The Best Logique Evidence of God Existence

[polymath257]

The sun is 'prior' to people in your sense because if the sun stopped, so would people. Why is that true? Because of the causal nature of physical reality and the way that fusion reactions in the sun produce energy that is conveyed by light to the earth, promoting photosynthesis and thereby production of foods that humans eat. I tis NOT a *logical* priority, but a priority that is due to the laws of physics.

Similarly, the hydrogen atoms are prior to the sun only in the sense that stars like the sun are made of hydrogen atoms. But they are made so only because of the physical laws that govern how hydrogen acts (especially that it has mass, so is subject to gravity, that the nuclei can undergo fusion, thereby giving energy, etc). There is nothing *logically* necessary in this, only *physically* necessary because of the natural laws that are operative.

Similarly, spacetime is also subject to physical laws and those laws are partly responsible for the production of hydrogen nuclei in the early universe. Once again, it is a *physical* causality that is based on the existence of *time* that is underlying the 'necessity'.

To the extent that the First Cause arguments are not about time, they are not about causality at all. To the extent that they are, they only apply within the universe and so are irrelevant to the existence of anything outside of the universe.

ALL known 'effects' (i.e, events that are caused) are caused by things within the universe.

Right, you're speaking very properly about cause-and-effect as we think of it today. Aristotle used a Greek word that gets translated as "cause," but has a different semantic range. For him, if X is necessary for Y to exist, then X is a cause of Y. In his sense, the sun is a cause of me (one of many) because without it I wouldn't be here. I understand that this isn't how we use the term today. 

Still, when we're talking about the First Cause argument that Aristotle and Thomas used, we have to read what they said.

How about if I just disagree with what they said? The notion of necessary versus conditional existence is, I believe, a very bad philosophical mistake that does not, again, represent a useful division.

Nor are they saying that a thing is logically necessary, in the way you're using it. It is in complete agreement with the known facts of science, however, to say that for the sun to exist hydrogen atoms have to exist. And this is the way Aristotle's First Cause argument uses the concept of cause.

But, again, it is only the case because of the physical laws.

So you are right that "To the extent that the First Cause arguments are not about time, they are not about causality at all," as you use the term "cause." But that's not relevant to what Aristotle and Thomas said. The typical example is that we say your parents caused you, in that they came first and what they did made you exist. And you continue to exist even if they're gone. This is contingent rather than essential cause. The First Cause argument, however, is all about things that, if they ceased to exist, would cause the end of all simultaneous things in an essential chain.

And this seems to me to be badly incoherent.

And you are right that all known effects are within the universe. This is true in Aristotle and Thomas's version, also. Everything that is held in existence by something prior on the essential chain is within the universe. 

You are right, also, to point to the laws of physics as being necessary for the existence of everything. The laws are non-physical things which are essentially prior to anything existing. They are not temporally prior, I'm pretty sure, because the laws of nature and the universe are co-existent. (This is why the Gospel of John specifies that the Logos, which is an old Greek term for the principles and logic of the universe, was there from the very beginning.)

No, that is merely definitional, not being prior. And, again, I think Ari and Thom are simply incoherent (in some matters) and counter to reality (in others). Their whole metaphysics is deeply flawed.

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My parents 'caused' me, again, through physical laws.