On refutation of the Unmoved Mover

[rossum]

Then doesn’t that then become an absolute? Given those conditions, then there is absolutely no way for me to know the fullness of the world? Wouldn’t that be considered an absolute?

It is not absolute because it is dependant on external conditions. In order to be absolute it has to be self-contained. Since those external conditions are changing it is also dependent on time, and so again is not self-contained.

Then in what way could that statement be false? How could something not either exist or not exist?

In a three valued logic we could say that the existence of something is unknown. for example, Mathematicians do not know if any odd perfect numbers exist. None have been found so far, but nobody has been able to prove that none exist. The existence of odd perfect numbers is unknown. Nobody knows whether the Riemann Hypothesis is true or not. It is neither true nor false but unknown.

rossum

 

[rossum]

The problem is that the word “truth” (whether you capitalize it or not) has always referred (to be general) to reification, which is why the term “relative truth” directly contradicts itself.

I disagree. Ordinary day-to-day truth is not reified. It becomes reified when it is capitalised and put alongside Beauty, Love, etc. It makes as much sense to reify truth to Truth as it does to reify the colour orange to Orange: “Truth, Love, Beauty and Orange.”

A statement like “There is no Absolute Truth” or “We cannot know Absolute Truth right now” cannot fail to be contradictory.

So, you are claiming to have a way to recognise Absolute Truth right now? Why didn’t you mention this earlier when discussing an Absoluteness Detector.

rossum

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Yes, it’s surprising how many people become experts after watching one show on the Discovery channel.

But your “reasonable times” coincided with most folk not getting an education, often not even being taught to read, which persisted until relatively recently, particularly for girls. Knowledge is power, and there’s been an explosion of power through cheap books, then radio, then internet.

And let’s face it, the higher the level of education, the more flaws can be found in the unmoved mover argument.

Your last statement needs some refinement. Most of those unable to follow the formal arguments or who reject them, many are non-believers who only claim to have found flaws. There are certainly a large number of well educated Christians, schooled in philosophy, who would disagree with you. As I said, understanding the arguments requires a firm grounding in philosophy. Without that one is hardly qualified to reject the arguments.

Linus2nd

 

[polytropos]

I disagree. Ordinary day-to-day truth is not reified. It becomes reified when it is capitalised and put alongside Beauty, Love, etc. It makes as much sense to reify truth to Truth as it does to reify the colour orange to Orange: “Truth, Love, Beauty and Orange.”

“Ordinary day-to-day truth” is not actually truth if it is not reified. If it does not refer to something that is not absolute, then I wonder why there is any reason to call it “truth,” other than a rhetorical sleight of hand.

As far as the color orange is concerned, I don’t see how the analogy holds. Truth (lowercase) does not need to be reified to Truth, since any coherent use of the word truth would already reify it. If it’s not reified, then it is meaningless; you’ll end up making claims that you insist are not absolute but which, allegedly, apply to all cases “in practice” - which seems like a decidedly absolute truth claim.

We have gone over this. As I said before, if I say, “The cat is in the other room right now,” and the cat is actually in the other room, then my statement is true. If the cat left the room 10 minutes ago, and I say, “The cat was in the other room 10 minutes ago,” then my statement is also true.

So the first point to make is that the truth of the statement is independent of the symbols used. It can be true or false whether or not I have a way of confirming it (you seem to acknowledge that you can’t argue otherwise without compromising your commitment to “relative” truth).

The next point is that I do think such an analysis can reveal that some truths are “absolute” (and by absolute I mean actually true). The intellect can grasp (without the help of any symbols) that the cat is, in fact, in the other room - so the truth value of the proposition cannot be dependent on the actual words used.

Of course, I cannot necessarily determine the truth value of a certain proposition. If someone utters the second statement, “The cat was in the other room 10 minutes ago,” and I don’t know if the cat actually was in the room 10 minutes ago, then I can’t assign a truth value to the statement. But that is pretty irrelevant to our example. What is important is that, if I were in the room 10 minutes ago and happened to glance at the clock and the cat, then I can evaluate the truth claim and it is as absolute.

