Thoughts on Causality

[Dimmesdale]

Cause and effect. I am, personally, a believer in the argument that, roughly stated, all causation ultimately points to God. I know many atheists will say that is simply a non-sequitur, that it doesn't follow. In the abstract sense, of what I would call "bare logic", I would actually agree. True, there is no reason one MUST assume that at the beginning chain of all existence, there is a God. One can leave it as a "possible" that there is nothing at the end of that given chain. But my question is: why assume that as the default position? Why assume that at all, from the standpoint of "bare logic" which is, in my view, completely denuded of content?

I say denuded of content, because this causal chain treats causality as simply abstract iterations of things which are in no way concrete. So for instance, my own generation was the byproduct of my parents engaging in an act of procreation. There is something in "me" which partakes of that original point of being, or becoming. I am linked to that given chain of events. It isn't as though there are discrete iterations of events with no bearing on each other EXCEPT the fact that they follow in succession and have, in some sense, a relationship to each other in time and space, but which relationship could be pulled apart from one another, and yet the preceding and succeeding generation of events could go on streaming just as well without those previous iterations.... In other words, there is a "relationality" at play among causal events which does not reduce to their being in logical sequence, but that one already "assumes" the other, both forwards, AND, I would argue, for the same reason, backwards....

If I am ultimately assumed in the conception of my being through both my father and mother, then for the same reason I MYSELF point backwards to that point of origination. This is the both-ways implication which grounds both events in a concrete union of relatedness which cannot be passed off by merely saying that both are just arrangements of atoms which were created into being at times A and times B. Rather, A is B, and B is A, and they are thus partaking of the same Substance in one form or another....

And the thing is this: if my point of origination has, already, assumed "me" into being, such that my being, implies the existence of my parents, so too does the existence of my parents imply the existence of causes beyond them, and those causes inferring all other forms of causation down through history, to the Creation of the universe as a whole....

And, once we get to the universe itself, which, let us say, lies at the "end" of this both-ways implication alphabet, as Z, then perhaps it is time we included another letter to complete the causal chain of existence, seeing that Z could not create itself, would be the ONE EXCEPTION to the RULE of this SUBSTANTIVE RELATIONALITY?

I believe the rules of induction would certainly spell this. And I would say, the very joy and substance of all created reality, would infer this. Not, again, through abstraction, which is our cutting up and culling FROM Truth, but through the immersion into Reality. Into the very Facticity of the Creative or Conjugal Act.

[Dimmesdale]

Only actuality can give birth to actuality. Nothingness is nothing but potency. So, it doesn't carry the Lineage of Actuality.