Is there a good refutation for 'Dependent Origination'?

[Ben_Sinner]

Our Catholic/Christian belief (along with Judaism and Islam) is that everything came into existence by a single un-caused cause (God).

Those who deny this belief usually use the law ‘Dependent Origination’ argument.

"There is no existing phenomenon that is not the effect of dependent origination. All phenomena arise dependent upon a number of casual factors, called conditions.

This is the cycle of dependent origination

1. Ignorance is the condition for mental formation.
2. Mental formation is the condition for consciousness.
3. Consciousness is the condition for name and form.
4. Name and form is the condition for the six senses.
5. The six senses are the conditions for contact.
6. Contact is the condition for feeling.
7. Feeling is the condition for craving.
8. Craving is the condition for clinging.
9. Clinging is the condition for becoming.
10. *Becoming *is the condition for birth.
11. Birth is the condition for aging and death.
12. Aging and death is the condition for ignorance."

My question is, what are good refutations against dependent origination, which would then show the Abrahamic religion’s stance to be more plausible?

 

[fhansen]

Our Catholic/Christian belief (along with Judaism and Islam) is that everything came into existence by a single un-caused cause (God).

Those who deny this belief usually use the law ‘Dependent Origination’ argument.

"There is no existing phenomenon that is not the effect of dependent origination. All phenomena arise dependent upon a number of casual factors, called conditions.

This is the cycle of dependent origination

1. Ignorance is the condition for mental formation.
2. Mental formation is the condition for consciousness.
3. Consciousness is the condition for name and form.
4. Name and form is the condition for the six senses.
5. The six senses are the conditions for contact.
6. Contact is the condition for feeling.
7. Feeling is the condition for craving.
8. Craving is the condition for clinging.
9. Clinging is the condition for becoming.
10. *Becoming *is the condition for birth.
11. Birth is the condition for aging and death.
12. Aging and death is the condition for ignorance."

My question is, what are good refutations against dependent origination, which would then show the Abrahamic religion’s stance to be more plausible?

It doesn’t answer the questions: What is the first cause? Where would “dependent origination” come from? Did everything we observe come from nothing? Where or what is the system that causes increasingly complex effects? Do complexity and order and purpose occur randomly? Or did they always, necessarily, exist, in order for them to be realities which we can observe in our environment now, in order for them to exist at all?

 

[ynotzap]

Ben Sinner:
Dependent Origination necessarily depends on a first independent uncaused cause for it’s existence. Dependent Origination is a secondary cause producing an effect which is also dependent in a series of causes and effects, and we can not have an infinite series of causes and effect, they have a beginning dependent on a Independent Origination
I agree with fhansen

 

[paziego]

I have been giving this topic some thought lately.

Perhaps a first cause for dependent origination could be some argument for the impossibility of non-existence.

What I mean is that we can’t point to nothingness as a ‘thing’. Something that would be truly ‘nothing’ would have to be the absence of everything, but this would include the absence of absence itself. Therefore It may be logically impossible for there to be literally nothing.

If this is the case, then the first cause of existence is nothing but logical necessity (‘nothing’ cannot exist, therefore there is an eternal something, albeit uncreated in the way we understand). Once we posit this we can argue that existence is infinite, and that since infinity contains all possibilities no matter how remote, we can explain everything that exits seemingly by intelligent design as coincidence. Of course, this coincidence appears extraordinary, but it is guaranteed to arise given infinity of variables

This argument would allow a first ‘logical’ cause, but one that is atheistic and eternal, rather than saying that the universe was created at X time.

 

[Ben_Sinner]

My question is, why does dependent origination have to be caused by an un-caused cause though?

Dependent origination It is not a thing, it is a law of logic.

Now, God is logic itself, yet he he wasn’t caused by anything. Maybe that could be the case with dependent origination as well? What is the difference between God (who is logic) and DO (which would also be logic)?

 

[paziego]

My question is, why does dependent origination have to be caused by an un-caused cause though?

Dependent origination It is not a thing, it is a law of logic.

Now, God is logic itself, yet he he wasn’t caused by anything. Maybe that could be the case with dependent origination as well? What is the difference between God (who is logic) and DO (which would also be logic)?

That is an excellent point. I was trying to make a similar argument before, but it didn’t come out very well.

I feel this relates to the question of “why is there something rather than nothing?” (which would include God as a ‘thing’).

It may turn out that the answer is as valid for justifying the existence of God than it is for justifying the existence of dependent origination. Or even that God is an unnecessary step in the explanation.

Then again, dependent origination is a law governing cause and effect, but the cause and effect of what? Gravity is also a law, which can explain the falling of an apple. But it does not explain the apple itself.

I know the Stoics would say that matter is coeternal with Zeus (Zeus being pure ‘cause and effect’ logic immanent in that matter), and that Epicureans would deny God but posit atoms and void as eternally existing and interacting, giving rise to phenomena.

Does anyone have any idea what a Buddhist would say?

 

[paziego]

To add to my last comment,

If God is supposed to be unchanging the ncreation ex nihilo does not, at least to me, make sense.

God’s internal activity would be understandable, but why would He need to create something separate and outside of Himself?

Furthermore, if He did do so He either did it from all eternity - in which case matter is coeternal with Him and not created ex nihilo - or He made a decision to create it at a certain point in time - in which case God would a temporal and changing being, who at one point thinks it inadvisable to create but later changes his mind.

I can’t see an alternative to these two options, and neither of them are acceptable to the Church.

 

[ynotzap]

My question is, why does dependent origination have to be caused by an un-caused cause though?

Dependent origination It is not a thing, it is a law of logic.

Now, God is logic itself, yet he he wasn’t caused by anything. Maybe that could be the case with dependent origination as well? What is the difference between God (who is logic) and DO (which would also be logic)?

When you say dependent origination, you are qualifying the origin, saying the origin is dependent, and if it is dependent, it needs a cause On the other hand if you are saying that the origin is not dependent, and qualifying it as dependent, you have made a logical contradiction, an origin can not be dependent, and independent at the same time.

 

[paziego]

I think the term actually means something like ‘for every effect there is a cause’. It does not refer to origin in the sense of an account of creation.

There is a circle of causes and effects where each step of the circle is ‘dependent’ on the previous one and the cause of ‘origination’ of the next. But it is a closed, eternal circuit.

 

[wmw]

There is a circle of causes and effects where each step of the circle is ‘dependent’ on the previous one and the cause of ‘origination’ of the next. But it is a closed, eternal circuit.

Someone asked for the Buddhist thoughts on this. I think this might be an answer to that. If not then one of the other Eastern religions.