Posted by Hugh Henry on September 20, 19100 at 11:49:21:
In Reply to: Re: Caused first cause? posted by Hugh Henry on September 20, 19100 at 11:41:43:
: : 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.
Oops! I'd better clarify something I've just noticed in this blurb of mine. Anyone spot it? I said "something caused cannot come from nothing". On its face, this is flatly untrue: EVERYTHING caused comes from nothing! What I meant to say was: Something caused cannot come from nothing OF ITS OWN ACCORD.[And one can very clearly go on to establish that only a Being of Infinite power can fashing even the tiniest subatomic particle out of sheer nothing. But that's another story]
There, cut me down from the pole and throw away those matches.
READ THE GREAT BOOKS
TERM PAPERS, RESEARCH PAPERS, ESSAYS
DR. ELLIOT'S NORTH AMERICAN GREAT BOOKS TOUR--COMING TO A BOOK
STORE NEAR YOU
[Shakespeare Forums]
[Bible Forums]