principle of “I AM” - words our Lord used to describe himself. First Cause truly exists and whole existence is dependent on First Cause.
Now if First Cause caused existence and everything in it, including intelligence and conscience but also time itself (because time couldn’t exist prior to existence itself) then it is reasonable to assume there was no outside interference that prompted this First Cause to create existence. Basically if there was then it isn’t First Cause… this boils down heavily to idea of Divine Simplicity as nothing that is composite exists on it’s own and hence there has to be sole First Cause.
And that means decision made to create existence was not made by accident or so. It was something we would describe as intelligent. By principle of “I think, therefore I am”, God is a being and only being there is in truest sense of existence. I don’t think this was necessarily argument to prove solely based on itself Christianity or Trinity or so… it was simply argument of Theism.
I’m not saying one can’t draw logical conclusion that God is love or that God is Trinity but it’s not directly from principle of First Cause.
First, forget any definition of God you know.
Now we define God as “cause without cause”. Nothing about love, mercy or any sort of personhood yet. God is simply what caused everything into existence but nothing caused God into existence. This is also principle of “I AM” - words our Lord used to describe himself. First Cause truly exists and whole existence is dependent on First Cause.
Now if First Cause caused existence and everything in it, including intelligence and conscience but also time itself (because time couldn’t exist prior to existence itself) then it is reasonable to assume there was no outside interference that prompted this First Cause to create existence. Basically if there was then it isn’t First Cause… this boils down heavily to idea of Divine Simplicity as nothing that is composite exists on it’s own and hence there has to be sole First Cause.
And that means decision made to create existence was not made by accident or so. It was something we would describe as intelligent. By principle of “I think, therefore I am”, God is a being and only being there is in truest sense of existence. I don’t think this was necessarily argument to prove solely based on itself Christianity or Trinity or so… it was simply argument of Theism.
I’m not saying one can’t draw logical conclusion that God is love or that God is Trinity but it’s not directly from principle of First Cause.
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Gorgias
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“And the Multiverse so loved the world that it sent its only Son”…?
“‘I am the Multiverse of your father,’ he continued, ‘the Multiverse of Abraham, the Multiverse of Isaac, and the Multiverse of Jacob.’ Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at the Multiverse”…?
Nah… doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…
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