The First Cause was not God.

[Thief]

Something is responsible for existence and the nature of reality. Why does it have to be a supernatural person that happens to bear a suspicious resemblance to a human? Why should such a supernatural entity exist? If the universe requires explanation, then so does God. If an existential imperative is invoked, why cannot it lead to all possible universes? This explains why the universe exists and is the way it is (a place where there can be an observer to ask such questions). And it avoids the difficulties I listed upstream from here concerning a personal God.

Please address what I am actually saying and not just provide the usual canned answers to some other questions.

I don't believe God is human.

I do believe Someone had to be First in mind and heart.

I simply place Spirit as the source of creation.

Substance is not 'self' starting.

 

[Runewolf1973]

You guys who keep referring to "spirit", do you actuallly know what that is? I'll tell you what "spirit" is...

The real existing "spirit" which some people call "the breath of life" or consciousness or that which animates the body is non other than the Fundamental Forces of nature. Yes, that same "spirit" or animating principal exists in all forms, even rocks and trees and planets and stars and entire galaxies.

This is why it is also logical to be an animist. Even so-called inanimate objects are endowed with these interactive forces or "spirits" of nature.

 

[Thief]

You guys who keep referring to "spirit", do you actuallly know what that is? I'll tell you what "spirit" is...

The real existing "spirit" which some people call "the breath of life" or consciousness or that which animates the body is non other than the Fundamental Forces of nature. Yes, that same "spirit" or animating principal exists in all forms, even rocks and trees and planets and stars and entire galaxies.

This is why it is also logical to be an animist. Even so-called inanimate objects are endowed with these interactive forces or "spirits" of nature.

Rocks are not animated.
If ever you see a rock jump into your line of step.....STOP!
and reconsider what you think reality is!

 

[Runewolf1973]

Rocks are not animated.
If ever you see a rock jump into your line of step.....STOP!
and reconsider what you think reality is!

The Fundamental Forces animate everything. Some things are just more animated than other things....

"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together." Max Planck

That IS animation on a fundamental level.

 

[Alt Thinker]

You do not know whether or not that which is spirit is capable of consciousness or volition. For goodness sake, you don't even know if spirits exist.

Not quite. We do not know that spirits exist. We do not know if leprechauns wear underwear. But until there is good reason to believe that leprechauns exist at all, the question is pointless. We may ask if angels wear underwear. But angels, if they exist, are presumed to be spirit. As far as we know, wearing underwear presumes a physical form. The most reasonable answer is that No, angels do not wear underwear, even if they exist. (If angels do not exist, then of course there are no underwear-wearing angels.)

The only examples of consciousness and volition we know of are tied closely to physical processes. The most reasonable answer based on what we know is that spirits do not have consciousness and volition, even if they exist. If spirits do exist and if they have consciousness and volition, the nature of that consciousness and volition would appear to be problematic. Not being based on physical processes, could these functions be anything like what we mean by those terms?

Talking about the possibility of spirits having consciousness and volitions requires three assumptions:

1. That spirits exist – no real evidence for this
2. That they are capable of consciousness and volition – problematic in the absence of physical processes
3. That being non-material these functions resemble the human ones in any meaningful way – making conclusions based on this assumption rather shaky

You have not determined that time does not exist without this particular universe. All we can say is that before this universe existed, this universe did not exist.

Time as we know it is an attribute of this universe. We know that the time we are familiar with is not the Absolute Time assumed by Newton. It is different for different observers. There is no such thing as simultaneity. According to Einstein there is only space-time. According to Hawking what we call time and space can swap places. According to Thorne space-time can even loop. How all this works is very much associated with the nature of the universe. There may be universes prior to or parallel to this one where the details of time are different. But what we call time is very much a physical phenomenon.

Virtually all theologians I am familiar with, beginning with Augustine, agree that God made time when he made the world. That is, even by broad consensus of theologians, time is physical, part of this world.

My point was that if God is timeless, there is even less connection with what we call consciousness and volition. But if God experiences time in some fashion, then God is not changeless as it generally said. God would have created the universe at some point in time and thereby changed. This raises the question of why God would have chosen that moment. Since God is presumably the original sole existence, what external factors could have prompted him? But if God simply decided to pick that moment for no reason, how is that any different from randomness?

