"Thus, the cause of the freezing water and the frozen water are concurrent with each other."
Thanks, aiki. That's a great example and feel free to jump in anytime during my exchanges. I find your inputs very insightful.
But this isn't how every cause and effect works. I can go ahead and move my fingers around and type this message (cause) but the only thing that will remain is this message (effect). They don't have to be concurrent with each other. My fingers have stopped moving. .
I think aiki's example is exactly how at least some cause and effects work. But I'd like to examine your example and point out that you skipped a whole bunch of relationships.
1. The effect of your words appearing on the screen is from the cause of electronic signals coming from circuitry. (simultaneous)
2. The effect of the electronic signals coming from the circuitry is from the cause of reading the saved data in the chips. (simultaneous)
3. The effect of the saving data in the chips is from the cause of a certain sequence of keys being pressed (simultaneous).
4. The effect of the movement of the key .002 distance is from the cause of the movement of my finger moving .002 distance into the keyboard. (simultaneous)
So while I might agree that some effects may continue to happen after the cause has stopped, it seems to me like we could cite an abundance of examples where the effects happen
concurrently with the causes. I think example #4 seems closest to what I saying...that at the same time the universe began to exist (the movement of the key .002) is the same time that God brought the universe into being (the movement of the finger .002). But I'm glad we're having this discussion because we seem to be agreeing with each other that our experience confirms that effects have causes, so it really looks like premise 1 is rock solid...that everything that begins to exist has a cause.
He said the first cause would have had to been uncaused, unaffected by time, and existed separate from the universeThis could be used to argue any first cause. People could use this argument to argue for the big bang.
I don't think so. What I said is that we could extrapolate some traits of the first cause and
rule out possibilities. Such examples that we could rule out are all of the Greek and Roman gods because they are said to exist within the universe, and the flying spaghetti monster because he is material. Maybe I misunderstood you, but I hope you don't mean to suggest that the big bang could have caused the big bang itself...that to me seems incoherent...that something that does not exist could bring itself into existence. So far, the only possible candidates that seem to have all of the traits that line up with the first cause are the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian god.
