Existence of God and the Five proofs?

[RWMorris]

Two questions basically.
1.) I looked over the Existence of God in the Summa, and I really don’t get it. …
2.) Any other suggestions on simple–(and i stress simple) works by other authors on the existence of God. Outlines? Essays? I am ot a academic and the simpler the better. (like i said i have the summa of the summa and handbook of Christian apologetics.)

Another source that might help is a series of debates by Dr. William Lane Craig. He is not Catholic and I’ve only read some of his debates concerning the existence of God so I’m not sure about his Theology (he’s an Evangelical Christian) or his view of the Catholic Church, but his arguments in support of God’s existence are pretty strong. His debates are here:
reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=debates_main

Just remember Saint Thomas said, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

After seeing Jesus and touching his wounds Thomas exclaimed, "My Lord and my God!”

Jesus answered him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

• John 20:27-29

Some of us have to work real hard at faith. For years I felt just like Thomas before he met his Lord face-to-face. But it’s worth the effort. May God bless you and reveal Himself to you.

 

[john_doran]

No, the premise is that there is nothing caused that does not have a cause. The conclusion is that there can only be one being which is uncaused (God), which is the same as concluding that nothing else can exist which does not have a cause. This is the same as the premise. This is circular reasoning unless one can support the premise with evidence.

you’re off the mark here, i’m afraid…

your version of the premise, “there is nothing caused that does not have a cause” is simply and straightforwardly not synonymous with “nothing else can exist which does not have a cause”.

more abstractly, (x)(Cx http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/matimp.gif (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/existq.gify)Cyx) is not logically equivalent to (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/existq.gifx)(~Cx http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/matimp.gif (~Cy http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/matimp.gif (x=y)).

in other words, the proposition “for any thing that exists, if that thing is caused, then that thing is caused by something (else)”, is not synonymous with “if there is a thing that is uncaused, then for anything else that is uncaused, then those things are identical”.

look, the form of aquinas’ proof is the following:

1. there are some things in the world that are changing;
2. things that are changing are caused to change (causal principle);
3. if something could change itself, it would need to be both changed and not changed at the same time and in the same respect.
4. therefore, nothing changes itself;
5. but there cannot exist an infinite regress of changers and things changed;
6. therefore there is at least one changer that is itself unchanged.

the conclusion (6) is clearly not synonymous with any of the other premises, so your charge of circular reasoning doesn’t go through.

michael_legna:

But as we have seen throughout this discussion this premise is not proven, just accepted based on common experience and observation of the macroscopic world

…just like these propositions that most of us just accept and for which there is no proof:

a) “there are other minds”;

b) “the past exists”;

c) “there is a mind-independent reality”;

d) “our senses are reliable”.

the causal principle, it seems, is in extraordinarily good epistemic company.

michael_legna:

But modern observations show that it should give us pause to claim there are no uncaused causes.

and this is exactly where you keep slipping up: there are no actual observations of “causeless events” - there are simply observations of events for which there are no observed causes. again, completely different beasts, i’m afraid.

the claim that there are acausal subatomic transactions is a philosophical claim, plain and simple; it is a conclusion that is drawn using certain philosophical assumptions, and not simply an immediate, pretheoretical grasp of experimental data. isn’t that obvious to you? how could “not seeing” a cause ever be prima facie evidence that no cause exists in an epistemological enterprise (i.e. science) that is based on the search for the cause of every event it studies?

 

[john_doran]

michael_legna:

You may be, but I don’t think the majority of Physicist would agree with you, and I suggest they are in a better position to judge the success of quantum mechanical interpretations than you both in regards to the extent of their speculative nature and as compared to the common understanding of causal relationships.

well, you suggest wrong…they’re in a better position to judge the success of the science of QM and its associated experiments, but the interpretations of QM are exercises in philosophy, and i can assure you that i am much more qualified to judge that than most physicists i have encountered.

that’s the problem with most scientists: they think that everything they think and say about science is itself necessarily science…

michael_legna:

There is no complete theory in science so this criticism is artificial at best.

how so? QM is a provisional theory, and in very obvious and troubling ways; how could it be an “artificial” criticism to note that the degree of belief warranted by a provisional interpretation of a provisional theory is far, far less than that warranted by the principles upon which all scientific theorizing is based?

