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YosefYosep
Guest
To me there is no doubt that there is a first cause instead of an infinite regress, but why does this cause have to be an intelligent, personal, and loving God?
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C
Classicist
Guest
The Universe is the only potentially-eternal impersonal force we know of. Were it the First Cause, however, nothing would have ever developed. Eternity is lack of time; since time measures changes in space, eternity must be infinite (without measurement, quantity, or variation). An infinite, eternal, but impersonal first cause would literally just be Nothing.
If the First Cause were merely an impersonal force, Infinity & Eternity would have remained a uniform Nothingness. Change from Nothing to Something automatically implies and necessitates a choice or decision. Were the “Impersonal Force” actually eternal, it would be eternally at its most basic state of being: without any multiplicity of galaxies, stars, or life ever developing.
Personality and intelligence are implied by Natural Logic in this case; whether this Necessary Being is Loving is a thing of Faith - someone actually has to make the claim that this Being is loving before we can believe that. Here is a clear distinction between the mutually-reliant concepts of Faith & Reason.
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jonathan_hili
Guest
It doesn’t.
But it does seem to necessitate having certain attributes, such as:
(i) omnipotence (it seems to be a truism that an effect cannot be greater than its cause - now the effect is the existence of everything; therefore, the cause must be greater than the existence of, or perhaps even, everything, which would suggest omnipotence);
(ii) being uncaused (the first cause itself, since there is no infinite regress, must be uncaused);
(iii) personal or a mind (this seems necessary because the universe has not always existed - if the first cause were a law of some kind or impersonal force without volition, then it would not change for all eternity, and so the universe would also have existed for all eternity; since it did not, it suggests that the first cause decided at some point to cause the universe to be); and
(iv) outside of time (or else the universe would have existed for all eternity, and the first cause would be a logical rather than temporal cause).
There may be more attributes, but am a bit too tired to think right now.
But it does seem to necessitate having certain attributes, such as:
(i) omnipotence (it seems to be a truism that an effect cannot be greater than its cause - now the effect is the existence of everything; therefore, the cause must be greater than the existence of, or perhaps even, everything, which would suggest omnipotence);
(ii) being uncaused (the first cause itself, since there is no infinite regress, must be uncaused);
(iii) personal or a mind (this seems necessary because the universe has not always existed - if the first cause were a law of some kind or impersonal force without volition, then it would not change for all eternity, and so the universe would also have existed for all eternity; since it did not, it suggests that the first cause decided at some point to cause the universe to be); and
(iv) outside of time (or else the universe would have existed for all eternity, and the first cause would be a logical rather than temporal cause).
There may be more attributes, but am a bit too tired to think right now.
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YosefYosep
Guest
I’m going to play the atheist here. If God is timeless then how did he make the decision to bring the universe into existence? Wouldn’t the action of cause require time? In God’s case, wouldn’t bringing something into existence be a change, which requires time?
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Classicist
Guest
God must exist in a Single Eternal Moment, as it were. It is that One Instant in which He exists, plans creation, creates, and finishes all things. Within that single fact of His divine eternity, the Fall of man, the giving of the Law, the incarnation of the Word, the death of Christ, the resurrection, the Ascension, and the Last Judgment are all present to God at once. It is the Great Mystery, in my opinion.
We can only pry so far.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Yosef
**I’m going to play the atheist here. If God is timeless then how did he make the decision to bring the universe into existence? Wouldn’t the action of cause require time? In God’s case, wouldn’t bringing something into existence be a change, which requires time? **
God is changeless, by definition. God cannot be better than, or lesser than, God. It’s not as if God said one day, “I think I will create a universe.” There is no “one day” in God. That is a purely human conception of God which is conditioned by the fact that we exist in time and so cannot imagine God existing except by the same dimension of time as our own. And so, when we hear it said in Genesis that there were six days of creation, and on the seventh day God rested, we must think again of God acting in human time.
**I’m going to play the atheist here. If God is timeless then how did he make the decision to bring the universe into existence? Wouldn’t the action of cause require time? In God’s case, wouldn’t bringing something into existence be a change, which requires time? **
God is changeless, by definition. God cannot be better than, or lesser than, God. It’s not as if God said one day, “I think I will create a universe.” There is no “one day” in God. That is a purely human conception of God which is conditioned by the fact that we exist in time and so cannot imagine God existing except by the same dimension of time as our own. And so, when we hear it said in Genesis that there were six days of creation, and on the seventh day God rested, we must think again of God acting in human time.
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Monte_RCMS
Guest
… well, the discussion was helped by “The Burning Bush”. Sort of answered a lot of open questions …
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TomD123
Guest
It doesn’t require time. The universe marks the beginning of time so there is no “before the universe” where one day God decided to create. God’s decision to create is part of the same eternal moment as is creation itself.
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jonathan_hili
Guest
That’s a great question and one I used to wrestle with too.
However, that’s because we perceive God as mind thinking in time, that is, consequentially: thought A followed by thought B followed by thought C… in a temporal, not only a logical sequence. However, as God is mind outside of time, all these thoughts are concurrent. If you wanted to speak temporally, God thinks them all at once (though technically this would be incorrect). Therefore, God’s decision to bring the universe into existence was from all eternity.
