Eternity (Origins)

by dhw, Thursday, November 21, 2013, 14:11 (4020 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: What do we imagine the first cause mind will have been doing with itself for ever and ever and ever? Well, all we know is that it has created this universe. 
DAVID: All we can know and work from is a first cause created this universe. We can't know or even reasonably make suggestions, except the St. Thomas approach as the maker of laws and information seems very reasonable to me,since we find those laws by math. Note I have removed your amorphous suggestions about how the First cause stayed busy for eons. Stick with us and how we are. Work back from there.-We certainly can't know what the first cause is, which does indeed mean we can only make suggestions. You seem to be saying that St Thomas's suggestion is the only reasonable one, any other is "amorphous" (what could be more amorphous than your God?), and you won't consider it! Why is it unreasonable to suggest that throughout the "for ever and ever and ever" past there might have been countless other universes, since we know that the first cause has produced this one? -dhw: ...the notion of an eternal first cause is as open to atheism as it is to theism.
DAVID: Not with St. Tom. Atheism simply says we don't know and can't know anything, so lets assume nothing and believe in nothing. That's easy. -Not so. Folk like Dawkins believe that our universe is the result of natural laws that govern matter, there is no universal intelligence, and eventually the mysteries of life and consciousness will be explained by materialism. They can argue that an infinite number of universes going back through eternity is bound eventually to produce one that will harbour life (see next comment for continuation).
 
DAVID: [...] What can we reasonably expect the minimal attributes of a first cause might be based on what we see exists? Intelligence. I can go no further.-The second phase, following on from the umpteenth zillionth universe being able to harbour life, is life itself, and this is where the origin of "intelligence" becomes the focal point. You insist that intelligence was always there, somehow. "First cause" explains nothing. I see no difference between this "somehow" and the "somehow" whereby intelligence evolved within materials. They are equally "amorphous". But if we are to go purely by "what we see exists", we can only go by life itself, which clearly shows materials cooperating to create ever greater complexity. We do not see a universal intelligence ... we only see individual intelligences. Were they inserted divinely from outside, or did they evolve naturally from inside? I don't think we can answer that, and so ... if I may echo you ... I can go no further.