michael_legna:

The fact is the vast majority of Physicist accept quantum mechanics as completely reliable to use for predictions of behavior in high energy environments when the causal principle has shown itself completely incapable of predicting results.

what are you talking about, “completely incapable”??? at its most general level, all the causal principle predicts about experimental environments is that when you punch the button on the accelerator or the cloud chamber or whatever, you will cause high energy particles to hit each other, which in turn will cause some kind of effect; just because we don’t know what the effect will be based solely on the causal principle is logically irrelevant: you might as well argue that the causal principle is useless because it doesn’t tell me exactly what will happen if i close my eyes and throw a banana down a crowded hallway…

the causal principle doesn’t need to predict specific results: it just predicts that everything that happens will have been caused to happen. and it does that with 100% accuracy.

 

[john_doran]

An understanding based on a very limited set of observations and an understanding completely incongruent with modern experiments, where we know many of our normal thoughts on causality have been shown to be wrong.

a “limited” number of observations??? every one of the millions of observations i’ve ever made confirms the causal principle, and it’s a safe bet that the same goes for almost everyone on earth.

as for “limited” observations, it seems to me that relying solely on one understanding of quantum fluctuations in the face of every other bit of observational evidence we have would be the very definition of “limited”.

of course, they would be “limited” if they were actually observations in the first place, but as i note above, not observing a cause for an event is not the same thing as observing an event with no cause…

 

[RWMorris]

… Any other suggestions on simple–(and i stress simple) works by other authors on the existence of God…

These guys are getting too deep for me.

I forgot to mention that Scott Hahn, one of my favorite Catholic authors and theologians, has a new book out called Reasons to Believe. The first chapter is titled “Natural Reasons”. Dr. Hahn has the ability to explain difficult concepts in layman’s terms. Like all of his books, this one is very, very good.

God Bless.

 

[punkforchrist]

RWMorris:

Another source that might help is a series of debates by Dr. William Lane Craig. He is not Catholic and I’ve only read some of his debates concerning the existence of God so I’m not sure about his Theology (he’s an Evangelical Christian) or his view of the Catholic Church, but his arguments in support of God’s existence are pretty strong.

Just in case anyone is interested, Dr. Craig does believe that Catholicism is within the realms of Christian orthodoxy (I believe he stated so explicitly in his debate with Frank Zindler). He is also a Molinist with respect to predestination.

Blessings

 

[punkforchrist]

michael_legna:

I think I will leave the discussion here.

Although we have some disagreements, I am thankful that you have contributed on this thread as much as you have. Your thoughts have helped to shed some light on the relevant issues.

Blessings

 

[tdgesq]

I think I will leave the discussion here.

I thought I might be able to explain this issue so that anyone could understand it without having to know the mathematics and details of the Physics that underlies the issues of causality.

I now see, based on some of the most recent posts, that there are many, many deep rooted misunderstandings of both the experiments and their outcomes, not to mention the extent to which our modern life and the devices it revolves around relies on these results.

The deep rooted misunderstandings appear to be shared by your contemporaries as well. The examples and arguments I gave against your ontological conclusions from the double slit experiment come directly from Anthony Rizzi’s book. Maybe you have a Phd in physics from Princeton University with a sub-specialty in general relativity like he does, or perhaps you are just another anonymous internet poster who has no credentials at all. It doesn’t matter in this case. To claim that the double split experiment disproves the law of non-contradiction is as preposterous to your peers as it is to me.

Or perhaps you are more qualified in the philosophy of science than Craig whose article to which I referred was published in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. A quantum vacuum has little, if anything, in common with nothingness. That you can’t even grasp that basic concept leads me to believe that you have not studied the lessons of philosophy.

No one here doubts the usefulness of the specialized sciences and its predictive power in the world. What some of us do doubt is a person that comes forth with “facts” that contradict the very foundation upon which science is built.

 

[Questioning_1]

I think the topic has gone of track a little bit.

I am going to start a new thread on the Existence of God proved by motion. That continues to plague me with questions.

Please all go there if you have comments or help for the proof of God by Thomas Aquinas’ proofs of motion.

