Help with another debate

[kantus12]

Hey all,

Thank you for your patience and participation with my previous “help me with a debate” thread. Sad to say, my interlocutor didn’t respond to my last response, perhaps because I took so long to give it. I’m in another,similar debate now, and though I fear that the same may come true here, I feel like I should post this thread so that I can give him my answer, and hopefully he will respond to them.

(HIS WORDS);

the argument that everything that comes into existence has a cause does nothing to change the argument. If god exists, he has a cause… what’s that? If god is outside existence, what does that mean and how does this establish its existence?

I am majored in philosophy. I studied these arguments at length in my history of philosophy sequence and again when I took a graduate seminar in Kant, where we discussed the antinomes of pure reason from the Critique of Pure Reason.

There are implicit assumptions that have to be resolved that are anything but resolved:

1. All of existence had a beginning.
2. There must be something outside of existence that brought the known world into existence.
3. Time is finite and had a beginning.

The Big Bang says that the known universe had a starting point around 13-14B years ago. Beyond that we know nothing.

The argument assumes answers not yet known as true. It is the classic failing of most religious philosophers.

Aquinas’ arguments fail simply and easily. No amount of weasel wording or shifting the definitions escapes the classical paradoxes associated with these arguments.
(END HIS WORDS)

Come to think of it, now that I read through this again, even I can see that it’s filled with holes. He says that “changing it to everything that comes into existence has a cause does nothing to change the arguments”, which denies that there’s a difference between things that are and things that begin to be (question begging). He says that “God must have a cause”, but that merely slips in the assumption that God begins to exist and thus is created, which Aquinas would strongly deny. Nobody, as far as I’m aware, claims that God is “outside existence”, unless by existence you mean “the physical universe” - which is slipping in the assumption that materialism is true (more question begging). I am not familiar with the antinomes of Pure Reason, so if anyone could give me help responding to this, then that would be appreaciated. Finally, he insists that Aquinas’ arguments are identifiable with the Kalam argument, which is simply false. Aquinas’s First Way, so as I’ve been told it, in fact assumes for the sake of argument that the universe is eternal,since Aquinas denied that its beginning could be known by reason alone. Everything after that is either insisting on the truthfulness of the previous assertion or a slur towards Aquinas.

What I could really use, however, is a way of phrasing the first way that makes it absolutely clear to my interlocutor that it is not a “god-of-the-gaps” argument, does not rely on assumptions of the finiteness of the history of the universe, etc. I would also like if someone could help me with the Kant, because that’s the only part of what he’s said that I myself can’t point out the holes in.

Thanks, all
kantus

 

[jonathan_hili]

Hi,

I’d definitely suggest more precise language in this debate. No theist would claim (1) that all existence has a beginning or (2) that God is outside existence. In fact, the latter argument doesn’t even make sense.

The claim is either that (1) all of nature (i.e. that universe of space and time, matter and energy) had a beginning and (2) everything that begins to exist must have a cause for its existence.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I don’t think that you and the person with which you are debating accept the set set of premises. As a consequence I don’t think that you’ll reach the same conclusions. If you are engaging a person that wants to understand that’s one thing. But if you are engaging some one that only wants to argue I think your time would be better spent doing other things.

 

[empther]

He says that “God must have a cause” :bigyikes: :extrahappy:

Oh, really?

Then God’s cause must be the long searched for God.

This is typical of atheists’ arguments. They’re full of holes.
There’s no use arguing with these people. They just can’t think straight.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

C He says that “God must have a cause”

He could have gotten that logic from Bertrand Russell, who admits in his autobiography that this line of thinking occurred to him in his late teens and was sufficient to destroy the cosmological argument.

Strangely, Russell was a world famous logician who could not see through his own fallacies.

Perhaps because he was a world famous logician?

Since God created what we call the principle of causality, God would not be subject to it.

 

[polytropos]

the argument that everything that comes into existence has a cause does nothing to change the argument. If god exists, he has a cause… what’s that?

Besides the fact that (as you note), this seems to be critiquing the kalam cosmological argument rather than anything by Aquinas, it seems like a really obvious non-sequitur. If it is just those things that come into existence that need causes, then the conditional “If god exists, he has a cause” plainly does not follow.

