Uncaused first cause

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Ya, but we often find little Catholicism. Topics like this tend to be dominated by those not so in conformity with the Church and/or, those with no training in philosophy (or who can think philosophically) and thus muddy the waters so much that anyone wanting the true will only be confused. Confusion is not of God.

I find more damage than good and have had to counsel with some of those damaged by this confusion.
 
BroIgnatius said:
and thus muddy the waters so much that anyone wanting the true will only be confused. Confusion is not of God.
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No, but Jesus Himself “muddied the waters” and used the mud to heal a person. If stomping through the mud caused someone to go elsewhere for clarification, and get it (!), then it’s all good… no?
 
Jesus was about clarity not muddy waters. Mud to heal a person is not what is being discussed here, and you know it.
 
BroIgnatius said:
Jesus was about clarity not muddy waters.
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He was… but He also recognized that His appearance and message would lead to division rather than unity. If “father against son” isn’t about muddied waters, I don’t know what is.

And, our job – as I see it – is to be willing to get down in the mud and help others out of it. If that’s not your calling, then I understand why you want to escape the mud pit for the safety of the sidelines. 😉
 
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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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Everything we see is an effect from its cause. Follow cause back to it’s ultimate source, we have the uncaused cause…God… which for us, is understood through Divine revelation & faith. Mysteries don’t necessarily mean we can’t explain them. We just can’t explain them perfectly and fully. Otherwise they aren’t a mystery any longer.
 
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Gorgias said:
What makes it difficult for me to wrap my head around the non-believer’s answer is that I can justify God’s eternal existence on His deity – which presumes his conscious and personal existence. How can we say the same thing about ‘energy’ or simple ‘matter’?
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The word “eternal” is meaningless. Let me repeat: “in your eye God is the existential primary, or a brute fact, which needs no explanation (in other words the PSR is NOT universal)”. The atheist says the same thing about the Universe. By the way, the Universe is NOT an object, it is a collection of objects.

By the way, from the hypothesis that God created the Universe, the only logical corollary is that he was able to do it. Nothing else follows. Literally nothing else. No omnimax attributes, for example. Not even that God wanted to create it. The Universe could be just the byproduct of an involuntary act, like a “Godly sneeze”.

That is one of the reasons why the so-called “God of the Philosophers” (if it could be established at all), could never lead to the “God of the Bible”. At best it could lead to a faceless deistic god.
Gorgias said:
Ahh… but there’s the rub: who gets to rule on what’s a ‘meaningless’ question?
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Everyone does it for themselves.
Gorgias said:
No, I’m not playing games. You claimed that your free will pre-existed your existence, didn’t you? Or did I misunderstand what you were asserting?
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Yes, you misunderstood. Of course I do not claim that my “free will” (if exists at all) pre-existed my existence. That would be totally irrational. When I say that “free will” is uncaused I only mean that my decisions (based upon my free will) are not determined by any external factor. The external factors may influence my decision, but they do not determine it. Or in other words, every instance of a “freely made decision” is the starting point of a new “causal chain”.
 
Sophia said:
By the way, the Universe is NOT an object, it is a collection of objects.
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Exactly the reason I think it must have been created and not just simply always existed.
Sophia said:
That is one of the reasons why the so-called “God of the Philosophers” (if it could be established at all), could never lead to the “God of the Bible”. At best it could lead to a faceless deistic god.
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True, that is why we need revelation.
 
Elf01 said:
Exactly the reason I think it must have been created and not just simply always existed.
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I don’t think so. Impasse?
Elf01 said:
True, that is why we need revelation.
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Ah the “revelation”. What form does a true revelation take place? I could imagine only one method: A personal manifestation by God, in all his splendor, visible to everyone. Having a sufficiently long conversation with every individual - something like an “extended doubting Thomas presentation”. Submitting to every test we can devise to separate the real God from an impostor (like Satan).

Everything else could be misunderstood, misinterpreted.
 
Why must existence not itself be eternal and self-sufficient? I think the arguments and defenses offered by Prof. Peter Kreefts have a narrow-view of what death is and that it undermines his arguments in this one video.

Given the law that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it is highly likely that matter itself could be eternal and self-sufficient. The changes in frequencies, energy and connections of matter fluctuate, but who is to say that it cannot fluctuate in a way that is eternal nor self-sufficient? Why must we assume that material existence must be caused by a “eternal, good and self-sufficient” existence that wasn’t caused. It sounds like solving the problem with the same solution and tagging on a rule to God that could just as easily be tagged on to matter.

Explanation: “Everything that changes needs a cause” < God is used as a placeholder to initiate “change” by being given the exception that he is unchanging, able to experience and exist, but not be changed. In this how can existence be separated from change? Furthermore, how come God is the exception to change and not matter? We think of matter as something that “changes,” but what if that was only because our perception of change was limited to our individual experience of it rather than the entire “objective” experience of it?

I’m a bit rusty at this, let me know if that made sense.
 
I think the arguments and defenses offered by Prof. Peter Kreefts have a
narrow-view of what death is and that it undermines his arguments in
this one video.
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You are therefore limited by your thoughts.
 
mdc said:
Why must we assume that material existence must be caused by a “eternal, good and self-sufficient” existence that wasn’t caused.
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That’s not a case of special pleading, it’s the rational outcome of airtight logical syllogisms, as defended by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Boethius, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Leibniz, and friends. If you don’t like Professor Kreeft (whom I greatly respect, but does falls under the category of ‘pop philosophy’) then try taking up some of the serious literature. You totally misunderstand the argument. “God” is not a placeholder, or a premise, he is a conclusion.

I’m going to recommend a few books for, essentially, everyone in this thread. They’re relatively basic introductions to the classical theist tradition, but totally invaluable nevertheless.

“Five Proofs of the Existence of God” by Dr. Edward Feser
Offers five logical proofs based on arguments made by Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, and Leibniz. This is probably the best book of natural theology written in the last 15 years.

“Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide” by Dr. Edward Feser
This book gives an overview of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, going deeply into his famous “Five Ways” (not to be confused with the Five Proofs discussed previously). A good companion text might be Feser’s “Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction”

“The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss” by Dr. David Bentley Hart
As Hart is an Eastern Orthodox philosopher and theologian, this work differs considerably from that of the Neoscholastic Ed Feser. However, I think it is invaluable for anyone who wants to learn what serious believers mean by “God” in the most general sense. He draws upon various Hindu, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions to produce this masterpiece. It’s very dense (in keeping with Hart’s style) yet eloquent, so get out a fine liqueur and go page by page.
 
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