How do we know the First Cause is a Mind?

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God does not have the potential to be something other than what he is and has always been.
 
Neither do creatures have the power to make God other than what He is and has always been.
 
That that doesn’t contradict what i said earlier:

“any power possessed by creatures must also be possessed by the First Cause”
 
There are things that creatures can do that necessary reality cannot (for instance God is not a temporal being, he does not change) ; however their abilities are due to limitations in their being and is not a positive power.

In order to disprove your argument one would have to show that the power of intellect is in fact a limitation.
 
Arkansan said:
“any power possessed by creatures must also be possessed by the First Cause”
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I think you should change this to… 'Any power possessed by creatures cannot be greater than the first cause’.

I think it makes sense to say that if the first cause has no intellect then human beings would be in possession of a power that is greater than the first cause.
 
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The ability to effect change isn’t even a counterexample, as God can certainly effect any change that a creature can.

Always remember the object of the act. “God is unable to change God” and “creation is able to change creation” are not valid comparisons.The correct comparisons would be “God is unable to change God but has plenary power to change creation” and “creation is unable to change God but has some power to change creation”. The use of self-identity referencing terms (e.g. “itself”) are the source of equivocation here.
 
Arkansan said:
“God is unable to change God but has plenary power to change creation”
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I agree with this. I was under the impression that you meant that God has the potential to be like a tomato.
 
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What I meant was that any power a tomato plant has to make tomatoes out of non-tomato matter, God also has (and much more).

Obviously, neither God nor a tomato plant can turn God into a tomato.
 
Arkansan said:
What I meant was that any power a tomato plant has to make tomatoes out of non-tomato matter, God also has (and much more).
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Ah. This makes sense. Humans have the power to effect change with their minds and therefore so does the first cause.
 
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First off, what is “a mind” in this definition? If a mind involves a stream of consciousness (where I’m self-aware of my thoughts that are continuing over the course of time), then God does not fit this definition because God transcends time and does not change. The most we can say is that our God is a personal God, meaning that God has a will and we can relate to Him as a person. Granted, we also say that God is not one person, but three persons. This begs the question “What is a person?”

Ultimately, we come face to face with the reality that while we are made in God’s image and likeness, we are finite and He is not. As such, we cannot fully comprehend God and most certainly have no ability to provide the adequate type of definition we’d be looking to defend in philosophy. Afterall, even as we acknowledge seeming attributes of God, the doctrine of divine simplicity states that God’s being and his attributes are one in the same. He is not made up of parts.

In the end, there are no adequate proofs for the totality of what God is because there is no way to define it. All the ways we imagine God to be often deny some trait we know God must have on a logical level.

Indeed, I think there is a tendency people have to think the proofs for God’s existence say and proove more than they do. Because typically people don’t narrow their idea of what God is down to the definition given in the proof. They just recognize “Yes, that’s how God describes Himself in the bible.” They then attach all their ideas of God to the word ‘God’ in the proof and listen to the argument. But they become convinced on what atheists complain is a “God of the gaps” level, similar to how someone might be convinced of something due to a logical fallacy of equivocation, though this is a bit different.

The problem is not that these proofs don’t work, but that people take these proofs and then insist people are being illogical or stupid when they hear these proofs and still aren’t convinced.

As strange as it seems, the ontological argument is what tends to get atheists as close to faith because it’s the best attempt at trying to actually reach the most inclusive definition of God. The problem with it is that God can’t be comprehended and the ontological argument seems to claim that God can. Or maybe not? At first it sounds easily dismissed but it’s one that at least attempts to correct all the misperceptions of God. But in the mind, you still can’t wrap your mind around the concept to really decide through reason alone whether it proves God’s existence.
 
Catholicwife32 said:
First off, what is “a mind” in this definition? If a mind involves a stream of consciousness (where I’m self-aware of my thoughts that are continuing over the course of time), then God does not fit this definition because God transcends time and does not change.
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At the very least God has knowledge and will. He does not have a steam of consciousness like you say. In fact God’s mind is beyond our comprehension. So when we attribute the word mind to him this is meant in very general terms. He knows himself and all things but not in the same way that we know things.

I’m sure you know this already i just couldn’t help but add my 2 cents.
 
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Catholicwife32 said:
Ultimately, we come face to face with the reality that while we are made in God’s image and likeness, we are finite and He is not. As such, we cannot fully comprehend God and most certainly have no ability to provide the adequate type of definition we’d be looking to defend in philosophy. Afterall, even as we acknowledge seeming attributes of God, the doctrine of divine simplicity states that God’s being and his attributes are one in the same. He is not made up of parts.
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I kind of agree, but we can speak of god in very general terms that everybody can understand, even if it does not encompass the full uncomprehensibility of God,
 
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catholic1seeks said:
There MUST be a unique first cause of all reality, this I’m quite convinced.

The arguments for God’s existence are quite good and persuasive to me… to an extent. I see the necessity of a first cause, unconditioned reality that is totally unique and unrestricted.