 

[polytropos]

And let’s face it, the higher the level of education, the more flaws can be found in the unmoved mover argument.

Whether there are flaws in the Unmoved Mover argument is precisely what is being discussed, so it won’t do to claim that it’s already been defeated without supporting evidence. But fortunately there is ample opportunity for you to show that these aren’t just uninformed words.

Given that many philosophy textbooks present a straw man of the argument (ie. a formulation with a premise like “everything has a cause”) that has never been defended by a credible philosopher, and given that even at higher levels of education people tend to have no familiarity with Aristotelian metaphysics, your claim is implausible.

I’d say that this article actually falsifies your assertion. If you look to the comments section, you find that most readers regard things like radioactive decay or quantum physics to be decisive objections. You also find people claiming that it has already been refuted or that even intro philosophy students learn why it’s wrong. To say the least, it seems like the higher the level of education, the more arrogantly one is to make flawed appeals to science, unqualified rejections of Aristotelian metaphysics (which they probably could not articulate anyway), and fallacious appeals to the authority of Kant and Hume. Some of the commenters there even remark that the cosmological argument makes assumptions about the beginning of the universe, which would make me wonder whether they read the article, which spells out reasons why many of these usual objections fail. (It is also interesting that the argument could make such a claim and people could nevertheless raise the same questions without even wondering what the author means when he says the cosmological argument is immune to the usual scientific objections.)

Maybe it’s not fair to beat up on HuffPo readers, but I’d think the ones appealing to quantum mechanics and David Hume at least have the credentials of higher education, if not the reasoning skills and intellectual humility.

The other issue of course is that people who are educated in the field of philosophy of religion - including atheists - are probably less likely to reject the cosmological argument out of hand than the typically college graduate. Whether someone educated in chemistry or English finds numerous flaws in the cosmological argument really means nothing as an appeal to authority, since they are not experts on such matters. What matters is whether professional philosophers of religion take the argument and its proponents seriously. And they do.

 

[empther]

Linus2nd’ post 75

Quote:
Originally Posted by empther View Post
Not when a person says I said something I didn’t say.

See my original post 49
and compare to the beginning of post 54

I think you must have misunderstood something. I have no idea what you are miffed about.

Linus2nd

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

So that’s how it’s going to be, hunh Linus2nd?
You know other people won’t bother checking this out,
so you pretend you have no idea why I’m miffed.

Here’s my post 49

From Linus2nd:

Quote:
Poly’ is correct. Thomas was convinced that the creation of the universe in time was strictly a matter of Faith. S.T., Part 1, ques. 46, arts 1-3.

Thomas was not convinced the creation of the universe in time was strictly a matter of Faith. He merely said it could not be scientifically demonstrated:

The blue is what you wrote and the red is what I wrote.

Now let’s take at look at your post 54

Quote:
Thomas was not convinced the creation of the universe was a matter of Faith.empther;11100240]From Linus2nd:

Thomas was not convinced the creation of the universe in time was strictly a matter of Faith. He merely said it could not be scientifically demonstrated:

?? You follow with a quote which contradicts what you just said!!!

You have changed what I wrote in post 49,
and say I contradict myself.

This won’t do, Linus2nd.

The twenty minutes are up, you can no longer edit your posts, and they’re there for anybody to see.

 

[bzkoss236]

It is not absolute because it is dependant on external conditions. In order to be absolute it has to be self-contained. Since those external conditions are changing it is also dependent on time, and so again is not self-contained.

And where does this definition come from, that Absolute Truth must be self-contained?

In a three valued logic we could say that the existence of something is unknown. for example, Mathematicians do not know if any odd perfect numbers exist. None have been found so far, but nobody has been able to prove that none exist. The existence of odd perfect numbers is unknown. Nobody knows whether the Riemann Hypothesis is true or not. It is neither true nor false but unknown.

