lifegazer said:
But the cause of an effect is actually it's primal-cause.
Wrong. In order to define primal cause, we must first have a coherent definition of a cause. If we are not allowed to define the relationship "A causes B", then the entire question of whether there is one primal cause for all effects is meaningless.
Don't you see? You
need to admit to a chaining of causes and effects or your whole argument is meaningless.
Of course, you're arguing for an alternative explanation:
(1) There is an existence full of effects.
(2) There is no absolute-cause for any of these effects. They all effected each other... giving us the irrational solution that effects are the primal-cause of themselves.
It doesn't follow from 1 and 2 that there is primal cause at all. In fact, it rather shows the opposite. There is no primal cause for the effects so it is irrational to ask "what is their primal cause".
As silly as all that is, you also defend the notion that this post, for example (of an effect), is the culmination of an infinite process. Yet anyone with half-an-ounce of sense should know that there is no culmination to an infinite process. One can reach for infinity, but one can never grasp it.
This post is the effect of a primal-cause.
Again, just because you have trouble dealing with infinities doesn't mean they are logically incoherent. You must actually show logical inconsistency, not just assert it.
Consider the sequence {Xi}, with i >= 0. Let's say that All Xi are effects except is x=0, and All Xi are effects, with Xi being the cause of Xi+1. Since X0 is not an effect but only a cause, it is by definition the first cause.
Do you agree that this chain of causation is valid for all i >= 0? That is, that a first cause can set in motion an infinite chain of events?
Well then, let's try a change of variable. let j=i-1. Now we still have X-1 as a first cause, but it just starts at -1 instead of 0. Note that it still goes on to infinity.
Now if we can start at -1 instead of 0 with no problem, let's take the limiting case and let the starting index go off to -infinity. Now the primal cause has disappeared. The simple proof of this is to ask "what is its index number i?" If you answered "minus infinity", then you proved that it doesn't exist, because -infinity is not in the integers. If you answered any integer, you just contradicted the fact that we took the limit toward -infinity
Note that I have nowhere introduced new elements into the sequence- The set of positive integers has the same cardinality as the set of all integers.