But that’s not ALL God is. It is essential that the definition of God includes “personal” – or is intelligent/is a MIND.

So how do we argue for a First Cause with a Mind??
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Here’s How:

Genesis 1: 26-27
[26] And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. [27] And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them

John 4:23-24 [23] But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore him. [24] God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth.

SO HOW CAN MORTAL AND PHYSICAL MAN EMULATE GOD; OR IS THE BIBLE WRONG?

Here is the short answer [I posted a lengthy explanation on a Evidence of God thread]

God is NOT “mind”; that would limit God who is limitless

In all of the Universe only humanity emulates our God [fulfilling Gen 1:] as God gifts every HUMAN Soul with God-LIKE attributes of a mind, intellect and FREEWILL, which He attaches to the Human Soul at the instant of conception.

These; similar to GOD are spiritual realities that cannot die or be killed; and are what face the Immediate JUDGMENT at the instant of death, and merit either Hell, Purgatory or Heaven. [At the Final JUDGMENT our then Glorified Bodies will be reunited with our Souls for Eternity

GBY

Patrick
 
IWantGod said:
At the very least God has knowledge and will. He does not have a steam of consciousness like you say. In fact God’s mind is beyond our comprehension. So when we attribute the word mind to him this is meant in very general terms. He knows himself and all things but not in the same way that we know things.

I’m sure you know this already i just couldn’t help but add my 2 cents.
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These are points I was already making. As I said, the issue is "What are we defining as ‘the mind’? Then I went into one definition of ‘the mind’ that we couldn’t go with.
 
IWantGod said:
I kind of agree, but we can speak of god in very general terms that everybody can understand, even if it does not encompass the full uncomprehensibility of God,
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I’m not understanding your point in. Philosophical proofs are dependent on definitions. If I come up with a proof of God’s existence and am defining God as the first cause, I can indeed prove God’s existence under THAT narrow definition. It doesn’t prove anything about God that goes beyond that definition.

For instance, if we believed that the sun was a god or even our God, we could definitely come up with plenty of proofs that the sun exists. This would not prove that the sun is a god or that the sun is God.

Or perhaps, the word “God” is making things confusing. Let’s say, I’m talking about the sun. The sun is many things. So let’s say I believed all the following about the sun (most of these come from a sun facts website, but I’m going to put in a few ridiculous ones in too).
  1. It’s the primary source that lights the day.
  2. It’s made out of hydrogen and helium
  3. It’s a Yellow Dwarf star
  4. It’s 4.6 billion years old.
  5. It is the closest thing to a perfect sphere that can be observed in nature
  6. The temperature of the surface of the sun is 5,600 degrees Celsius.
  7. The sun eats apples
So, let’s say that I’m dealing with a person who looks at points 7, and rather than saying “I don’t think the sun can do that”, they instead see that definition as the primary definition I use when I refer to the sun. So if I react to them merely stating “I don’t believe with the sun” and then create a proof for point 1, I still haven’t proven any of the other points. All remain in the land of logical possibility, but the proof doesn’t do as much as it would seem.

And because atheists feel that our primary working definition of God is this willful being we worship, looks out for us, and intervenes with the world, the fact that we ALSO believe He’s the First Cause, is somewhat irrelevant to them. Yes, logic says there must be a first cause. It doesn’t follow that the first cause is necessarily the Christian God. Could it be? Yes!

BTW, please don’t confuse me for an atheist. I’ve just argued with atheists enough to understand their logic.
 
Omnipotence, omniscience, and the like, can be proved logically to be necessary qualities of the First Cause. As for Christianity being true, no one has ever held the five ways as a proof of Christianity.
 
Thanks for contributing. You’re being very helpful, and I only mean to respond for the sake of clarification. I’m not the most philosophically-inclined. 🙂

But what if intelligence is a sort of secondary result from creation (a contingent reality)? Like, the ability to reproduce sexually is a result from biological creatures, but this power to do so does not belong to God as such. Sure, only the First Cause allows there to be such a power/process in the first place. But it does not belong to the First Cause as such.

I guess I’m just having trouble seeing how intelligence is more than just an aspect of contingent beings (like us humans)
 
Maybe it’s because it doesn’t take much if any intelligence for humans to make babies 🙂 -while the reproductive process itself is so enormously complex that it’s hard to imagine it could be the result of mindless, random chance.
 
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Catholicwife32 said:
Yes, logic says there must be a first cause. It doesn’t follow that the first cause is necessarily the Christian God. Could it be? Yes!
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Proving Christian revelation has never been the intention of the first cause argument. Can i prove that God is 3 persons in one? No i can’t. However proving that there is a first cause that has all the general metaphysical attributes we assign to God is the goal of the first cause argument and i think it succeeds. I don’t think its possible to doubt the first cause argument without doing away with logic.

At the very least the first cause argument provides a rational foundation upon which we can comfortably express our Christian faith; its not just a leap into the unknowable.
 
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