Why you should think that the First-Cause has to be an Intelligent Cause

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Bradskii said:
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IWantGod:
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Bradskii:
But there is a point, as I explained in the post above, where we must just accept some things as brute facts.
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Not if by the brute fact you mean a thing has no reason to be and just is.

A thing either exists because of its own nature or because of the nature of something else. The reason why metaphysics exists as a method is that physical reality is changing, it is moving from potentiality to actuality. It is comprised of unnecessary beings, things, or states. And it is reasonable to ask why. This is not a scientific question that deals with the particularities of beings, it is a question about the very act of reality in general.

If a thing doesn’t begin to exist and infinitely regresses then for sake of argument perhaps it has no ultimate cause or perhaps we cannot know it’s cause and you can argue for an epistemological-brute fact, which is very different from the absurd claim of an ontological brute fact. (i know an infinite regress is impossible, but that’s beside the point). But when faced with anything that is an actualized potential, we are justified in asking why it has an act of reality. And the only way of explaining the actualization of unnecessary beings is if the source of their existence is a being that is not an actualized potential and necessarily exists. An uncaused-cause.
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Let’s consider water again. Is it in any way valid to ask why two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen combine to make H2O? Not how, but why?

If we go where this leads, then God designed that particular combination to give us water. So is it also then valid to ask if God meant it to be that the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides? Did circles happen without God or did He design them? Would one plus one one make two without God? Does He use the maths that He didn’t create to design the chemistry that He did? Is He contrained by mathematical rules? Or did He arrange it so that one plus one will always make two?
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The Aristotlean approach, well, in this case an Aristotlean-Thomist approach, isn’t that God designed natures ad hoc. Rather, he simply knows natures and chose to create the ones he did. So he didn’t design the nature of a triangle, he simply knew the nature of a triangle. What is true about the nature of a triangle isn’t something God designed, but something he knew. Not as something external to himself, mind, but simply contained in his intellect (God’s intellect is another topic altogether, but as phrased it could be misinterpreted in a way that anthropomorphizes God). So what it is to be a hydrogen atom, what it is to be an oxygen atoms is always true, not designed or put together as an Occasionalist might claim and God decided to create a reality in which these natures actually exist.
 
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I can’t seem to edit my last post but to expand a little on the A-T approach:

A hydrogen atom behaves the way it does because that’s what it is to be a hydrogen atom, not by divine command. Now whether or not a hydrogen atom could exist independently is another matter, but the explanation for why an existing hydrogen atom acts like a hydrogen atom is found as an intrinsic principle of the hydrogen atom, not external to it.
 
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Bradskii said:
Did circles happen without God or did He design them? Would one plus one one make two without God?
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There are some other points you raised that I will come back to. But what you write here I think is very important, and is a metaphysical question that deserves attention.

It seems that you admit or at least think that there are at least some truths that are eternally true, they never change. This is to say that no matter what state physical reality is in a triangle will always have 3 sides; that will never not be true.

Here is my position. Truths are never true without reality. This is to say that if a thing is true, it is only true either because of the nature of reality or because it is something happening in reality.

In other words, if there were absolutely nothing/no-reality, there would be no truth. This leads to a contradiction because it would still be true that there is absolutely nothing which contradicts the fact that there is absolutely nothing. Thus It is meaningless for there to be truth without being. This is one of the reasons why I reject the idea that there could literally be absolutely nothing or no reality.

In relation to your question, I would argue that, without a necessary uncaused cause, there can be no truth. It wouldn’t be true that a triangle has 3 sides if there is no reality for it to be true about. The reason I have come to this conclusion is that…
  1. There is no truth without reality
  2. An actualized potential or possibility cannot be the reason why a triangle has three sides, because the fact that a triangle has three sides is always true or eternally true and therefore can’t be said to be true because of that which begins to exist or becomes actual. In other words, contingent beings are not the reason why there is such a thing as eternal truths.
Therefore the reason a triangle has 3 sides must be true because of the nature of that which necessarily exists. Something that is not changing. Something that is not itself comprised of actualized potentiality, emergent properties, or possible states. It is pure-actuality. This is what we call the uncaused-caused..

So, to answer your question, eternal truths are not created, but it is also true that they only exist because of the nature of the uncaused-cause.
 
