First Cause is sentient

[STT]

Ha! Meaningless statements is exactly where one might answer n/a.

So your definition of God is meaningless?

 

[Wesrock]

STT:

Bradskii:

If you believe there was a first cause then why assume that it still exists? Without begging the question.

I am not begging question.

No, I meant if someone does claim it still exists they can’t use the argument: ‘because if it didn’t then it wouldn’t be God’.

Well, it wouldn’t be the Subsistent Being that the cosmological arguments claim to demonstrate.

 

[Wesrock]

Uncaused being is a much better description of God than subsistent being.

Both are true, and Subsistent Being is defined dogma.

 

[Wesrock]

By the same token, Subsistent Being is also richer in meaning and depth.

 

[STT]

What if alive and dead are the same thing? What if they are both derivative properties of the same underlying physical constructs? Emergent properties are called that because they emerge from underlying systems. Carbon can form crystalline or non crystalline structures. And yet it’s all carbon and energy.

Alive and dead are different state of affair by definition. Whether life is an emergence property is subject of another thread. Regardless, state of alive is different from state of death.

 

[niceatheist]

The definition strikes me as artificial. Useful for categorization.

 

[STT]

No, your definition of God is meaningless.

That is not true. God is conscious is very meaningful statement. Everybody understand what it means. Whether it is true or not is subject of the discussion.

I think we can agree that we should not bother with meaningless sentence.

 

[STT]

The definition strikes me as artificial. Useful for categorization.

It cannot be artificial if it is useful for categorization.

 

[STT]

Consciousness is a created experience.

To me consciousness/conscious state is a state that the agent has the ability to experience.

 

[niceatheist]

Of course it can be both useful and artificial

 

[John_Martin]

Consciousness is a created experience.

Only in created beings that are conscious.
But the subsistent being is conscious, personally so, which is why we engage in intelligent dialog with Him, and call Him by Name, rather than just talk about Him as if he were an unknowing object for our curious observation.

 

[LateCatholic]

The first cause is an intelligent cause because the act of causing something to exist that doesn’t naturally exist and sustaining it in existence cannot be a natural process ( a progression of physical states that have an affect on the nature of it’s effects through it’s activity. )

Hawking radiation is proof the above statement is false.

 

[LateCatholic]

The First Cause has a mind because the First Cause must decide what becomes real and what does not become real out of the infinite possibilities for creation. That decision making by the First Cause is mysterious and being uncaused is unlike any material mechanism using determinism or probability, such as Hawking radiation.

Why? Clearly, a threshold or probability could be exceeded such that a “Big Bang” occurs. Why does it have to be a “decision”. If Hawking radiation occurs, why can’t a Big Bang? There is no reason why multiple universes cannot be created either.
And who says the possibilities of creation are infinite?

 

[Wesrock]

IWantGod:

The first cause is an intelligent cause because the act of causing something to exist that doesn’t naturally exist and sustaining it in existence cannot be a natural process ( a progression of physical states that have an affect on the nature of it’s effects through it’s activity. )

Hawking radiation is proof the above statement is false.

Except it doesn’t. Why do you think it does?

 

[John_Martin]

First Cause has a mind because the First Cause must decide what becomes real and what does not become real out of the infinite possibilities for creation. That decision making by the First Cause is mysterious and being uncaused is unlike any material mechanism using determinism or probability, such as Hawking radiation.

This is all kind of backwards; the LORD is conscious, but does not change, as must happen in making decisions. What he wills is willed always, never a decision to will.
I am guessing you have not regarded the solution provided by Saint Augustine in his Confessions, where “Let there be light” is the knowing of a created creature contemplating in co-knowing a single thing temporally which God is knowing eternally in his knowing of all, consciously: and in this co-knowing of God and his servant there is temporally speech and light and evening and morning, one day.

 

[John_Martin]

Consciousness is dependent upon (name removed by moderator)ut from sense organs. God doesn’t have sense organs

Sentience is dependent upon (name removed by moderator)ut from sense organs, not consciousness - 2 different things.

 

[AlbMagno]

Well, someone blind, deaf, with no olfatory sense and with a paralysis could still be conscious.

 

[John_Martin]

Name a created consciousness in a material being that does not have sense organs?

It is unnecessary - God’s consciousness is not a created consciousness but eternal Uncreated consciousness.

 

[John_Martin]

Do you believe that consciousness is caused by the brain?

No, human consciousness is caused by the soul’s animation and informing of the activities of the brain, unlike divine consciousness which is uncaused, and simply IS. ‘I AM’ (our LORD’s Name) is meaningless without consciousness of self and of “not-self” and of actual relationship.

 

[John_Martin]

If a soul is infinitely small, then what infinitely small spot in the brain does it attach itself to? And what is the purpose of the rest of the brain matter which is not directly attached to the infinitely small soul? And how does an infinitely small immaterial soul interact with the matter inside the brain in light of the fact that the matter within the brain would have to be infinitely larger than the soul?

I don’t know where you are getting this from; the soul is not material, and has “no size” such that you could say it is infinitely small. The soul, 100% of it, is in every part of the body, and contains every part of the body and contains the whole of my body; 100% of my soul is in my little finger and 100% of my soul is in my brain, and my heart and my liver.
The body, including the brain, being material, is 100% caused and zero percent self-agent, including the brain.

Wouldn’t a simpler and more rational explanation be that God preserves our consciousness after death in another realm where He copies our brain structures into a different created reality where our souls are preserved until reunited with a body?

Simpler? It is already worked out for anyone to contemplate in the works of the Doctors of the Church (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, etc.), and you don’t have to make up some preservation refrigerator realm, and a secondary temporary storage reality, and some construct of a new body - you are making all those things up; they do not exist.
The body is dying; it is a temporary material interface until it is resurrected, when it will be a permanent interface between person and person, but never the person itself. It is something I “Have”, but not what I am.