Creation: From Anthropomorphic Theology to Theomorphic Anthropology (No. B5)
Creation: From Anthropomorphic Theology to Theomorphic Anthropology (No. B5)
(Edition 1.1 19901201-20000919)
This work is directed at examining the logical basis of the Creation, Causation and the Attributes of God and the place of humans and sons of God in that Creation in harmony with the Scriptural account.
This work is directed at examining the logical basis of the Creation, Causation and the Attributes of God and the place of humans and sons of God in that Creation in harmony with the Scriptural account.
Christian Churches of God
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1990, 2000 Wade Cox)
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Creation
Contents
Preface
1 Causation and Singularities
1:1 Singularities and the Notion of Causation
1:2 The Development of Causal Explanation
1:2.2 Descartes and Post-Cartesian Causation
1:3 Metaphysical Aspects of Science and Matter
1:4 Testing Accounts of Causation
1:4.2 Idea/Ideatum and Existence without a Cause
1:5.1 Hume and Leibniz
1:5.2 The Humean Positon
Harmony
1:6.1 Unsound Aspects of Singularist Causation
1:6.2 Supervenient and Intermediate Causation
1:7 Counter Arguments
1:7.1 The Argument from the Possibility of Indeterministic Laws
1:7.2 The Singularist Account
1:7.3 Intermediate Account
1:8 The Direction of Time
1:9 Simultaneous Transmission of Ideas
1:10 Essential Properties of a Definition of Singularist Causation
2 Creation and Absolute Creation
2:1.1 Cyclical Creation and the Attributes of God
2:1.2 Transcendence/Immanence Problems
2:2.1 Absolute Creation
2:2.2 Activism and Law as a Mechanism
2:3.1 Ontology and Illumination
3 Transcendence and the Sons of God
3:1 Transcendence and the Angel of Redemption
3:2 The Elohim, Morning Stars and the Sons of God
3:2.1 The Elohim
3:2.2 The Elohim as a Plurality
3:2.3 Morning Stars
3:2.4 Cherubim
3:3.1 The Spirit of Man and the Angelic Order
3:3.2 Original Millennial Doctrines
3:4 The Logos and Creation
3:4.1 Will and Nature
3:4.2 Faith and Wisdom
3:4.3 Men and the Divine Nature
3:5 The Elohim and Free Moral Agency
3:6 Pantheism Versus Transcendent Monotheism
3:6.1 The Sons of God and a Continuity Argument
3:6.2 The Union of the Holy Spirit
3:6.3 Satan and Pantheism
4 Material Creation
4:1 The Creation of Man
4:1.1 Pre-Adamic Humanoids
4:1.2 Explaining the Sequence
4:2 Philosophical Aspects of Evolution
4:3 The Nephilim
4:3.1 Qumran
4:4 A Harmony of Apparently Conflicting Philosophies
4:4.1 Nicene and Post-Nicene Distortions of the Philosophy of Religion
4:4.2 An Alternative Explanation
4:5 The Soul and Life after Death
4:6 Early and Later Concepts of the Elohim and the Resurrection
4:7 The Mechanics of Human Spirituality
4:8 A Tentative Explanation of the Mind
5 Summary
bibliography
Preface
Up until the nineteenth century the science of the day was locked into the absurd quasi-religious theory that the earth was some few thousand years old, based on erroneous and illogical reconstructions of the biblical scenario. Many of these illogical myths are extant even today. As science started to estimate, based on its knowledge at the time, various estimates were made for the age of the earth, and therefore the sun/solar system. In 1854 Helmholtz came up with an age of 25 million years for the age of the sun and Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) came up with an estimate of 100 million years as the most likely figure. "Even Thomson, we know now, was more than ten times too modest in his assessment of the age of the solar system." (John Gribbin, In Search of the Big Bang: Quantum Physics and Cosmology, Corgi Books, 1988, p.160). These calculations were based on scientific assumptions on how much energy the sun radiates and how long such a body could sustain that energy output. The energy released is in fact about 4 x 1033 ergs per second or some 1041 ergs per year (ibid., p.161). With the discovery of radioactivity the estimates of Helmholtz and Thomson had to be multiplied by some 10 to 100 times to produce a correct model of radioactive breakdown.
As understanding increased of the mechanics of the solar system, it became possible to produce models of the structure and possible creation of the universe. Over the decades of the 20th century it has become fashionable to dismiss contemptuously the concepts of Creation and Theistic Activism. It has also become fashionable to dismiss even more contemptuously the concept of demons or an Angelic Host. It became almost an accepted definition that causation was non-singularist or supervenient and that the universe was material. Whilst it is true that there are difficulties with singularist concepts of causation and also the postulation of immaterial sub structures to the material universe, it is nevertheless becoming increasingly difficult within standard paradigms to account for the smoothness and uniformity in the distribution of the universe. In view of the current measurements of background radiation in the universe and the attendant problematic smoothness and orderliness of matter, the Big Bang Theory of the universe is now acknowledged to be in serious trouble. That does not mean that we should be dismissive of the models of physical reaction but rather we should now be able to re-examine the paradigms within which they were constructed. In the work on Creation and the Host the work of some philosophers and scientists was found to be extremely useful, especially those dealing with singularities. Any Theist account necessarily rests on premises of Singularist Causation, and from these, singularities in the physical creation.
It is considered that the work done by Michael Tooley on Singularist Causation is of significant importance to the concepts not only of causation but for theistic activism and necessarily for the concepts of human action. It is contended that the Philosophy of Religion was placed in an historical and causal straight jacket by the rewriting of the understanding of the ancients as mythological nonsense, and the actions of some Christian philosophers have arguably destroyed the spiritual direction and understanding of many generations of humans. This incoherence has also placed religion and paleoanthropology in needless conflict. It is significant that Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking have together demonstrated that the questions of general relativity in their classical form (i.e. without allowing for quantum effects) absolutely require that there was a singularity at the birth of the universe, a point at which time began. (Gribbin, ibid., p. 381). Stephen Hawking has identified mathematical singularities where not only matter but space and time can be created (or conversely crushed out of existence to the physicist). The writer does not profess to be an astrophysicist and therefore any suggestions that were to be made regarding astrophysical models would be gratuitous. It is noted in his work A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to the Black Holes, (Bantam Press, UK, 1988, p.50) that Hawking has changed his mind regarding Big Bang singularity, in that the necessity for such singularity can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account. He is however having difficulty unconvincing his colleagues. Whilst the necessity for Big Bang causal distribution of the universe is certainly in serious doubt it is held that the logical necessity of singularities cannot be overcome.
