First Cause

[eagle_eye222001]

Look at how smart we all are! Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Whichever one God put out there first…

 

[John21652]

No, I merely have a very different view of the relationship between ‘name’ and ‘actuality’.

What’s in a name? It is we who do the naming. Naming something as a ‘first cause’ is a human prediliction. Usually we do it in terms of causation when we use something like Hume’s defintions of causation which includes contiguousness. But that’s a human trait.

However, its causing something is an action, and any action requires a real change from the “not acting” state to the “acting now” state. That is a real and essential change. If there is no action then there can be no effect. If the cause is always in the “acting now” state then the effect is also always present. An eternal unchanging cause results in an eternal unchanging effect.

We usually refer to God’s unchanging nature when we speak of immutability. Now ask your self this, does God’s nature has constituent parts, or aspects? Then ask yourself, is it not the case that God’s nature cannot change, yet those constituent aspects of God’s nature can vary within the parameters of whatever it is that is God’s nature without the nature of God changing? In other words, to answer another of your questions, he can think of you today and of your great-great grandfather a couple of hundred years ago and still have the same unchanging nature.

If time starts with the first effect, how can you tell that the cause came ‘before’ the effect.

It is because the cause came before the effect that we call it a cause. Refer to Hume’s definitions of causality.

There is no ‘before’ if there is no time. Causation requires time in order to be able to distinguish between the cause and the effect. If they are simultaneous, or eternal, how can you tell which was which?

According to which theory of causation? If you use a Humerian theory, then there is little allowance for the concept of mental states as causative agents. In terms of God, with his omnicience, there would be no distinction between cause and effect as measured by time. Creation just was.

Then its actions are also outside its actuality. You have two things; an unchanging thing and a second changing thing which performs the actions. God and the ‘Hand of God’ if you like. God cannot act but the Hand of God can. God cannot change but the Hand of God does. Two different things with two different sets of properties.

It depends on whether you conceptualise God as waving a magic wand, or as just thinking something. God can think what He likes, for as long as He likes and still be immutable. After all, if I write ‘Abc’ and then write ‘Abcd’, no component has changed, but ‘d’ has been added. The immutability you seem to envisage would indicate a being of sheer power, but indifferent, insensitive and unresponsive, like a magic rock. That doesn’t accord with the Christian concept of God.

 

[rossum]

All of matter, space, time, and energy.

Then angels are not part of the universe? What of heaven and hell? You seem to be limiting the universe to matter/energy.

rossum

 

[rossum]

G-d is equally present at all points that can be said to exist. That’s the point of being omnipresent. What you consider to be 200 years ago to you, is now to Him.

‘Change’ is a human word defined in human terms. Those terms include a dependence in time. If X(-200) is not the same as X(0) then X has changed fro 200 years ago to now. God then was not the same as God now. That is a change in any human definition of the word.

If God cannot be discussed in human language then a lot of theologians are going to be out of a job and you will have to have a remainder sale for all those Bible, which are written using human languages.

rossum

 

[rossum]

God is not part of the universe, he is outside it - if things change in the universe they do not meant that God has changed also.

Then you are saying that God does not exist. I defined the universe as “all that exists”.

If things in the universe change, while God does not change, then you are saying that the universe is independent of God and does not require Him to keep it in existence?

And as I understand it God is identical to his nature. I think by nature they mean the attributes of God.

That is also my opinion, I see no need to separate the two.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Let’s see: ‘dependent’: what do you mean when you use this term here?

It is shorthand for “cannot logically exist without”. An effect is dependent on its cause because it cannot logically exist without its cause. A cause cannot logically exist without its effect; if there is no effect then it can’t be a cause.

So, if the only child of two people dies, they stop being ‘parents’?

Yes, strictly they become ex-parents, though language is often used sloppily in this sort of case.

Does it matter when the child dies?

In what sense do you ask this question?

Let’s see: ‘contingent’: what do you mean by the use of this term here?

Something is contingent if it does not have independent absolute existence separate from everything else. A thing is contingent if it is dependent on something else. My life is contingent on the ambient temperature remaining within a certain range, on the presence of enough (but not too much) oxygen in the atmosphere and on many other things.

rossum

 

[rossum]

God is not different to “God’s nature,” as you put it.

I agree.

Everything that exists has a nature.

Be very careful here. Each thing only exists once; it does not exist twice. I do not accept any reifying of any “nature of X” into something separate from X. There is simply X, that is all. There is no hidden “nature of X” sitting behind the X.

“For I am the Lord, and I change not: and you the sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6).

The Bible is not self consistent. It describes a God who changes and who claims not to change. Since change is ubiquitous, I will go for the changing version.

Genesis 8:11 “I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” What God did before He will not do again. That is a change.

