IS THERE NOT A CAUSE?
Truth even if it hurts... Clearing confusion and cant on the CONCEPT OF CAUSE
Let's take a brief walk on
this topic. We'll notice some far more detailed presentations as we pass, but
this will be sufficient to alert you, warn you and prepare you. The issues are
quite simple, but the tactics we meet are as askew as normal where necessary
things are being contested by unnecessary argument. It simply needs
dismantling.
1. Causation has caused a lot of casualties in clear thinking. (For an extensive coverage, see "The Shadow of a Mighty Rock", SMR, Chs.1,3, and initially pp. 3-10). First let's note that the word of God has this to say:
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness; because what may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has showed it to them.
For the
invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so
that they are without excuse" (Romans
LET US NOW LOOK AT CAUSATION.
2. NO APPLAUSE FOR FIRST CAUSE, but MUCH FOR THE MAKER OF CAUSATION.
In fact there is a lot of confusion in this field. One of the reasons is an Aristotelian PRIME MOVER which is admittedly somewhat ridiculous. He is - it is - thought of as being contemplatively present, but averse to being too close to things, a perpetually actualising original dynamic.
I have no interest in pursuing
this type of imagination, a sort of internalised, self-contradictory focus, set
in system like an on-site genie, a timid child, or a leg-roped cow. It is,
perhaps, better than nothing, but stops short of what reason requires. (For
this, see SMR - Chs.1,3,5 at site
noted later). Logically needed: one originator of this two-fold ordered set-up,
all of it, one who is self-sufficient and without inbuilt system, or alignment.
3. PRODUCER OF SERIAL CAUSATION.
Of course, the producer of that particular discrete article (one of so many items) known as "causation" - with its time and space confines and laws, constantly becoming better known by mankind - is not bound by or related to such a type of thing, except as an inventor of it. He does not "have to" wait for anything, wait on anything, but has constructed us so that we very often do. He has no "need" to do anything to anything, for none has set him to any assignable task or function, nor is there any to prescribe limits, properties or "place". He does not execute any required program on-site, but does what He will. Assigned tasks belong to taskmasters, and when you are looking for the cause of things, this is by definition irrelevant. The Being who set the task would then be the Cause, and the programmed the consequence. Otherwise there is the fey fairyland of nothing doing things, a simple contradiction in terms.
You can call this free Being, in this context, what you will. For clarity, I prefer to call Him God. A limiting causation such as we see in this world is a mere product. Causatively, you may say with perfect accuracy that God has invented serial causation, and any other type of interactive, rather than intrinsic, causative significance. The "rules" are of Him, not for Him.
As an illustration,
consider this.
My characters in a book may interact; and this, for the reader, has much to recommend it, since it is a mirror of life etc.. Yet I, writing it, am so far above it, that it is laughable if you like to compare the constraints on my fictional characters with the freedom I have to create them. I am not a first cause or mere prime mover in that system. Far more than that: I created it, being myself the contriver of its system of causal interchange.
4. CREATION - common, but not commonplace.
THE AUTHOR does not have to wait years for the hero to get out of prison; he merely invents the system where these things happen. That's why it IS a system. He could interfere in his story, his book, in this way or that if he chose without the slightest difficulty of form or style or system. Whether or not he does this, is entirely his own personal affair, as creator of that particular system, and inter-relationship of persons; and of what we call events. An author's role is at a far superior level. He acts causatively in creating that other (here fictional) causation which the reader follows duly in the book written. Creation is like that, and we are all very familiar with it. We are performing it in one way or another, at one level or another, constantly.
On the topic of
"removing" causation, that is, seeking to withhold existence from it,
we find some laughable results. It amounts to this: producing your own
reasons - as intellectual causes - for removing "causation" (though
it is at that very moment still alive, intact and you are right then using it). Such a pretence is
rather like being "caught in the act". IN seeking to dispense with it
by argumentation and explanation, one is thereby assuming its validity while
trying to remove it. On all this, I have little here to say. It involves
self-contradiction. (See here: "Predestination and Freewill", Appendix on Kant, and SMR Chs. 5 and 3.)
There is however one thing
which must be said, however brief our review.
5. SELF-CONTRADICTION
Self-contradiction renders contradiction by any other party rather unnecessary. Any time you would use what you have already dismissed, you are left rather abandoned when you have done it. Otherwise put: Invalidating your weaponry is not much of a way to make it effective to do ANYTHING. If there is no such objective thing as causation, then there is no such thing as giving a valid cause for the concept. It then CANNOT be explained; far less 'explained away'; no, far less again, is there any way in which such a concept as causation could then apply to more distant reality, doubly distant because it is, in the natural sphere, known only by or through thought. Reason is bankrupt by a stroke, and doubly so. It is evacuated, illicit and disbanded. That is the result.