It is unfortunate that Roger Penrose’s new work came out at the completion of this work, as its importance to the understanding of human thought is highly significant. There appears to be a drift to structural immanence and a form of logical monism may become a fashionable innovation stemming from the new physics. This is alarming in its implications for Transcendent Monotheism.
From Tooley's position on Singularist Causation it is attempted to develop a singularist causal structure which is coherently theist. The attributes and nature of God require of the structure of creation an absolutist moral and ethical system based on theoretical relationships as Laws which are not disembodied or relative. It will be shown that existence of spiritual entities and the capacity for evil are logically necessary to a perfect harmonious universe with absolute capacity, and that the existence of Angels, Demons and Evil is not only compatible with the omniscience and omnipotence of God, but is in fact logically necessary to absolute spiritual capacity. It is further argued that the substructure of the universe is necessarily, with the current concepts of Dark Matter Theory, a logical reflection of the action of the spiritual, and will prove to be immaterial spiritual and little understood. That the universe has a purpose only barely comprehended is a premise of the ancients and one being demonstrated as knowledge increases.
Chapter 1
Causation and Singularities
Assumptions
Similar to the position experienced by Tooley, the following assumptions are necessary.
1: Traditional empiricist views concerning what concepts can be treated as analytically basic are sound and hence, the concept of causation cannot be treated as analytically basic and thus stands in need of analysis.
2: Regardless of Wittgenstein’s work on the problematic nature of private language, a private language is held to be unproblematic for the purpose of causation.
3: Concepts that involve the ascription of secondary qualities to external objects can be analyzed in terms of concepts that involve the ascription of qualia to experiences.
4: Analysis in the opposite direction is impossible.
1:1 Singularities and the Notion of Causation
Most views of causation have been reductionist and have treated causal relations as observable. These are unsatisfactory for the reasons outlined below and any treatment of causal relations which hopes to offer a satisfactory account of causation would appear to be realist, treating causal relations as theoretical. The assumption that causal relations are observable is a materialist view that is quite ancient. Originally theories of causation were theist with assumptions that some theistic causes were not observable save in the effect. The earliest alternate explanations of the actions of matter were basically animist, which assumed that corporeal structures acted the way they did because of their inherent nature. Bodies therefore acted as they did because it was the nature of the structure of the body. This essentially was a perversion of the early theist understandings of the nature of God. It is philosophically incoherent because it allocates an essentially indeterminate and logically polytheist structure to the universe. As seen below even Galileo was reluctant to abandon this animist causal explanation in view of the potential for offence to the religious scholars of the day who had adopted the Greek corporeal atomist explanation of science within a Chaldean theological structure which allocated an eternal soul to living entities. This theology was the basis of the animist structures of earlier ages.
To be coherent a Monotheist causal structure requires singularity of causation as an exercise of the will of the central entity called God. That entity logically cannot be a plurality otherwise a polytheist division of wills is introduced which raises philosophical objections of the type David Armstrong has raised to Dualism and which cannot logically be Monotheist. All entities that exist are therefore logically subordinate to the will of the central causal structure we understand as God and as such are extensions of that singular causal will. It is contended that all structures which impute division or plurality to the godhead cannot logically be Monotheist. They are essentially Polytheist and divisive and as such their existence must be of a transitional type with limited purpose. This is later dealt with.
The following analysis of causation is preliminary to any examination of the creation which is determined by the nature of the singular causal entity termed within our understanding as God, the Father and Maker. It is because of the logical reduction to God that singularities in the origin of the universe have been resisted by science. Similarly it has been from a desire to limit the concepts of an absolutist structure that scientists and philosophers when embracing singularities have tended to logical structures which render the singularity immanent and not transcendent. Such was the system of Spinoza, and the latest works out of the U.K. by Hawking et al. appear to be attempting an explanation based on captive immanence. This approach is a form of Monism rather than Monotheism.
Any singularity which is coherently Monotheist would also require that causal relationships be theoretical, not being disembodied or relative, and that such a singularity be not indeterminate. The existence of such a singularity would require an absolutist structure of fixed theoretical relationships where those relationships were established as laws concurrent with the creation of the entities regulated. A singularity responsible for the material creation necessarily must precede the material creation being immaterial in structure and substance. It must require also the immaterial underpinning of the material creation; otherwise all laws would not be theoretical but observable material and the original structure a physical or material initiation as an immanent structure of initial density not comprehensible and necessarily limited to the physical capacities of the material structure.
Superficially, a materialist Monism attendant upon corporeal atomism has been attractive since the Greeks refined it from Chaldean and Indo-Aryan theology. However, it is seriously incoherent both in its inability to purge its schema of metaphysical elements and its increasing inability to account for the orderly and even distribution of the physical system as knowledge increases.
There have been some incorrect assumptions underlying the notion of causation and some of these have been developed to accommodate the animist and polytheist systems that are in tension with revelation. Aquinas’ and other theological analyses of first cause essentially accommodate Greek views of causation. An explanation of the development of causal explanation and an analysis of the notion of causation follow. From this the importance of singularist causation and the implications regarding the creation and human action will become clear:
1. It will be shown that rather than traditional approaches involving claims of progression from human to the divine as an anthropomorphic theology, necessitating the appropriation of an immortal soul approximating that of the spirit of God and any angels there might be; the logically coherent schema is rather one of theomorphic anthropology and that there has been a fundamental misapprehension on the part of mankind regarding the nature, regulation and purpose of creation and mankind’s role in that creation.