God is the creator of time and is therefore independent of time.

How do you know that? A creator must exist before the created. How can you have a ‘before’ if there is no time? The word ‘creator’ is just another way of saying ‘cause’. All my arguments about cause, effect and time apply equally well to creator, created and time. There can be no creator unless there is also something created.
Q. What do you do?

A. I’m a creator.

Q. Hey, cool. What have you created?

A. Ermm… Well… I haven’t actually created anything yet.

Q. Oh. My, is that the time? I have a sudden urgent appointment elsewhere.

God is neither contingent on time nor restrained with the constraints of anything in His creation.

I disagree. He cannot be “Creator” unless there is a creation. He cannot be “Lord” unless there is something to be Lord over. He cannot be “Eternal” unless there is time to measure that eternity.

rossum

 

[warpspeedpetey]

… If X(-200) is not the same as X(0) then X has changed fro 200 years ago to now. God then was not the same as God now. …

X does not equal G-d, which brings us back to the question you are trying to answer.

** I don’t follow. What is it about things changing that makes G-d change?**

 

[rossum]

We usually refer to God’s unchanging nature when we speak of immutability. Now ask your self this, does God’s nature has constituent parts, or aspects? Then ask yourself, is it not the case that God’s nature cannot change, yet those constituent aspects of God’s nature can vary within the parameters of whatever it is that is God’s nature without the nature of God changing?

One single thing cannot have two opposed properties. Something can by spherical and blue; it cannot be spherical and a cube because sphere and cube are opposed properties. Changing and unchanging are also opposed properties, so you are proposing splitting God into two different parts. An unchanging part and a changing part. We can then proceed to analyse the two different parts separately.

In post #20 on this thread I called them “God” for the unchanging part which cannot act and the “Hand of God” for the changing part which can act.

That which is eternal, God, cannot change and hence cannot act. That which acts, the Hand of God, changes and so cannot be eternal.

In other words, to answer another of your questions, he can think of you today and of your great-great grandfather a couple of hundred years ago and still have the same unchanging nature.

You are separating God and God’s nature. If God is thinking about different things then He is changing. If God’s Nature isn’t changing then it is a separate entity from God. One thing cannot both change and not change. You must make the separation explicit and treat them as two separate entities. Does God change? Yes or no? Does God’s Nature change? Yes or no?

It is because the cause came before the effect that we call it a cause. Refer to Hume’s definitions of causality.

Please indicate how you determine “before” in the absence of time. Any causality depends on the existence of time to separate cause (prior) from effect (after).

In terms of God, with his omnicience, there would be no distinction between cause and effect as measured by time.

Then how can you separate the two? What other criterion are you using to separate one from the other?

It depends on whether you conceptualise God as waving a magic wand, or as just thinking something. God can think what He likes, for as long as He likes and still be immutable.

Here we disagree. If He thinks the same thing all the time then He is indeed immutable. If He thinks different things (notice the word “different”) then He has changed. Or do you want me to separate out “Thoughts of God” as yet a third entity, leaving an immutable God who has no thoughts, which He has outsourced to a separate entity?

After all, if I write ‘Abc’ and then write ‘Abcd’, no component has changed, but ‘d’ has been added.

That is a change. “abc” =/= “abcd” as any computer will tell you. The fourth character of the string has changed. Alternatively we can separate the string into two entities, an unchanging three character string and a changing zero or one character string. What you cannot do is to claim that the three character string is unchanged compared to the four character string. If you grew a second head we wouldn’t say you were unchanged, though we might call you Zaphod .

The immutability you seem to envisage would indicate a being of sheer power, but indifferent, insensitive and unresponsive, like a magic rock. That doesn’t accord with the Christian concept of God.

You are correct. Unchangeability has exactly that effect, a rock - unchanging, unresponsive and unable to act. In Buddhism one of the fundamental properties of things is that everything changes, nothing is unchanging.“Impermanent are all compound things.”
When one realises this by wisdom,
then one does not heed ill.
This is the Path of Purity.

• Dhammapada 20:5
  Hence the emphasis in Buddhist philosophy on the logical pecularities of claiming any entity as unchanging.

Buddhism sees change as fundamental to religion. Nirvana has to change from nirvana-without-rossum to nirvana-with-rossum. Heaven has to change from heaven-without-John21652 to heaven-with-John21652. If there is no change then there is no point to religion, no enlightenment and no salvation.

rossum

 

[Stephen168]

In Buddhism one of the fundamental properties of things is that everything changes, nothing is unchanging.

“Impermanent are all compound things.”
​

Are you saying the 'fundamental property of things" does not change?​

 

[rossum]

Are you saying the 'fundamental property of things" does not change?