Seems like your making my point for me.

My point was that a metaphysical answer is needed. Your point is that God is needed. I am arguing that even though a metaphysical answer is required God is not needed. God is in fact problematic. I am not making your point. I am making mine: that existence is natural and that all things that can be, are. As I have argued this explains more with fewer problems and fewer assumptions than either the materialist or the theist/deist explanations.

You have no idea whether or not there is a multitude of life out there in the cosmos.

And even if there wasn't, so what? What does this have to do with anything?

There may be a multitude of life out there but it is clearly extremely rare. The vast and I mean vast majority of the universe is utterly inhospitable to anything that we would call life above the simplest chemical reactions. The ‘purpose’ of the universe is not life. The conditions for intelligent life are even rarer. That is definitely not the ‘purpose’. (We could mention the obviously absurd idea that the purpose of this vast, ancient and exotically complex universe is humankind and maybe even only some of them, but why bother? That is not anything that you have been saying.)

So why did God create this particular universe? What considerations went into this decision? Where did these considerations come from, since God is supposed to be the original sole existence? If God had no reason for doing it this way, how is this different from randomness?

The fact is that it is the nature of things to fall when they are acted upon by gravitational forces. The answer Aristotle gave was true. It's wonderful that you would like a more detailed explanation. I don't know my exact age. I am nearly 51 years old. I can narrow that down to the month, even the hour. But I don't know what second of the day I was born, or the nano second. With a lack of greater understanding, there is nothing wrong with accepting the truth that you know. Things fall, it is in their nature to fall.

Now why don't you tell me how gravity works. Is it not in the nature of matter to possess gravitational forces? Well explain how this force works. Why are there gravitational forces? Why do gravitational forces exist?

Aristotle did not say that he did not know why things fall. On the contrary, he gave an explanation. Things that fall are less perfect and naturally fall toward the center of the earth, which is the ultimate imperfection. Things that rise are more perfect and naturally rise toward the source of perfection in the sky. In Aristotle things moved according to their metaphysical nature, not due to any forces between bodies. Aristotle’s explanation was a moral one.

Quite a bit is understood about the physical nature of gravity. More needs to be learned. But it is a physical phenomenon, not a metaphysical one, as Aristotle wanted. I would launch into a description of General Relativity and work being done on hypotheses of Quantum Gravity. But I do not have that much time. And anyway Legion would challenge my abilities in the mathematical discipline of tensor analysis, which I admit defeated me.

Why shouldn't God have these attributes?
Why shouldn't God exist?

Why should God have those particular attributes as opposed to any other attributes? What pre-existing conditions determined that? If no explanation is needed for arbitrary attributes, why does there need to be an explanation for the universe?

Why should God exist, indeed… Why is there God instead of nothing? There must be some principle of existential imperative. But why should this principle lead to arbitrary and problematic characteristics like consciousness and volition, which we know are not attributes of everything and therefore not inherently natural? Why should this unexplainedly conscious and volitional being decide to create exactly this universe as opposed to any other?

Given a principle of existential imperative, without which we have no reason for God to exist, and avoiding the pitfall of assuming arbitrary characteristics to be somehow pre-existent without reason, we can explain what we see – this arbitrary and apparently pointless universe – by the simple conclusion that everything that can be, is. That every possible universe exists, that all possible eventualities (those that are not self-contradictory) are realized. That existence is simply the potential to be and that all potentialities are actualized. Why should it be any other way?

 

[Alt Thinker]

I don't believe God is human.

I do believe Someone had to be First in mind and heart.

I simply place Spirit as the source of creation.

Substance is not 'self' starting.

Define Spirit. If it has arbitrary characteristics that might have been different, please justify those characteristics.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

I don't entirely buy into the abiogenesis thing. The thing is, abiogenesis is the idea that living, animate matter somehow formed/emerged out of non-living, inanimate matter. This idea postulates that "dead" matter can become "alive". That to me does sounds like fantasy...like alchemy or turning water into wine. I have my own hypothesis...

Matter is neither living, nor is it non-living. It is neither animate, nor is it inanimate. Matter is just matter. It is interactive and it changes form. Evolution is a process of change over long periods of time where simple interactions and simple adaptations combine in ways to produce more complex forms of interaction and more complex adaptations. There is nothing magical about it. Things change over time, it is a fact. Evolution is just another form of change. It cannot be disputed, it is fact.

