God in the beginning of every human life

irichc

I.

Axiom:

A full cause absolutely determines its effect.

Propositions:

1) If parents were full efficient causes of their sons, every offspring would be identical to the previous one.

2) If not, it would be a worse one.

Dilemma:

But, insofar a generation can be beaten in every facet of the life by that which is coming next, first premise (parents being full or partial efficient causes of their sons) is somehow wrong in both cases.

So, they are neither full efficient causes nor partial efficient causes. Or, better, they are not the only cause of their son's conception as a rational creature.

Solution:

It follows, then, the existence of a partial efficient cause cooperating in the conception of every new individual.

This cause is God, who gives a rational soul to the corpuscle in the very moment of the fertilization of the woman.


II.

Everything is in DNA or, in the other hand, there's something else added.

If everything is in DNA, we have two possibilities when facing the generation of a new being:

1) The engenderers transmit all their genetic potential to it, so the offspring's capacities would be the result of putting together its parents' actual ones, insofar they are biologically compatible (in case of asexual or hermafrodite reproduction, which is not studied here, they would be exactly the same in both generations).

2) The engenderers transmit only part of their characteristics, or all of them but decayed, and this would imply a diminishment of physical and intellectual vigor in the resulting progeny.

The reason is that, as long as an effect can't have what its cause lacks, no one can engender merely with his own forces something that excedes them.

Finally, assuming the fact that there are humans objectively more capable than their immediate biological predecessors (so we can avoid "natural selection" issues), we have to admit that their efficient cause -complete or not- cannot be unique and identify itself with the parents. Thus, we shouldn't try to find this hidden cause in nature, as far as the individual's future characteristics are fully determined since his conception, that is to say, when he had neither any contact with the external world yet, nor any food from the hosting organism. It only remains, then, God's hypothesis, who, not interfering in the world from the order of second causes, creates rational soul, on the trail of preexisting irrational one, perfecting it in a miraculous way.

Cheers.

Daniel.


Theological Miscellany (in Spanish):

http://www.miscelaneateologica.tk

nesf

irichc wrote:

Propositions:

1) If parents were full efficient causes of their sons, every offspring would be identical to the previous one.

2) If not, it would be a worse one.

No. Genetics, offspring and reality don't work like that.

Sapien

Oh dear, oh dear. Stick to faith guys.

SkepticOne

Ignoring the wrongness of the genetics, I think there's a bit of Platonism behind the thinking which is leading to error.

The idea that if an offspring is not identical to its parent it must be in some way "worse" sort of suggests that there's an ideal human that we are imperfect copies of. Any variation leads us to further deviation from this ideal.

simu

This guy again. And a google search for "God in the beginning of every human life" reveals that this same post has been posted in at least two other on-line forums. This forum is not a bucket for spam disguised as philosophy. You are banned, irishc.

simu

Dave!

good job simu