Quotes about First Cause

Because humans are capable of knowing, the first cause that produced them must have a mind. Because humans are capable of choosing, the first cause must have a will. And so on. Philosopher Étienne Gilson captures the argument neatly: because a human is a someone and not a something, the source of human life must be also a Someone.

There can only be one God according to these arguments for many reasons. First, the God of the Cosmological argument is infinite48since every finite thing needs a cause. And there cannot be two infinite Beings. For in order for there to be two beings of the same kind, they would have to differ. But two infinite Beings do not differ; they are the same kind of Being, namely, infinite. Second, the theistic God (of the Moral Argument) is absolutely perfect.

The universe began in an instant, is expanding, and exhibits design, order, and complexity. Every effect must have a Cause, and design must have a Designer.

Therefore our natural desire for knowledge cannot come to rest within us until we know the first cause, and that not in any way, but in its very essence. The first cause is God. Consequently the ultimate end of an intellectual creature is the vision of God in His essence" (The Divine Trinity, Chapter 104).

When God is so often spoken of as the last as well as the first, the end as well as the beginning, it is implied that as he is the first, efficient58 cause and fountain from whence all things originate; so, he is the last, final cause for which they are made; the final term to which they all tend in their ultimate issue. This

taken. There is so much intelligibility and specified complexity in this world that it seems willful and prejudiced to try to explain it away with no intelligence behind it. Can morality, personality, and reality be reasonably explained without a personal, moral first cause?

Ghazali frames his argument simply: "Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning.