1

The two categories I wish to describe is:

  1. Eternal existence being uncaused and having always been
  2. Short term existences such as human consciousness or other types which are destructible from their original and being prone to cause and effect and causality.

If the universe did indeed come to be spontaneously then would this not rule out infinite regression ? Furthermore spontaneous creation does not seem likely as something cannot come out of nothing in which case it would mean the world or existence has always existed. The consequence of this is that existence itself is the prime mover and infinite causality only applies to the “things” that exist in it being bound by the laws of causality which do not apply to existence itself (due to the principle that something can not come out of nothing)

In essence it appears to me that the existence consists only of two categories the uncreated, always existing one and the created one which is a result of infinite causalities.

But if both infinite causality and eternal existence do exist does it not imply somewhat that they’re the same thing by virtue of being eternal or is the eternal uncaused existence of a different type altogether ?

Improve this question
7
  • 1
    I believe you are trying to draw a distinction between necessary beings and contingent beings, or possibly a distinction between temporal and atemporal beings.
    – David Gudeman
    Oct 1 at 22:32
  • 2
    The uncreated/created distinction being the most fundamental is a piece of e.g. Cornelius van Til's theology. For God as Existence-with-a-capital-E, see de Ray(22). You don't seem to be pushing theology, though, unless maybe pan(en)theism is in view?
    – Kristian Berry
    Oct 1 at 23:16
  • "There are two kinds of people: those who divide people into two kinds, and those who don't."
    – Scott Rowe
    Oct 2 at 2:12
  • No. In general, there are more kinds of existence than that, see What is existence and what kinds of it can be distinguished? To get just two categories, you'll have to restrict the meaning of "existence" in some way, maybe to something like physically/causally efficient objects.
    – Conifold
    Oct 2 at 6:43
  • 1
    "something cannot come out of nothing" - there's no-one (or at least no-one I've heard) actually arguing that something can come from nothing. The only people I've ever heard referencing this are theists trying to argue against "the atheist position"... which would make it a strawman.
    – NotThatGuy
    Oct 2 at 9:16

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .