If The Universe Has A Cause, That Cause Is A Personal Mind

Thanks to RT for the challenge and for the kind words. May the odds be ever in your favour!If we define the universe as all matter, energy, space, and time, then whatever the cause of the universe is, it must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.We all agree that abstract objects fit the bill, but abstract objects aren't "things," so they can't cause anything. We can rule that out, then. I think RT will agree with me about that.Another possibility is a spaceless, timeless, immaterial impersonal force or object. Although such a thing is foreign to our experience and even fiction, it's hard to say why we should rule out the possibility of something like that existing. After all, "there are more things in heaven and earth, RT, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." But we can rule this one out as the cause of the universe, too. The reason is because if we are talking about an impersonal force or object, then whatever conditions are sufficient to bring about the beginning of the universe are conditions this object has always had. Being in a state of timelessness, there could be no prior moment at which this object acquired these conditions. Whenever there are sufficient conditions for some effect, the effect occurs immediately--as soons as the sufficient conditions are met. That means it's impossible for the sufficient conditions to exist without their effect. If the conditions existed without their effect also existing, that would prove the conditions were not really sufficient. So it would be impossible for there to be a state of affairs in which this entity existed without the universe also existing. But since this is a timeless entity, and since the universe is temporal, then it must be the case that there is or was (or however you could say that without using temporal language) a state of affairs in which the entity existed timelessly without the universe. So it is impossible that the cause of the universe is a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, impersonal force or object even if it's possible that such an entity could exist.Process of elimination leaves us with a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal entity. That would entail a mind that is spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. Many people think minds are material things and might not be on board with this possibility, but I don't think RT is one of those people. Unless he's changed his mind since I last talked to him about this, he is an idealist. He thinks an immaterial mind underlies everthing, and it's the material world we should be in doubt about, not immaterial minds. If minds are immaterial, as I think RT will grant, then they must be spaceless as well. That leaves only the question of whether a mind can be timeless.Some people don't think timeless minds are possible because thought is a process and processes occur in time. If time stops, then so does thought. However, thought processes are not necessary for the existence of conscious minds. A mind could be timeless and possess conscious thoughts, desires, knowledge, and even emotion without there being any stream of consciousness, reasonings, etc. that occur in time. So, while a stream of thought or reasoning might require time, they are not necessary for consciousness.One might wonder, though, whether a personal being presents the same problem about necessary and sufficient conditions that an impersonal being suffers from. After all, if we are to suppose that a personal being was the cause of the beginning of the unvierse, then we must assume the personal being has all the necessary and sufficient capacities to bring about the effect, and being timeless, must have those things eternally. But what personal beings have that impersonal beings don't is a faculty of volition. This makes a big difference, because whereas impersonal beings are always passive, personal beings are active.Let me explain that. If we were merely passive agents in a deterministically causal chain, we would observe our arms and legs moving, but there would be no sense in which we willed them to move. It would be as if something outside of us were pulling our strings. That's what I mean by being passive. Our wills would not be engaged in the whole thing. We'd be passively acted upon by prior physical causes. But we can tell just by reflecting inwardly on our own conscious states that we ourselves are the ones behind the wheel. We are choosing and exerting our wills in order to move our body parts. That's what I mean by saying we are active rather than passive.In the case of all impersonal beings and objects, they are passive. They don't will anything. They have no faculty of volition. In a passive causal chain, whenever you have all the necessary and sufficient conditions (or causes) to bring about an effect, the effect is immediate and simultaneous with the presence of those conditions.It's different with volition, though. Volition arises out of mental states that include beliefs, desires, motives, preferences, etc. Some thoughts, plans, and desires we have include the wish to act, refrain, or delay. It is possible for there to be a timeless personal being who knows timelessly, "I am in a state of timelessness," and has the thought, "I wish to create the universe and intitiate time. . .now." Acts of volitions do not happen mechanistically. If they did, then even our acting on desires would be passive acts; yet we know by inward reflection that they are not.So it's possible for a personal timeless being to exist and have the necessary and sufficient power and desire to initiate the beginning of the universe without the universe existing just as eternally as the timeless being. In fact, that seems to be the only way to make sense of a timeless entity being the cause of a temporal effect. In the case of an impersonal being, since the universe must exist as long as the impersonal being exists, the beginning of the universe would get pushed back infinitely in the past, and if you push it back infinitely in the past, then there can't really be a beginning of the universe. Follow this line of reasoning, and you end up in paradox because you'd have a timeless cause giving rise to a temporal effect when there is no beginning to the temporality.So, a personal being seems to be the only thing that possibly could be the cause of the beginning of the universe.There's one more argument I want to make that I won't have room to develope in too much detail, but I didn't want to completely leave it out. As active agents, it appears there is something about us that transcends the mechanistical physical causal nexus of the physical world. If we were merely physical beings and all of our parts behaved deterministically according to the laws of physics and chemistry, then we would be passive agents along a causal chain. The fact that we have mental states which are the reasons for why we act and which move our wills shows that we ourselves are actually immaterial beings who interact with the physical world. That has caused a great number of philosophers to scratch their heads wondering how it's even possible for an immaterial being to have causal influence over the material world.There's a solution to the problem that gives us good reason to think the cause of the beginning of the universe is a person rather than an immaterial entity. The solution is the unique ability of personal beings to create energy out of nothing. When physical objects move, they have energy. When they are caused to move, it's because energy was transferred to them by something else that has energy. Energy is a physical thing, so immaterial beings are not composed of energy which they can transfer to other things. The only way, then, for an immaterial being to have causal influence over a physical thing is to create energy ex nihilo. That's what we do every time we exercise our volition. This gives us reason to suppose that the cause of the universe is a volitional being, which entails that it is a person.