On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:02:52PM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> > "If God created the universe, who created God?"
> >
>
> That's one of the more interesting questions. The medieval theologians
> charactarised God as the 'prime mover', i.e. the first in a causal chain
> of events. It's not unreasonable to suppose that there was an initial
> cause - after all, infinite series can still have beginnings and ends. You
> quickly end up in a not-at-all religious discussion of what constitutes
> 'an event', and other metaphysical topics that are very much in the domain
> of analytical western philosophy and logic and not really much to do with
> the God of the bible, if you like.
yes, the question is a problem if you've been saying that everything
must have an (external) cause, or that anything as
wonderful/intricate/... as $WONDERFUL_THING must have an (external)
cause; but not a problem for a 'prime mover' theory. i'm suspicious of
a 'prime mover' concept, because it seems to bear very little
resemblance to a cause in the everyday sense of the word, which leaves a
lot of work that needs doing to show that the concept is explanatory, or
even meaningful.
> None the less, there is more cross-over between the domains than is
> popularly imagined. In particular the early Christian theologians took a
> very rigorous and logical approach to their discussions.
semantics is everything.
> Jon, who rarely gets to talk about medeival phiosophy any more....
--
Phil Lanch 0xD78D598DA6635CF32AB24593C98994B7D95B33E3
http://www.subtle.clara.co.uk/rephrase/
"I have an answer. It's not the right
answer, but it makes me feel good."
