Uncaused first cause

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adrian1

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I don’t have a verry profound understanding of Aquinas or Aristotle philosophy, but if someone can ask me I will try to understand: about cosmological argument, the uncaused first caused must be councious, relational and personal and having free will, can someone develop this understanding and the impossibility to be an uncouncious immaterial reality.
 
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Go to YouTube and look up some of Prof. Peter Kreeft’s vids on creation and the un-caused cause.
 
Scripture speaks about God as an Eternal relationship of Persons; conscious and knowing. God is an Eternal Being. One has to understand that in order for something to have a beginning, it must exist in time; God has no beginning since He is outside of Time; thus science tells us that Time and Matter came into existence with the Big Bang. Therefore the Cause is outside of time (Eternal) and outside of matter (Spiritual). A spirit has no size or shape or weight or color; a Spirit is described by the way it operates, namely the power to produce ideas. Thus Man, being both body and spirit has a rational soul with the power to grasp and produce ideas and understand concepts such as Truth, Goodness, and Love, which are all descriptions of God.
 
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The argument that a thing must have a cause, which had a cause, which had a cause… ending in, this can’t go on forever, therefore there must have been a first uncaused cause, destroys the argument that a thing must have a cause. If everything must have a cause then that first cause must have had a cause because it is a member of the everything set. Would seem that an uncaused cause is a meaningless statement.
 
clarkgamble1 said:
Would seem that an uncaused cause is a meaningless statement.
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Only when you misunderstand or mis-state it. 😉
If everything must have a cause then that first cause must have had a cause because it is a member of the everything set.
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So, here’s what should clear it up for you: everything created must have a cause.

God, then, is the uncreated, uncaused cause. He’s not part of the set of “created things”.

Hope that helps. 👍
 
adrian1 said:
the uncaused first caused must be councious, relational and personal and having free will, can someone develop this understanding and the impossibility to be an uncouncious immaterial reality.
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Humans can be unconscious from time to time, but they do possess consciousness.

So, what’s in play here is that the uncaused cause must possess consciousness. If it does not, then how is it without a cause? That is, if it’s without consciousness, how could it have come to be? And, without consciousness, how can it create the physical universe from nothing?

Relationality, a personal nature, and free will all depend on consciousness.
 
adrian1 said:
I don’t have a verry profound understanding of Aquinas or Aristotle philosophy, but if someone can ask me I will try to understand: about cosmological argument, the uncaused first caused must be councious, relational and personal and having free will, can someone develop this understanding and the impossibility to be an uncouncious immaterial reality.
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A thing exists either because of it’s own nature, or a thing exists because a nature or being distinct from itself is causing it to exist.

That which is necessarily actual or exists necessarily has no unactualized potential because everything that it essentially is necessarily exists. It is not made up of potential states of being. It does not have emergent properties. That means everything it could possibly be is necessarily real. If it did have unrealized potential then some part of what it essentially is would not be necessary and therefore there would be a contradiction in calling it a necessary being, since it’s nature is either necessary or not. Also, that which is not necessary cannot be said to be identical in nature to that which is necessary. They must be distinct beings since if their natures where identical then they would either both be necessary or both be unnecessary. That which is necessary has no unrealized potential, it does not change. It is not potentially something else because what it is is necessary.

Physical reality is in a continuous state of becoming. It has emergent properties. It has emergent qualities. It has potential states. It is always potentially more than what it was. It changes. It is not a necessary nature or being. If physical reality was necessary then everything that it could possibly be would just exist without change…

A nature that does not necessarily exist does not exist because of it’s own nature or power. Thus it requires an existential-cause. It requires a cuase that creates it’s being and sustains it in existence because it does not exist of it’s own accord. Therefore there must be an uncaused-cause, a cause that sustains the reality of physical existence.

There are two reasons to think that the uncaused-cause is intelligent or has a will to create.
  1. Only that which is necessary ought to exist. That which is necessary is not potentially the universe (it is not in a state of becoming something else) and thus the universe cannot be considered it’s natural end. Therefore if things exist other than what is necessary only an intellect and will can be considered to be it’s cause, since there is no other reason for it to exist.
  2. The laws of physics is not necessary and physical laws only apply to physical natures. Physical laws do not exist outside the existence of physical things. Physical laws is just a description of regularities in physical things. Thus the reason why physical things behave the way they do can only be attributed to an intelligent cause, a being who has designed the rules of how physical things behave. Otherwise there is no logical reason as to why physical things must behave the way they do once they exist since none of it is necessarily real…
 
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Gorgias said:
So, here’s what should clear it up for you: everything created must have a cause.
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That is fine. Actually it is trivially self-evident.

But then the question is: “how can you substantiate that the universe was created”? The atheist simply says: “The universe just exist”. There is nothing outside the universe, there is no time outside the universe, as a matter of fact these would be meaningless propositions. The concept of causation is only defined within the universe.

Some apologists realize that the “creation” cannot be substantiated, so they change their tune and say: “Everything that has a beginning must have an external cause for its existence” - and proudly point to the “Big Bang” - as the beginning of the universe. Of course they don’t understand that the Big Bang is only the beginning of the current state of the universe. Our current physics is unable to penetrate the first few zillionth of seconds after the singularity “exploded”.

Of course the philosophers are not physicists, they don’t know what they are talking about. Unfortunately for them, the concept of “free will” demolishes their idea that “everything that has a beginning must have an external cause for its existence”. If our “will” is truly “free”, then it cannot be caused. A “caused free will” would be an oxymoron.

