First Cause

[rossum]

I don’t.

It is one of the ways that Buddhist philosophy differs profoundly from much Western philosophy. There is no ‘soul’ or essence in anything.

True, things can change without changing

And triangles can be square and pigs fly. I do not accept this. By the logical law of the excluded middle, either something changes or it does not change.

The constant nature of God can create change.

How can the constant nature of God create if it is constant? It can never switch on or switch off creating. All that is created is itself permanent and unchanging since it is never uncreated.

rossum

 

[rossum]

But what if God can change as I believe?

I have no problem with a changing God. I do have a problem with a changing God who is described as unchanging. Likewise I have no problem with an unchanging God, provided you don’t want Him to change as well.

Either a changing God or an unchanging God. You can’t have both.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Yes, for G-d the Red Sea is still parted, not parted, dried up, lost in Pangaea, merged into the Indian Ocean, and eventually boiled away by a dying sun. The entirety of everything that can be said to exist does so simultaneously for G-d.

Then God cannot act. Your God is unchanging.

rossum

 

[rossum]

I believe that the Immutability of God delineates His nature, which does not mean, suggest, or imply that God cannot create things.

Any act of creation in time requires change. There was a time when I did not exist. I do exist now. Sometime between those two time I came into existence. That is a change. If God is unchanging then I have always been in existence unchanged. I know that is false. Hence your unchanging God cannot have created me.

If I was created by an unchanging eternal God then I am also eternal and unchanging. Since I am neither then I was not created by such a God.

By definition, God has the ability within His nature to actively create things; but He does not have the ability within His nature to actively or passively change His Being in any way other than God.

Then He cannot change from “I will create rossum tomorrow” to “I am creating rossum today”. An unchanging God cannot act.

In other words, since all things made are related to the material world, and thereby limited by time, all things made are either changeable or perishable. Only the Eternal God, who is neither related to the material world nor limited by time, is able to exist necessarily, essentially, and changelessly, both within and without the universe.

I know this is what Christians believe, but it is logically indefensible. An unchanging creator can only create an unchanging creation which lasts as long as the creator. Since we can observe that creation changes we can deduce that the creator is also changing.

rossum

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Then God cannot act. Your God is unchanging.

rossum

When I say that everything that exists does so simultaneously for G-d, that means literally everything. His acts included.

 

[rossum]

The act does not change the Being, but only changes things that are incidental to the Being.

Then it was not the Being that was doing the acting, but the Incidentals. All hail the Incidentals! Let us praise the Incidentals!

If we can remove the incidentals, and leave the Being behind, then the incidentals are not part of the Being and should be treated separately. My clothes are not me and can be removed and treated separately. Whatever is assigned to the incidentals is relevant to them, not to the Being. My clothes go into the washing machine; I do not.

If I start a fire, I do not become the fire, and neither does the fire become me. The logic you are using is fallacious.

Not my logic. If I start a fire then I strike a match - a change. I rub two boy scouts together - a change. I take some action in time in order to create the physical effect I want. If God takes some physical action then He also has to act in time, and any action in time is a change.

Warpspeedpetey gave you an irrefutable answer.

His answer was nonsensical. The Red is not parted now. It was parted in the past. That is a change. Whatever God sees from the fifth dimension has nothing to do with time, which is the fourth dimension. Change is defined in terms of the fourth dimension, not of the fifth dimension. God@1200BCE was parting the Red sea. God@2011CE is not parting the Red sea. God at the two times is different hence God has changed by all reasonable definitions.

You have not countered the fact that no exchange of properties occurs between the actor and the thing acted upon.

I do not require such an exchange of properties. God has changed from “I will part the Red sea” to “I am parting the Red sea” to “I have parted the Red sea”. Those are properties of God, not properties of the sea.

A clear non-sequitur. The properties have no existence apart from the Actor, but an Actor can exist even without those properties.

A forest can exist without any of its trees? Go through your billionaire and remove a single molecule at a time. Repeat my argument with the forest and trees. No single molecule contains “the billionaire”. Remove all the molecules; what is left is “the billionaire”.

Since an exchange of properties between the Actor and the action or thing acted upon is not necessitated, then your argument fails.

