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Logically impossible concepts mean that they contain a contradiction. For example, a square triangle contains a contradiction. However, logically impossible concepts are also often concepts you cannot imagine.

Now let’s bring in the idea of non physical causes using perhaps the example of God. Suppose that God intervenes in the world by allowing John to win the lottery. One might now ask: how?. Suppose one states that the process by which this is done is in a non physical manner. However, given that the end result/effect is still physical, in that John wins the lottery, it seems difficult if not impossible to imagine some sort of non physical process that leads a supposedly non physical being to allow John to win. Even if the process involves direct intervention in that God physically changes atoms to ensure John wins, the question seems to still remain: how does a non physical cause start this physical process?

Something about the term “process” seems to imply physicality to it. Is this an assumption or does the very concept of a non physical process lead to a contradiction? What about a non physical cause?

If non physical causes that lead to physical effects are impossible, can one use this to reject the idea of a “non physical” god altogether? Even if god was physical, can one still argue that the only way for him to intervene with the world is through a physical process since a non physical process seems impossible to imagine? Or is there no contradiction here?

  • Psychosomatic illnesses. – gnasher729 Jun 28 '23 at 09:17
  • There’s no evidence that those exist without a brain though so wouldn’t that still ultimately be a physical cause? And even if you do recognize it as a non physical cause, any physical effect it causes would have an observable physical process/mechanism. Anxiety causing me to tense up is an example of an observable effect –  Jun 28 '23 at 09:20
  • See the book Ideas have consequences – Rushi Jun 28 '23 at 09:41
  • Why is "physical causes" leading to "physical effects" unproblematic to you? Regardless of the type of cause and type of effect... the Humean issue is still there of finding some necessary link between cause and effect. I don't see what "imagination" has to do with it. Certain events lead to certain other events. When there's a regularity, we say there's a cause and effect. What does physical or non-physical have to do with it? – Ameet Sharma Jun 28 '23 at 20:45
  • Because god is conceived of as a non physical being. This has two issues: a) there is nothing in existence that we’ve observed that doesn’t seem to have physical roots, this includes the mind. B) in every case of a physical event, other physical events lead to it –  Jun 28 '23 at 22:03
  • Was quantum tunneling a nonphysical cause prior to ~1924? If not, and something can be impossible according to known scientific principles and still be a physical cause, what is nonphysical? Is it something that can't be reproduced in any conceivable laboratory? Is the universe nonphysical, because there's nowhere to put the laboratory except in a finite section of the universe? What about the events of the Big Bang? - there's too much entropy to repeat the experiment, even if you could defy logic to put the whole universe inside the laboratory and put the scientist outside to do experiments. – g s Jun 29 '23 at 04:10

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You are rightly pointing out what one might consider to be a questionable aspect of all theories about gods, mystics and other supernatural phenomena, namely that if they are going to affect the world then at some point they have to affect it in a physical way, so how can that happen? How does god influence the balls in the lottery machine to pop-out to match the numbers on John's ticket. I have heard that there are some people on this forum who have sunk to such depths in the abyss of skepticism that they think such things are impossible and that the idea of gods etc is utter nonsense.

Marco Ocram
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  • I may be turning into one of those people since intuitively, I cannot imagine how a physical effect can arise from a non physical cause. The way to save god in my eyes would be to simply assume he/she is physical in some form. That would further imply either a hidden physical mechanism that is directly influencing certain outcomes, or some sort of process that god “started” at the beginning that led to the laws that we have today. The question then would be how one can differentiate between laws that just exist as a brute fact vs. being designed by this physical god –  Jun 28 '23 at 08:48
  • Agreed. But then if god were physical in that way, then you might feel obliged to consider that he or she or it would be constrained by physical laws, so how could they do all the clever stuff they're supposed to do. – Marco Ocram Jun 28 '23 at 08:50
  • What would sorry? Do you mean that if god was physical, we would be able to differentiate? –  Jun 28 '23 at 08:51
  • Sorry, I accidentally posted the initial version of that comment before I had finished typing it! I seem to be getting better at such gaffes as I get older! – Marco Ocram Jun 28 '23 at 08:52
  • Yeah after reading your full comment, that is something I didn’t consider. Everything that we know of that is physical seems to be bound by physical laws by definition. But I suppose god could be bound by some unknown physical law that still allows him to have the power to change or cause events in the world dictated by other physical rules that he creates? Of course, this does sound complex and is just armchair philosophy. The answer, as usual, if it even exists, will be likely figured out by physicists and not by laymen like me –  Jun 28 '23 at 08:59
  • @thinkingman, you say you cannot "imagine" it. I don't understand what you mean by this. Even in the physical case... we don't see "cause" and "effect". There's no mechanism. We have a regularity of certain events followed by other events. And we make laws to generalize this. That's all. We do not see any "necessary" connection between physical causes and effects. So I don't see why there's any special issue with non-physical causes or non-physical effects. – Ameet Sharma Jun 28 '23 at 20:50
  • @MarcoOcram https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/ – Dave Jun 28 '23 at 21:46
  • Because cause and effect don't exist, God can do literally anything! Problem solved. – Scott Rowe Jun 28 '23 at 22:22
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The concept of a non-physical cause indeed feels a little problematic. How can something non-physical cause something physical?