2. We will examine and reject Cartesianism and from an examination of the nephesh, or spirit of man, show how it is logically necessary for all spirit or beings to exist as entities within the structure of God as parts of God: or be destroyed. The concept of destruction extended to the soul doctrine is philosophically inconvenient and polytheist. Logically the soul doctrine must be rejected along with traditional Athanasian and materialist concepts.
3. Indeed it will be shown the soul doctrine is fundamentally polytheist and contrary to the nature of God and that God is a controlling singularity.
4. It will also be shown that mankind’s spirituality is what might properly be termed non-essential theomorphism, where the divine in us is conditional and supernatural rather than derived from our natures.
1:2 The Development of Causal Explanation
Pre-Cartesian Causation
One of the problems in an adequate understanding of the biblical method was the concept of causation as understood by the Hebrews and that understood by the Chaldeans and from them the Greeks and Europeans. The Chaldeans were animists and hence the concepts of causation were seen in animistic terms, i.e. that physical bodies possess a spirit which regulates its action in some determinist sense. The Greeks were to inherit this and Aristotle was to give it formal expression. Jennifer Trusted gives a good and simple analysis of this in her Free Will and Determinism, (Oxford Opus, 1984, p. 29 et seq). The four kinds of causes are:
1. the material cause: the physical matter;
2. the formal cause: the plan or design for the physical matter
3. the efficient cause: the source of movement and/or activity of the matter; and
4. the final cause: the ultimate purpose or intention in bringing the event about.
Now a reduction in the forms of thought away from Parmenidean Monism or formal theism towards restricted corporeal atomism, which occurred with the Greeks and continued on into Europe (finally resulting in the establishment of Positivism and the rejection of Theism), results in concepts of causation which concentrate on efficient cause as cause in the modern sense and others as modes of explanation.
The concepts of the causes as expounded by Aristotle are only now accepted as valid for events that depend on human (and perhaps some animal) actions. This has become so because animism was rejected as a view of nature. Latent Greek animism affected thought up into the Renaissance. The concepts of the Chaldean soul doctrine were coupled with it. "Even Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) who died only a few years before Descartes, was not disposed to reject the animistic view of the heavenly bodies out of hand" (Trusted p.30). The concepts here are that, "if the ultimate explanation of any event is thought to be in terms of purpose then there is no problem of free will; for the ultimate cause is the will. It becomes senseless to ask what causes the will" (idem.). Hebrew and Chaldean Thought are therefore in dispute only as to the entity who wills. Hebrews, and indeed all Theists, argue that it is the entity God who wills. Chaldeans attribute an animistic spirit which permeates matter, from which derives immanent monism, and incoherently with that accommodate a form of pantheism in the Babylonian and Indo-Aryan systems generally.
1:2.2 Descartes and Post-Cartesian Causation
René Descartes (1596-1650) introduced a new type of explanation which said that "physical events could be fully explained in terms of prior physical events operating according to fixed laws ordained by God." (ibid. p.30) Teleological explanations of events, especially ordinary physical ones, have become rather ridiculous as thought becomes increasingly materialist non-theist. However, physical explanations of human actions are also considered "bizarre if not actually ridiculous." (ibid., p.31) For example: "Why are you walking up the road?" Answer: "Nerve impulses in my brain are activating my muscles." The teleological explanations, e.g. "to post a letter," are increasingly confined to human will, and external immaterial explanations are considered seriously bizarre, e.g. "the holy spirit moved me to act." Such explanations increasingly precipitate psychological investigations and diagnoses which in the past may have been more readily identified with demon possession. Descartes’ explanation is mechanistic rather than animistic.
From the dependence of physical events on prior physical events and from the event itself being the cause or part cause of subsequent events, all governed absolutely by the laws of nature (as ordained by God and which are immutable), Supervenient Causation was enshrined. God’s laws could be discovered but it was not for humans to know his ultimate purpose. Descartes was correct in his assertion that God’s laws were immutable; however the relegation of the concepts of Law and Causation only to observed physical explanation and the rejection of revelation as law, resulted in relativism. The concepts of nature as a self-regulating body and the rejection of Theism saw his system adopted by Positivism. Nature became a machine-making machine of absolute capacity, relative morality, and material purpose. For Descartes "the laws of nature were like human laws in that they prescribed what would happen, but unlike human laws in that they could not be violated. Hence all physical events were determined; what happened happened inevitably and necessarily. God had programmed the cosmic machine at the creation and it would behave according to the divine preordained plan." (ibid.) This concept shows a failure of Descartes adequately to analyse the concept of God’s nature and the element of Free Will, both of which even Augustine had differentiated from Determinism and isolated to the error of the Stoics. The linking of causes exclusively to physical events results in a concept of Determinism which had earlier been addressed by Aristotle and involving the following premises and conclusions:
Premises
1. Every physical event is caused by some prior physical event or events;
2. Every cause operates according to some pre-ordained law of nature which necessarily produces its effects;
3. Every human action is nothing but a physical event or a series of physical events.
Conclusions
1. Every human action is produced by a prior physical event operating according to a pre-ordained law of nature which necessarily produces that action;
2. All human actions are determined and there can be no free choice. (An apparent corollary is that humans are, at least in principle, predictable.)
As this sequence forms a valid argument, acceptance of the premises involves acceptance of the conclusions. From this, human action is completely and absolutely determined. The Cartesian view of causal explanation was that cause and effect were related by logical necessity. Causation also involves assumptions of temporal precedence. So for C to cause E it is implicit that C always precedes E in temporal relationship. A central issue of causation is that between necessary connection and constant conjunction.