Thank you for pointing out my error. It is not a “fundamental property”, merely a property. It starts when the thing starts and it ends when the thing ends. It has no independent existence beyond the thing it refers to.

rossum

 

[Stephen168]

Thank you for pointing out my error. It is not a “fundamental property”, merely a property. It starts when the thing starts and it ends when the thing ends. It has no independent existence beyond the thing it refers to.

rossum

If the property is to always change, then that property never changes. Is that what you are saying?

 

[rossum]

If the property is to always change, then that property never changes. Is that what you are saying?

I have the property that I am always changing. My property came into existence less than 100 years ago and it will cease to exist sometime in the next 100 years. The property has no existence separate from myself so it changes from non-existent to existent and back to non-existent. Like everything else is starts, persists for a time and then stops. Like everything else it changes.

rossum

 

[razredge]

Then you are saying that God does not exist. I defined the universe as “all that exists”.

If things in the universe change, while God does not change, then you are saying that the universe is independent of God and does not require Him to keep it in existence?

Well in that case, yes God doesn’t ‘exist’ as such, he is beyond our existence.

I don’t know if the universe (once created) is independent of God or whether he has to constantly will it’s existence or similar - that is probably beyond us to determine.

 

[Stephen168]

I have the property that I am always changing. My property came into existence less than 100 years ago and it will cease to exist sometime in the next 100 years. The property has no existence separate from myself so it changes from non-existent to existent and back to non-existent. Like everything else is starts, persists for a time and then stops. Like everything else it changes.

yes, the only constant is change. The earth rotating around sun is constant, but at the same time the position of the earth is always changing.

 

[Stephen168]

God is not part of the universe, he is outside it - if things change in the universe they do not meant that God has changed also.

Then you are saying that God does not exist.

No, razredge said God exist outside his creation.

I defined the universe as “all that exists”.

That maybe your definition but is irrelevant to what razredge said.

 

[shoe]

The Bible is not self consistent. It describes a God who changes and who claims not to change. Since change is ubiquitous, I will go for the changing version.

Genesis 8:11 “I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” What God did before He will not do again. That is a change.

God’s immutability identifies a quality of God’s nature and does not signify that God cannot think, know, create, or experience things. The basic character of free will is to utilize that free will. If a person decides one morning (free will) to walk to work rather than to take his or her usual bus, that decision did not change or alter that person’s nature. That person is the same person before, during and after the decision.

How do you know that? A creator must exist before the created. How can you have a ‘before’ if there is no time? The word ‘creator’ is just another way of saying ‘cause’. All my arguments about cause, effect and time apply equally well to creator, created and time. There can be no creator unless there is also something created.
Q. What do you do?

A. I’m a creator.

Q. Hey, cool. What have you created?

A. Ermm… Well… I haven’t actually created anything yet.

Q. Oh. My, is that the time? I have a sudden urgent appointment elsewhere.

The cosmological argument states that everything that has a beginning has a cause, such as the universe, which means that the universe had to be caused by something else. But God is just the opposite of the universe in that He did not have a beginning. Therefore, God, who by definition is perpetual existence, did not have a cause nor needed one. God is the uncaused first cause. God is the starting point. “In the beginning God created heaven, and earth”(Genesis 1:1).

I disagree. He cannot be “Creator” unless there is a creation. He cannot be “Lord” unless there is something to be Lord over. He cannot be “Eternal” unless there is time to measure that eternity.

rossum

eternal: Being without beginning or end; existing outside of time. thefreedictionary.com/eternal

 

[John21652]

One single thing cannot have two opposed properties. Something can by spherical and blue; it cannot be spherical and a cube because sphere and cube are opposed properties.

Nobody suggested otherwise. You are starting to shift the goal posts.

Changing and unchanging are also opposed properties, so you are proposing splitting God into two different parts. An unchanging part and a changing part. We can then proceed to analyse the two different parts separately.

Woo, now that’s rather weird logic by any definition! It is you who have introduced the notion of “unchanging”, like a rock, as discussed below. God’s nature does not change, it is immutable. You seem to confuse the term ‘immutable’ with the ability to behave like a rock. Let’s go back to first things. Read 1Samuel 15:29 where we are told that Saul lost his kingdom and appealed to Samuel. Samuel informed Saul that God is the immutable God, He could not and would not alter His word or change His mind to reverse the consequences He had just pronounced upon Saul’s sin.

In Malachi 3:6 God says “I am the Lord and I change not”.
According to your logic, once God made that statement He abdicated! He was no longer God because He changed!!

So you see, you throw up a non-Christian concept of God’s immutability and then wonder why the arguments don’t match. Until you begin to understand that God is not a detached, unfeeling, impervious, heedless power, then we can’t progress.

