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

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It’s still a good analogy for most people. If it’s good enough for Peter Kreeft… I don’t personally think that an athiestic view of the world adequately explains the world anymore than a tornado going through a junk yard explains a 747. And Evolution alone is not enough to explain everything. Do you believe that given enough time the tornado could eventually produce a 747? Is Evolution a magic bullet that explains how we can get more out of a system than is put into it? How you can get intelligence from non-intelligence?
 
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lisaandlena said:
you believe that you’re the product of an intelligent designer, so how can I possibly trust that you’ll come up with any meaningful conclusions?
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Wouldn’t you trust to fly in a 747 more that was assembled by a team of highly intelligent engineers rather than randomly by some tornado?
 
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If you are ignorant of the subject to such a degree that you can compare the 747/tornado scenario to how evolution works, then I for one don’t have the time or the inclination to educate you.
 
That’s not an answer that sheds any light on the subject. Perhaps the information that you have is misinformation. You haven’t shown anything other than your own sense of superiority. I studied evolution years ago and I think I understand it better than most people. You don’t have to explain it to me. Perhaps I understand it better than you think? . I am only saying I do not think it adequately explains everything apart from an intelligent creator. That is not ignorance but an informed position.

An athiestic evolution takes for granted certain metaphysical principles. God is the ground of the world being intelligible.

If you think of evolution as kind of system, how can you have more in the output of that system than in the (name removed by moderator)ut? How can any system have more in the output than the (name removed by moderator)ut? Can intelligence come from non-intelligence? That is basically saying you can get more out of the system than what is put into it.
 
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I can only go by what you post. And if you want to compare evolution to a hurricane and a plane, then you either have no grasp of the basics of the subject at all (and I mean that quite literally) or you are posting something you know to be nonsense. There is no third option.

And by the way, you need to read up on the second law of thermodynamics as well.
 
Aside from the insults I think what you are implying is that Evolution is a more an intelligent system than a tornado. Let’s agree on that for the sake of argument. But where does this intelligent system come from in the first place? At some point you have to appeal to random chance. And then it starts to look more like the tornado example. Unless you are saying that it is predetermined by the nature of things to have intelligent people walking around. And if you are saying that then it starts to look a lot like design.
 
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No, it’s not an intelligent system, so we don’t agree on that. And yes, it does start to look a lot like design so we DO agree on that.
 
@Wesrock Thanks for starting this thread. I find this subject to be the real issue. It’s easy to establish a first cause, and it’s also straightforward to show that this first cause is outside space and time (the Universe). But the central issue regarding God is if this first cause is intelligent, is a mind, and is therefore personal, etc.
But this is most closely analogous with the way concepts and relationships between concepts exist as thoughts in a mind, as knowledge. Therefore, God is something analogous to a mind or an intelligence that has (or is) knowledge. And if it knows all relationships between things that have been, are, or can be, it is what we call omniscient.
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I find this argument compelling, but I wonder if it presumes that the mind and intelligence is trans-physical. That is, we say the First Cause must either be material/physical, or abstract, or trans-physical/spiritual. It cannot be the former two, so we say it must be the latter. But that’s because we go into the conversation thinking that spiritual realities like the mind exist.

So how do we first prove that the mind and intelligence is trans-physical and not composed of parts?
 
IWantGod started the thread, but that is my post you quoted.

What is established by the cosmological arguments is that God is metaphysically simple, which rules out being made up of matter. The argument for His intelligence from the Principle of Proportionate Causality establishes that the things He effects or could effect are present in Him virtually (as I described in Post 18). It concludes that this is most closely analogous to the way a human mind has knowledge. So we establish that God has knowledge and is immaterial without needing to make any assumptions first about whether a mind is physical or not. That it such a thing must be possible has been established by the prior arguments.

I suppose we could have a separate thread regarding the immateriality and composition of the human mind. Keep in mind, though, that what we’ve said about God is not that He has a human-like mind, only that the closest analogue within our experience is a mind.
 
I suppose we could have a separate thread regarding the immateriality and composition of the human mind. Keep in mind, though, that what we’ve said about God is not that He has a human-like mind, only that the closest analogue within our experience is a mind.
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I think this is important to stress. Some people seem to talk about God as if he’s just a bigger version of us, like the biggest kind of “Person.” And so, according to this thinking, really our minds, angelic minds, and his Mind are just a matter of degree. But that is false as you say: We should rather mean that God has (is) what is analogous to intelligence and mind in a human person.

In this way, do you think it would be fair to say that, even if the human mind is totally physical-based, that would not affect the notion that God, the Simple Being, is yet still analogous to a mind?
 
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Or rather “we” (our minds )are an analogous representation of God.
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Hmmm, I guess it depends on what is being said. For when we say God is analogous to human intelligence/mind, we are starting with what we know: our own mind and intelligence, and in doing so we are acknowledging that those terms are used for God in a way we don’t experience or fully understand.

But perhaps I could agree with the other way around if one were trying to make an illustration of, say, the immateriality of the mind.
 
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catholic1seeks said:
But perhaps I could agree with the other way around if one were trying to make an illustration of, say, the immateriality of the mind.
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I mean it in the sense that God is the truest mind because his mind is a natural expression of that which is the most fundamental reality, and we are living finite artificial analogies of that which is most fundamental. It is not he who has a likeness to us, but rather it is we who have a likeness to him, we are made in his image.
 
Negative, soldier. That might interfere with my golfing schedule.
 
If you say that Evolution is a system where it is inevitable that there will eventually be intelligent life forms then it is an intelligent system. But if you say it is not inevitable that there will be intelligent life then there could have been other possibilities which would imply random chance, if you are assuming there is no intelligent designer. And if it is random chance then the probability is so low of our world becoming a reality that it is like the probability of a tornado assembling a 747.
 
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