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o_mlly said:
Has anyone observed the unintelligent being beget an intelligence being?
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Yes. That can happen. For example, if the two parents are not very intelligent but their children are intelligent, and their grandchildren even more intelligent.
 
lisaandlena said:
it’s obvious that you don’t understand metaphysics.
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Do you understand physics or biology or chemistry or mathematics? Do you understand political science or psychology or human nutrition? If you understand any one of these, please let us know which one it is, because I will have a question for you in that area.
 
lisaandlena said:
anyone who truly understands metaphysics would understand that metaphysics and alchemy are in essence the same thing.
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Since you understand metaphysics and metaphysics and alchemy are the same thing, can you tell us the secret of how to turn lead into gold?
 
Bradskii said:
This universe came into existence as we know it at the moment of the Big Bang. Period.
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I am not sure I agree with the Period part because the hypothesis that this universe as we know it came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang raises a lot of questions.
 
IWantGod said:
square-triangles can’t exist
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That is going to depend on the definition. Many people use the term square triangle to denote a right triangle. And using that definition, square triangles exist in Euclidean geometry.
 
IWantGod said:
physical reality cannot be both the effect and the cause of its self. Physical reality cannot be both necessarily real and have unrealized potential at the same time. It can’t be both necessary and changing.
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I don’t see this. Holy Scripture tells us that God changes. And the Catholic believes that God came down from heaven and that God responds to our prayers. How can God change and be necessary ?
 
AlNg said:
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Wesrock:
we all fall into the same type of monotheism
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No. Jews and Muslims do not believe that their understanding of monotheism is the same as Catholics who believe in three Persons in one God.
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Again, I was speaking more generally insofar as we understand what we mean by God to be the First Principle of reality, and even then in such a way in which we are not monists, as Hinduism is.
 
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@AlNg

Just for contrast, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in God as the First Principle.

Neither would Hellenes have professed Zeus as the First Principle or Romans Jupiter as the First Principle.
 
AlNg said:
That is going to depend on the definition. Many people use the term square triangle to denote a right triangle.
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Well, then I don’t mean a right-triangle. Just the ordinary triangle that everyone understands and knows.
AlNg said:
I don’t see this. Holy Scripture tells us that God changes.
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The question of whether the God of philosophy and the God of religion are one and the same is an interesting topic for another thread. It is not relevant to whether or not my argument is correct. That being said, the Catholic church accepts the God of philosophy as defined by Aquinas. Holy scripture doesn’t tell us that God changes in a metaphysical sense (his nature and being), but God’s effects (in comparison to God’s eternal act) in the world certainly occurs in temporal succession.
 
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AlNg said:
How can God change and be necessary ?
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What i will say is this. If God is necessary and is the foundation of all potential possibilities, and if the universe is caused to exist and is sustained in existence by Gods unchanging and eternal will, then it makes perfect sense that creation conforms to God’s eternal will whenever it is appropriate. This existential-conformity appears to us in temporal succession. But it is not God’s eternal will that is changing or moving in temporal succession, it is the universe that is changing in relation to God’s eternal presence. So the burning bush and the words of God being expressed have a temporal succession, but that is an instance where the universe is actualizing God’s eternal will. it is not God’s will that is changing. And so too has something similar occurred with Jesus Christ who has both an eternal unchanging divine nature and a created nature that moves and changes within the universe.

There is no inherent contradiction with the idea of God being unchanging and yet at the same time causing an effect that has a temporal succession in the universe.
 
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Wesrock said:
we understand what we mean by God to be the First Principle of reality,
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Wesrock:
we all fall into the same type of monotheism

Would the Father be the first Principle and the Son is not the first Principle? Or would there be two first Principles, the Father and the Son? And then there is also the Holy Spirit? Would that be a third First Principle? In Judaism, you have only one First Principle, so how can the monotheism be of the same type with Christianity?
 
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AlNg said:
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Wesrock:
we understand what we mean by God to be the First Principle of reality,
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Wesrock:
we all fall into the same type of monotheism

Would the Father be the first Principle and the Son is not the first Principle? Or would there be two first Principles, the Father and the Son? And then there is also the Holy Spirit? Would that be a third First Principle?
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Why are you speaking of God as three beings? Ontologically, God is one nature, one essence, one Principle.
 
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