This just feels like a cop-out. As the value of “unknown” would mean that it either exists or is doesn’t, but the true value is not known. It seems less of an actual value, and more of a placeholder until more is known. The only place I’ve seen that could really have a 3 value system is with quantum computing, where the qbits can actually be in one state, the other, or both. All other systems it seems, to me, that the value is either true or false, regardless of whether it is known. Which is actually part of Absolute Truth, that something is true or false regardless of human knowledge of it.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Linus2nd’ post 75

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

So that’s how it’s going to be, hunh Linus2nd?
You know other people won’t bother checking this out,
so you pretend you have no idea why I’m miffed.

Here’s my post 49

The blue is what you wrote and the red is what I wrote.

Now let’s take at look at your post 54

You have changed what I wrote in post 49,
and say I contradict myself.

This won’t do, Linus2nd.

The twenty minutes are up, you can no longer edit your posts, and they’re there for anybody to see.

Here is the original discourse. You clearly do not understand what Thomas said. He definitely held, taught, and believed that the fact that God created the world out of nothing, in timer can be known strictly by Faith ( Council of Trent). Therefore he designed his Five Ways so they were equally valid, inedpendent of whether one considered the universe to have always existed or that the universe had an actual beginning in time. I don’t see how you can read Thomas and come to any other conclusion.

"
Re: On refutation of the Unmoved Mover ( The Original Discussion )

---

From Linus2nd:

Quote:
Poly’ is correct. Thomas was convinced that the creation of the universe in time was strictly a matter of Faith. S.T., Part 1, ques. 46, arts 1-3.

Emp Responds
Thomas was not convinced the creation of the universe in time was strictly a matter of Faith. He merely said it could not be scientifically demonstrated:
Q 46 Art 2: “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). The reason of this is that the newness of the world cannot be demonstrated on the part of the world itself.”

Emp Interprets the quotation above
That is, the universe itself cannot prove or disprove its eternity because all we can look at is the universe at the present time.
This does not mean Aquinas thought an eternal universe was possible. He didn’t.
Q 46 Art 1: “I answer that, Nothing except God can be eternal.”
And this is logically derived from what he said earlier in ST when he discussed the Five Ways: “we can’t go back to infinity”.

Quote:
This why he designed the Five Ways so that the existence of God can be proven starting from an eternally existing universe or one beginning in time.

Linus2nd

Emp responds
This is impossible. In the Five Ways, Aquinas’s argument is “we can’t go back to infinity, therefore …”

Linus2nd Responds

The contradictions should be obvious. Also, whether or not you agree, Thomas thought that, from reason it was impossible to prove the universe had a beginning in time. And for that reason he designed them so that they did not depend on ones point of view. I have shown you that the most highly respected commentators of Thomas agree with what I have said. If you do not agree, fine, but no since getting upset or rude.

Linus2nd

 

[empther]

Therefore he designed his Five Ways so they were equally valid, inedpendent of whether one considered the universe to have always existed or that the universe had an actual beginning in time. I don’t see how you can read Thomas and come to any other conclusion.

Simple. I read what he wrote.

In Question 46
newadvent.org/summa/1046.htm#article1
Aquinas says it is an article of Scripture based faith. But there’s a problem with that. To accept Scripture’s truth, you must already have proved that God exists. Therefore, this cannot be a proof of God. In fact, it leaves open whether the world began or not, if you haven’t yet proved God.

Now,
in post 49 I wrote,

Q

46 Art 2: “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). The reason of this is that the newness of the world cannot be demonstrated on the part of the world itself.”

That is, the universe itself cannot prove or disprove its eternity because all we can look at is the universe at the present time.

Now “through faith alone” mentioned by Aquinas and Council of Trent pre-supposes a firm belief in Scripture. But proof of God must come before that.

So it appears that God’s existence can neither be proved by Scripture based faith, nor by scientific evidence. Are we condemned to doubt?
No. There is one more weapon in our arsenal: logic, common sense.
In Question 2 Article 3
newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm#article3
he proves that God exists because there cannot be an infinite series of causes.

** If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity**

Thus Aquinas proves God by logic/common sense.