There is no “God of the philosophers” that could be substantiated by the hand-waving of some philosophers. Every attempt, starting from Aquinas all the way to Kreeft and beyond suffers from some philosophical problem. Better stay with the “God of the Bible”. It is a great observation: “Everyone believed in God until some philosophers tried to prove it”. 🙂
 
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I’m most curious why anyone would assume that causation, a property of the observable universe, should apply to a region or period before the universe came into existence. Since time is also a property of the universe, I’m not even sure talking about “before” is a sensible concept. Whether your solution is God, or a quantum event at the beginning, or a multiverse where universes spawn like bubbles, you’re always going to reach a point where you have to violate parsimony and insert some kind of entity, whether it’s intelligence or some natural phenomenon not yet observed or postulated.

I don’t view these as solutions at all. I view them as ad hoc declarations meant more to make one comfortable with one’s particular world view. Fo myself, I do imagine the universe as essentially being included, that time is a curve where the closer you get to the beginning (whatever that might be), the curve becomes ever steeper as it approaches zero, but never does reach a start point. That’s sort of the notion of “imaginary time” (which isn’t imaginary, it’s just a mathematical expression). In other words, as the universe is finite but without defined boundary in its spacial dimensions, so to is time.
 
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  1. Are you alleging that all things are equal as to their condition or state of being?
  2. Are you considering the transcendent?
  3. Do you believe in transcendence?
 
Seems to me people are trying to rationalize away what is a rather simple concept. But, those without God will desperately do that to avoid God.
 
What? You mean there’s an Authority higher than the self? Say it ain’t so!

I ponder two points.
  1. If the universe always exited why didn’t we always exist?
  2. If the universe suddenly popped into existence, perhaps non-believer’s fear is that it can also suddenly pop back out of existence. I can see the terror in that view, as they might not get to Disneyland before they cease to exist.
 
po18guy said:
What? You mean there’s an Authority higher than the self? Say it ain’t so!

I ponder two points.
  1. If the universe always exited why didn’t we always exist?
  2. If the universe suddenly popped into existence, perhaps non-believer’s fear is that it can also suddenly pop back out of existence. I can see the terror in that view, as they might not get to Disneyland before they cease to exist.
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I don’t even understand point 1. Even if the Universe is infinite, why should any particular structure in the universe, whether it be a human being or a galaxy, have always existed?

There is at least one way in which the universe could “pop out of existence”, at least in theory: False vacuum decay - Wikipedia

But at any rate, I think you’re ascribing an emotional aspect that doesn’t exist. First of all, “pop into existence” really is a strawman. In the scenario I list above, time is a curve that, the further back you push, the steeper the curve comes (approaching zero), but never quite reaches it. In other words, the universe is finite but without boundary both in the three spacial dimensions and in the dimension of time. In other words, as hard as it is for the human brain to comprehend, there was a beginning of time, but no actual point zero.
 
  1. Because if we did not always exist, the universe (self-contained) must possess some form of creative potential Darwinian evolution seems to infer this.
  2. Emotion? That was a song by DFX2. Rather, reason. Emotion is immature, even false. Something that exists either always existed, introducing the concept of time, or was brought into existence. Spontaneous generation is a concept, but both spiritual and scientific knowledge have come to understand more than Pre-K explanations for existence. Also, how did time come into existence? How does it relate to the universe? Why is it necessary? Why do the cells in our bodies possess programmed life span? Why do we have reproductive systems? Why can humans alone ponder existence? Why don’t the laws of physics ever change, in an ever changing and expanding universe?
Lotsa Q, little A.
 
Lots of unrelated questions. Would you care to ask just one?
 
I am mostly providing points to ponder. However, the “Big Bang” must, by reason and logic, have a “Big Banger.”

No?
 
Po18guy was making a joke in response to my post, nothing more.
 
po18guy said:
I am mostly providing points to ponder. However, the “Big Bang” must, by reason and logic, have a “Big Banger.”

No?
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Well, to answer your question honestly, I’d say “We don’t know.”

To expand on that, once again I will repeat that causation is a feature of our universe. Is it inherited from some previous or larger existence? If yes, then yes, the universe required a cause. If no, if the universe encapsulates causation; in other words, causation is a product of the Big Bang, then the answer is no, the universe does not require some impetus (whether that be a Prime Mover, or some larger reality like the multiverse).

But if we do invoke the notion that the universe required a cause, we then have to postulate that there was something before it (whatever “before” means), or more precisely that time, in some way, was a parameter or dimension before the Big Bang. Then we’re left asking “So, if not the Big Bang, then when?” And to my mind, simply declaring a Creator or a Multiverse or whatever solution you invoke doesn’t need a cause in turn, it sure looks to me like you invite either an infinite series of causes, or just a post hoc declaration with no other reason than to promote one’s pre-existing view.

I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer the question of how the Universe began. I’ve stated my view, that time is a curve that becomes steeper then further back you go, so that while the universe is of finite age, you never quite reach Time Zero, so a sort of infinite description of the finite. But if I go with the multiverse types, then we’re just talking about a multiverse, and where did THAT come from? The same problem comes from invoking God. Just declaring either one of these as being the uncaused cause of the universe strikes me as violating parsimony. I can just counter that the Universe is self-caused, which I have no more evidence for than a theistic or multiverse advocate can provide, but at least I’ve removed the extra entity and taking the attribute “uncaused” and moved it to the one entity I can say exists; the universe itself.
 
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