Q&A: The Cosmological Proof
The Cosmological Proof
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In your book The First Existent, in the cosmological proof you present God as something with which we have no acquaintance, and therefore He does not necessarily have to be included in the assumption that everything has a cause, unlike the things familiar to us (the cause of Himself; there was never a time when He did not exist), and as the Creator, as the first cause.
My question is: how do we use concepts like "Creator" (assuming that "Creator" means "something from nothing"), "the cause of Himself"? Aren't these concepts without meaning (similar to the readings you suggested for the question "Can God create a stone that He cannot lift")?
Answer
I didn't understand. Those concepts are completely clear. Why not use them?
Discussion on Answer
The content is absolutely not meaningless. The fact that we do not have direct acquaintance with something does not mean that we cannot speak about it. Contradictoriness is a different matter.
Hello Rabbi.
What I mean is that we have no understanding of what "something from nothing" means. All our acquaintance is with concepts of "something from something," so perhaps we say Creator (as something from nothing), but we have no understanding of the concept. Similarly, with being the cause of Himself, we have no acquaintance with that concept (I understand that the assumption that everything has a cause refers to a cause external to the thing caused).
So I compared it to a stone that God can create but cannot lift: we understand the syntax and the words, but the content is meaningless.
My response:
The content is absolutely not meaningless. The fact that we do not have direct acquaintance with something does not mean that we cannot speak about it. Contradictoriness is a different matter.