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Post by Maggie on Dec 13, 2013 11:30:32 GMT -6
Hi Illusion! Hope you are still interested in discussing Thomas' 5 proofs for the existence of God. Rather than pull them out of my head, I went out on the web and copied a nice short (as opposed to nice longgggg!!!) description of each. These come from Proving the Existence of God by Gregory Watson.
1. The Way of Motion: Things move and change. Things are put into motion by something else. There cannot be an infinite regress, therefore there must have been an initial unmoved mover. This we call God.
2. The Way of Causation: All things have an immediate or efficient cause. The efficient causes cannot go back infinitely, so there must be a first, uncaused cause. This we call God.
3. The Way of Contingency: It is not necessary for any particular thing to exist, they are, rather, contingent things. All possible things at one point did not exist. If all things are merely contingent, then at one time things did not exist. There must be a necessary essence that caused all contingent things to be. This we call God.
4. The Way of Goodness: Things have degrees of perfection—larger or smaller, heavier or lighter, warmer or colder. Degrees imply the existence of a maximum of perfection. This maximum perfection we call God.
5. The Way of Design: Things in this world are ordered to particular ends. Even unintelligent things are predisposed to this and not that. This order inherent in even inanimate things necessitates an intelligence to direct it. This intelligence we call God.[blockquote/]
I still remember my medieval philosophy professor (an atheist) telling us that 4 of the 5 ways were nonsense but that number 3 (Contingency) was a pretty good one. Personally, as I look at these today, 4 and 5 strike me as pretty bad but the first 3 seem to hold up well.
What do you think?
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Post by illusion on Dec 15, 2013 2:54:43 GMT -6
Thanks, Maggie, for starting this thread.
Although, I've never formally discussed Aquinas' 5 proofs, the concepts have come up several times in conversation. At first blush, I have some disagreement with the first two, "The Way of Motion" and "The Way of Causation". With "Motion" it contains the statement, "Things are put in motion by something else ...". "Causation" contains this statement, "The efficient causes cannot go back infinitely, so there must be a first, uncaused cause." Is this true? Is there such a thing as an uncaused event? In physics that's sort of an unresolved debate. I'm no physicist, but the debate is an interesting one, and enough to make me unsure of truly claiming that uncaused events can't happen.
If the first two are in doubt, definitely 3 is in doubt, as well, with the statement, "There must be a necessary essence that caused all contingent things to be." Must there? Again, I'm unsure this is true.
I have to admit, the argument of, "The Way of Goodness" is a bit confusing. Perfection = God. I don't seem to follow the argument.
My disconnect with "The Way of Design" argument is that I don't necessarily see design. I agree that certain forces are connected and cause the universe to act in certain ways. Maybe that falls into the "Contingency" category, but I don't see that it implies design.
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Post by Maggie on Dec 15, 2013 21:06:24 GMT -6
I am glad the Christmas break is coming up because this is really an interesting subject. I can't do justice to it now and I have to dig out my notes and review them but the third proof is a lot tougher than you are giving it credit for. We exist. We are surrounded by things that exist-- birds, trees, flowers animals, you name it. But just as we and they come into existence, so we and they go out of existence. None of them exist necessarily and all depend on something else for their existence. Since they go in and out of existence, it is at least plausible that there was a time when nothing existed. Something does not come from nothing and so it seems clear that a necessary being; a being not contingent on anything else for its existence is necessary to bring contingent beings into existence. This being we call God (according to Thomas.)
Where are the flaws in the argument? It seems reasonable. But they are there!
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Post by illusion on Dec 18, 2013 4:29:30 GMT -6
Something does not come from nothing and so it seems clear that a necessary being; a being not contingent on anything else for its existence is necessary to bring contingent beings into existence. This being we call God (according to Thomas.) Where are the flaws in the argument? It seems reasonable. But they are there! I'm not yet in agreement with the statement, "Something does not come from nothing." Admittedly, I've been reading Lawrence Krauss. "Nothing" is something of a debate. But, putting that debate aside for a moment, on the quantum level particles and their anti-particle counterparts seem to pop in and out of existence, apparently uncaused. If this claim is true, then something does seem to come from nothing, not, that Thomas Aquinas would have known about quantum physics. I don't mean to say that things aren't contingent on other things at the macro level, but on the quantum level, they may not be. But, here's a blanket statement that seems to apply, at least, to the first 3 claims of Aquinas. Even if I were to agree that there must be an unchanging, eternal thing that started all other things, at no point must that thing contain personhood or intelligence to fulfill the claim of these 3 statements. Labeling that thing as "God" seems to be unwarranted. We haven't yet shown why this thing must be conscience. |
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Post by Maggie on Dec 18, 2013 7:58:14 GMT -6
Matter is a very mysterious thing indeed. However the argument that particles and anti-particles pop in and out of existence is not easy to make. All change requires an agent of change. More to the point perhaps, "nothing" means nothing. No energy, no anything.