I am majored in philosophy. I studied these arguments at length in my history of philosophy sequence and again when I took a graduate seminar in Kant, where we discussed the antinomes of pure reason from the Critique of Pure Reason.

There are implicit assumptions that have to be resolved that are anything but resolved:

1. All of existence had a beginning.
2. There must be something outside of existence that brought the known world into existence.
3. Time is finite and had a beginning.

This is a straw man, assuming that you have properly characterized Aquinas’s argument.

Finally, he insists that Aquinas’ arguments are identifiable with the Kalam argument, which is simply false. Aquinas’s First Way, so as I’ve been told it, in fact assumes for the sake of argument that the universe is eternal,since Aquinas denied that its beginning could be known by reason alone. Everything after that is either insisting on the truthfulness of the previous assertion or a slur towards Aquinas.

You are right:

I answer that, By faith alone do we hold, and by no demonstration can it be proved, that the world did not always exist, as was said above of the mystery of the Trinity (32, 1).

He is lumping together his opponents arguments and trying to justify it by appealing to his own background in philosophy, which evidently is insufficient.

What I could really use, however, is a way of phrasing the first way that makes it absolutely clear to my interlocutor that it is not a “god-of-the-gaps” argument, does not rely on assumptions of the finiteness of the history of the universe, etc. I would also like if someone could help me with the Kant, because that’s the only part of what he’s said that I myself can’t point out the holes in.

I think that, if you are going to defend Aquinas’s First Way, then you should have the metaphysical background to draw the relevant claims directly out of the text of Summa Theologica. Everything that is central to the argument–that the causation is simultaneous and per se rather than accidental and temporal, etc.–can be clarified therefrom.

If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, I would recommend brushing up on A-T metaphysics before you engage in internet apologetics.

 

[balto]

Yeah, I’ll echo what the previous posters have already said in that your interlocutor seems to using thinking that is replete with misconceptions of actual Thomistic arguments.

the argument that everything that comes into existence has a cause does nothing to change the argument. If god exists, he has a cause… what’s that? If god is outside existence, what does that mean and how does this establish its existence?

This is a misunderstanding of what God is. Aquinas argued that God has no distinction between His essence and existence. He is not a being, but being Itself.

There are implicit assumptions that have to be resolved that are anything but resolved:

1. All of existence had a beginning.
2. There must be something outside of existence that brought the known world into existence.
3. Time is finite and had a beginning.

None of which are claimed by a Thomist. The relevant quote from the Summa Theologica kindly provided by polytropos will put to rest the erroneous assumption that Aquinas was defending the kalam argument, or some similar argument.

The Big Bang says that the known universe had a starting point around 13-14B years ago. Beyond that we know nothing.

Perhaps you would be interested in reading Prof. Feser’s recent article on whether brute facts can be appealed to in order to explain the universe: edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/03/can-you-explain-something-by-appealing.html

The more I think about this, the more confused I become when skeptics make appeals to brute facts about nature. I thought that these skeptics tend to be very highly motivated by scientific explanations for everything, and now he’s asserting that all knowledge ceases at the Big Bang. Why are we drawing an arbitrary limit on knowledge at the Big Bang? It would be as if the caveman chieftain told his frightened contemporaries to not worry about the nearby lightning strikes because they are simply “unintelligible brute facts” about nature and that we cannot understand them at all. Why can’t the Young Earth Creationist draw the arbitrary line at 6,000 years ago? Because we have evidence that things occurred in pre-history? The Thomist has given detailed rational arguments that a causal series must terminate in an uncaused cause, else nothing exists because nothing else exists by nature. He has also given arguments that the nature of change entails a final pure Actuality that is the ultimate source of all change in reality. So our knowledge can extend beyond the Big Bang. It doesn’t seem that your interlocutor has addressed any of these arguments and instead has hand-waved them all away.

I am majored in philosophy. I studied these arguments at length in my history of philosophy sequence and again when I took a graduate seminar in Kant, where we discussed the antinomes of pure reason from the Critique of Pure Reason.

Maybe you should ask him if he was paying attention during class. If so, you should tell him to ask for a refund because they evidently did not teach him actual Thomistic arguments.