My argument does not depend on any exchange of properties. It merely depends on a close analysis of the actions of the actor. My argument stands.

So, to repeat and earlier statement, though properties/actions are dependent on the Actor, the Actor Himself is not dependent on the properties/actions.

I do not accept an actor who does not act, any more than I accept a creator who does not create. Using an incorrect predicate will not win any arguments.

Again, God is not physical, nor is He bound by physical laws. Your arguments based on the premise that God is a physical Being don’t make the slightest dent in our beliefs.

You describe God as both unchanging and acting. I am showing that such a description requires two different entities. Neither entity has to be physical, though at least one of them needs to be able to manipulate the physical world.

As admitted earlier, we are referring to essence/nature/being. Helen will always be Helen no matter what properties she may display that are different from one point in time to the next. If this is so even for tactile creatures, it is even more so for God who is outside of time and is not a tactile Being.

Christianity generally sees the world as basically static with a veneer of apparent change laid over it. Helen is still Helen, despite the fact that she is now older than she was. The change is ignored as unimportant, not ‘real’.

Buddhism sees the world as fundamentally changing, with a veneer of apparent stasis. The designation “Helen” applies to a series of different persons, each conditioned by her predecessor, which on a casual look appear to be continuous.

One of the Buddhist analyses of the cause of suffering is this error. Looking for the permanent in what is essentially impermanent and changing is a fruitless search because you will never find what you are looking for. “You’re not the person I married,” is precisely true. You wanted to keep that person in aspic, but they have changed. Change always wins over stasis. Expecting stasis to win over change is a foolish notion.

You can never step in the same river twice because it’s not the same river and it’s not the same you.

rossum

 

[Stephen168]

It is one of the ways that Buddhist philosophy differs profoundly from much Western philosophy. There is no ‘soul’ or essence in anything.

And it is just Buddhist philosophy, which cannot find God.

And triangles can be square and pigs fly. I do not accept this. By the logical law of the excluded middle, either something changes or it does not change.

How can the constant nature of God create if it is constant? It can never switch on or switch off creating. All that is created is itself permanent and unchanging since it is never uncreated.

I already showed you

Counting from 1 to 2 is different from counting from 101 to 102, at least I hope my Bank thinks so.
Stephen168;7909971:

I think your bank would agree that to change your bank account from 1 to 2, or 101 to 102 would require the addition of one

M=(y2-y1)/(x2-x1)
Constant equals change.
One person can see a constant another can see change.

The constant nature of God can create change.

 

[rossum]

And it is just Buddhist philosophy, which cannot find God.

The Buddha already found him. Here is what He said:“I am the Brahma, the great Brahma, the conqueror, the unconquered, the all-seeing, the subjector of all to his wishes, the omnipotent, the maker, the creator, the supreme, the controller, the one confirmed in the practice of jhana, and father to all that have been and shall be. I have created these other beings.”
Despite having found this God, the Buddha still founded the basis of today’s Buddhism. That give a good indication of the Buddhist attitude to such a God.

The constant nature of God can create change.

Please define the relationship between the “nature of God” and “God”. We have not yet settled whether you are talking about two entities here or just one.

rossum

 

[Stephen168]

The Buddha already found him. Here is what He said:“I am the Brahma, the great Brahma, the conqueror, the unconquered, the all-seeing, the subjector of all to his wishes, the omnipotent, the maker, the creator, the supreme, the controller, the one confirmed in the practice of jhana, and father to all that have been and shall be. I have created these other beings.”
Despite having found this God, the Buddha still founded the basis of today’s Buddhism. That give a good indication of the Buddhist attitude to such a God.

Interesting, I didn’t know that Buddhism believed in an eternal God of all creation that you call Brahma.

 

[JDaniel]

You have an unchanging God. I have no problem with that. I have problems when you tell me that your unchanging God is changing.

Rossum:

If you don’t mind, I’d like to step in here for this.

You are quite correct: You can’t have an immutable God that is mutable. As has been stated over and over again, in the past, by the Church, by Theologians, by philosophers, God IS unchanging. However, the human problem is that we only truly understand things from a perspective of “time.” That’s not a problem with God, rather it’s a problem with our know-ability.