To assert a causal relationship between C and E is to assert that C and E are necessarily connected and could not occur apart. When C has to occur, it is necessarily the case that C is followed by E. C and E as it were are forged together by chains of necessary connection. (John Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. London, 1959, p.223)
The Cartesian account of a machine-like cosmos was not questioned by Hume "but he did question the doctrine that events were necessarily related so that effect necessarily followed cause and the laws of nature represented logical truths." (Trusted, loc. cit.) Hume attacked this doctrine as following from empirical observation and as giving us no justification at all for using expressions such as "C is necessarily connected with E." He argued that there was no logical or necessary connection between cause and effect such that any given event must logically be followed by another specific event. The meaning of causal relation consists in the statement of an exceptionless repetition. The idea that the effect is forced to follow the cause is held to be "anthropomorphic in its origin and is dispensable." (Hans Rucherbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1951, pp.157-158; ibid., p.225)
Premise 2 therefore would be modified as follows:
2. Every cause operates according to a causal law that we have established and which we regard as justified because past experience has shown constant conjunction of the cause with its effect.
Hume’s argument states that knowledge of causal relations between events depends entirely on past experience. It is from this development that Anscombe’s contention, that the rejection of relations would be argued individually by Hume, is made. Hume’s observations were important in demonstrating that our grounds for belief that a given cause would be followed by its effect were based entirely on experience, not on logical deductive argument. It follows from this argument that the absence of active theism over time relegates the causal explanations to the record and subsequently, to the mythological. The result of this causal explanation, however, removes the logical inevitability in the succession of events, but it does not and cannot exclude the conclusion that physical events are determined. Hume therefore was more determinist than Descartes, since Descartes took steps to avoid the consequences of the determinist argument.
Descartes modified Premise 3 from every human action being nothing but a physical event, to that where
human action originated with a volition or choice made by the immaterial soul or mind. Since this was immaterial, it did not form part of the physical causal system and was not subject to the laws of nature. Therefore acts that were initiated by the mind (that is actions) were not determined." (Trusted, op. cit., p.35)
For Descartes therefore, all events between physical non-human objects were determined. Some human actions (reflexes) called by Aquinas acts of a man (actus homini) were happenings, and bodily acts imposed by external forces were happenings also. Only voluntary movements initiated by the mind were actions not determined but could be explained teleologically. Thus Descartes developed the concept of material body and immaterial mind (or mind/body dualism) where the essence of the individual was the immaterial mind. After death it is the mind which survives as an immaterial spirit. There is thus drawn a sharp distinction between actions and happenings as voluntary acts or determined happenings. From this distinction and explanation Descartes was able to accommodate the Chaldean Soul Doctrine that he had inherited as an Athanasian Christian from the developments made by Socrates.
Descartes had fallen into the same essentially polytheist argument that arises from the assertion of entities with wills not in accord with the will of God. As will be shown below, evil must arise as divisions within the Godhead or God family, otherwise there is an inevitable and unavoidable limitation on the power of God. God is no longer omnipotent. Entities must exist within the will of God with the freedom to move outside of that will, such movement constituting rebellion, or to remain within the will in unity of spirit and purpose. Descartes’ fundamental problem, and indeed it is the problem of all systems based on Chaldean Theology involving an immortal soul, is that the creation of an immortal soul by God necessarily involves the production of an imperfect being, which, from its circumstance, is external to the will of God and logically polytheist. The complicated ontology which is required for the soul’s production and destruction (or in Monism, its absorption) and explanation of its being is incoherent as a logical philosophical system. Descartes cannot avoid the problems raised within the general framework of the Problem of Evil in his assertions of Mind/Body Dualism. The later explanations of the divisions within the Godhead and of the problem of evil are applicable to Descartes’ elitist form of polytheism, as they also are in refutation of the Soul Doctrine generally.
An examination of Materialist Theories of Mind, together with Quantum Mechanical and other problems, take the formal explanation beyond the incoherences of Cartesianism, Chaldean Theology, and Positivistic Materialism generally. It should be evident from the above that concepts of causation are fundamental to our notion of the regulating mechanisms of being as laws governing the operation of the structure. Not only do our concepts determine our capacity to act as an exercise of our will but also those concepts determine whether there is a tension between any singularist structure deemed to exist, and the operation of entities within theoretical relationships under an idea of freedom to act within them (or without) in contravention of the theoretical relationships. Such views of concepts of the capacity to act must also affect any view of freedom and determinism within the will of the singularity. Judgments thus take place under the idea of freedom as Kant demonstrated, and an immaterial substructure to matter necessarily involves metaphysical explanations of causal interaction. The concept of will included in the idea of necessary connection is as an idea of the effect to be produced: but this is arrived at by observing constant conjunction. Will was defined by Kant as the power to determine oneself to action in accordance with our conception of certain laws (gr,427). (H. J. Paton drew attention to the implications of this in The Categorical Imperative, Hutchinson of London, 4th ed., 1963, p.208.) So for Kant, our judgments and not merely actions in the ordinary sense take place under the Idea of Freedom.
1:3 Metaphysical Aspects of Science and Matter
Science as a philosophical product of corporeal atomism has habitually rejected notions of metaphysics and theism largely because the claims of Chaldean theology within a pseudo-Christian structure were demonstrably incoherent by observation, and their anthropomorphic theological reconstruction was ultimately and demonstrably fallacious. However, this total rejection has arguably limited understanding ultimately of the correct theist structure. The notion of causation involves assumptions regarding observation; however the fundamental notions of atomic structure within the current scientific paradigm of quantum mechanics are incapable of scientific verification and necessarily involve metaphysical speculation.
Sir Karl Popper has examined this problem within the mechanics of quantum theory (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson, 1986, pp.215-221). In an attempt to examine the behaviour of electrons Heisenberg had examined the possibility of checking the path of an electron between two experiments. Of these exact calculations Heisenberg says "whether one should attribute any physical reality to the calculated past history of the electron is a pure matter of taste." (quoted by Popper at p.220. The English Translation of Heisenberg’s Die Physikalische Prinzipen der Quantantheorie, 1930, p.15 on p.20 says "is a matter of personal belief.") If a statement about the position of an electron in atomic dimensions is not verifiable then we cannot attribute any sense to that statement. "It becomes impossible to speak of its path between the points it has been observed." Even so, "it is possible to calculate such a senseless or metaphysical path in terms of the new formulation." (ibid). According to Popper, Heisenberg has failed to carry through his program. The theory allows only two positions, the first one or the subjective position where the particle has an exact position and an exact momentum (and therefore also an exact path) but it being impossible for us to measure them both simultaneously. "If so then nature is still bent on hiding certain physical magnitudes from our eyes." (ibid). (Popper holds that both the position and the momentum (the path) are hidden). This regards the uncertainty principle as a limitation of our knowledge and therefore subjective.
