I hope the defence isn’t as lightweight as that! Simply claiming that the “nature” of causation is akin to that of colour is an arbitrary claim. Why is it like colour? You need to define your evaluation criteria - it’s not enough to say, “why should putting them together suddenly mean they are un-caused?” - that just adds a new fallacy. With Lego bricks, we can devise an experiment to test the nature of the composite. What’s your equivalent experiment for the Universe?
If this really is Feser’s defence (I haven’t read him, although I’ll have a look on the web), then the atheist rebuttals of the KCA are untroubled.
That there is not always a fallacy in compositional arguments is obviously valid. What is being ignored is that people - who really do not know the conditions required for the fallacy - are falsely associating the compositional fallacy with the first cause argument. This is usually because they don’t understand the fallacy, or because they think that all valid arguments must stem purely from scientific observations; and if that were true, then they would have a rational basis for their argument. But it is not true that I cannot know certain things without science. I know that a square triangle cannot exist. I do not need science to tell me that this is true; no rational person does. Attempts to conjure up a basis to doubt certain knowledge outside of science is always based on a false understanding of Science and reason. Such doubts are not based in rationality itself but rather false irrational hypocritical interpretations and a misunderstanding of the epistemological limits of what science can say about things. One or two Christian theists on this thread have also failed to understand the fundamental nature of Aquinas’ argument; that his argument was
ontological rather than “scientific”. That is not to say that one doesn’t use observations as part of the argument, as this is necessary; but it is not the core premise of what justifies the arguments success.
- Out of nothing comes nothing. This is always true and cannot possibly be otherwise; just like a triangle cannot be a square.
- Every change is the actualisation of the potentiality for change; otherwise it must be said that ultimately “change” came out of absolutely nothing.
- Potentiality by itself is not to be thought of as an ontological being or an action, and therefore must be accounted for by something that is not itself potential, but is instead “purely actual” with with no beginning or change in it.
Change must have a cause, not because we observe that things have a cause, but rather because change is fundamentally an actualisation of “potential events”, and this is evident because change by definition is the motion between two ontological points; one point is actual, and the other point is potentially real. The point from which change proceeds from, cannot itself be changing, otherwise that point too would be preceded by that which was initially only potential points of reality. If we do not stop at a being that is a pure unchanging timeless reality, we will end up with an infinite regress of events that were at one point only potential. If we do not account for that potentiality, we end up with the irrational belief that the world proceeded out of nothing, because none of the events in an infinite regress explain the existence of “
actual reality”; given fact that every event in the chain was at one point only
potential events. An infinite regress, by itself, cannot fulfil the question of why there something rather than nothing.
The belief that something came from nothing by itself is more irrational than a flying spaghetti monster, simply because its is anti-rationality and thus
anti-knowledge/anti truth; since we would not be able to admit true knowledge of anything given that everything would be qualitatively no different in nature to absolutely nothing. This is made clearer by the fact that as soon as an
honest person admits that there is obviously a fundamental and intrinsic distinction between the two, they are also admitting indirectly that nothing is not intrinsically a being and thus cannot be attributed any objective possibilities/potentialities/powers or anything that would suggest more than absolutely nothing, because nothing is the absolute opposite of these things. “
Nothing” therefore can never have the nature of a being of its own accord, and therefore we can never speak of something coming from nothing, since that would involve *nothing *becoming more than what it is by definition. From that, and the mere possibility of true distinctions (
A man is not a mouse; a tree is not air, etc…) . ", one is necessarily admitting that the law of non-contradiction is objective insofar as it applies to general actuality as opposed to non-actuality. These facts are made evident by the fact of existence itself; long before science is necessary. It is from this basis that we can make true statements about reality, such as "
a square-triangle cannot exist. From that basis you have the grounds for true knowledge which is necessary for honest science and philosophy.
.