A First Cause must be contingent. It cannot be “First” without depending on time;

Actually that’s not quite true. In any queue there is a first, a second, and so on, even if both first and second (and so on) entered into their positions simultaneously.

Furthermore, a cause must instead pre-exist its effect, or at least be simultaneous with it, but, sequentially second. Even if the separation between a cause and its effect are virtually simultaneous, there is probably at least a Planck length difference separating them.

it cannot be a “Cause” without there being an effect.

Well, WE certainly would not know that it was a Cause without an Effect. But, even a fisherman who fishes, and catches nothing, is called a fisherman, and understood by that term.

You can have your necessary non-contingent unchanging God, but that God cannot be the First Cause. The First Cause is contingent and changing.

Not quite: in English when we say “contingent” we understand that to portray a relationship of much greater urgency. IOW, it is not a relationship merely because of one, or more, definitions of the words, it is a “life-and-death” existential relationship. A Cause can be a cause prior to any of its effects, except that we won’t necessarily know it. But our knowing that it is a cause does not translate into ontological urgency.

God bless,
jd

 

[razredge]

I have no problem with a changing God. I do have a problem with a changing God who is described as unchanging. Likewise I have no problem with an unchanging God, provided you don’t want Him to change as well.

Either a changing God or an unchanging God. You can’t have both.

rossum

Ok good - yes, I also think an unchanging God is a bit illogical as how would he be able to think?

If He was unchanging He would be more like an abstract concept like the number 7, abstract concepts don’t change and so can’t cause any change either so couldn’t create the universe - the only immaterial thing that can cause change is a mind and a mind by definition has to be able to think - and thinking necessarily involves change.

 

[shoe]

Any act of creation in time requires change. There was a time when I did not exist. I do exist now. Sometime between those two time I came into existence. That is a change. If God is unchanging then I have always been in existence unchanged. I know that is false. Hence your unchanging God cannot have created me.

If I was created by an unchanging eternal God then I am also eternal and unchanging. Since I am neither then I was not created by such a God.

Then He cannot change from “I will create rossum tomorrow” to “I am creating rossum today”. An unchanging God cannot act.

I know this is what Christians believe, but it is logically indefensible. An unchanging creator can only create an unchanging creation which lasts as long as the creator. Since we can observe that creation changes we can deduce that the creator is also changing. rossum

Actually, it’s quite logical to believe that a very real difference exists between God’s nature and the nature of the physical world that He has created for the simple reason that God’s creation is set apart from His attribute of eternity. Thus, the nature of God’s creation does not share in God’s eternal quality. And since God’s creation is set apart from His own nature, it logically does not follow that God’s creating or changing the physical world could possibly change His nature. God’s creation of the physical world, including people, can logically change every day during the world’s existence without affecting God’s immutability. But God’s unchangeable nature does not mean that God doesn’t have a variety of attributes within that nature; for instance, His changeless characteristics of love, justice, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, etc.

 

[perro_sarnoso]

But it cannot initially be called the “First Cause”. At most it can be “First Cause in Waiting”.

No, as you pointed out it isn’t the First Cause until after the First Effect. It has to change from “First Cause in Waiting” to “First Cause”. Since it changes it cannot be immutable; it actually has to say “Let there be light,” or whatever it does to change from its “I am not causing yet” state to its “I am now causing” state.

rossum

What is Necessary and what is Contingent.

In a universe of contingencies or as Hawkings would have us believe, in all of these universes of contingencies…there has to be the Necessary.

Commonly known as the Cause and the Effect.

It is necessary to have a first cause. Even if you have to go back further and further ad nauseam…alll the way to the First Necessary Cause. That my friend is God.

God - to whom past, present and future is an eternal now; is unchanging. All possibilities and all variations due to our free will and choices…are not only already known to God - they have always been known to God. Even the ones He knew that you could possibly take and didn’t even think of.

It is the reason why He is unchanging/immutable/omniscient. This Divine Being is the Necessary First Cause whose realm is the Supernatural.

You and I exist in the Natural. Heavenly beings exist in the praeternatural. Supernatural is only proper to God.