The second or objective position asserts that it is inadmissable or incorrect or metaphysical to attribute to the particle anything like a sharply defined path. It possesses only either an exact position with inexact momentum, or vice versa. But according to Popper if we accept this interpretation then, again, the formulation of the theory contains metaphysical elements, as the "path" is exactly calculable during the time when it is, in principle, impossible to test by observation. (ibid., p.221) According to Popper "Heisenberg has not so far accomplished his self imposed task: he has not yet purged quantum theory of its metaphysical elements." (ibid). It is thus that causal relations must ultimately be theoretical and some physical magnitudes remain unknown.
One of the rather trite assumptions of quantum mechanics is that a Divine observer would interfere with the operation of the system in the process of observation. Quantum mechanics has speculated on the question of observers for some time. A proposition was made by James Clerk Maxwell regarding what is now known as a Maxwell demon. The demon presides over a door between two compartments, one of which contains gas and the other of which is empty.
The demon observes the system and allows fast moving or hot molecules through the central door, thus transferring energy. Scientists were unable to prove that the demon cannot exist, but they are also unwilling to give up the laws of Thermodynamics. The proposition would violate the second law of Thermodynamics and so the two positions are mutually exclusive.
Carlton Caves of the University of Southern California attempted to use information theory to show how a demon can extract energy from a gas. Caves uses a theoretical demon called an "Unruh" demon in what is termed a "Szilard engine." Rolf Landauer of IBM at Yorktown Heights, New York, showed in 1988 that the Szilard engine gains energy by dropping a partition in a box after determining which side a molecule is on, with the result that interference with the energy flow takes the opposite piston to the centre and the recoil force acting on the piston after removal of the partition transfers a quantifiable amount of energy. The energy gain, however, is cancelled out by the energy expended by the demon. Caves took this a step further by restricting the activity of the Unruh demon to operation on banks of boxes when and only when the molecule is on the same side of each of the ten boxes in the bank resulting in a net energy gain. (See Physical Review Letters, Vol. 64, p.2111). In Physical Review Letters, Vol. 65, p.1387, a Santa Fe seminar confined the activities of the Unruh demon within the second law of Thermodynamics by the inclusion of an additional erasure cost which even under the most efficient scheme reduces the maximum possible energy gain to zero.
The assumptions involved here are that the demon or entity is bound by the laws of corporeal atomism requiring nett energy transfers in physical reaction. This rests on a false premise and on an unexamined assumption that relates to a false premise. Firstly, any omniscient being or any entity delegated power to act by an omniscient being would of necessity know the outcome of any reaction or causal sequence set in motion since the theoretical relationships are known a priori, and the laws involved are not disembodied but determined and exist logically prior to the creation.
There is therefore no requirement to observe in any technical sense. Secondly, the assumption that the entity involves physical energy transfers is an anthropomorphic speculation based on corporeal atomism which fails to come to grips with the immaterial nature of sub-subatomic matter. There is no reason for assuming that the observing entity is logically constrained to or by the physical medium that it observes. Even if such were the case there is no logical reason to assume that two differing entities would convert energy in precisely the same or a similar way. Physics can conjure up a hypothetical demon to satisfy quantum mechanical speculation, yet it immediately rejects the postulate of such a non-physical entity in a more involved ontology.
Roger Penrose has postulated in his work The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics, Oxford, 1989, that it is the gravitational influence of the measuring apparatus and not the abstract presence of an observer which has an effect on the physical states. At the quantum level, the basic atomic structure has a number of different possible states which are somehow "superposed" on one another. The physicist in measuring those states somehow collapses the superposed states into a single state so that only one of the possibilities seems to have occurred. Quantum physics is thus not only incompatible with macroscopic events, but somehow dependent on human observation, and thus somewhat anthropomorphic. Penrose postulates that at some level intermediate between the quantum and classical realms, the differences between the superposed states become gravitationally significant, so that they collapse into the single state, such that physicists can measure. This Penrosian quantum gravity, it is thought, may also help account for what are known as non-local effects in which events in one region effect events in another simultaneously.
The occurrence of non-locality was first indicated by the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Thought experiment. We have seen elsewhere that the simultaneous transmission of ideas is widely observed, viz. the Lorentz matter. Observable non-locality can be found for example by measuring the spin of a photon emitted from a decaying particle. A photon simultaneously emitted by the particle in the opposite direction similarly has its spin "fixed" by the other measurement even though the particles may be light years apart. There may be some problems with Penrose’s propositions, but the implications for the human mind deserve further examination, particularly the concepts that the physiological processes underlying a given thought may initially involve a number of superposed quantum states, each of which performs a calculation of sorts. He supposes that when the distribution of mass and energy between the states reaches a gravitationally significant level the states collapse into a single state, causing measurable and possible non-local changes in the neural structure of the brain. This physical event correlates with a mental one, hence formulating thought as comprehension, differing from artificial intelligence. These propositions deserve further examination in view of their implications for human thought, physical interaction, and the notion of causation.
1:4 Testing Accounts of Causation
Given the foregoing we should test the accounts of causation to establish if any are sound, and if any accounts are sound to see what deductions concerning morality and regulation can be drawn.
