Knobbyboy88 wrote:I never denied that the one was more contrived than the other. However, considering the fact we are dealing with what effectively constitutes a mind boggling logical impossibility either way, I wouldn't necessarily say that we can really say for sure either way. Which way any given individual swings on the matter is really just a matter of personal preference.
EDIT: Anything simply "existing" with no cause is a difficult concept to come to terms with.
Doesn't bother me.
Knobbyboy88 wrote:Care to expand on that? I'm not sure I follow.
If I am understanding your point correctly, you were saying that the absence of "time" being an essential characteristic of the natures of both God and Satan would mean that God and Satan existed simultaneously and that, therefore, neither could have created the other because one technically could not predate the other.
This would basically make Satan a God unto himself as God would not be his creator. Such a view would more or less constitute Gnosticism.
You have not understood my point correctly. My point was far more restricted: if the absence of time were an essential characteristic of Satan, then the idea of some
point in time at which Satan had not rebelled against God is meaningless. However, this does not mean that God could not possibly have created Satan, so far as I am concerned.
For instance, along with all other aspects of the instantaneous and simultaneous creation of and fiddling with spacetime, God could have thought "this universe I'm making needs the attentions of an annoying, malicious, ambitious, relatively powerful being that disagrees with me" and created one, which sprang into being opposed to God and which instantaneously interfered to the limits of its ability at all points in spacetime.
I cannot imagine why any quasi-sane God would have done so, but I can imagine a God doing it.
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On a side note, I think I agree with Darth Wong that the "prime mover" argument is not valid, and is indeed stupid.* The idea that the universe logically
must have a prime mover to explain its existence is tempting if you start from the point "everything happens for a reason," and proceed naively. But it can't be proven true anywhere near well enough to justify the strength of its conclusions by any line of argument I've ever heard of.
*On a very strange and rarefied plane of stupidity.
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I read the paper, and I'm rather disappointed in it. I do not think it adequately supports its conclusion.
I take exception to Smith's reasoning at a number of points, organized by the sections in which he makes those points:
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Section 2, "Hume's Definition of a Cause," (c):
Smith argues that the nature of a supernatural being willing the universe into being makes it impossible to define cause-effect relations in terms of "nomological" conditions. He reasons as follows:
A cause C is nomologically related to an effect E if we can describe the cause as a set of conditions {C
1, C
2,...,C
i} that, assuming a set of laws {L
1, L
1,..., L
j}, we can logically deduce that E will occur, or that E
might occur with some known probability. Smith argues that for an omnipotent being, there are no laws to put in set L, and this condition (necessary for Hume's definition of cause and effect, among others) cannot apply.
I contend that this is not true. One can suggest some laws L that derive from the very
definition of the word 'omnipotent,' such as "what [insert omnipotent thing here] wants to happen happens, regardless of any interfering circumstances." That would certainly belong in the set L,.
Or one can suggest any number of conditions under which even an 'omnipotent' being is constrained by logical principles such as the need for self-consistency. Thomas Aquinas's argument that his idea of God would not be able to create a plane triangle with angles adding up to 180 degrees comes to mind. Again, this imposes laws on the situation and populates the set L.
Therefore, Smith is too quick to dismiss the nomological condition as being inapplicable. But since the later part of Section 2 depends heavily on the idea that any definition of causation that
includes the nomological condition cannot be used to make a statement of the form "[Supernatural being X] caused the universe to come into existence," that undermines the rest of Section 2 of his paper.
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Section 2, "The Transference Definition of Cause:"
Here, Smith argues that a nonphysical God could not have caused a physical event under a definition of "cause" in which the cause transfers some quality or substance to the effect. After all, Smith argues, a nonphysical being cannot have physical qualities or assets (such as energy) to transfer to an event; nor could a physical event be caused by nonphysical qualities or assets (which I don't have words for).
This seems to me to be making some heavy, unwarranted assumptions about the definition of "nonphysical" and the claim that a God would qualify as "nonphysical." In a sense Smith is assuming that which he wishes to prove: that it would be impossible for a God to effect* the observable universe without itself being observable to us.
*Yes, I meant
effect and not
affect. As far as I can determine, Smith does not attempt to prove that a God could not affect the observable universe without itself being observable to us, though this would follow equally well from his premises that a God would be nonphysical and that nonphysical entities cannot affect physical events.
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Section 2, "Counterfactual Definitions of Causation:"
Here, Smith cites an earlier argument by David Lewis, involving the idea of 'counterfactual' definitions of causation: if C and E are events that occur, and if C had not occured, E would not have occured, then C caused E.
He argues that such a definition cannot apply to a divine willing of the big bang, arguing that if we place "divine willing" in as C and "the universe appears" as E, then if E had not occured, C would not have occured (I infer that Smith means we can
deduce that C did not occur from the absence of E).
This is, so far as I understand it, a disagreement with Lewis's argument as Smith presents it. To use more normal examples, if we make C the act of me flipping a light switch and E the light bulb coming on, we can infer that I did not flip the switch if the light does not come on.
I very much doubt that, in the event that the light
does come on, the above fact can be said to mean I did not cause the light to come on. At least, not for a reasonable definition of "cause" that would actually be useful enough to merit attention. Assuming Lewis's argument was reasonable,* Smith seems to have misunderstood it. If Smith is getting Lewis right, then Lewis's definition is utterly useless, because under it nothing can be said to have caused anything, because the absence of
any effect can always be used to prove the absence of its cause.**
*Not having a copy of the 1983
Philosophical Papers at my fingertips, I cannot prove this, of course.
**If we define the cause of the effect broadly enough to catch everything: for the light bulb, the "cause" includes me flipping the switch
and the power being on
and the bulb working and so on.
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Section 3:
Smith argues that there is a more damning argument against the consistency of "Divine volition caused the universe to exist" than his own inability to find a definition of "cause" under which the statement can be examined. Specifically, he contends that:
"For any two particular events or states x and y, if x is a logically sufficient condition of y, then x is not a cause of y."
Here, I may honestly be missing something, because this claim strikes me as completely absurd, pulled from nowhere without anything resembling adequate support. If anyone can offer insight into why Smith saw this is as so clearly true that he presented it in a published journal article without further justification, I'd appreciate it.
This unlikely-seeming claim is a cornerstone of Smith's argument that an omnipotent God cannot be said to have caused the big bang, as outlined in the rest of Section 3.
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Most of the rest of his paper stands on the foundation laid by his (in my eyes, poor) arguments made in Sections 2 and 3; aside from that I have no relevant objections to them. Objections, yes, but not ones relevant to my disagreement with his conclusion.
But based on my reasons above, I contend that Smith's argument is inadequately reasoned, and does not support his conclusion that the statement "God caused the universe to come into existence" is logically inconsistent. That doesn't mean the statement is
true, but 'logically possible' and 'true' are not the same thing.
Likewise, I think that Smith's argument does not support his conclusion that God could not have caused the universe to come into existence,
and therefore that the "prime mover" and teleological arguments for the existence of God are logically inconsistent because they include the argument "therefore, God must have caused the universe to exist," which is impossible if Smith is right. While I think the "prime mover" and teleological arguments are stupid, and that they may well be logically inconsistent for a vast horde of other reasons, they aren't inconsistent for
this reason.
I was simply addressing the OP's question about the Judeo-Christian interpretation of time where it relates to the existence of God and Satan.
lol