 

[rossum]

Interesting, I didn’t know that Buddhism believed in an eternal God of all creation that you call Brahma.

It doesn’t. Brahma believes what he says, but he is mistaken. He is not what he honestly claims to be.

That is why Buddhism does not make much of him. Read the Brahmajala sutta (Digha Nikaya 1) for the full text. It deals with a number of religious errors, Brahma is in the fifth of the wrong views.

rossum

 

[Curious_Seed]

since they do not exist, obviously not

The inane made sane, thank you.

 

[rossum]

You are quite correct: You can’t have an immutable God that is mutable. As has been stated over and over again, in the past, by the Church, by Theologians, by philosophers, God IS unchanging. However, the human problem is that we only truly understand things from a perspective of “time.” That’s not a problem with God, rather it’s a problem with our know-ability.

However, words like “change” and “mutable” are defined in terms of time. If you are going to drop time for something else, then you will have to develop a new vocabulary to describe the “God-time”.

Actually that’s not quite true. In any queue there is a first, a second, and so on, even if both first and second (and so on) entered into their positions simultaneously.

Then “First” requires space instead of time, and my argument stands with minor modifications. “First” is still contingent on the existence of space instead of being contingent on the existence of time. Either way it is contingent.

Furthermore, a cause must instead pre-exist its effect, or at least be simultaneous with it, but, sequentially second. Even if the separation between a cause and its effect are virtually simultaneous, there is probably at least a Planck length difference separating them.

Whether a Planck length or a Planck time, there is still either a length or a time, or both. Causation cannot stand alone, it is always contingent on something else.

Well, WE certainly would not know that it was a Cause without an Effect. But, even a fisherman who fishes, and catches nothing, is called a fisherman, and understood by that term.

In normal speaking we use words casually. If we are trying to describe the ultimate then we have to use words far more carefully. Remember “homoousion” versus “homoiousion”, the original “iota of difference”? Even in casual language there is a difference between a successful fisherman and an unsuccessful fisherman.

A Cause can be a cause prior to any of its effects

This is where we differ. Is a one year old baby a parent because when it grows up it will have children? Does it make sense to describe a one year old as a “parent”?

rossum

 

[rossum]

Actually, it’s quite logical to believe that a very real difference exists between God’s nature and the nature of the physical world that He has created for the simple reason that God’s creation is set apart from His attribute of eternity.

We now have four entities: God, God’s nature, the physical world and the nature of the physical world. Can you see why I am distrustful of using “nature of X” in an argument, it only leads to confusion and a multiplication of entities. Does the nature of the physical world itself have a nature? Do we get an infinite regress of natures?

Thus, the nature of God’s creation does not share in God’s eternal quality.

We can observe that the physical world changes and is not eternal. What you have to explain is how an eternal God can do different things on different days.

And since God’s creation is set apart from His own nature, it logically does not follow that God’s creating or changing the physical world could possibly change His nature.

I say nothing about God’s nature; I only talk about God. If God acts in time then God has to change. We observe that the world changes, so if God is creating/sustaining the world then God must change. 200 years ago God was sustaining Napoleon and was not sustaining rossum. Today God is not sustaining Napoleon and is sustaining rossum. God is doing different things so God has, at least in part, changed. If God has no parts then God has changed. If God has parts then we can analyse God into fixed and changing parts and deal with the two parts separately.

God’s creation of the physical world, including people, can logically change every day during the world’s existence without affecting God’s immutability.

How. How did God sustain Napoleon and not sustain Napoleon without changing?

rossum

 

[rossum]

What is Necessary and what is Contingent.

In a universe of contingencies or as Hawkings would have us believe, in all of these universes of contingencies…there has to be the Necessary.

Commonly known as the Cause and the Effect.

It is necessary to have a first cause. Even if you have to go back further and further ad nauseam…alll the way to the First Necessary Cause. That my friend is God.

To repeat my argument, any “First Cause” must be contingent. How do you know it is the “First” cause and not the “Second” cause? It is contingent on time (or possibly space) in order to determine that it is indeed “First”.

How do you know that it is a “Cause”? You can only know that if there is also an effect. If there is no effect then it is not a cause but a non-cause. Hence the “Cause” is dependent on the effect.

