Posted by Hugh Henry on September 20, 19100 at 11:41:43:
In Reply to: Caused first cause? posted by Malarky Mark on February 08, 19100 at 23:20:47:
: According to the uncaused cause, something cannot come from nothing. why is God the exception? i believe in God and everything but i just dont get this one.
I think it helps to be very precise here and say: Something CAUSED cannot come from nothing.
But God is not an exception to THIS rule. It's just that He is a "something", an "entity",
a "being" - whatever - that
is not caused. Therefore, unlike any caused things, He did not come from nothing.
He simply "was" - or rather "is" - forever.
This is very hard to grasp because we are irrepressibly empiricist in our thinking and
tend to think that just because everything we see in the universe about us has a cause,
therefore everything WHATSOEVER [God included] must have a cause.
But you can see this doesn't follow as a matter of strict logic. Before 1600 everyone European used to think that "all swans are white" because every single swan
noticed up till then was white (ish!). Then Western Australia was discovered, with its black swans, thereby showing the fallacy of
concluding to the all from the many - the inductive fallacy. So: to recap. Most things seem to have a cause. But
this doesn't at all imply that everything is caused. The fact that God is an uncaused being does not contradict our experience in a
logical sense, any more than black swans were logically ruled out by the pre-1800 experience of swans. Certainly, there being an uncaused
cause sort of "goes against the grain" of our everyday experience. But then,
one would expect a Being that is Infinite, Omnipotent,and Eternal to be a tad unusual in many respects!!
Hope this helps & does not further confuse.
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