The Speculist

Richard Gott, a well-known Princeton cosmologist, has suggested that the universe may be its own mother. This theory evades first cause arguments and seems to imply that there's no need for any initial singularity. I understand that nonetheless Gott himself is a Presbyterian.

The notion of God as “the uncaused cause” comes to us originally from Aristotle's Metaphysics. Both Aquinas and Maimonides barrow this concept from Aristotle and apply the Biblical notion of creation ex nihlo to it. Aristotle's notion of causation is not so much an initiating event as it is a continuous force – sort of like the difference between knocking down a domino and the continuous force of gravity keeping the earth in motion. Also Aristotle is not talking about efficient causation alone – remember Aristotle's four causes? In order for an entity to serve the function of Aristotle's God it must be more than a spacio-temporal event – it must be an intelligence. Aristotle was the first I.D. Theorist and Aristotle applies this conception to an evo/devo cosmology in which potentiality is moving toward actuality according to an intellectual principle of teleological cause.
I postulate that the movement toward technological singularity is a movement toward the telos of God and is God-like because it is the summa bonnum (greatest good) which both Aristotle and Aquinas theorized about.

woccam --

I can see how this model potentially explains the existence of the universe, but there is still an enormous gap between nothing at all and a universe that is its own mother. How did we get from point A to point B?

Micah --

You are correct. Aristotle is the originator of the notion of what he called a Prime Mover. However, if I recall correctly, although Aristotle was interested in the four different kinds of cause as you mentioned, the Uncaused First Cause was, in point of fact, a flavor of efficient cause.

(The only Aristotle I've read in the past two decades was The Rhetoric, so I'm a little rusty, here.)

Happy New Year all Ye Speculists. I got "The Privileged Planet" as a gift for Christmas--and learned more science and astronomy than I ever did in school. Contrary to the hype, it's not written to convince people that God exists, and it certainly doesn't fit creationsists' agenda--the fine-tuned universe took billions of years to reach our cosmic "habitable time zone." What struck me is how we are positioned for discovery. We were designed to wrestle with the very questions you write about in your post. It may be "turtles all the way down (and up)," but eventually we're going to find the first turtle. And each paradigm is essential to climb to the next. Nothing is wasted in the grand cosmic scale. Phil, I believe we'll truly discover the physics of eternity and meet God face to face.That would be a Singularity in itself, don't you think? And I'm beginning to think that the intelligence we call God is "immeasurably more vast, more ancient, and more magnificent than anything we've been willing to expect or imagine." (Quote is from the last line in the book-- and it sounds eerily like my life verse, Ephesians 3:20.)

I'm beginning to wonder if all the mult-verse and string theories we're cooking up to explain "the miracle" are a bit petulant. The fact that we are privileged to discover, oberve and measure this universe is sufficienlty sophisticated, elegant and grand.

Phil,
You have probably come to think of the uncaused cause as "the prime mover" because Aquinas puts forth a cosmological argument for God's existence in which a prime mover is a necessity and this prime mover, it is said, must be God. However for both Aquinas and Aristotle all of the causes are interwoven. For both of these men change is an effect of mental agency and the four causes all depend on mental agents for their respective effects.

Micah --

Yes, Aquinas did argue as you point out, but he got the argument from Aristotle:

Now we have already determined (when we were discussing whether eternal motion exists or not, and its definition, if it does exist) that the origin of all other motions is that which moves itself, and that the origin of this is the immovable, and that the prime mover must of necessity be immovable.

I take Immovable Prime Mover to be another way of saying Uncaused First Cause. Whatever else he may have said, and whatever context he may have put it in, it seems that Aristotle did posit the prime mover as the (ultimate) efficient cause of...everything.

Kathy --

Happy New Year back at you. I've been meaning to read that book.

"I'm beginning to wonder if all the mult-verse and string theories we're cooking up to explain "the miracle" are a bit petulant. The fact that we are privileged to discover, oberve and measure this universe is sufficienlty sophisticated, elegant and grand."

What? Don't you know that Alexander wept when there were no more words to conquer? It isn't petulance. It's a guy thing!