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

[IWantGod]

Catholic churches are beings which exist. They ought to exist since they are a means to propagate the Catholic faith. However, they are not existentially necessary since they did not exist 3000 years ago.

What church buildings are made of do not exist necessarily i agree. Whether or not the “catholic faith”, that which people hold to be true, is something that should necessarily exist (whatever that means) is irrelevant to the OP. Of course what Catholics hold to be true is by faith thought to be true. Whether or not churches should have always existed is really a theological matter and has nothing to do with demonstrating whether or not a being necessarily exist and is intelligent. In other-words what you have asserted does not in anyway refute the idea that an existentially necessary being must exist in-order to explain the existence of that which is not existentially necessary.

 

[IWantGod]

The OP mentions the First Cause. I don’t see why there cannot be more than one First Cause each one containing within herself the reason for her existence.

The purpose of the Op is to demonstrate the idea that fundamental reality, necessary reality, is an intelligent cause of that which does not exist necessarily. There are arguments as to why there cannot be more than one necessary uncaused-cause. But it’s besides the point. Whatever is unnecessary must have been intelligently caused into existence and sustained in existence by that which necessarily exists; this is the point of the argument.

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:

I would just say,

Without God creating everything that is, in the beginning, there would be no beginning, there would be NOTHING. There would remain NOTHING. NOTHING on its own is NOTHING. NOTHING can create. NOTHING remains NOTHING

You and i both know this is true, the challenge is demonstrating this to the unbeliever. This can be frustrating as they tend to either ignore what has been demonstrated or they lack a basic understanding of how to reason.

Here’s the answer. Jesus knows in advance who doesn’t believe

AND Even God can’t convince the unbeliever. Because He won’t force anyone to believe. He won’t violate free will which He gave all of us. Free will is what makes us culpable.

Imaging His own disciples, face to face with the one who spoke in the beginning and everything that is came into existence, denied to His face His teaching (on the Eucharist). They saw His miracles. Yet they wouldn’t believe. One of the scariest passages in scripture IMO is that Jesus let them go.

 

[AlNg]

Whatever is unnecessary

What is necessary and what is not necessary is oftentimes a matter of opinion which will vary from one philosopher to another.

Whether or not the “catholic faith”, that which people hold to be true, is something that should necessarily exist

That is beside the point of whether or not the Catholic church buildings ought to exist. You are bringing up a different issue of necessity which is not the same as ought-ness.

 

[AlNg]

necessary reality, is an intelligent cause

What is meant by an intelligent cause. It is a matter of opinion as to whether or not Trump is intelligent and whether or not his decisions are intelligent. Similarly, intelligence is a dubious and nebulous quantity with no certain agreed upon definition.

 

[IWantGod]

What is necessary and what is not necessary is oftentimes a matter of opinion which will vary from one philosopher to another.

Perhaps. But the fact an existentially necessary being or nature does not in any way begin to exist or begin to be actual is true nonetheless. That which necessarily exists does not begin to exist or transform into a being that is not necessary because that would violate the principle of non-contradiction in much the same way that the idea of all reality beginning to exist would lead to an irrecoverable contradiction…

 

[AlNg]

That which necessarily exists does not begin to exist or transform into a being that is not necessary because that would violate the principle of non-contradiction

There is no violation of the principle of non-contradiction to say that a being has one property at one certain point in time and it has a different property at another point in time. It is only a violation if you have the contradiction at the same point in time and in the same manner. It is necessary for me to take the medication when I am sick, but it is not necessary for me to take the medication when I am well. And there is no contradiction. So what is necessary at one point in time can be transformed into what is not necessary at a different point in time and vice versa.

 

[Bradskii]

Need ten charachters to delete post.

 

[steve-b]

IWantGod:

necessary reality, is an intelligent cause

What is meant by an intelligent cause. It is a matter of opinion as to whether or not Trump is intelligent and whether or not his decisions are intelligent.

AINg,

well lets see

He’s a

1. self made billionaire X10.
2. Graduate of Wharton business school with top honors.
3. He beat 16 top Republicans for the party nominee for president,
4. never being in politics before, and at 71 yrs old, won the presidency with overwhelming vote totals of the electoral college.
5. In his first 500 days in office, in spite of the massive obstruction by the Democratic party, he has accomplished more than any president that has held that office.

Not bad! I could go on and on but it’s off topic. As for me, I’m looking forward to what the future brings.

Oh BTW here is what God thinks of the left

Now back to the topic

 

[IWantGod]

There is no violation of the principle of non-contradiction to say that a being has one property at one certain point in time and it has a different property at another point in time.

For something that is not existentially necessary i agree. However that which is only potentially real or actual cannot be considered necessarily real or necessarily actual. Only an unreasonable person or somebody in denial would consider it as such. If a things existence is necessary then it’s existence cannot ever be considered not necessary or not actual. That which is existentially necessary in the context of a thing having an “act of existing” has never “not existed” and will never not exist. To claim otherwise is to violate the principle of non-contradiction.

 

[AlNg]

He’s a

1. self made billionaire X10.
2. Graduate of Wharton business school with top honors.
3. He beat 16 top Republicans for the party nominee for president,
4. never being in politics before, and at 71 yrs old, won the presidency with overwhelming vote totals of the electoral college.
5. In his first 500 days in office, in spite of the massive obstruction by the Democratic party, he has accomplished more than any president that has held that office.