On the other hand, we do have agent causation. We are agents who do things for various non-physical reasons. We can decide what our muscles do.

Our muscles don't break any laws of physics. Muscle movement is caused by the energy released by burning glucose, but this process is controlled by the non-physical mind who decides which muscles to move and when.

An omnipotent god without muscles can be imagined, but in reality there are no non-physical causes.

Pertti Ruismäki
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  • Our mental states wouldn’t exist without a physical brain. Secondly, muscle movement may be arguably controlled by a non physical mental state but that state would be controlled by physical events in the brain. Lastly, we have examples of physical things that do not seem to have a mental component to them but not vice versa, hence the ultimate cause still seems to be physical. –  Jun 28 '23 at 19:29
  • @thinkingman Physical events do not control anything. Not even in the brain. Only mental processes can do any controlling, decision-making is a mental process. – Pertti Ruismäki Jun 28 '23 at 20:06
  • You’re just abusing semantics at this point. By control I mean dependency. There is no mental without the physical. The foundation of every mental state has a physical root. The vice versa isn’t true –  Jun 28 '23 at 20:19
  • @thinkingman The mental and the physical are co-dependent. Neither can survive without the other. They also have a very clear division of labour. Both are doing their own things that the other is completely incapable of. The body processes physical matter and energy and the mind processes information. – Pertti Ruismäki Jun 29 '23 at 03:50
  • There are examples of physical things in the universe with no mental component. There are none vice versa. –  Jun 29 '23 at 04:57
  • @thinkingman Of course most of the physical activity in the Universe is completely uncontrolled. Only living conscious beings are mentally controlled by themselves. – Pertti Ruismäki Jun 29 '23 at 05:07
  • Which gives some level of evidence that the mental and physical are not codependent. The mental is a result of the physical –  Jun 29 '23 at 05:28
  • @thinkingman Of course they are co-dependent only within a conscious being. Dead matter has nothing to with anything mental. Neither is a "result" of the other. – Pertti Ruismäki Jun 29 '23 at 05:35
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Physics says that mass ≡ energy.

Please see How are Energy and Matter the Same?

As Einstein showed us, light and matter and just aspects of the same thing.

If a supposed god is omniscient and omnipotent, then it knows how to manipulate one in terms of the other.

The question asks about intervention by allowing John to win the lottery. Let's reduce that to John spinning a coin on a table. At the point of 'chaos' where the outcome of the spinning coin may resolve to heads or to tails (depending on the grain of the table's wood, or the air currents from an open window, etc), it might only take a tiny amount of energy to tip the uncertainty into certainty.

Where does that energy come from? Perhaps from the mass because it is just a form of energy. As long as the energy equation balances, the physicists shouldn't object if the coin weighs slightly less after the god's intervention.

But something else might weigh less, or have less energy. Physicists like to consider a closed system, but in a holistic universe everything is a part of everything else. The god might have moved the required energy from a storm cloud, which might not even be noticed.

Weather Vane
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  • How would the energy move from a storm cloud? You seem to be making the hidden implication that this would just happen by magic but that’s the very problem addressed in my original post –  Jun 28 '23 at 19:38
  • It would be by the intervention of an omniscient and omnipotent god, as you asked. Perhaps the energy comes from everywhere else, not one specific place. Please don't get into a tautology of explaining how a god does its stuff. – Weather Vane Jun 28 '23 at 19:40
  • Either way, how would this happen, if not physically? If the energy is coming from everywhere else, it would require a cause. What is this cause? Claiming that this cause is non physical is the issue –  Jun 28 '23 at 19:42
  • Explaining how a god, a supposedly non physical agent, does his stuff in a way that creates physical impact is the very root of the issue though. You have not removed the issue –  Jun 28 '23 at 19:45
  • We, as humans, not very far from ants, cannot explain the workings of the universe. We can construct models of how we think (or allegedly prove) it works, but we are not gods. We are not masters of the universe and we don't know who or what is, and we use the term 'god' for that as a placeholder. As our collective knowledge progresses, some things move from the realm of 'magic' or 'god' to 'understood' – or at least, a more coherent model. Trying to explain what a god does, is a sort of antithesis. – Weather Vane Jun 28 '23 at 19:47
  • “god” isn’t thought of as a placeholder for what we don’t understand. Although this may be the original cause for it as a concept, most people conceive of god as an actual agent, a being, who can directly or indirectly intervene in the world. So explaining how or what a god does and in what way He causes a physical impact upon the world is very relevant –  Jun 28 '23 at 20:18
  • You are are on a losing streak if you insist on knowing how a god works. Having fully understood how a god works, do you plan to become a better one? The Christian version says beyond human understanding. – Weather Vane Jun 28 '23 at 20:20
  • That’s just a cop out. I can come up with a hypothesis to explain anything without indicating the mechanism and simply say “well I’ve defined it to be beyond human understanding”. –  Jun 28 '23 at 22:01
  • Do you really, really expect someone to explain god as though it were some kind of mechanism that can be taken apart, examined and fully explained? Not only does that kind of defeat the idea of a god, but puts you somewhere above the god. Phew, come down from there! – Weather Vane Jun 29 '23 at 09:32
  • How can anything in a physical sense exist without a mechanism that can explain it? That’s a presumption –  Jun 30 '23 at 00:43