Humean Assumptions
Since the time of Hume the overwhelming body of philosophical opinion has been that for two events to be causally related the relationship must be an instance of some causal law, either basic or derived and either probabilistic or non-probabilistic. A singularist concept of causation has been rejected as incoherent because of its assertion that two events can be causally related contrary to the above. The assumption that causal relations are not theoretical relations has become endemic to the philosophy of causation. G. E. M. Anscombe (in "Causality and Determination", Causation and Conditionals, Ed. E Sosa, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975, pp.63-81) has identified the problem but misdiagnosed the location and she herself appears to share the assumption. Her stance would appear to stem from a misunderstanding of the Humean argument. Professor Anscombe (from "Time, Beginnings and Causes" in Rationalism, Empiricism and Idealism, Ed. Anthony Kenny, Oxford Clarendon, pp.56-103) notes that the Humean argument has come to be seen as if it were a partial definition, resulting in the argument that some objects cannot be causally related just because there is a logical necessity of the one given the other. She holds that whilst he would have rejected counter examples, he would have argued against each specifically. The problem with the Humean applications is dealt with elsewhere.
1:4.2 Idea/Ideatum and Existence without a Cause
She makes the interesting proposition at p.91 regarding the possibility of the argument from imagination, the possibility arising from the position that "we can imagine a beginning of existence without a cause; therefore there can be a beginning of existence without a cause." This seems to be rather like accepting one half of Parmenidean Monism to reject the necessary other half. However, the point to be introduced is essentially the supposition that a thought is considered "not a psychological event but as the content of a proposition, the common possession of many minds." Anscombe’s notation of the arguments of Aquinas and Hume (p.92) is:
Aquinas:
It is possible to understand existents without the relation of caused to cause;
therefore that relation does not belong to the concept of existents;
therefore they can lack that relation.
Hume:
It is possible to conceive an object coming into existence without there being a cause;
therefore it is possible to imagine an object coming into existence without there being a cause;
therefore it is possible for an object to come into existence without a cause.
From Hobbes’ equality of time and space "the object can never begin to be for want of something to fix its beginning," as Hume rendered it, but Anscombe quotes the correct passage from The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Vol 4, p.276, where Hobbes introduces the necessity of the eternal in the absence of special cause (Anscombe in Kenny, op. cit., p.93). Anscombe states, "a beginning of existence implies the existence of something other than what begins to exist, even if the implication is satisfied merely by processes within that. If indeed, we are speaking of the beginning of existence of the universe, that is the only way the implication can be satisfied." (ibid., p.97).
From Anscombe’s outline and from Aquinas, Hobbes and Hume, theoretical relations are possible and from the external consequence of first cause a singularist concept of causation develops. There appears to be an admissability of the possibility of singularist causation in Anscombe’s later argument that overcomes the misidentification of the earlier. The argument for the potential pre-existence of an item in its coming to be allows a metaphysical precedence. The absurdity of a space-time continuum as a linear proposition merely reinforces this notion of theoretical causality. The lack of understanding of origins is not a deficiency of the object, merely of the observer.
According to Michael Tooley (The Nature of Causation: A Singularist Account, a paper in publication, p.21), to rule out a singularist account the Humean argument requires supplementation.
It needs to be proven that causation must be reducible to observable properties and relations. Both possibilities, either dealing specifically with causation, or a general thesis that all properties and relations must either be observable or else reducible to observable properties and relations, are excluded by current capabilities as outlined by Popper above; and the non-physical or metaphysical nature of matter appears certain. The reduction of causation to the above is eliminated as a possibility, thus opening up the singularist possibility based on theoretical relationships.
Leibniz, Harmony and Corporeal Atomism Hide Ishiguro touches on this possibility when he deals with Leibniz’ work ("Pre-Established Harmony Versus Constant Conjunction: A reconsideration of the Distinction Between Rationalism and Empiricism" in Rationalism, Empiricism and Idealism, Ed. Anthony Kenny, Oxford Clarendon, 1986, pp.61-85). Leibniz denied the philosophical doctrine of causal interaction. "His disagreements with Descartes and with Newton about the laws of dynamics never concerned the question whether there exist laws stating the interconnection of material things. They related only to how the laws should be formulated." (ibid., p.65). Lord Russell misunderstood Leibniz in this regard when he wrote that according to Leibniz "nothing really acts on anything else!" (The Philosophy of Leibniz, p.93; and ibid., p62). Ishiguro contends that Leibniz was concerned with the rejection of the then current theory of influx which he thought involved the detachment of qualities from substances (and hence the passage in the Monadology at 7 GVI p.607; L.p.643). The rejection involved the impossibility of the transfer of material substance in the body to an immaterial quality of the mind. The system was based on a concept of Leibniz’ that there were ultimate simple entities. Now it appears that this assumption has been carried on by the corporeal atomists and that this speculation is fundamentally wrong, not in the existence of ultimate simples, but from assumptions of their corporeal nature rather than a logical postulation of the existence of immaterial sub-subatomic simples. Anscombe holds that the concept of causation comes from that of derivation which can be immediately grasped by perception. This again misidentifies the nature of causal relationships.
1:5.1 Hume and Leibniz
Now both Leibniz and Hume make the point that in saying that efficient cause is that which produces, you make use only of synonyms (Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, II 26,S1; and Hume, Treatise, Part III, Section 4, p.157). So what do Leibniz and Hume establish? Leibniz seems to be arguing within the limited physics of his day; limited by presuppositions of corporeal atomism, for a harmonious account of causation which becomes incoherent not by its attempt at singularist causal harmony but by incorrect metaphysical apprehensions.
1:5.2 The Humean Position
Similarly Hume has claims made on his behalf about what his argument establishes but it is helpful to establish the position precisely. Firstly, it shows that causation is not directly observable in the relevant technical sense and therefore cannot be a primitive unanalysable relation between events. Secondly, in view of radical causal gaps, causation cannot be reduced to observable properties of, and relations between, individual pairs of events. Thus the possibility remains that causation is simply an observable relation between individual events. The supplementation required to the Humean argument to rule out a singularist account of causation from the above does not appear to be plausible.