Not bad! I could go on

Exactly.right for your opinion. However articles on CNN and the NY Times imply he is pretty dumb. IOW, intelligence is not a well defined concept. And people have greatly different opinions on it.

but it’s off topic

If the claim is that the First Cause is intelligent you need to have a well defined concept of intelligence that everyone can agree on.

 

[AlNg]

Need ten charachters to delete post.

I am not sure I understand the idea here?

 

[AlNg]

The first cause of an event may be some human being. For example, if you have free will, then you or your free will is the ultimate and first cause of your choice. OTOH, if what you choose to do is caused by events outside of you, then you have no free will, which is repugnant. So, there are many first causes, and it is therefore wrong to refer to THE First Cause as was done in the title to the thread.

 

[Benadam]

Here’s some stop press news: Your distant ancestors were as dumb as a box of rocks. They got by by instinct and good fortune. But you (presumably) are not. Now I wonder how in the world that happened. Maybe, and I’m just pulling this out of thin air, maybe the intelligence evolved.

If evolved, intelligence leaped from animal consciousness, over a chasm and landed on another plane of existence. There is a progression in animals as it pertains to instinct and consciousness. As it pertains to instinct, humans have what the animals have but distinct in order. if it is reordered to it’s former function it is a mental disorder for humans. Exposure to life threatening environments cause instincts to refine to the individual animal. In humans we call it PTSD and other disorders. Traumatic experience is stored in memory differently because of the intensity and type of emotion that accompanied it. A function of memory that is like emotion, it is memory that is involuntarily recalled and put human consciousness back into the life threatening event. Good for animals but it destroys human ability to distinguish reality intelligently and be present within it intelligently. Past traumatic events are involuntarily recalled when the environment begins to be similar to the one in the past. This is how instinct is uniquely adapted to particular individual animals.

We have what they have but there is no evidence of what we have in any other animal. There is no reason to believe it evolved because there is no evidence of it’s powers in any other animal for a base to evolve from…The teleology of human intelligence isn’t found in the teleology of animal consciousness but teleology of animal consciousness is found in human intelligence. Hope I used that word right.

 

[rossum]

Using your analogy of randomized sized grains, can you explain how the natural selection “sieve” filtered out the first “intelligent” grain from a batch of non-intelligent grains?

Is a cat more intelligent than a mouse? Is a dog more intelligent than a cat? Is a chimp more intelligent than a dog? Intelligence is a continuum, not a binary yes/no property. Natural selection will increase (or decrease) intelligence by selecting the level of intelligence which gives the best reproductive success in the given environment.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Programs that do not execute 100% of the time may imply imperfect designers but never unintelligent designers.

There are computer programs which can write other computer programs. Some of those program-writing programs use genetic algorithms to write those programs.

The output programs do not have an intelligent programmer, they have an intelligent meta-programmer – the intelligence that wrote the program that wrote the program.

For an example of this process see Lenski (2003) The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Not assuming it but reasoning to it. You can’t get more out of something than what is put into it. The output can not be greater than the (name removed by moderator)ut.

That is only true if you have a conservation law, like the conservation of energy. In the absence of a conservation law you may get more or less out than you put in.

How can you have intelligence come from lifeless matter?

It is easy to show that there is no “conservation of intelligence” law. Death reduces the amount of intelligence present: total intelligence present is reduced by one unit. If I give a couple the necessary non-intelligent (name removed by moderator)uts: air, water, food, then over time intelligence will be increased by the arrival of babies.

There is no law of conservation of intelligence, so your claim is incorrect. Intelligence can either increase or decrease over time. A conserved property, like energy, can neither increase nor decrease. Since intelligence is not conserved, it is possible for intelligence to arise from non-intelligent causes.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Back up the truck a bit. What selects t[h]e filter?

That was actually my text, not o_mlly’s.

The filter is reproductive success. Genetic variants which have more offspring on average spread through the population. It is a bit like compound interest, money invested as 1% interest grows faster than money invested at 0% interest. If a mutation gives a 1% reproductive advantage over the average then that variant will spread through the population.

The calculation is easy to set up on a spreadsheet. As an example, take a stable population of 1000 organisms; on average each organism has one descendant in the next generation. Now let a beneficial mutation appear with a 1% advantage, so the mutated organism will have on average 1.01 descendants in the next generation. For comparison I include ten other mutated organism with a 1% disadvantage. Start with a population of 10 deleterious, 989 neutral (or unmutated) and 1 beneficial mutations. See what happens if we let the population reproduce for one thousand generations:

Generation  Deleterious   Normal    Beneficial
----------  -----------   ------    ----------
     0         10.0       989.00          1.00
     1          9.9       989.00          1.01
    10          9.0       989.00          1.10
   100          3.7       989.00          2.70
   500          0.1       989.00        144.77
   700          0.0       989.00       1059.16
  1000          0.0       989.00      20959.16

That is how natural selection works.

rossum

 

[o_mlly]

Is a cat more intelligent than a mouse? Is a dog more intelligent than a cat? Is a chimp more intelligent than a dog? Intelligence is a continuum, not a binary yes/no property. Natural selection will increase (or decrease) intelligence by selecting the level of intelligence which gives the best reproductive success in the given environment.

The argument still does not answer how the first instance of intelligence came to be. Natural selection cannot increase or decrease (sieve out or in) grains that do not yet exist. One cannot reproduce that which has never been produced.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Need ten charachters to delete post.

I am not sure I understand the idea here?

I wanted to delete a post but couldn’t for some reason. So I edited it and needed ten characters to have the edit accepted.