God As Grounding Cause

[Silver]

1+1+1= trinity.

Dur.

[Angrboda]

Here, with an added comment from Grandizer here.

And I replied here

I don't think either your or Craig's talk disarm the objection to Ghazali's argument. Either God exists timelessly or he does not. There is no boundary line where he is both. So God creating doesn't in some magical way insert time into a timeless state. As such, Ghazali's argument still fails. (In particular, you draw the following, "God existed prior to creation with the potential for creation," out of thin air. If I accept this whole theory of timeless apart from creation, temporally with creation, it still doesn't eliminate the objection. Moreover, I think it simply points to the incoherence of the implications of Craig and your ideas about God and time.) At the very least, Ghazali's argument becomes a matter of speculation, disarming its potential as an argument for the necessity of a personal God being the only interpretation of a first cause.

[Edwardo Piet]

Read Spinoza if you're really stuck on the PSR. The only attribute required for a first cause is that it is itself uncaused (or perhaps self-caused). It is erroneous to think that a first cause needs any other attributes than that.

The only attribute required for a first cause is that it itself is uncaused. Self-causation is incoherent. The idea of something causing itself would appear to violate the law of identity, the most fundamental law of logic.

And as for the silliness of a self-causation Friedrich Nietzsche said the following on that matter:

The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness.

The absurdly incoherent notion of self-causation is what would be required for libertarian free will to be possible.

@ the OP

It's interesting to discuss causation and Aristotle's four causes. What is not so interesting is to have people speak of a first cause and then illogically jump from that to the idea of that first cause being a god.

[pocaracas]

Are you saying there is a thing called spacetime that just sat changeless from the infinite past?

Maybe. I don't know. You don't know. No one can even claim to know.

Besides, your concept of change applies to things in spacetime, not spacetime itself. But we know that things in spacetime can somehow alter it.

[RoadRunner79]

Get thee to a priest! 

I'm fine... the trinity states that there are three persons!

[The Grand Nudger]

So long as 3=1, I;m sure you'll be fine. Thats the beauty of the abstract.

[RoadRunner79]

So long as 3=1, I;m sure you'll be fine. Thats the beauty of the abstract.

It’s fine when you are not talking about same thing in the same way. No need for abstractions or anything complicated.

[RoadRunner79]

What is 1 + 0. I assume you’re not just getting me to do your homework for you?

[The Grand Nudger]

So long as 3=1, I;m sure you'll be fine.  Thats the beauty of the abstract.

It’s fine when you are not talking about same thing in the same way.  No need for abstractions or anything complicated.

The irony, it burns the flesh!

For real though, wtf is going on with religion when two different believers start to lose their shit over pre-k math in a -totally- legit convo about a -totally- legit god?

[RoadRunner79]

It’s fine when you are not talking about same thing in the same way.  No need for abstractions or anything complicated.

The irony, it burns the flesh!

For real though, wtf is going on with religion when two different believers start to lose their shit over pre-k math in a -totally- legit convo about a -totally- legit god?

There isnt any disagreement on the math, that I’m aware of. I’ve mostly just found some atheists who have difficulty with the math.