Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Uncaused First Cause

Everything must have a cause, therefore there must be an uncaused first cause, which must be God. Right?

First flaw: Many alternatives are possible, which the promoters of this proof commonly either handwavingly dismiss without an adequate explanation or leave entirely unexplored.

Second flaw: In order for something to be uncaused, it must be part of the primordial realm of the uncaused, consisting of only things that exist only because their nonexistence does not exist. I've never seen any description of what sort of God might be plausibly included in this realm.

Third flaw: In order for something to be a cause, it must have causative powers. I've never seen anything in our theology that explicitly credits God with any specific causative powers beyond the hand-waving statement that God is omnipotent, which is meaningless.

The primordial realm of the uncaused might plausibly include such things as the validity of logic, the truth of the axioms, the workability of mathematical patterns, the feasibility of certain dimensionalities, and many other things which, if true, would have precisely the sorts of causative powers needed to cause at least some of the features of our universe, but theologians have unexplainably omitted these attributes from their various concepts of God.

Theologians, you've got a lot of work yet to do!