If one supposes there is a transcendent prime cause for our Universe, and if one supposes mind is clearly immaterial, then isn’t postulating an impersonal first cause unparsimonious? because contrary to minds, we’ve never proved an immaterial unconscious creator.
So, in this case, isn’t a mind is the most probable candidate for being a prime cause?
Posted: October 25th 2010
George Locke
I’ll play along: suppose there was a first cause and that mind is immaterial. The biggest problem with your argument is identifying the first cause as a “creator”. Mightn’t the first cause resemble a quantum fluctuation more than a watchmaker?
Your argument seems to require some additional premises:
- The first cause was either a personal creator or an impersonal creator
- Impersonal creators don’t have anything resembling a mind
Many people who believe in an impersonal creator think of it as a “universal consciousness” or something, inconsistent with your second unstated premise.
Anyway, why is it such a stretch to imagine that something mindless caused the universe to exist? If quantum fluctuations could do it (an hypothesis with some actual science behind it), why not an impersonal creator? If you require further that the creator designed the universe so that intelligent life could develop, you might infer that the creator would have to be intelligent itself. But assuming the creator had intentions is probably begging the question.
Of course, all of this is academic. None of these premises are sound.
Posted: October 25th 2010
brian thomson www
Your last sentence looks like a non sequitur to me; even if I shared your presuppositions, which I don’t. The mind may be an immensely complex form of emergent behaviour, but “immaterial”? The mind is in the material of the brain: damage the brain, you damage the mind, as any neuroscientist will tell you. It doesn’t get more material than that.
Since I have no reason to believe there was a “prime cause”, I have little interest in speculation about its nature. Sorry!
Posted: October 25th 2010
Mike the Infidel www
Neither of your suppositions make any sense. There is no reason to assume that the universe is the result of any sort of transcendent cause, and minds (so far as we know) are the direct product of the action of a physical brain. We have no evidence of any sort supporting the idea that a brain can exist without a mind, so no, a mind cannot possibly be the most probable candidate for being a prime cause. Otherwise you’d have to explain the existence of an uncaused mind.
Posted: October 25th 2010