RE: The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.
July 7, 2023 at 10:54 am
Just passing through.
@LadyForCamus said:
"Let’s concede, just for fun, that the universe had a ‘First Cause’. What is it, and how do you know?"
Ok. So if we concede that, even jff, the next step is to deduce the Necessary Properties of this First Cause.
So that's why I mentioned Properties I-IV of the First Cause. Because B1 is not contingent on a Prior Being, He/It exists non-contingently, i.e. necessarily.
Can we agree on that much? That would be the first step. And subsequent premises, just like we do in mathematic theorems, would build on those foundational axioms. That a First Cause exists, then that He/It exists necessarily, i.e. without beginning or end, eternally, then in the next steps, that He is a Personal Being, Supremely Good, Perfectly Simple, Actus Purus (Pure Actuality), without Potentiality, etc etc.
Historically, it was the God of Abraham who first revealed Himself like this, as One Supreme Being, as Almighty God, while the rest of the world, being polytheistic, thought there were as many gods as there were men and women. That is incorrect and can be disproved by deducing the Properties of the First Cause. Later on, Greek Philosophy, including those like Aristotle, Plato etc, by philosophical arguments, which St. Augustine and St. Thomas would subsequently build on, develop and improve, also established, from rational premises, some truths about the First Cause.
God Bless,
Xavier.
@LadyForCamus said:
"Let’s concede, just for fun, that the universe had a ‘First Cause’. What is it, and how do you know?"
Ok. So if we concede that, even jff, the next step is to deduce the Necessary Properties of this First Cause.
So that's why I mentioned Properties I-IV of the First Cause. Because B1 is not contingent on a Prior Being, He/It exists non-contingently, i.e. necessarily.
Can we agree on that much? That would be the first step. And subsequent premises, just like we do in mathematic theorems, would build on those foundational axioms. That a First Cause exists, then that He/It exists necessarily, i.e. without beginning or end, eternally, then in the next steps, that He is a Personal Being, Supremely Good, Perfectly Simple, Actus Purus (Pure Actuality), without Potentiality, etc etc.
Historically, it was the God of Abraham who first revealed Himself like this, as One Supreme Being, as Almighty God, while the rest of the world, being polytheistic, thought there were as many gods as there were men and women. That is incorrect and can be disproved by deducing the Properties of the First Cause. Later on, Greek Philosophy, including those like Aristotle, Plato etc, by philosophical arguments, which St. Augustine and St. Thomas would subsequently build on, develop and improve, also established, from rational premises, some truths about the First Cause.
God Bless,
Xavier.