Your last paragraph is entirely spot on. We are not talking about the God of the Bible (necessarily) with these arguments. The best we can do with a solid argument is get to an immensely intelligent, immensely powerful being. We cannot even establish that He is a personal being. We are dependent on revelation for anything else we might know about his "characteristics" (for lack of a better word). But, at least, if we can establish "God" as a reasonable postulate, it is easier to see if we can find him in our world and learn about him.
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Post by illusion on Dec 19, 2013 2:17:45 GMT -6
Matter is a very mysterious thing indeed. However the argument that particles and anti-particles pop in and out of existence is not easy to make. All change requires an agent of change. More to the point perhaps, "nothing" means nothing. No energy, no anything. I'm not well versed in the particle/antiparticle aspect of this argument, but for me the interesting part is this it seems to be well established in the scientific community that these events do not require a previous cause. Knowing that, I can't accept the position that all things in nature need a previous cause I am curious why it seems resonable to postulate a being that has no previous cause to His existance, exists outside of nature, and yet thinks and has the ability to create. Doesn't that seem to be a cause of special pleading? |
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Post by Maggie on Dec 19, 2013 7:53:32 GMT -6
Not really. Existence is not a property of God; existence is God. It is a property of humans. We can have it and we can lose it (die). God cannot.
There is certainly a school of thought that tries to say as you have that "it seems to be well established in the scientific community that these events do not require a previous cause." They are not the majority and, indeed, there is no real evidence for such a thing. What evidence could show how nothing becomes something? How would you identify the nothing and its properties? Like I said, nothing means nothing. No energy no nothing. How does something, which by definition is constituted of identifiable properties, come from that? To my way of thinking it is a sort of desperate "we know there is a scientific explanation that we will find and it won't require God." In fact, I don't think they are doing science at all. To me it looks suspiciously like philosophy.
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Post by illusion on Dec 19, 2013 14:18:17 GMT -6
Existence is not a property of God; existence is God. It is a property of humans. We can have it and we can lose it (die). God cannot. Claims like this always seem odd to me. This is a claim that a being that we can't detect has certain properties that we can't verify. Why would we assume this to be the case? I beg to differ, here is an article from Scientific American. It's conclusion states, "Thus virtual particles are indeed real and have observable effects that physicists have devised ways of measuring. Their properties and consequences are well established and well understood consequences of quantum mechanics." This seems to be well established, and accepted by the majority of scientists working in the field. www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-virtual-particles-reaThe "nothing" debate is only something that I'm recently learning about, and I am not informed enough to argue for or against it. I only bring it up because it is proposed and is currently still in debate. I do have one thought on the topic, though. When Lawrence Krauss talks about "nothing" he talks about an area of free space that still has a potential for these virtual particles to pop in and out of existence. When you claim that that "nothing" isn't a valid definition. You may be making a claim to a form of "nothing" that in reality might not exist nor ever have existed. |
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Post by Maggie on Dec 19, 2013 15:52:07 GMT -6
God does not have properties at all. He is. Or, to put it another way that you will find in the philosophy/theology encyclopedias, he is absolutely simple. Everything we say of God is by analogy. How else could we speak of him? But that does have the problem of causing us to think of him as some sort of super man which is not accurate. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on divine simplicity. It starts out: In theology, the doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is without parts. The general idea of divine simplicity can be stated in this way: the being of God is identical to the "attributes" of God. In other words, such characteristics as omnipresence, goodness, truth, eternity, etc. are identical to God's being, not qualities that make up that being, nor abstract entities inhering in God as in a substance. Varieties of the doctrine may be found in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophical theologians, especially during the height of scholasticism, though the doctrine's origins may be traced back to ancient Greek thought, finding apotheosis in Plotinus' Enneads as the Simplex. I will have to read your article in order to say anything more about virtual particles. Stay tuned! |
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Post by illusion on Dec 20, 2013 1:43:59 GMT -6
Wikipedia has a pretty good article on divine simplicity. It starts out: "...the being of God is identical to the 'attributes' of God. In other words, such characteristics as omnipresence, goodness, truth, eternity, etc. are identical to God's being, not qualities that make up that being, nor abstract entities inhering in God as in a substance." Isn't this just an unfalsifiable/unprovable assumption? Not only do I wonder how we would know that this God exists, I also wonder how we would know that these assumptions about Him are true. |
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