wex@ittvax.UUCP (Alan Wexelblat) (08/19/83)
Whew! You don't ask for much, do you? I can't *prove* to you that God exists. But I can relate the thinking which convinced me that some form of eternal Is had to exist. (Note, I use Richard Bach's "eternal Is" here to avoid steeping on the toes of anyone's god-conception.) If we leave aside human thought for the moment, every event in the universe seems to have some sort of cause. Some causes are more complex than others, ans some are still not understood, but all events in our universe have some deterministic set of causal influences. Now, if current cosmology is correct, the universe was formed as the result of a "big bang." This bang is the first event in the universe. In some causal way, all events we see are related to that first event. Human thought, however, seems to be somehow outside the chain of causality (yes, I know this is a huge issue in itself, but leave it go for now). In other words, humans, as a result of their cognitive processes seem to be capable of causing events without the humans' thoughts being determined by outside causes. So, if we accept that cognition is the only thing (other than physical causes) which can produce physical effects, we need to posit a cognition which caused the first event (see above). I call that cognition the eternal Is. I think that this reasoning holds, no matter what your universe-view. Somewhere, there needs to be a first event, and that event requires a first cause. Now, I'm sure you'll get lots of responses telling you that God is alive and well, and that He sent His son here to die for us, or that he gave Moses the ten commandments, or that he inspired Mohammed, his greatest prophet or some other equally unprovable thing. THOSE you have to take on faith. The eternal Is, however, seems to be a logical necessity. --Alan Wexelblat decvax!ittvax!wex P.S. Note that nothing is said about religion, worship, or any similar idiocy.
larry@grkermit.UUCP (Larry Kolodney) (08/20/83)
WEX@ittvax claims to have a logical proof of the need for existence for
some sort of Is (GOD).
His argument is based on two shaky premises:
1. Human thought .... seems to be somehow outside the chain of
causality.
2. Somewhere there needs to be a first event, and that event requires
a first cause, and only something with cognition can "cause" things.
I don't see any evidence at all for the first point. Human thought is
the result of chemical processes in the brain. If you think there is
some sort meta-physical soul, than you are starting out with an article
of faith and your argument ceases to me logically sound.
As far as the second point goes, I think you had better explain what
you mean by cause. I can cause things to happen. I can push a button
on my keyboard, and a letter appears on the screen. But if a rock fell
on my keyboard, the samething would happen. How do you differentiate?
You can trace my causation even farther back. I hit the keyboard
because I wanted to communicate with net.users. I wanted to do that
because I had the instinctive need of a social animal. This
instinctive need is contained in certain chemical structures in my
brain which react in ways know to the laws of physics and chemistry.
There's nothing mysterious about it. Until you can justify putting
human action outside the laws of physics, your argument doesn't hold
water.
--
Larry Kolodney (The Devil's Advocate)
{linus decvax}!genrad!grkermit!larry
(ARPA) rms.g.lkk@mit-ai