Ontology and the Curse
The Curse, Natural History, and the Ontology of Causation
by Paul Smith
It is difficult
to read much in Christian apologetics without running into questions
in the area of natural history. Specifically, the question 'was
there death before the fall' can be found lurking beneath most
eruptions of Creation-date debates. The following is one
person's ideas on that issue, still largely in the refinement stage.
The "TEMPORALLY UNIVERSAL EFFECTS" HYPOTHESIS:
This is one speculative hypothesis dealing with the implications of
the fall on natural history, and specifically on how we should expect
that history to appear to today's investigators.
Briefly put, the hypothesis goes something like this:
- All of creation is under the curse
- All of Time is part of creation
- Therefore, all of time is under the curse
I believe (1) can be defended well on exegetical grounds; (2) can be
defended on exegetical, historical, philosophical and physical grounds,
thus the strength of the argument rests on the lack of equivocation
between the uses of the term "all" in 1 and 3. Also, the
strength of the argument is not necessarily the same as one that deals
with the laws of a closed system, since the type of causation we're
dealing with here is causation by Agency. Thus, the
"therefore" in (3) is a weak "therefore," since an
Intelligent Agent Who is outside of time could elect to apply causes in
any way He deemed fit. [Note: my goal is not to contend for or prove
this hypothesis so much as it is to shrewdly evaluate it, thus having a
potential weakness such as this is not a great concern to me.
Ultimately, my next concern here is to see what tools we have for
determining how this Agent actually *did* elect to apply the effects of
the curse.]
For some reason, this is a hunch that I've had a hard time shaking,
and some of the philosophical writings of Koons [1] and Craig [2][3]
seem to support the notion that it's not off- the-wall to think of
causation in two distinct ways: Ontologically and Temporally. After all,
Time itself cannot be a caused entity if causation *entails* temporal
succession; the causation of the existence of Time is necessarily prior
to T = 0, but since it is not *temporally* prior, we can only understand
it as *ontologically* prior for the purposes of causation. Thus, the
concept of ontological succession in causation preserves the theistic
definition of {Time as a created entity} without violating any
requirements of the law of causality. While it does not *necessarily*
follow from this that a cause will temporally precede its effect when an
extra-temporal Agent is the cause, I believe that this understanding of
causal succession does render such a state of affairs conceivable,
coherent and ultimately, possible.
If that is the case, then I have to wonder if we have any reason to
demand that the effects of the fall are limited to that fraction of all
time which is located temporally after the fall itself, or if, as my
syllogism implies, the curse could, via causative succession in the
ontological-but-not-temporal sense, have effects that pertain to all of
creation in all points of time.
What this would mean is that the original creation state is *now*
evidentially inaccessible to us. This does *not* mean that Adam and Eve
would have been living in a state that was recognizably fallen before
the fall occurred in their experience. This is an admittedly
awkward-sounding temporal paradox, but I do not think it is necessarily
incoherent, nor that such a state of affairs could not follow from the
actions of an extra-Temporal agent, such as the Christian God.
If this hunch has any merit whatsoever, I think it could have
implications on the OEC/YEC debate. I should point out that I do not see
the ramifications of this as *entailing* that OEC be true; i.e. I see no
reason why such an understanding of causal priority could not also be
consistent with a YEC viewpoint.
REFERENCES:
[1] "...the nature of temporal priority is even more obscure
than that of causal priority, and the best accounts of temporal priority
seem to be those that presuppose the ontologically prior existence of
causal priority."
http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/gifford.html
Defeasible Reasoning, Special Pleading and the Cosmological Argument,
Robert C. Koons, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas
[2] "...there is no generally accepted account of the
direction of causation überhaupt, including accounts which appeal to
temporal priority as a condition of causal priority."
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/replyg.html
A Response to Grünbaum on Creation and Big Bang Cosmology
William Lane Craig
[3] "Since the cause [of the universe's coming to be] cannot
be physically prior or subsequent to the Big Bang, it must be
simultaneous or coincident with the Big Bang, a conclusion which is in
no way obviated by the want of a generally accepted criterion of causal
directionality." Ibid.
See also: Robert C. Koons, Theism and Big Bang Cosmology http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/docs/lec5.html
(Especially the section titled "The Universality of
Causation.")