(November 30, 2022 at 9:47 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(November 30, 2022 at 9:12 pm)Jehanne Wrote: I am okay with everything that you state, as long as it is understood that there are events that just happen (e.g., the radioactive decay of one atom versus the nondecay of another) that are not caused by anything; they just happen.
Yeah, we've been through this before. By "just happen" you are ruling out a temporal efficient cause.
This does not rule out causes as Aristotle uses the term.
For example, for radioactive decay to occur, there must be several prior conditions (=causes).
Among these causes: there has to be something to decay. There has to be a universe in which it can decay. There have to be laws of nature such that radioactive decay is possible. There has to be time and space in which it can decay.
The fact that there is no temporal efficient cause doesn't change the per se series of causes of which Aristotle and Thomas write.
The various isotopes of Uranium are, of course, created in supernova explosions, which are themselves the product of the proton-proton cycle of hydrogen fusion under the influence of gravity and the electromagnetic repulsion of the protons. We can continue this line of thought all the way back to the Big Bang.
