No, the domino at starting point does need a cause to move if it is unstable. This is known as inflation theory of universe at which there existed a unstable energy at the beginning. You can read more in this simple short article.
Something which is outside of time is timeless. Cause and effect cannot lay at the same timeless point. This is contrary since there is no need for cause if effect is at timeless point.
Decision is an act as a result of moving from a potentiality to actuality. God is pure actual therefore He cannot decide.
I have another argument which states that time is fundamental and cannot be created: Time is the fundamental variable of any dynamical theory therefore it cannot be an emergent phenomena in the same theory. This means that there exist not a dynamical theory with time as an emergent phenomena. Therefore time cannot be created. Time however just has a beginning/starting point (when unstable energy burst).
Your set of dominoes needs a mover because they are stable. Something which is otherwise, unstable, moves on its own.
My position is very simple. An unstable form of energy at the beginning. It was just there, uncaused like God, and could cause because it is unstable.
We are talking about creation. If the stuff, the effect, was already at the beginning then we don’t need an act of creating. You cannot have cause and effect at a timeless point so things were simply there at the beginning.
Then He is not pure act.
I already explain my position. That is the only option now. The beginning however could be more mysterious and I agree with you (bold part).
I guess it is just easier to believe in God. Thanks for the conversation STTHow is God affected by our choices?God is pure act in His essence but He changes in the sense that He wills to create and is affected by our choices. It doesn’t affect His essence though.
I was talking to a friend yesterday about Hume. In his view the world is just a series of pictures with bubbles of force thrown in within it. I’ve been thinking really hard about the bubbles of force being “unstable” as you say, and whether they have to have a spiritual cause. Imagine nothing in the universe ever moving, and you forever having watched a train sit still. All of a sudden it moves. Can it be without a cause? You says its own force, and that the singularity had it own cause within it. These are very difficult concepts
Seems to me this requires the we constrain God to time.
Why would it have to be a ‘mind that can choose’ ?
Yes.
Decision is an act of moving from a potentiality, doubt about what to do, into an actuality, what I will do.
Because that merely continues the cycle of the series. A mind like God’s never changes even while it wills something
Well, for one, you just mentioned something that is composed and changing, so this “extra-temporal non-sentient animal” can’t be a prime mover or first cause.
do you agree with my argument or do you have another one?
Well, not a prime mover or first cause of whatever non-temporal, outside our universe that it lives in, sure.
Well, sure, but that’s not our problem - let’s say that outside of our universe, there is a prime mover that creates a universe, part of which is herds of “extra-temporal non-sentient animals” that poop out things like our universe.
Yes. And the stuff at starting of time was unstable, therefore you don’t need a mover, an unstable thing moves on itself.
It depends on what you mean by force. If force is like a domino set, you need something outside of MATTER to set it off, because God doesn’t move when He wills to create. However, STT is saying that the singularity didn’t need a cause but causes itself like we say God does. I don’t know how to respond
Well, in a way, he’s right - all we know about how things work is how things work in the time and space we can observe.