Invitation for Atheists to Debate a Christian via Skype

[SenseMaker007]

Thank you!

It's all a bit counterintuitive for us moderns, I think. Not because science has disproved it, but because our use of the word "cause" has narrowed over the last 1000 years or so. For Aristotelians, if A is necessary for B to exist, A can be called a cause. Even if it takes no action. 


This is also a tricky part of the argument. 

It's essential for Aristotle that the First Cause takes no action. 

It is eternally unchanging, actus purus, entirely without potential for change. It is called a cause not because it reaches down and pushes something, but because (they argue) it has to be there for even space-time to exist. 

Another way to say it is that the First Cause is existence itself. Not a thing that exists, but existence. Without it -- without existence -- there would obviously be nothing.

You said the First Cause is not a thing, but then you go on to say, “without it.”  What is existence then, if it isn’t a thing? Do you mean to say, ‘without the potential for things to exist?’ If so, what are the preconditions necessary for anything at all to exist? I believe that it is logically contradictory to describe “nothing” as a potential alternative to “something”, because “nothing”, by definition, cannot be.  Not trying to be difficult, I just want to make sure I understand exactly what is meant by the First Cause, and I’m no philosopher, lol.

The idea of there being a such thing as something that isn't a thing ... makes zero sense to me. Even people are living things. Numbers are abstract things. "It's a cause not a thing!" ... just seems like nonsense. If it's not a thing then it can't do anything ... including causing stuff. And how could a non-thing interact with things? And isn't a non-thing, well ... nothing?

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Not a thing that exists, but existence. Without it -- without existence -- there would obviously be nothing. 

There's nothing more real than the totality of existence itself. It's more likely that the separation of one thing from another is an illusion* .... than that existence itself isn't a thing. Existence HAS to be a thing ... or it wouldn't exist. It would be nothing.

There are sound reasons to believe in a first cause ... but there are no sound reasons to believe that that first cause has a personality.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(philosophy)

^^^ but without the "divine being" aspect.