Hey Griffin, since you posed the same question here as in our PM, I'm just going to post the reply I sent you, in case others would benefit or would like to make further comments on the points I raised.
1. I have a creeping suspicion that concepts such as "causality" and "necessary being," which is what is truly meant by First Cause, are really not quite so simple as those we perceive in the context of our everyday experience; in fact, we know we don't live in a billiard ball universe as Newtonian physics once had us believe we did, and causality begins to look very strange at the level of fundamental particles. So, any argument that appeals to the nature of our experiences, as this one does (going back to the Scholastics and farther back still to Plato), must consider the knowledge we possess about that nature, and that knowledge is leaps and bounds above the soaring heights ancient and medieval philosophers believed natural philosophy could soar. It's far from certain that the Singularity (Big Bang) represents the beginning of being in such a way that justifies our appeal to "first" cause, although that might be a point I'd be willing to grant for the sake of language.
2. I'm not so sure the logic of the Kalam is valid. I readily admit that an infinite regress is inconceivable---which leaves it in the same ballpark as necessary being or first cause---but is it illogical? It seems to me to expose the limitations of reason but not necessarily any inherent contradiction. Why can't we logically ask what caused the cause we are calling the first? Perhaps one could suggest an "eternal recurrence," an idea also suggested by the ancients (Presocratics like Empedocles and Zeno, that famous lover of paradoxes involving infinities), and taken up again by Nietzsche, and retort that the First Cause is the same as the Last Effect, and causation is a cycle that has no beginning or end but is a genesis, a becoming to be, that exists necessarily? Then again, does that really satisfy the concept of infinity or does it suggest setting limits on infinity by conceiving it as a closed series? And if it's an open series, then how could any effect follow a cause when we can't seem to find the point where the fourth cause was begotten by the third, which was begotten by the second, and then of course, that followed the first? But to even the ask that question, haven't we already conceived infinity as a closed series? Haven't we merely set an arbitrary starting point and asked where the other end lies, and if so, what is logically different about doing this whether we conceive time as moving forwards or backwards?
Most importantly, though, what does "first cause" do to actually alleviate the situation? I'm inclined to agree with Arthur Schopenhauer when he wrote, "A first cause is just as inconceivable as is the point where space has an end or as a moment when time had a beginning. For every cause is a change and here we are necessarily bound to ask about the change which preceded it, and by that which it had been brought about, and so on ad infinitum, ad infinitum... The law of causality is therefore not so obliging as to allow itself to be used like a cab which we dismiss after we reach our destination." How could a first cause be anything that becoming can't be?
3. Why should we assume this First Cause, if we allow ourselves that, is God? Wouldn't that be an unnecessary step which easily leads into the same folly that the ancients committed when they treated the Sun as a god?
What do you think?
1. I have a creeping suspicion that concepts such as "causality" and "necessary being," which is what is truly meant by First Cause, are really not quite so simple as those we perceive in the context of our everyday experience; in fact, we know we don't live in a billiard ball universe as Newtonian physics once had us believe we did, and causality begins to look very strange at the level of fundamental particles. So, any argument that appeals to the nature of our experiences, as this one does (going back to the Scholastics and farther back still to Plato), must consider the knowledge we possess about that nature, and that knowledge is leaps and bounds above the soaring heights ancient and medieval philosophers believed natural philosophy could soar. It's far from certain that the Singularity (Big Bang) represents the beginning of being in such a way that justifies our appeal to "first" cause, although that might be a point I'd be willing to grant for the sake of language.
2. I'm not so sure the logic of the Kalam is valid. I readily admit that an infinite regress is inconceivable---which leaves it in the same ballpark as necessary being or first cause---but is it illogical? It seems to me to expose the limitations of reason but not necessarily any inherent contradiction. Why can't we logically ask what caused the cause we are calling the first? Perhaps one could suggest an "eternal recurrence," an idea also suggested by the ancients (Presocratics like Empedocles and Zeno, that famous lover of paradoxes involving infinities), and taken up again by Nietzsche, and retort that the First Cause is the same as the Last Effect, and causation is a cycle that has no beginning or end but is a genesis, a becoming to be, that exists necessarily? Then again, does that really satisfy the concept of infinity or does it suggest setting limits on infinity by conceiving it as a closed series? And if it's an open series, then how could any effect follow a cause when we can't seem to find the point where the fourth cause was begotten by the third, which was begotten by the second, and then of course, that followed the first? But to even the ask that question, haven't we already conceived infinity as a closed series? Haven't we merely set an arbitrary starting point and asked where the other end lies, and if so, what is logically different about doing this whether we conceive time as moving forwards or backwards?
Most importantly, though, what does "first cause" do to actually alleviate the situation? I'm inclined to agree with Arthur Schopenhauer when he wrote, "A first cause is just as inconceivable as is the point where space has an end or as a moment when time had a beginning. For every cause is a change and here we are necessarily bound to ask about the change which preceded it, and by that which it had been brought about, and so on ad infinitum, ad infinitum... The law of causality is therefore not so obliging as to allow itself to be used like a cab which we dismiss after we reach our destination." How could a first cause be anything that becoming can't be?
3. Why should we assume this First Cause, if we allow ourselves that, is God? Wouldn't that be an unnecessary step which easily leads into the same folly that the ancients committed when they treated the Sun as a god?
What do you think?
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