In post #20 on this thread I called them “God” for the unchanging part which cannot act and the “Hand of God” for the changing part which can act.

Which means that God’s hand is the real god head! Is god the left hand, or the right hand and what is the other hand?

That which is eternal, God, cannot change and hence cannot act. That which acts, the Hand of God, changes and so cannot be eternal.

You’ve just taken away all of God’s powers and temporarily given them to a hand. That gives a whole new meaning to “lend us a hand”!

You are separating God and God’s nature. If God is thinking about different things then He is changing. If God’s Nature isn’t changing then it is a separate entity from God.

You are moving the goal posts again. I wrote *In other words, to answer another of your questions, he can think of you today and of your great-great grandfather a couple of hundred years ago and still have the same unchanging nature. *
To state that God’s nature can include variables does not mean I have seperated God into bits and pieces. Notice how I keep on referring to God’s nature. You are not accepting of the notion of God having a nature, just like you have a nature and a tree has a nature. After all, He made us in His image!!
God is immutable. His creation is mutable. And contingent! If we go back to Malachi 3:6, the full quote is “For I am the Lord (Jehovah), I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” God has a will, shows restraint and mercy and yet you state that when His nature operates it disqualifies Him from being God. Yet it is that immutable nature which makes Him the God he is!

One thing cannot both change and not change. You must make the separation explicit and treat them as two separate entities. Does God change? Yes or no? Does God’s Nature change? Yes or no?

That was stated in earlier posts. The Christian notion of God is that His nature does not change. The Bible is explicit on this.

Please indicate how you determine “before” in the absence of time. Any causality depends on the existence of time to separate cause (prior) from effect (after).

Actually, it depends upon a human mind to give names to events which occured outside the human experience. You are again attempting to utilise a Humerian concept of time and causation. I mentioned the possibility of mental events as causative agents, but you have side stepped that agument to point out that a Godhead with a will is not a God because e God exercising His will is changing when He does so. As we have seen, that is a proposterous thesis, because the logical conclusion is a pretend god made of stone sitting on an alter. Well, that’s what fits your definition of ‘immutable’.

cont.d

 

[John21652]

cont.d

Here we disagree. If He thinks the same thing all the time then He is indeed immutable. If He thinks different things (notice the word “different”) then He has changed. Or do you want me to separate out “Thoughts of God” as yet a third entity, leaving an immutable God who has no thoughts, which He has outsourced to a separate entity?

This is where your idea of immutability leads. It leads to the absurd. Please look up “immutability” and “mutability” in the dictionary. Then read some Christian literature on the concept.

That is a change. “abc” =/= “abcd” as any computer will tell you. The fourth character of the string has changed. Alternatively we can separate the string into two entities, an unchanging three character string and a changing zero or one character string. What you cannot do is to claim that the three character string is unchanged compared to the four character string. If you grew a second head we wouldn’t say you were unchanged, though we might call you Zaphod .

I actually wrote Abc. Add in ‘d’ and the components Abc do not alter. They are still there. Did you not notice? You have added in extra concepts to try and prove something, but you have failed because you went off on a tangent.

You are correct. Unchangeability has exactly that effect, a rock - unchanging, unresponsive and unable to act.

Rossum, how about not shifting the goal posts around? The term we were discussing was “immutability”, not “unchangeability”. There is a massive difference.

You are attempting to prove that God is an uncaring, detached, rock. After all I wrote that - The immutability you seem to envisage would indicate a being of sheer power, but indifferent, insensitive and unresponsive, like a magic rock. That doesn’t accord with the Christian concept of God" You agreed. Why don’t you just start an “I love Buddha” thread and be done with it?

Buddhism sees change as fundamental to religion. Nirvana has to change from nirvana-without-rossum to nirvana-with-rossum. Heaven has to change from heaven-without-John21652 to heaven-with-John21652. If there is no change then there is no point to religion, no enlightenment and no salvation.

Buddhism is not the subject of this thread. I find it strange that you need to convolute the meaning of accepted Christian terms by introducing Buddhist philosophy to try to prove a point. Heaven with John21652 will be as welcoming of Rossum as Heaven without John21652. Just acknolwedge the welcome when you get there. OK?!

PS: last I heard, Nirvana had disbanded.

 

[JDaniel]

It is shorthand for “cannot logically exist without”. An effect is dependent on its cause because it cannot logically exist without its cause. A cause cannot logically exist without its effect; if there is no effect then it can’t be a cause.

Rossum:

I’m in a quandary: “logical existence?” What is ‘logical existence’ contingent on?

Yes, strictly they become ex-parents, though language is often used sloppily in this sort of case.

Cleanly or sloppily; the question is, “in everyday usage do we know what it means?” Do you think that we don’t?

God bless,
jd