But if there cannot be an infinite series of causes, neither can there be a universe going infinitely into the past. This is just logical common sense. It doesn’t matter that it can’t be proved scientifically and is only an article of faith. ( No use claiming the universe could have been static for an intinite time, since that would include the present. )

And so the Five Ways doesn’t permit both an eternal and finite universe.

---

Nothing to say about how you changed my post 49 ?
I didn’t expect anything. This is why theology professors, priests and bishops, and other people like that avoid forums.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Simple. I read what he wrote.

In Question 46
newadvent.org/summa/1046.htm#article1
Aquinas says it is an article of Scripture based faith. But there’s a problem with that. To accept Scripture’s truth, you must already have proved that God exists. Therefore, this cannot be a proof of God. In fact, it leaves open whether the world began or not, if you haven’t yet proved God. ( end of Emp’s comment )

Linus2nd responds
No. God revealed Himself in Divine Revelation. We did not have to prove His existence. Thus the Credo ( all Credos ) begin, " I believe in God…"

Now, ( Emp. goes on )
in post 49 I wrote,
Now through “faith alone” mentioned by Aquinas and the Council of Trent presupposes a firm belief in Scripture. But proof of God’s existence must come before that.

Linus2nd Responds
I don’t know where you are getting this but it is certainly wrong. The Israelites were not philosophers. Not only that but from the Catechism of the Catholic Church we have, " 37 In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. the human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.13

38 This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also “about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error”.14

( Emp. goes on ) So it appears that God’s existence can neither be proved by Scripture based faith, nor by scientific evidence. Are we condemned to doubt?
No. There is one more weapon in our arsenal: logic, common sense.

Linus2nd Responds
Read the comment I just made and what the Catechism says.

( Emp. goes on)In Question 2 Article 3
newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm#article3
he proves that God exists because there cannot be an infinite series of causes.

Thus Aquinas proves God by logic/common sense.

Linus2nd Responds

Yes but he is speaking of an infinite regress of immediate causes, not accidental causes like the endless string of moving freight cars. Yes, Thomas proved the existence of God philosophically. But as the Catechism points out above, not all, perhaps few men are capable of doing that. Thus we have that knowledge through Divine Revelation and through the teaching of the Magisterium.

( EMP. goes on) But if there cannot be an infinite series of causes, neither can there be a universe going infinitely into the past.

Linus2nd Responds
Wrong. There can and Thomas said there could and every well known Thomistic Philosopher since has agreed that there could have been an eternally existing universe.We know that is not the case by Faith alone. See the example of the moving line of freight cars above. He was speaking of an infinite regress of immediate or secondary causes.

( Emp. goes on) This is just logical common sense.

Linus2nd Responds
Yes, as long as you distinguish between the kind of causes you are speaking of.

( Emp. goes on ) It doesn’t matter that it can’t be proved scientifically and is only an article of faith. ( No use claiming the universe could have been static for an intinite time, since that would include the present. )

Linus2nd Responds
No one claims that an eternally existing universe would have to be static. That is you contrivance.

( Emp goes on ) And so the Five Ways doesn’t permit both an eternal and finite universe.

Linus2nd Responds
As I said, every Thomistic Philosopher, since Thomas disagrees with you. That is good enough for me and it should be good enough for you. In a previous post I listed some of these.

Linus2nd

 

[rossum]

“Ordinary day-to-day truth” is not actually truth if it is not reified.

Why not? There are plenty of non-absolute truths around and there is no need for reification for us to ba able to use them perfectly well in our day-to-day lives. All you are doing is shifting the argument from absolute/relative truth to “actual”/ordinary truth. Again we will need a distinguisher to tell one sort of truth from the other. It the absence of a reliable distinguisher, the contrast you are making is useless and cannot be supported.

As far as the color orange is concerned, I don’t see how the analogy holds. Truth (lowercase) does not need to be reified to Truth, since any coherent use of the word truth would already reify it. If it’s not reified, then it is meaningless; you’ll end up making claims that you insist are not absolute but which, allegedly, apply to all cases “in practice” - which seems like a decidedly absolute truth claim.