Thank you again for you help.

 

[Ghosty]

What is your basis for claiming that quantum fluctuation is not the source of its own being? It certainly cannot be my statement that “This quantum fluctuation does not have a underlying cause other than it being the nature of the instability of space.” because the instability of space and the quantum fluctuation is a way of saying the sam thing.

The fact that it is a fluctuation, a change, makes it impossible for it to be the source of its own being. Since it is not the same from one moment to the next, it can’t be a self-existing thing. Something that “is what it is and that’s all that it is” would permanently be itself, not be in a state of flux. Fluctuations are by definition always “becoming”, never stably “being”, and only something that is entirely and perfectly stable can be its own being. Anything that is in flux must have a “first state” (not temporally, but logically), either within itself or coming from outside itself. The “first state” must be stable, however, which precludes a changing object from being the source of its own change.

So we’re reduced to two possible conclusions: the thing in question exists eternally, but is changed by an outside source that is itself unchanging or comes from a chain of events that goes back to an unchanging principal, or the thing’s very being comes from without. In either case this “first cause” would be unchanging and the source of its own being, and that is what we call God.

Additionally, what is your source or reasoning that it cannot be the source of its own being? It certain cannot be because NOTHING can be its own source of being, otherwise this limitation would be extended to God as well.

The fact that it is in flux means it can’t be the source of its own being. Only a constant “being” can logically be the source of its own being.

What then do you suggest is the source of the quantum fluctuation, since it occurs in a vacuum, completely empty space?

But that’s just it, it’s NOT completely empty. You are limiting yourself to material “emptiness”, failing to take into consideration the fact that any vacuum that has laws and principles it operates by is not entirely empty. It is void of matter, perhaps, but it is NOT void of definition and a cohesion of its own. True void would have no such laws, but would rather be the utter absence of even quantum fluctuation. In other words, the fact that it has quantum fluctuations means it’s not “empty”, even if it contains nothing that we would call matter.

Sorry you cannot exclude God from this requirement as you use the argument to prove His existence. That would be logically inconsistent.

God is unchanging and eternal, so He is not excluded from the rule at all; He just has attributes that the vacuum and quantum flux within doesn’t have. We can conclude that there is a “God” simply from the logical necessity of such a being; we don’t need to believe in it and its attributes before drawing these conclusions. I don’t need to be told that God is unchanging and eternal, and then work him in to the system, I can determine these things about such an entity by the evidence of the system itself.

Yes, that is exactly what they do since they occur spontaneously in an area where nothing else exists to cause their coming into existence.

See above. You’re taking the material emptiness and making it emptiness of every possible thing, which is illogical and unscientific.

No the vacuum I refer to is a true void. It is the space between subatomic particles in which nothing exists until the quantum fluctuations spontaneously occur.

The fact that you just defined it by actions within it proves that it’s not truly void. Nothing but nothing comes from true void.

continued…

 

[Ghosty]

I disagree that the Fifth Argument is completely separate from the argument of the watch maker and the watch. But even if your understanding of it was what Aquinas intended we have other problems in our modern understanding of the nature of creation and its behavior, problems Aquinas was unaware of and which cannot be made similar to the way God works with creation and thus reveals Himself. I refer of course to chaos theory and the inability of us to ever provide a detailed enough model of certain aspects of nature to ever see an intelligent guide behind the mechanical certainty of the events. Chaos theory shows us very clearly that there are systems we CANNOT see the mechanical certainty you claim is there and if we cannot see this we cannot see the need for an intelligent guide and thus we cannot see God revealed in His creation.

I agree that it doesn’t stand up to modern scrutiny, and incidentally so would Aquinas. It was his weakest proof and he said as much. Still it was included because all observation at his point in history pointed to it, and there is no need to throw out evidence that has not yet been proven against.

As for it not applying to the watch and watchmaker, I’m interested in hearing how “all natural objects move towards a natural end, yet without a will of their own” can include the watchmaker argument. It is tangentially related, sure, but it’s hardly the same argument.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Questioning_1]

This topic has gotten way way way off track.

Still more questions on the five proofs.

How about the 3rd proof that of contingency–right?