[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Another question Pat, assuming the first cause is “God” what exactly makes it so special we are even talking about it in the first place?
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The tread was started by an atheist as most religious threads seem to be. So whether you think it’s special or not is subjective. But at this point if you or others who put a lot of time in to the matter try to tell say now that ‘they don’t care’, I am going to call bullshit. You must think it’s pretty special to argue and ask so many questions about it.
[quote]
What if the first cause’s only purpose was the big bang and nothing else. In fact it had no choice but to create the big bang, the big bang was the sole inevitable purpose of the first cause and is incapable of ever doing anything else.[/quote]
The first part is a deistic point of view. ‘God created everything and then went hands-off and let it roll.’ Part of being said first-cause or Uncaused-caused, by default you have some unique things about you. First, you cannot be limited. Limitations are causal and something necessarily sitting outside the causal chain cannot be bound by it.
Second, the deistic point of view I would argue is largely correct, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t or hasn’t intervened. his intervention in the larger scheme even our understanding, if you believe everything that has ever been said about him intervening is still quite limited.
That’s why I said you have to understand what an ‘Uncaused-cause’ must be. Forget about whether you think the argument is true or not for a second and think, if such a thing exists, what does it have to be, to do what it did. Limited is not one of those things, because something independent of cause cannot be limited because limitations are causal.
Take a look at that link I provided for Neuromancer, it’s quick, easy and answers a lot of the things you’ve talked about, outright. Like I said to him, you potentially can learn more about the argument by understanding what it isn’t.[/quote]
The first cause being unlimited still does not make sense. With a causal chain the only thing that is required of the first cause is that it created the 2nd. [/quote]
You’re thinking first and temporal terms, A cause, then an effect which is not an actual case when discussing things at this level in the hierarchy of metaphysics (yes, metaphysics has an order and a hierarchy, it’s not a blob of immaterial shit). So by that fact alone, all things occurring in metaphysics are eternal. Second, ‘first-cause’ is really an improper term, used commonly by proponents arguing the Kalam version, which is a temporal based version of the argument. ‘Uncaused-cause’ is more proper, it says more about what it really is we are talking about. An Uncaused-cause cannot be acted on, so for it to expire after creating, would remove the ‘Uncaused’ part of the the title and hence we are no longer talking about an uncaused-cause but caused one. A limitation is a causal event and if the Uncaused-cause must expire after causing you end up with an invalid argument.
To really understand what the ‘Uncaused-cause’ must be like, you have to suspend your like or dislike of the argument and think of that part of it. Then look at the argument as a whole and think about what the ‘Uncaused-cause’ must be.
The argument does not tell us everything about the Uncaused-cause, or hell maybe it does, but for ‘it’ to be what it is, it has to be a certain way. One of those things is eternal, another is uncaused, which means nothing can act on it. So by the nature of what it must be, it must be eternal, and unaffected. Any change in that, will make it something other than the Uncaused-cause.
To really understand this sucker you really have to jump all the way in. If you ever have a hope of beating it you have to understand it exactly. Most of the time people attack ad hominem versions of it, claiming it says things it doesn’t. It may look good at first glance but it’s feeble, weak and ultimately pointless, because it’s so easily refutable.
That’s what that atheist author George Smith did in his book, ‘Atheism: The case Against God’ ( I went back and looked up the book I was looking at…
All he did was mock up a faulty version of the cosmological argument. His mock up was basically that proponents of the theory argue that God created the universe, and delved in to the various theories of how the universe could have come to be, and on and on. That’s fine, but that’s NOT what the argument is claiming. He was refuting a version that only technically existed in his head and in his book. Nobody who knows the argument in any depth makes any sort of claim that he said we make.
It does make me wonder why he and other supposedly smart guys cannot take the correct form of the argument and argue their points against the real thing?
It also tells me, when people get all puffed up and immediately dismissive of it, that they don’t know shit about it. It’s a specific argument, it says very specific things and none of it is really all that complex when you dig in to the reality of the argument. [/quote]
Would you agree there are Atheists who fully understand this argument? I think the blog you linked before indicated something along those lines.[/quote]
Yes, not a lot, but yes. Usually, the link between Uncaused-cause and God is assumed, but not always. Technically, the argument argues for Uncaused-cause… Understanding what an Uncaused-cause must be to be an Uncaused-cause is where the link to God is inferred. There is only one thing that can exist that can have the properties the Uncaused-cause has, but you have to know something about God to make the inference. It is an inference but not a large one.
Kamui understands it well, but he’s also said some strange things about it before.