Talk:Occasionalism

Intelligent Falling is a classic example of Occasonalist thinking, and serves as an excellent reductio ad absurdam.

Schematic
Anyone want to make one that doesn't have "physical" spelled wrong? --Anaraug 23:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

The schematic is badly wrong. For a start, the arrows aren't labelled, and it's not at all clear what they're actually supposed to be representing: but, no matter how one chooses to interpret them, at least some of them will be going the wrong way. If, as seems most reasonable, we interpret them as signifying efficient causation, then all four of them should be pointing away from God.

If they are supposed to signify some sort of 'occasioning' relation, then none of them should point away from God -- either make them all point towards Him, or drop the ones on the right altogether, or just have them lead directly between the events on the left and the ones on the right. My own feeling is that even a revised diagram isn't going to add very much to the article, and that it might as well be dropped altogether: but it certainly shouldn't be left in its current garbled and misleading form. Hce1132 21:54, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

IF is another of those ridiculos paradoys atheist pop out like the FSM. Cause & effect itself is a unprovable intuitive principle. go figure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.18.235.210 (talk) 12:48, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Karl Barth
I've seen Karl Barth cited as a contemporary source of theological occasionalism. It would be interesting if we could have more references on that. ADM (talk) 03:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Minor Edits
Im removing the word Habitual from the lead, Habit gives the wrong understanding and has nothing to do with this or God, although i understand why it was used and what it was trying to express. I couldn't find a precise single word to replace it so removing it would be better as the passage still conveys the same meaning without it. Iβn Kᾱτhir τᾱℓк 07:08, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I think continual and constant intervention or creation is a better expression, Al ghazali would not have used such a word as it assigns deficiency and dependency to God.

changed to  Iβn Kᾱτhir τᾱℓк 07:26, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * natural law is actually a kind habituated regularity
 * law is actually a kind constant and continual regularity

Uploaded video of a 2009 lecture explaning Occasionalism
Oxford professor explaining Occasionalism. I think, at first, a bad explanation of Berkeley, but a good one of Occasionalism. It has a good "billiard ball" analogy that may be somehow be here incorporated. Nagelfar (talk) 17:54, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

etymology
Kind of odd that this theory of constant intervention is called "occasionalism", a word which might seem more apt to describe the common opposing view of secondary causation plus *occasional* intervention. Maybe some explanation could be added; can anybody suggest sources on where the term originated or how it was motivated? Is it a translation of the arabic (islamic) terminology? Cesiumfrog (talk) 00:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In Latin occasio basically means "favorable moment". Have no idea what the Arabic term is, except that the Arabic Wikipedia article interwiki link is to the مناسبة school, a word which seems to have meanings such as "suitable" or "corresponding"... AnonMoos (talk) 03:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * P.S. Something on the Latin etymology at Catholic Encyclopedia link... -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Occasion (in 14th C.) meant opportunity (a "state of affairs that makes something else possible"), derived from a word for "cause/pretext". So creatures persist only during the occasion of divine activity?
 * Interesting your source says occasionalism limits to pantheism. Cesiumfrog (talk) 12:34, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

occasionalism and science
Something could be said about the possible relationship between the rise of occasionalism and the relative stagnation of science among Muslims in most areas after the 13th century. Adherence to occasionalism is not necessarily incompatible with practical scientific work, but overall it encourages habits of mind not very favorable to a scientific world-view, and some have speculated that there might be a connection to the decline of scientific innovation in most Muslim societies (though of course official endorsement of occasionalism would not have been the only factor in the decline)... AnonMoos (talk) 05:31, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This claim has been debunked numerous times -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:248:5181:4250:D496:CBC:CF9:D7D9 (talk) 06:15, 2 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Muslims were still the most powerful people on the planet 600 years after the theory presented by Ghazali. After that the British took over. Occasionalism was present before Ghazali aswell. Your statement is a non-sequitor. 2600:1700:727A:1010:24F7:F30E:2F6A:400C (talk) 00:03, 1 October 2022 (UTC)


 * The latest year that Muslims could be considered the most powerful was 1683, and some would consider the decline to have begun earlier. Anyway, I wasn't talking about that; I was talking about the fact that Arabs contributed little to science after the 13th century, in contrast to the earlier Abbasid period.  Obviously occasionalism wasn't the only reason for this, and the acceptance of occasionalism didn't immediately cause an abrupt end to science, but nevertheless occasionalism may have been a somewhat significant part of a cultural climate that was overall moderately hostile to scientific innovation... AnonMoos (talk) 02:16, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

A claim which he defended using logic
The section on Islam has the sentence "In his famous example, when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned not because of the heat of the fire, but through God's direct intervention, a claim which he defended using logic." This sounds kind of dumb and should be fixed. Either the phrase "a claim which he defended using logic" should be stripped out entirely or should be replaced with an actual summary of his arguments. Just saying he used "logic" to defend his arguments is baseless and doesn't actually tell us anything. --SStewartGallus (talk) 02:37, 16 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Why? Human beings have no definition of what is "logical" So what is logical to Ghazali might not make sense to you and vice versa. 2600:1700:727A:1010:24F7:F30E:2F6A:400C (talk) 00:04, 1 October 2022 (UTC)


 * SStewartGallus -- The purpose of the phrase is to indicate that he gave reasoning in support of it, and didn't merely assert it without any reasoning. AnonMoos (talk) 02:02, 1 October 2022 (UTC)