Harmony
The concomitance noted by Ishiguro makes nature comprehensible even though the metaphysical structure of causation is imperfectly understood. The doctrine of pre-established harmony is therefore a metaphysical concept that, as I have established below, was the original conception. The law, as understood by the biblical patriarchs, was based on a concept of metaphysical unity ruled by absolute laws and hence the inclusion of the spiritual with the physical laws in the decalogue and their interrelationship. Ishiguro correctly notes "God cannot create disembodied laws. Substances and laws are fixed simultaneously. In creating a universe governed by law-like regularity, God does not carry out two distinct acts of creation. By establishing the laws, God does not merely give us a way of describing things by the extrinsic or contingent relational properties." (Ishiguro, p.72)
Now the creation of theoretical relationships is not logically confined to material substances and so a law not related to the material is only disembodied in the sense that it is not a relation between physical bodies. Theoretical aspects of regulation emanate then from a singularist cause in a preliminary immaterial sense. The immaterial spiritual is thus logically prior to the material.
1:6.1 Unsound Aspects of Singularist Causation
In explanation of a singularist account of causation, it is necessary to note the unsound aspects of the notion.
Immediate Experience
The argument for a singularist account of causation to follow from the immediate experience of causal relations is unsound following from varying familiar possible worlds, as Tooley notes, either Berkely’s view or perception from isolated brain activity. It follows that nothing that one was aware of in perceptual experience would be a cause of anything else. The argument is therefore unsound. It would not however preclude the influence of action by alteration of perception by influence of brain activity, i.e. stimulation or conditioning. It is from the above concepts of the capacity to alter perception that the concept taken as an assumption at the beginning was made, that from empiricism an idea can be treated as analytically basic only if it serves to isolate properties or relations within one’s direct acquaintance, and it is because of this that causation stands in need of analysis, not being able to be treated as basic.
Observability
We have already dealt with the theoretical nature of causal relations and the contention that to argue from the observability of causal relations is unsound. Knowledge thus obtained is inferential and prior knowledge is of a causal generalization that applies to the observed case. If this is so then cases of ordinary perceptual knowledge of causal relationships cannot be used to demonstrate the existence of causally related events that do not fall under causal laws. The absence of prior causal knowledge can show causal relations only where the cause and effect exhibit relevant complexity, and such complexity means that the observation is one involving a number of instances of the relevant law. Such an observation makes it likely that a relevant law does exist. Observations infer causal relations only if they also infer the event to be an instance of some causal law. Hence epistemologically a singularist account fails.
1:6.2 Supervenient and Intermediate Causation
Michael Tooley has offered (in Causation) a discussion of arguments which attempt to establish a singularist concept of causation by rejecting alternatives. He begins with the dominant supervenience view which holds that events cannot be causally related unless that relation is an instance of some law, the causal relation being logically determined by the non-causal properties of the two events, and by the non-causal relations between them together with the causal laws that there are in the world. The supervenience view holds:
1. causal relations presuppose corresponding laws;
2. causal relations are logically supervenient upon causal laws plus the non-causal properties of, and relations between, events.
From this it follows that the supervenience view and the singularist view are followed by an intermediate position consequent upon the denial of the second thesis above. The position would be that causal relations presuppose corresponding causal laws, even though causal relations are not logically supervenient upon causal laws together with the non-causal properties of, and relations between, events.
1:7 Counter Arguments
Arguments for a singularist account that argue against the supervenient and intermediate views are in two parts. There are three arguments that are:
1:7.1 The Argument from the Possibility of Indeterministic Laws
which involves the assumption that indeterminate causal laws are logically possible.
Answer A: Because causal relations hold between states of affairs and whilst disjunctive expressions can be used to pick out states of affairs, states of affairs can never be disjunctive in nature.
Answer B: (see Tooley, Causation, op. cit., ch.8) From the supervenience view, causal relations between states of affairs are logically supervenient upon causal laws plus non-causal states of affairs. The only basic causal facts that need to be postulated are those that correspond to causal laws, and such facts are to be identified with certain contingent relations between universals.
1:7.2 The singularist account
which holds the primary nature of causal relations. Regularity accounts of the nature of laws are opposed by strong objection (e.g. Fred I. Dretske, "Laws of Nature" in Philosophy of Science, p.44, 1977; and David M. Armstrong, What is a Law of Nature, Cambridge University Press, 1983); therefore a singularist account would combine this with the view that laws are relations among universals.
Both approaches however need an account of the nature of laws and both fail: superveniently in distinguishing causal from non causal laws; and singularistically in the explanation of causal relations in conjunction with that of a law to explain what a causal law is.
1:7.3 From Tooley, Causation, pp.268-274,
in the intermediate account, if the exclusion of anomic causation is to be comprehensible a separate account of the nature of causal laws is needed. The alternatives to a singularist concept of causation are excluded; in the supervenience view by certain logically possible cases involving indeterministic causal laws, and the intermediate view is ontologically more involved or uneconomic than the singularist. These arguments relating to the three views apply to the Argument from the Possibility of Exact Replicas of Causal Situations and also to the Argument from the Possibility of Inverted Universes. In the latter case the Argument from the Inversion of the Direction of Time will see some laws excluding inversion and others not.
1:8 The Direction of Time
If the assumption can be sustained that the direction of time is to be analyzed in terms of the direction of causation, then a counter-example to the supervenience view of causation can also be sustained. From Einstein, the postulate is made that space, matter, time, energy and gravity are all inter-related equivalent expressions of a single fundamental essence. This essence, from James Jeans, is incapable of description in any material sense. This would imply that the relationship of causation is limited by its inability to apply universally under inverted time hypotheses. Whilst we have seen that the relationship is theoretical, those relationships are in some cases fixed non-reversible indicating a notion of fixed theoretical relationships. It is noted that Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time) seems to apply laws under inverted time hypotheses, making deductions from them regarding singularities that may or may not be valid.