But that seeming is a false seeming. I do not make any absolute truth claims because I have no way of either a) using non-absolute language to make such a claim and b) have no absoluteness detector to back up any claim I might make.

So the first point to make is that the truth of the statement is independent of the symbols used.

But it is not independent of the combination of the symbols and the relevant dictionary. It is not independent of the geographical location of actual cat and the actual room. Since the statement is non-independent then it is not absolute but relative. It is relative to all those external things outside the statement itself.

It can be true or false whether or not I have a way of confirming it (you seem to acknowledge that you can’t argue otherwise without compromising your commitment to “relative” truth).

If I have no way of confirming a statement, then how is that statement useful to me? “There are no odd perfect numbers,” is currently unconfirmable. How is that statement useful.

What is important is that, if I were in the room 10 minutes ago and happened to glance at the clock and the cat, then I can evaluate the truth claim and it is as absolute.

I disagree. You may think that, but I cannot evaluate the truth claim if I wasn’t there. That makes any absoluteness dependent on my geographical position, ans well as yours and the cat’s. Since there are external dependencies, the claim cannot be absolute, since it depends on things external to itself.

rossum

 

[Peter_Plato]

I disagree. You may think that, but I cannot evaluate the truth claim if I wasn’t there. That makes any absoluteness dependent on my geographical position, ans well as yours and the cat’s. Since there are external dependencies, the claim cannot be absolute, since it depends on things external to itself.

rossum

So truth claims can possibly be true only if they can be evaluated by every possible evaluator? As soon as an evaluator “pops up” who hasn’t evaluated the claim, the claim, thereby, becomes untrue pending a new evaluation? That is nonsense.

Polytropos point is that truth is not contingent upon any evaluator for verification precisely because it is true independent of any or all evaluators. That is precisely what makes it absolutely and not contingently true.

You are making truth contingent (and not absolute) by definition when you argue it must be dependent upon verification In order to be true and then argue until it can be verified by all evaluators it can’t be true.

Sounds like a circular argument to me.

 

[inocente]

Your last statement needs some refinement. Most of those unable to follow the formal arguments or who reject them, many are non-believers who only claim to have found flaws. There are certainly a large number of well educated Christians, schooled in philosophy, who would disagree with you. As I said, understanding the arguments requires a firm grounding in philosophy. Without that one is hardly qualified to reject the arguments.

Careful now, that’s unnervingly close to the dilettante’s cry that disbelievers are too ignorant and unsophisticated to understand their whacky theories.

Although come to mention it the unmoved mover argument does have attributes of a whacky theory: it’s based on arcane and somewhat convoluted concepts, makes no testable predictions, and as regards the notion that it proves a personal deity :-

“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.
“Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?” said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, “He hasn’t anything on. A child says he hasn’t anything on.”
“But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last.
The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.

 

[inocente]

Whether there are flaws in the Unmoved Mover argument is precisely what is being discussed, so it won’t do to claim that it’s already been defeated without supporting evidence. But fortunately there is ample opportunity for you to show that these aren’t just uninformed words.

Given that many philosophy textbooks present a straw man of the argument (ie. a formulation with a premise like “everything has a cause”) that has never been defended by a credible philosopher, and given that even at higher levels of education people tend to have no familiarity with Aristotelian metaphysics, your claim is implausible.

The article you cited makes the common assumption that the argument is about God, but even in the form given by Aquinas the argument only attempts to prove a first cause rather than establish its nature.

Only by virtue of bafflement do we then throw up our hands and plead that it must be God for what else could it be (or as Thomas puts it more kindly “to which everyone gives the name of God”).

But pasta-ists would likewise assume it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Yoda would assume it’s the Force, powerful it is.

I know there are supplementary arguments, but if the purpose of this type of argument is to “prove” God, it turns out there’s a much simpler alternative available even unto the unwashed, known as faith, which approves of much does Christ.

Talking like Yoda hard it is now to stop.

The other issue of course is that people who are educated in the field of philosophy of religion - including atheists - are probably less likely to reject the cosmological argument out of hand than the typically college graduate. Whether someone educated in chemistry or English finds numerous flaws in the cosmological argument really means nothing as an appeal to authority, since they are not experts on such matters. What matters is whether professional philosophers of religion take the argument and its proponents seriously. And they do.

