Classic old argument for God

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thinkandmull

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In confronting Kant’s criticism’s of metaphysics, it dawned on me that he likes to circle
metaphysics with a wall and convince you that there is nothing to be known through the steal gates because everything outside has to do with material sense perceptions. Yet once inside to play with metaphysical ideas, they can become very real. With that, let me present an old argument for God and see what the atheists/agnostics think.
  1. Many people have a clear idea of what God is. Not that they know his essence, but they understand imperfectly the concept of a complete being with his attributes. Its a complex idea that has ontological unity
  2. This premise is a step. Imagine taking the idea from you mind in order to examine it
  3. In looking at the idea, one realizes that the idea must have had a cause
  4. Humans are finite
  5. The reality the idea has, although a reality that is simply that which an idea has, has infinite dimensions since the idea is of an infinite eternal perfect God
  6. Nothing in sense perception is infinitely perfect
  7. No human is perfect or at least can increase their perfection to the infinite
  8. The idea of God must have been discovered by the individual as an innate thought implanted by the perfect God, the CAUSE of the idea (effect)
 
I disagree with the first premise. I can ask one hundred people to define “God” and get one hundred different answers, many of them contradictory.

God is often considered omnipotent, but do you have a clear idea of what omnipotence is? All that it entails? I certainly don’t. In fact, if God himself manifested before me and performed a miracle, I’m not sure how I could distinguish it from a demon’s spell or something. So I don’t know how to identify omnipotence even when it’s right in front of my nose, and the same goes for the other omni- attributes.

Now perhaps you mean that it isn’t necessary to know what omnipotence entails to understand it, but this sort of understanding seems nebulous to me. It’s rather like saying you understand Euclidean geometry because you understand the postulates. That doesn’t count in my opinion.
 
This is Descartes argument, also supported by Spinoza and known in Hinduism. It only works when someone has had a profound thought of God. Otherwise there seems always to be a way out of an argument for God. If someone had a profound experience of God an argument wouldn’t be necessary, but if the experience wasn’t extremely emotion, this argument proves God’s existence
 
I actually also disagree with the first proposition and take up Aquinas view that God is not self evident and that he must be discovered through rational thought and analysis. The fact that there are atheist and many different concept of God shows this. Only by rational thought can we later come to the idea of a perfect and complete being.
 
Aquinas only gains for someone the thought of God, which appears as innate. He doesn’t have a proof for God’s existence in his body of work. To say that the idea of God comes from us is impossible. To say it is a faulty idea is wrong as well. Its as solid as the idea that we have free will
 
thinkandmull said:
Aquinas only gains for someone the thought of God, which appears as innate. He doesn’t have a proof for God’s existence in his body of work. To say that the idea of God comes from us is impossible. To say it is a faulty idea is wrong as well. Its as solid as the idea that we have free will
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Well Aquinas’s arguments fail because he says “the world might be eternal according to reason”. Even with a God, in his view there could be the infinite dominoes series into the past up to the present. So were is the need to God is physically the dominoes series could be there with a God?
 
thinkandmull said:
This is Descartes argument, also supported by Spinoza and known in Hinduism. It only works when someone has had a profound thought of God. Otherwise there seems always to be a way out of an argument for God. If someone had a profound experience of God an argument wouldn’t be necessary, but if the experience wasn’t extremely emotion, this argument proves God’s existence
Click to expand...
I’m not sure what you mean about arguments being necessary. Arguments can be used for persuasion. Obviously if you feel you have connected with God somehow, then you’re past the point of needing to be persuaded of his existence.

Another purpose of argumentation is self-correction. Perhaps I believe something very strongly but find that I’m unable to convince others with my arguments. It’s fair to ask why others aren’t being persuaded. Are others unreasonable, or do the reasons for my belief not stand up to scrutiny? Maybe I am certain I see an oasis ahead, but others are just pointing out that it’s a mirage.
 
thinkandmull said:
Well Aquinas’s arguments fail because he says “the world might be eternal according to reason”. Even with a God, in his view there could be the infinite dominoes series into the past up to the present. So were is the need to God is physically the dominoes series could be there with a God?
Click to expand...
He shows that even an infinite series of dominoes requires a non-domino to explain it. Every physical cause might be set in motion by another physical cause, on into infinity, but the set of physical causes as a whole requires a non-physical explanation.

In short, anything that does not exist by its own essence requires an outside explanation. Ultimately there must be something that fundamentally exists in and of itself, and this entity must not be composed of changing parts as that implies a changing existence which is a self-contradiction for such an entity.
 
As others have said, the first statement is incorrect. If a dozen years on Christian forums have convinced me of anything at all, it’s that everyone has a different view of what God is.

He always appears to be what you want Him to be.
 
thinkandmull said:
Well Aquinas’s arguments fail because he says "the world might be eternal according to reason".
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Do you happen to have the entire sentence from Aquinas in which that quote appears?

It’s also important to note that Aquinas only says it might be eternal, since there is not way to prove by pure reason that it is not. He did not say the world **is **eternal. We know from modern cosmology that the world is not eternal but rather in the neighborhood of 14 billions of years old.
 
Aquinas has an article in the Summa First Part saying that the beginning of time is a matter of faith, not provable by reason. But if the series of past causes goes back forever, physically one being behind the other, than the argument for someone behind the whole series is the third way, and the first and the third are no different. Athiests are not going to accept that a necessary being is needed in order to sustain contingency. The big bang might have happened, but it could have come from another dimension, hence the infinite series into the past
 
Aquinas defines an essentially ordered infinity as if to move a stick you must move a hand, and in order to move the hand you must jump a lake, ect. But this merely means that something cannot be done in an infinite time. Yet if its possible for there to be an infinite past as he says, then the stick will move. Its the infinite dominoe effect again. So I am not seeing a difference between the third and first way. The second way is the first way just made more all encompasing. So I think my argument is much more satisfying
 
thinkandmull said:
Aquinas has an article in the Summa First Part saying that the beginning of time is a matter of faith, not provable by reason. But if the series of past causes goes back forever, physically one being behind the other, than the argument for someone behind the whole series is the third way, and the first and the third are no different. Athiests are not going to accept that a necessary being is needed in order to sustain contingency. The big bang might have happened, but it could have come from another dimension, hence the infinite series into the past
Click to expand...
There is no scientific evidence that the Big Bang came from another dimension. This would seem to be the preference of an atheist, so it seems odd coming from a Catholic.

If you believe in multiverse, you believe in science fiction, which is no more demonstrable than a finite series of causes that begins with God.
 
My point is that science has nothing to say about what happened before the BIg Bang
 
thinkandmull said:
My point is that science has nothing to say about what happened before the BIg Bang
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Time begins with the Big Bang.

There was no “before” the Big Bang, so nothing happened “before” the Big Bang. .
 
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