Would the action of cause require time? I don’t see why. I mean, it would require logical precedence but not, as far as I can see, temporal precedence. Can you explain a bit more of what you mean here, Yosef?
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DrTaffy
Guest
I don’t think I agree. Consider an avalanche being started by a carelessly dropped pebble, or a forest fire by one small spark.
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jonathan_hili
Guest
But consider what is being caused here.
A forest fire isn’t just caused by a small spark, but by the spark and flammable material, without which there would be no fire. The potential for the fire is in the spark and flammable material.
Likewise, an avalanche isn’t just caused by a pebble, but by sound reverberations that result in the loosening of ice and snow.
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tonyrey
Guest
In other words it is caused by the laws of nature which also require explanation. Why do they correspond so precisely to the conditions necessary for life and rational existence? Chance is a hopelessly inadequate explanation of the immense value, beauty and significance of the universe and its inhabitants.
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jonathan_hili
Guest
Yes, that is very true.
But not really what I mean, Tony.
I meant that even when you consider an avalanche being caused by a dropping pebble. If it was solely a dropping pebble, it would seem that indeed the effect is greater than the cause. In reality, however, the cause of the avalanche is a host of activities, including a particular range of acoustic power.
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tonyrey
Guest
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Foofaraw
Guest
It is a tradition. Way back when, some early theologian got the notion that a single god who incorporated all the properties of the lesser gods (sun god, rain god, fertility god, etc.) into a single entity would be a bigger and more powerful god than those of competing religions.
This is based upon a principle built into the human psyche, the desire to have the grandest house on the block or the largest mud hut in the village. The idea of a single, large god was inevitably accepted, although it is known that the Hebrews hedged their bets by paying some attention to minor gods.
Inevitably, the single but limited god of the early Hebrews was morphed (thanks to Augustine and Aquinas) into the modern omnipotent, omniscient God of most monotheistic religions, replete with the inevitable contradictions.
Somewhere along the philosophical pathway the principle of “Occam’s Razor” came into power. It stated that the simplest possible hypothesis was almost certain to be the best. And what could be simpler than a single God?
Thus the idea of a single all-powerful God became set by philosophical principle as well as tradition.
So powerful is this principle/tradition that the universe began with a single all-encompassing entity that science adopted it in their Big Bang theory. The Bang’s precursor is an all-powerful, all-knowing, and mysterious entity in its own right, coming into existence without cause (like God) and forming the universe without any known or even well-guessed-at cause (just like God).
Simpler and more elegant theories of the beginning have been proposed, right here on CAF. My favorite, as I mentioned elsewhere, is Digital Universe, Analog Soul, the book that led me to this little forum. It is an entertaining and non-PC little book that is accessible to any open-minded and clear-thinking person, despite its wealth of unique theological and scientific concepts. .
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jonathan_hili
Guest
jonathan_hili;10620928:
In other words it is caused by the laws of nature which also require explanation. Why do they correspond so precisely to the conditions necessary for life and rational existence? Chance is a hopelessly inadequate explanation of the immense value, beauty and significance of the universe and its inhabitants.
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DrTaffy
Guest
The potential is in the fuel(wood), oxidising agent (air) and the ignition source (spark) and other issues such as ambient temperature, wind and humidity - where the fuel and air have been around for a while the cause is the spark, alone, the final event that kicks off the effect.
The potential includes far more than the cause, but where the potential exists a tiny cause can have a vast effect. The cause is the thing (allegedly) proven by arguments for a ‘first cause’, potential can have existed eternally without need for an eternal chain of cause and effect and the problems (allegedly) associated with that.
Differentiating potential from triggering cause is worthwhile if not essential
That’s just quibbling about where you draw the line. The pebble colliding with the snow causes a chain reaction (including sound reverberations, possibly but not necessarily) resulting in an avalanche.
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DrTaffy
Guest
Can you prove that these exact conditions are “necessary for life and rational existence”? i.e. that no other conditions would allow for any form of life and rational existence, not just life and rational existence as we know it?
This would seem to presuppose knowing both all possible forms of life and rational existence but all possible combinations of conditions in other possible universes and having a Grand Unified Theory of Everything that perfectly describes not only the conditions in our universe but all those other possible universes, before you can even begin calculating what proportion of potential universes could support life and rational existence.
Also, given implications from the theory formerly known as string theory that the universe can switch from one potential state to another over time, and empirical evidence that conditions vary over space, is it not reasonable to assume that life only exists in those regions of space time where life can exist? Would you also declare the fact that icicles only form on cold days when they won’t melt as proof that the ice-god exists and directs the formation of ice?
For that matter, what conditions are necesary for a sentient omnipotent benevolent god to pop into existence, uncaused, with no chain of evolution (or equivalent) to explain any complexity?
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
St. Thomas in the Summa Theologiae, Part 1, ques 3 and following shows that the First Cause is Pure Act, Unchangeable and Unchanging. Since there can only be one such being ( more than one being cannot be Pure Act) and since this being is the cause of all that exists, is the cause of all motion and change, and directs all things to their proper end, this being cannot be a part of a changing, contingent universe but exists outside of it. This being ,since it is Pure Act and Unchangeable and Unchanging and since it is the First Cause as described, must be eternal and infinite in power and Intelligence and has the Will to do what he wishes. This Being, Christians rightly call God. Linus2nd
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tonyrey
Guest
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