Why does the First Cause have to be intelligent?

Let's assume, for a moment, that the cosmological argument is right and that there's a first cause which caused everything else.

The usual response as to why the first cause doesn't need a cause, unlike everything in nature (let's also assume that quantum physics don't exist), is because it lies outside of nature, hence the rules of nature don't apply to it.

We know that order can only come from an intelligent creator (let's also assume crystals and spherical objects don't exist, either). We know this because we have observed it countless times.

We can say that the rule of design (everything ordered had to be designed by an intelligent creator) is a rule of nature. However, how can we apply this rule to the supernatural? If God doesn't have to follow the natural rule of causality, why does he have to follow the natural rule of design?

Why can't supernatural entities create order without having to be intelligent?

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“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
- Plato

The title of the thread is "Why does the First Cause have to be intelligent?". I take that to mean (using God as the First Cause), "Why does God have to be intelligent?"

You then said
Here, I take your question to be associating intelligence with the order and not the creator.

Are you really asking two questions, or am I just reading you wrong?

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What's the Word say?

I meant the without intelligence as in without using intelligence as a tool. It was ambiguous, so I changed it now.

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“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
- Plato

The First-Cause must be intelligent because intelligence effectively exists, and no effect can transcend its cause.

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I would not as well understand what I am left to believe if not for the contributions of those who did not see it my way.

If that is true, then you've already ruled out a supernatural cause.

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"The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. So long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues." - Bertrand Russell

Because the Bible says God made the world, God is intelligent, so the first cause must be God, and thus intelligent.

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"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!"

When you write "supernatural" do mean other than material-spatial-temporal?

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I would not as well understand what I am left to believe if not for the contributions of those who did not see it my way.

It's intelligent because its the first thing that actually works...

...after eons of nothing happening - absolutely nothing - something actually works...

...and if you don't call it intelligent... pretty soon you will forget about it:

the one thing in eons that actually worked and you will forget about it!!!

Non sequitur, and a pretty bad one, too.

How does it qualify as eons if time didn't exist before God created it?

What?

What am I reading?!

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“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
- Plato

Let us assume that the First Cause is unintelligent. Let us assume that it is some impersonal, unintelligent entity that somehow caused the universe to come into existence.

The question remains: How could an impersonal, unintelligent First Cause give rise to an effect such as you and me who are personal, intelligent entities?

If one wants to maintain that it is incredible that there should exist an intelligent First Cause, is it not much more incredible to maintain that the First Cause is unintelligent? It seems to me to be patently obvious that the latter position is inherently absurd, especially when taking into account the effects that came from this First Cause.

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"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." – C.S. Lewis Surprised by Joy






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