The notation of the findings of Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang is useful (ibid., p.77 et seq.). Their findings that the symmetry of particles and antiparticles is such that of the Symmetries C, P and T, weak forces do not obey the Symmetry P, which assumes mirror image spin of particles and antiparticles. The assumption of Symmetry P is such that "if you reverse the direction of motion of all particles and antiparticles, the system should go back to what it was at earlier times; in other words, the laws are the same in the forward and backward directions of time." (ibid.) Chien-Shung Wu allegedly proved their predictions correct in 1956 by demonstrating that electrons were given off more in one direction than another by means of lining up the nuclei of radioactive atoms in a magnetic field. It was also found that weak forces do not obey the symmetry C so that a universe composed of antiparticles would behave differently from our universe. Nevertheless, it seemed that the weak force did obey the combined symmetry CP. Cronin and Fitch discovered that "the CP symmetry was not obeyed in the decay of certain particles called K-Mesons." (ibid.) Hawking says of this, "Cronin and Fitch showed that if one replaces particles by antiparticles and takes the mirror image, but does not reverse the direction of time, then the universe does not behave the same. The laws of physics, therefore, must change if one reverses the direction of time: they do not obey the Symmetry T." (ibid.) Expansion and contraction of the universe allegedly exempts one of these combinations.
The supposition of quantum mechanics of the material structure from a preponderance of quarks is academic and merely introduces an intermediary step in the reduction proposed here. There is thus an apparent directionality of time and thus some directionality of causation. Causation stands in need of much more detailed analysis and requires a further explanatory dissertation not offered herein.
1:9 Simultaneous Transmission of Ideas
Following on from the assumption of corporeal atomism regarding the structure of matter and the explanations of human action we are left with the assertion of physico-chemical actions on the body as the causal explanation of human thought and production of ideas. The simultaneous transmission of ideas, however, poses some serious metaphysical problems for Materialist theories of the mind and causal explanation that is physico-chemical supervenient and therefore non-singularist.
The observations of simultaneous transmission of ideas are too well documented to be denied and too recurrent to be coincidental. Materialists however are illogically internally driven to claim coincidence as the alternative, requiring an external causal explanation that involves external suggestion and the influence upon the human mind by the implantation of new ideas. Concurrent emergence of thought indicates an immaterial externality of superior knowledge and power. Differences of observation and perceptions with simultaneous ideas were evident, for example, in the Lorentz/Fitzgerald theories. The perception of relationships and causality is variable, and the Lorentz theory postulates that "observers in different frames of reference will report different results for the measurement of the length of the same object in the direction of motion." (Stanley Goldberg, "Understanding Relativity" in Origin and Impact of a Scientific Revolution, Oxford Science Publications, Clarendon, 1984, pp.124-125). Lorentz’s explanation, that the object is squeezed up in the direction of motion as a result of electromagnetic interrelations of the object and the ether through which it moves, is incidental to the problem.
What is of significance to the question here is that Lorentz and Fitzgerald came upon the same notion at about the same time in roughly the same context. Goldberg says "ideas are in the air, and often several people will simultaneously make the same suggestions about natural phenomena and will construct the same kind of argument." (loc. cit.) This concept has importance to the notions and perceptions of causation which are directly applied to moral notions and which contribute to relativism in the moral concepts. It is a reflection of Anscombe’s statement and relates directly to the proposition that ideas as external propositions enable the influence upon the human mind. Therefore, not all thoughts are individual psychological events. Hence the immaterial influences the material. Whatever controls this emanation of thought influences human action, hence the concept that Satan as God of this world is Prince of the Power of the Air (Ephesians 2:2).
It is useful to note that even in the physical realm, variance will occur when measuring mass because of differences between the proper or rest mass and the non-proper or moving mass. The variance occurs because of disagreement about judgments of simultaneity (ibid., p.147). So in one sense rest mass is an invariant identical in behaviour to the Newtonian concept of mass. It is an unacceptable simplification to use the theory of relativity to support a view that "all things are relative" even when the phrase "all things" refers to objects in physics. (ibid.)
Within relativity theory actually is as actually measures, but this does not imply a conditioned causal variability; rather from inferences about changes in velocity we infer changes in mass. It was by rectifying the theoretical relationships of mass that a concept of a law (in this case, the law of conservation of momentum) could be maintained and this in the absence of empirical evidence. From the general theory of relativity the effect of mass is to distort classical space. "The general theory of relativity does not account for the origins of the universe, nor account for the source of mass. It does not explain the nature of the universe. What has been generalized are the concepts of length and time." (ibid., p.177)
From the simultaneous transmission of ideas, teleological determinism as a physico-chemical event of the brain is difficult to sustain, admits of a non-physical action, and requires a radical restructure of the notion of causation. Jennifer Trusted’s simplification of physical determinism to direct or supervenient physical causation (Free Will and Responsibility, Oxford Opus, 1984, p.6) shows the absurdity of resting a structure on corporeal atomism when the nature of the universe is unknown.
The structure of the universe can be determined metaphysically only by the application of logic and, from the detail of causation herein, it is contended that singularist causation is the compelling account and that the singularity is necessarily immaterial and logically prior to the material.
1:10 Essential Properties of a Definition of Singularist Causation
Michael Tooley has produced a formal statement of a singularist account of causation which possesses four formal properties:
1. it is necessarily irreflexive;
2. it is necessarily asymmetric;
3. it is necessarily transitive;
4. causal loops are impossible.
Asymmetric may be dropped as Conditions 1 and 3 must be asymmetric and such as cannot enter into loops; and Irreed copies. Brief quotations may be embodied in critical
articles and reviews without breaching copyright.
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aggelos (angelos) a messenger, hence an angel. The difficulty lies in the paucity of words in the Greek to carry a number of meanings. That there are degrees of messengers seems beyond dispute. That the Angel of Redemption, one of the Elohim, gained preeminence from the incarnation seems inescapable from the passage at Hebrews.
This, however, does not obscure or lessen the earlier structure of the order of the creation and the powers of the Host. Hebrews 1:2 states that the incarnation is appointed heir of all things and was the mediator through whom God made the worlds, although the word here should be ages not worlds. This concept is dealt with later in the discussion on Creation.
The passage is probably a reference to the Mithraic teaching of the Aion as the "sap of life" and hence a lifespan or epoch as the Greek word aion is used and in the Jewish sense means a messianic period (see Strong’s Concordance).
It appears that the concept of age is related to the p | |