Matter is animated by the Fundamental Forces. Given enough time and the right conditions that matter may become even more animated. It is those highly animated forms we call life.

So basically, you are not alive right now. Gotcha.

 

[Runewolf1973]

So basically, you are not alive right now. Gotcha.

Technically this is correct seeing as we are composed of matter which is not alive. We are simply interacting is a very complex manner.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Technically this is correct seeing as we are composed of matter which is not alive. We are simply interacting is a very complex manner.

You're engaging in the compositional fallacy: we may be composed of atoms that are not alive and can't be seen with the naked eye, but this no more implies that we are not alive than it implies that we can't be seen with the naked eye.

 

[idav]

So basically, you are not alive right now. Gotcha.

Being alive doesn't require being aware of it. The singularity has been active for billions of years, from what we can tell never was there a time it was inactive. It isn't any more active today, anything alive is as alive as it ever was.

 

[Runewolf1973]

You're engaging in the compositional fallacy: we may be composed of atoms that are not alive and can't be seen with the naked eye, but this no more implies that we are not alive than it implies that we can't be seen with the naked eye.

This doesn't mean that what I say is false or inaccurate. We are entirely composed of atoms that are not alive and the matter which makes up our bodies can be seen with the naked eye is no more alive than those atoms. What this does imply is that matter is interactive and so are we. What part of the matter which makes up your body is actually alive or living?



--

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

This doesn't mean that what I say is false or inaccurate.

It doesn't mean your conclusion is false (it's false for other reasons), but it does mean that your argument is incorrect.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I see you edited your post while I was replying.

This doesn't mean that what I say is false or inaccurate. We are entirely composed of atoms that are not alive and the matter which makes up our bodies can be seen with the naked eye is no more alive than those atoms. What this does imply is that matter is interactive and so are we. What part of the matter which makes up your body is actually alive or living?



--

Which H2O molecule takes you from "not wet" to "wet"? There are such things as emergent properties.

 

[Runewolf1973]

I see you edited your post while I was replying.



Which H2O molecule takes you from "not wet" to "wet"? There are such things as emergent properties.

Complex interactions emerge from simple interactions. The property of what we call "life" is the ability to interact in a complex manner. There is no emergent "new force" or "special property" that makes what we call life forms different from non-living forms aside from their ability to interact in a more complex manner.

 

[Alt Thinker]

Continuation of a prior post.

Alt: The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.

Legion: Prove it.

Sure.

We have talked quite a bit about the limitations of theoretical mathematics. Let us move on to applied mathematics and its limits.

I could belabor the difficulties of solving problems in the various forms of dynamics: Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics and (shudder) aerodynamics. But I still have nightmares in Fortran. The problem is that except in a few special cases (usually of little practical interest) there are no direct paths to obtaining answers. It is not a matter of just applying formulae. One must usually home in on an answer by iterative methods. The many advances in methodologies and huge improvements in computing power tend to make one forget that the answers being obtained are only dearly bought approximations of a slippery reality. And that is when the problems are linear. The real world is very non-linear but, as Hawking put it, we concentrate on the linear problems because we know how to solve them. (And even then trying to combine more than one kind of dynamics in a single problem generally results in a jump in Excedrin stock prices.)

And that is just everyday engineering. More exotic eforms of physics are even worse. The interference of virtual particles makes any but the simplest problems in quantum mechanics incredibly computational intensive. And the answers are still only approximations. General Relativity is so horrendously non-linear that it is often considered a major victory when linear differential equations can be developed for getting approximate answers in limited scope situations. And we have no idea for how to combine QM and GR even in theory much less for the purpose of generating quantitative predictions.

Yet individual particles have no trouble at all in instantly and perfectly responding to all of the many simultaneous influences impinging on it, even when the responses modify the influences. Numerous electromagnetic and gravitational forces, and sometimes weak and/or strong nuclear forces, all hitting the particle at once and the particle behaves just as it should without taking time out to do any calculations. The universe, in all its exotic non-linear glory, just acts. We pretend to understand those actions but when we try to extend that supposed understanding into making precise predictions, we get approximations, generally at a heavy price in programming skills and computing power.

