Invitation for Atheists to Debate a Christian via Skype

[Belacqua]

Causality requires time ... and the concept of "first" requires time. Nothing happened before time. Time was the beginning if "beginning" is used in a way that means anything we can understand.

Causality, in the sense that Aristotle used it, is not about time. 

I've tried to describe this before, but apparently I haven't done a good job. I'll take another stab at it.

For A to be the case, B must be the case. In Aristotle's use of the word, B is therefore a cause of A. They could be sequential in time, or they could be simultaneous. 

For cats to exist, space/time must exist. Therefore space-time is a cause of cats. If space-time went away, the cats would also disappear. But the same is not true the other way -- space-time would continue to exist even if all the cats disappeared.

I know this isn't how we normally use the word "cause" these days. But that's what Aristotle meant. 

This is important in Aristotelian philosophy and in theology. Traditional Christian theology holds that God is First Cause because he holds the world in existence constantly, not because he started it at a point in time. Aristotle thought that the world had no beginning, and Aquinas said a beginning is a matter of faith, not provable by logic or science. However they believed in a First Cause because they thought that there must be a fundamental thing that must be the case, in order for all other things to be the case.

The cat didn't always exist as a cat but it always existed in some form. Before it was a cat the atoms that make up its body were something else instead. 

I don't think it's right to say that the cat always existed, when all that existed was its material. 

Raw materials are not the thing. Maybe the atoms always existed, but for the cat to exist it has to have the form and functionality of the cat. Good old hylomorphism.

Michelangelo existed, and his atoms still exist, but Michelangelo no longer exists.

Reality is not contingent on anything, everything else is contingent on it.

If that's true, then reality is the First Cause. (I suspect, though, that the term "reality" is going to give us trouble down the road.)