Reason, however, being invalid, on such a postulate, in such an imaginary world, it could show nothing. Indeed, if there were no such thing as causation per se, then there would be no way it could be caused to enter into things external or internal, in reality; it could not pretend to cover cases of any kind; could not enter into argument of this kind or that, into realities of this world or that. Therefore, on such a basis: in reality, no causal ascription, point or program, no appeal to it would be valid. Thus all argument to remove it is removed before it happens, since the presupposition is contrary to its use.
It is, quite simply, logically impossible to invalidate causation. It is out of the question to give causes for the dismissal of causation, as if to 'explain' that this is how it appears to be what it is not. This is like paying a barrister to prove that you are penniless, fighting a war to prove you are a warless individual, or immovably peaceable; like killing to prove you cannot kill.
It is possible however to view it in different dimensions, as we have already seen to be the case. It is susceptible to multiplication, not annihilation.
Actually causeless things are not able to have any characteristics (e.g. SMR 264ff., 284ff.); for if they did, these would be ascertainable or depictable in some sense, so that they could even exist for thought, or be specifiable. Then there would be causation in operation ensuring these characteristics displayed themselves so that they could be correctly stated to be what they are. It does not matter too much WHAT you depict it as being, what criteria you seek to erect: it has to have them in order to be thought of at all.
Hence, without
characteristics, they are without specifiability of ANY kind, which is not
distinguishable from nothing. In other words, they do not exist. Empirically,
and unsurprisingly, a causeless operation has never been demonstrated, though
the old "spontaneous generation" seemed plausible to some, before
Pasteur; and doubtless the logical impasse just noted is one of the
reasons for that simple circumstance. You could never specify the thing in
order to show what it did or did not do.
6. REFERENCES.
For detailed PAGE
REFERENCES and access to parts of our on-site works dealing with the things
noted, in physics etc. see: the hyperlinks provided PLUS the detailed
suggestions at the end of this presentation.
7. MUCH
Particularly amusing is the idea of making 'nothing' the source of something. It is simple contradiction in terms, a sort of secular speaking in tongues or worse. If it were assumed something came from nothing it would simply mean that logic had been dispensed with, rationality dismissed, definitions were a jumble, meaning was delusive; but that invalidates what ELSE you do, such as use language with its logical, causative relationships of terms. So it cannot be done in theory any more than it has ever been demonstrated in practice.
Again, trying to
"invent" a cause for causation itself, as if it
were our own internalised construction on things, is merely as before, USING
what you dismiss in the very act of dismissal, in order to dismiss it.
Self-contradiction again. Things have reasons. Reasoning against reason is
contradiction in terms. Refs. As for point 4, above, plus Barbs, Arrows
and Balms, Item 29.
8. MEETING THE PRODUCER.
We don't NEED TO invent impossible internal causes of causation from within the system,
any more than we logically CAN DO IT;
we need to meet the Inventor of the serial causal concept and operation,
the producer of the processive,
operating eternally as He sees fit,
creating or destroying universes at will.
But that is another matter.
For that, see
9. REDUCTION AD ABSURDUM
There's a procedure known as reductio ad absurdum - used a lot in geometry. It means, as you probably know, that you explore what may be, remove what cannot be, and remain with the choice option. You get that, amongst other things, within the reference area given above; and also in many other areas in this field of what the truth is about the nature of things.
See Barbs, Arrows and Balms 7. These
'alogisms' or
impossible fiascos resulting from not coming to God Almighty in the name of His
chosen revelation in Jesus Christ, the Just One, speak for themselves. God speaks for Himself, too.
Artisan of created communicator powers, He is surpassingly good at it. For the step-by-step
logical development showing what He has said to our race, see SMR Ch.1, and if
you wish more, Chs.5, and 10.
Chapters 4, 6, 8-9 deals largely with verifications,
though these are logical as well as empirical. Ch.7 deals with applications and
expositions of what God has to say.
REFERENCES:
ALSO:
1) You may go to The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (SMR) direct at
This
yields a page counter access to a given page plus below it, an extensive index access,
alphabetically leading to "causality" with an array of references, as
also to "series", "thought", "language" and other
related topics, also by hyperlink.
2) If you wish, you may go direct to That Magnificent Rock - contents
or to its cited Ch.7
3) You may direct to Predestination and Freewill
or
to its cited Appendix on Kant within
this.
4)
Specifically: You may find the matter for our present topic, in much more
detail in SMR, pp. 284ff., and
elsewhere in that Chapter (3). On the same line, see SMR pp. 3ff., 36ff., 73ff., and elsewhere: for example,
through the Index under CAUSALITY. Paul Davies' errors specifically are dealt
with in SMR pp. 421ff. (in Chapter
4), and in "That Magnificent Rock", {TMR} Ch.7, "Models and
Marvels" (above). It deals with some detail at the level of physics.
5)
If you wish to explore the personal side of things in this vast context of
Creator and Creation, see also Biblical Blessings, Ch 13, and A Spiritual Potpourri
Ch.12, as well as That
Magnificent Rock, Chs. 3
and 2 ,
and
6, Little Things Ch. 5 and It
Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls Ch. 9.