The Best Logique Evidence of God Existence

[polymath257]

Formal cause is really the shape. Material cause is the composition. Effective cause is the cause. And ultimate cause only makes sense if there is an active intelligence.

I'm afraid I don't agree with any of this. 

Formal cause is not only the shape, but the construction, the interaction of the parts, the operation, etc. A dead body has the shape of a person but not the formal cause. [edited to add: Probably people assume that Formal Cause is only shape because the common example teachers use is a statue. And for statues, it's true that Formal Cause is only shape because statues aren't active at all. But for more complicated things, things that operate, shape isn't sufficient.]

Hmmmm....in that case, it seems even less coherent. So, the formal cause is the dynamics of the interaction of the parts? So it is dependent on the material cause?

The material cause is the stuff it's made from. The word composition, to me, means how it's organized, which in fact is part of the formal cause.

OK, that is different than how I understand the word 'composition'. I see it as what the thing is made from. The organization is more, like you said, a matter of the internal dynamics.

Effective cause is, I think, a term that you invented...? Usually it's efficient or moving cause.

yes.

And ultimate, or final cause certainly doesn't require an active intelligence. That is a misunderstanding. 

Suppose you were teaching a beginning anatomy class, and you spent an hour talking about the heart. The formal cause of the heart includes the heart's construction and movement. The material cause is the special kind of muscle that the heart is made from. The efficient cause is the parents making a baby, which grows a heart. All of this is necessary to understand if you want to understand a heart. 

But it leaves out an important fact about the heart: what it is for. It would be silly to talk about a heart and not mention that it pumps the blood around. But that's the Final Cause. And hearts have this Final Cause entirely because they evolved that way. There was no intelligent design or active intelligence involved. But to deny that hearts have a purpose -- a Final Cause -- would be silly, don't you think?

If you go that route, then the 'ultimate cause of the heart is reproductive success. The pumping of the blood is just a means to get that success.

But the 'ultimate cause' of reproductive success is, what? the laws of thermodynamics that determine whether energy is available for reproduction?

Once again, this seems to be a poor division of concepts. There is no 'ultimate cause' for the heart. It simply does not have a purpose in any reasonable sense. It has *effects* such as differential survival, but that isn't the same as the ultimate cause.

But let's go with this. Yes, the heart pumps blood. What identifies that 'function' as its 'ultimate cause'? Why not all the other things that the heart does? Because it isn't *just* a pump.

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So 'existence' is the 'cause' of existence.

That's certainly not what I said.[/quote]

Then I am confused about what you did say. I agree that having a non-existent thing (whatever *that* means) be the cause of existent things is strange. So why not just admit that some things have no cause? And that there could well be many such things?

And we can go further. Many quantum level events have no cause (and certainly none by Ari's definitions). This means there are quintillions of uncaused events all around us all the time.