A First Cause is contingent on spacetime and at least one effect. Being contingent it cannot be necessary.

rossum

 

[SonofMonica]

To repeat my argument, any “First Cause” must be contingent. How do you know it is the “First” cause and not the “Second” cause? It is contingent on time (or possibly space) in order to determine that it is indeed “First”.

How do you know that it is a “Cause”? You can only know that if there is also an effect. If there is no effect then it is not a cause but a non-cause. Hence the “Cause” is dependent on the effect.

A First Cause is contingent on spacetime and at least one effect. Being contingent it cannot be necessary.

rossum

No–a thousand times, no. Aquinas’s concept of First Cause does **not **mean “first in time.” Thus his argument from First Cause does not deal with a “first point in time” as opposed to a “second point in time.” It supersedes the concept of time. It deals with primacy, not order, as such. A lot of folks, even on this site, miss this. So I’m not surprised that you don’t. But let me help.

For Aquinas, “first cause” means something like “the most foundational” or “the base cause.” It is wholly foreign to the concept to say that “it is the one that came first.” Rather it is the cause without which the others would not be able to be. As Edward Feser puts it, “What Aquinas seeks to show in all of his arguments for God’s existence is not the existence of a first cause who operated at some point in the distant past to get the world going, but rather one who is operating here and now, and at any moment at which the universe exists at all, to keep the world going. And part of his point is that the existence of such a God is something that can be proved even if the universe has always existed. (He did not actually believe it has always existed, mind you; he just didn’t get into the issue for the purposes of arguing for God’s existence.)”

Another way of putting it is that Aquinas is not even arguing that the universe must have had a beginning (it may or may not, to which the argument of First Cause is neutral). So we might say that the first cause he is arguing for is not a temporal first cause, but in an ontological first cause, that is, a sustaining cause of the world here and now, and at any point in time at which the world exists at all. Here’s some more from Feser:

“What is key is the distinction between instrumental and principal causality (or second and first causality), a distinction which the language of per accidens versus per se (which I use in The Last Superstition and Aquinas) better conveys. An instrumental cause is one that derives whatever causal power it has from something else. To use Aquinas’s famous example, the stick that the hand uses to push the stone has no power to push the stone on its own, but derives its stone-moving power from the hand, which uses it as an “instrument.” (Of course, the stick might have some other causal powers apart from the hand; the point is that relative to the specific series hand-stick-stone it has no independent causal power.) A principal cause is one that does have its causal power inherently. The hand in our example can be thought of for purposes of illustration as such a cause, though of course ultimately it is not, since its power to move the stick depends on other factors. Indeed, there can at the end of the day be only one cause which is principal or non-instrumental in an unqualified sense, namely a cause which is purely actual and thus need not be actualized in any way whatsoever by anything else. In any event, it is because all the causes in such a series other than the first are instrumental in this way that they are said to be ordered per se or “essentially,” for their being causes at all depends essentially on the activity of that which uses them as instruments. By contrast, causes ordered per accidens or “accidentally” do not essentially depend for their efficacy on the activity of earlier causes in the series. To use Aquinas’s example, a father possesses the power to generate sons independently of the activity of his own father, so that a series of fathers and sons is in that sense ordered per accidens rather than per se (though each member of such a series is also dependent in various other respects on causal series ordered per se).”

 

[warpspeedpetey]

…If there is no effect then it is not a cause but a non-cause. Hence the “Cause” is dependent on the effect…

If there is no effect there is no cause…yada yada yada…infinite regress. Your making a very roundabout claim to an infinite regress. Infinite regress is and always was a logical impossibility. The regression of causality stops with G-d, Actus Purus. G-d requires no cause because the negation of the act of existing, is the act of not existing or “nothing exists”. A logical contradiction. Making G-d, Actus Purus, the only possible state of reality. Hence there is no causal regression beyond G-d because there is nothing to regress. We do not need an effect to know something is First cause, we only need to know that what we call First cause is logically precedent to any other being in order to rightfully call it “First Cause”. We know that the act of existing is logically precedent to everyother being, so it is perfectly correct to Call G-d First Cause, even of no other being existed.