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

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We can be more particular in an analysis of the mind, but as a high level statement, the human mind’s purpose is to apprehend truth. This doesn’t mean it is always used to convey objective or absolute truth to others, or that it always apprehends truth in its totality or one hundred percent correctly. And sometimes the information the mind has to pull from is bad or incomplete due to deficient brain processes. I am not denying that these things occur in nature. But the mind perceives/abstracts what it can about the truth of reality from sensory data, it makes connections between various particulars, abstracts these to universal concepts, contemplates what it believes it knows, is able to formulate these into language so that these concepts can be communicated to others. Maybe it’s “truth as an individual sees it” or attempting to apprehend truth from bad information it’s receiving, that doesn’t undermine the point.

Anyway, something which is the reality of all these truths in itself is, in some analogous sense, like a human mind. Or maybe it could be said that the human mind, which is itself one of the things caused by it, is a limited imitation of it.
 
It’s just hard to think of something so abstract and immutable as also being personal and loving. I find these arguments and other traditional ones (that lead to divine simplicity and immutability) and Revelation (Scripture, Jesus) both convincing, and yet they seem hard to mesh together.

Not that one source contradicts the other — it’s more a limitation in my imagination. When I’m in a “philosophical mood,” my imagination doesn’t entertain the Trinity or Jesus or the Holy Spirit in a way that it does when, say, I’m praying. You know what I mean?
 
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I do. Though I don’t think the gap between what we can apprehend of God through natural philosophy and what has been revealed through revelation are unbridgeable, and I think once a person does reconcile these two conceptions in their mind as being harmonious and complementary, it can lead to a deepening of faith and wonder. But certainly reading and learning and contemplating it can at times see very distant and clinical.
 
Like take prayer (of the petition sort). I often wonder if it makes sense to pray for God to DO something. He knows what I need from all eternity. Does he need me to tell him? Does it matter to ask? He can’t change his mind.

These kinds of thoughts…
 
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catholic1seeks said:
Like take prayer (of the petition sort). I often wonder if it makes sense to pray for God to DO something. He knows what I need from all eternity. Does he need me to tell him? Does it matter to ask? He can’t change his mind.

These kinds of thoughts…
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Trying to phrase this into words, but I see prayer as important, that in God’s act to create (ongoing) reality he left it open to our prayers and petitions because he wishes to associate his act of creation with us, that what we do or don’t do all belongs as knowledge within him, and that his act is tuned accordingly. God had no need to associate with us in this way, but he choose to, and so our prayers and personal disposition are accounted for in his immutable act. They are not after the act attempting to ask God to change it, but belong to it.
 
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Wesrock said:
Says the person who for at least a year has said knowledge must have form?
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What I am saying is that the truth value of 1+1=2 does not change if there is anyone to know it or not. The knowledge of 1+1=2 however requires a form owned by the knower.
 
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It is meaningless to talk about a point before Big Bang since there was no time and space before it. So one needs to focus on point of Big Bang. Whatever was there, first cause, at the point caused the universe. Now think of unstable stuff, as an example, which could exist as first cause. It was not caused by anything as first cause is believed to be uncaused. It was unstable so it just start to change to all possible forms. The very fact that it was unstable means that it doesn’t need any intention to change.
 
Wesrock said:
Blah blah blah blah blah blah, and therefore there must be one thing that is not itself caused.
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I suppose it is possible that a one thing that is not caused is the universe itself. The universe is with us yesterday, today and tomorrow.
 
Things that change are conditioned by time, but God cannot be conditioned by anything, since he is the first principle and ultimate reality. To say he could change would make him contingent, and time cannot go on in the infinite past. An infinite is unachievable.
 
No it’s not speculation. To say an infinite sequence exists would mean that the unachievable is achievable. That is a contradiction.

 
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catholic1seeks said:
To say an infinite sequence exists would mean that the unachievable is achievable.
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That is not evident. It has nothing to do with achieving anything. We know by our experience that there was a yesterday, a today, and there will be a tomorrow. That has been true as long as anyone has lived. Questions on achievablity are not relevant and in any case are unverifiable. As such, they are not convincing.
 
The Bible says that God did change His mind.
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The Bible also says:
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:17
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The Bible says God is spirit in one place, and in another it says he walked in the garden (Genesis).

The Bible says a lot of things, and we can’t read it straight through with a single lens on.
 
Time is sequential. Wherever there is change, there is in some sense time.

An infinite sequence of time is the same thing as saying an unachievable sequence of time.

If past time is infinite, then today would never exist.
 
In what it says, yes.

In what it teaches, no.

Again, the Bible mentions God’s body parts in several places in the OT. But we know that God does not have a body (aside from Jesus). We have to get beyond what the Bible merely says to what it is teaching.
 
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Many things are unachievable but still are real. For example, it is unachievable for me to go back in time and listen to the Gettysburg address of President Lincoln. Nevertheless, it was a real event. Something that really happened.
 
catholic1seeks said:
In what it says, yes.
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If you are explaining a concept to a class, is it better to explain it in a consistent, clear and precise manner that is not contradictory, or is it better to confuse the class by contradicting yourself and contradicting your own explanation?
 
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