We try to talk about the world but all that comes out of our mouths are rough guesses. All the time the world goes on its merry way being what it is effortlessly. And perhaps laughing behind our backs.

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.

The above asserts that a set is a set. The 'genuinely coherent, definite attribute" part is extraneous and misleading. The attribute "not a set" is necessarily as definite, coherent, etc., is "is a set". Hence, we can define a set as "not a set" were we to use your definition. The issue is vastly more nuanced.

The attribute “not a set” is not itself a set. It can be an element in a set. Likewise “is a set”. A set is not its contents. It is a container. The color blue can be an element in a set. That does not make the set blue. Cantor said that a set is the form of a possible thought. It is not the thought itself.

The reason for words like "formal", "mathematical", etc., is to indicate that we are working within a system which is entirely syntactical. Logic, set theory, etc., are designed to lack semantics. Hence the practice derivations in any intro or advanced mathematical/symbolic logic textbook that don't bother trying to give meaning to the symbols. One of the most important goals of mathematics since the early modern period has been the reduction of mathematical "objects" to meaningless symbols that we manipulate within some system. This is why calculus, linear algebra, statistics, etc., can be used in quantum field theory and sociology: the notations, systems, and other formal aspects of mathematical subjects are given semantic content through application. The philosophy of mathematics is another matter, but it is also irrelevant here as we aren't even dealing with whether mathematical objects are solely epistemological or are ontological.

It is interesting that set theorists have no problem with using the Axiom of Choice when they need it even though they do not (cannot) know if it is true. It is compatible with ZF and that is deemed sufficient. In Quantum Theory, a technique known as re-normalization is employed with great success even though it is mathematical anathema. Infinities naturally arise in QM (those pesky virtual particles again). They are removed by rearranging the formulas to pair up infinities. Infinity minus infinity is deemed to be zero. Infinity divided by infinity is deemed to be one. Totally unjustified from a mathematical point of view but it works like a charm. (Pun intended … as if anyone is going to get it.)

 

[Runewolf1973]

It doesn't mean your conclusion is false (it's false for other reasons), but it does mean that your argument is incorrect.

My argument is simple....

Matter is interactive. All forms comprised of matter are interactive. Some forms are more interactive and more complex than other forms. The most complex, highly interactive forms we know we label as life. There is nothing false or incorrect about this conclusion. The only reason it may seem false or incorrect is because it differs from the typical abiogenesis view that living matter somehow emerges from non-living matter. Mine is simply the view that no matter is living, but all matter interacts in varying levels of complexity.

Living matter is not an emergent phenomena... Matter does not live. Complex interactions are emergent from simpler interactions.



---

 

[Thief]

The Fundamental Forces animate everything. Some things are just more animated than other things....

"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together." Max Planck

That IS animation on a fundamental level.

To say as you do....you have to stretch the word 'animated' way too far.

You're deliberately crossing animation and movement.

Rocks are not animated.
They can move with a landslide.....but that doesn't make them 'animal'.

Now if you prefer a confusing discussion.....
Start a thread....are plants 'animated'?

 

[Runewolf1973]

Being alive doesn't require being aware of it. The singularity has been active for billions of years, from what we can tell never was there a time it was inactive. It isn't any more active today, anything alive is as alive as it ever was.

Exactly. It is no different, it is just interacting differently now.

 

[Thief]

The singularity was never in motion.
It was not moving at all.

Once it started moving.....it was no longer the singularity.

And no part of it is alive.
The Creator could be said to be living.
The substance isn't.

Life in the flesh came much later.

 

[Runewolf1973]

To say as you do....you have to stretch the word 'animated' way too far.

You're deliberately crossing animation and movement.

Rocks are not animated.
They can move with a landslide.....but that doesn't make them 'animal'.

Now if you prefer a confusing discussion.....
Start a thread....are plants 'animated'?

Animation is movement. Like I said, rocks are not very animated, but they do interact with their environment. Trees or plants are more animated than rocks, they interact in a more complex manner. Insects are more animated than trees. Animals are even more complex and highly animated than any other forms. Everything interacts and everything is animated to some extent and at varying levels all the way down to those animating forces themselves, the Fundamental Forces. This should not be confusing, it is very simple logic.