Yes I am making assertions, but not abitrary or groundless ones, I am not spelling out the logic letter for letter. But I think one problem we may be experiencing is that our definition of “created” differs. When I say created, I mean caused. Something cannot cause itself, therefore, it must be caused or always have existed (uncaused). You were the one that claimed that the first physics principle was uncaused, not me by way of saying it always existed. This might also shed light on your comment about the soul (although we don’t have to go there… I was just following your lead).
Another explanation of why God can’t change the rules of logic is that they subsist in His very being. If God is the cause of all universes, even a null one, then the rules of logic will appy. But your view has a bit of sense in it, as far as I understand it, since you hold that God is a part of the universe (and in my opinion not God at all, which breaks down with some of Aquinas’ arguments).
I think we should focus on the word “created” as it will bring much light to this discussion.
ciao
Thank you for engaging our OP and related questions, and for a cogent reply.
Our understanding of created is “functionally equivalent,” but let’s be clear about it. I see creation as a higher level than cause.
I live at the base of a granite mountain. A thousand feet above me are multi-ton boulders precariously balanced. Someday a wind will blow a small boulder into a big one and it will roll down the mountain atop my house That will be a “caused” event, but not a created event.
If I was lucky enough to have been to the city for a night of country dancing when the boulder clobbered my house, I’ll use my insurance money to buy some tools and lumber, and will rebuild the house. I’ll think about the kind of house I want, engage my mind in its layout and structure, generate some plans, then start pouring concrete and hammering nails. When the project is done, I will have “created” a house.
That act of creation will not be the hallowed (and likely not possible) creation of something from nothing attributed to God. I’ll need some lumber, etc. But experientially that’s the only kind of creation we know of. It is not even sensible to apply such a word to the bringing into being of something from nothing, because we have no experience of that, and no physics.
My Websters’ says that create means to cause to come into being. That is excessively broad, but Websters has learned to be broad, general, and as meaningless as possible regarding words related to religious or metaphysical concepts.
Re: logic: I appreciate your desire to attach logic to God. But consider that there are many different religions whose proponents believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God identical to the God of Christianity except in terms of His expectations regarding human behavior. Practitioners of these religions regularly kill one another over beliefs. We are fighting a slow burning world-wide religious war right now, which we are doomed to lose.
Yet the one thing all religious and anti-religious factions have in common is their acceptance of good old logic. 2+2=4 works for fish peddlers and rocket scientists. It is used by Muslims and had been used by the hundreds of thousands of peace-loving Bahai’s they butchered. It is used, but only to balance their large bank accounts, by U.N. representatives ignoring various butcherings. Atheists do not need God to accept logic; in fact, they commonly use logic to deny God’s existence.
Do you really like your argument that the rules of logic “subsist in God’s being”? And is it even necessary?
If it is true that logic is immutable, does that take away anything from an entity sufficiently powerful to have created a seemingly boundless and clearly magnificent universe, doing so within rules of logic which exist independently of Him?
If I should happen to build a magnificent house, will you fault me for buying my hammer from the Stanley Tool Company instead of first building a foundry to forge it myself? Will the fact that I did not dig the taconite and smelt the steel for my nails put me down in your eyes? Must I have also bioengineered the trees, designed the chainsaws to bring them down and the sawmills to shape them into lumber?
I took a final look at your “subsist in His very being” comment. First off, I don’t have any idea what that means. Do you claim to know anything quantifiable about the anatomical structure of God?
If I did, I’d say that if logic exists within Him, He and only He has the power to adjust it. But if logic exists outside of God, as it does outside of us, He has no more power to change it than you or I.