Then most of those who accept the argument also do so without understanding it!

If the machinery behind the argument really is so complicated that it requires as much training as brain surgery or quantum physics, most people won’t have that training and so can only accept or reject it as an argument from authority.

In which case we have to ask what do these professional philosophers of religion think they are doing? If they can find no way to explain these complexities to the unwashed then all they can ever do is perpetuate their isolated way of life.

I mean if they can provide no evidence for their conclusions other than “trust me I’m a professional philosopher of religion”, how do we know all that training isn’t really just a lengthy acquisition of special glasses to see convoluted concepts which only exist in the minds of those who have gone through the indoctrination rites?

Anyhow, I think this adds to my point that if after 80 posts there’s no agreement on what “truth” means, nor on whether an infinitely old universe is or isn’t a paradox, and now on who is qualified even to discuss such things, then likely objective the argument isn’t.

 

[empther]

From the numerous rantings of post 89

Now, ( Emp. goes on )

in post 49 I wrote,
Now through “faith alone” mentioned by Aquinas and the Council of Trent presupposes a firm belief in Scripture. But proof of God’s existence must come before that.

Linus2nd Responds
I don’t know where you are getting this but it is certainly wrong. The Israelites were not philosophers. Not only that but from the Catechism of the Catholic Church we have, " 37 In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:

99.99% of people who believe in God come to do so by upbringing or faith experiences of some kind,
not be getting at it through philosophy,
but our discussion was about what Aquinas wrote and what was his mission.

So your counterargument is empty. It’s besides the point.

Similarly, the other rantings in post 89 are easily torn apart.
Why bother?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

From the numerous rantings of post 89

99.99% of people who believe in God come to do so by upbringing or faith experiences of some kind,
not be getting at it through philosophy,
but our discussion was about what Aquinas wrote and what was his mission.

So your counterargument is empty. It’s besides the point.

Similarly, the other rantings in post 89 are easily torn apart.
Why bother?

Except that you are evading discussion of your own errors in reading and understanding Thomas. You have not proven my contention wrong, you simply attempt to discredit by hurling ad hominems.. If you refuse to address my objections honestly, that is your failure, not mine.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

The article you cited makes the common assumption that the argument is about God, but even in the form given by Aquinas the argument only attempts to prove a first cause rather than establish its nature.

Only by virtue of bafflement do we then throw up our hands and plead that it must be God for what else could it be (or as Thomas puts it more kindly “to which everyone gives the name of God”).

But pasta-ists would likewise assume it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Yoda would assume it’s the Force, powerful it is.

I know there are supplementary arguments, but if the purpose of this type of argument is to “prove” God, it turns out there’s a much simpler alternative available even unto the unwashed, known as faith, which approves of much does Christ.

Talking like Yoda hard it is now to stop.

Then most of those who accept the argument also do so without understanding it!

If the machinery behind the argument really is so complicated that it requires as much training as brain surgery or quantum physics, most people won’t have that training and so can only accept or reject it as an argument from authority.

In which case we have to ask what do these professional philosophers of religion think they are doing? If they can find no way to explain these complexities to the unwashed then all they can ever do is perpetuate their isolated way of life.

I mean if they can provide no evidence for their conclusions other than “trust me I’m a professional philosopher of religion”, how do we know all that training isn’t really just a lengthy acquisition of special glasses to see convoluted concepts which only exist in the minds of those who have gone through the indoctrination rites?

Anyhow, I think this adds to my point that if after 80 posts there’s no agreement on what “truth” means, nor on whether an infinitely old universe is or isn’t a paradox, and now on who is qualified even to discuss such things, then likely objective the argument isn’t.

You continue to mystify me. You have been told that the purpose of philosophy is to serve as a tool to philosophy. It was never intended for average students. Unfortunately, today many average students jump in and after barely surviving 18 hours or so of philosophy feel qualified to trumpet loud and wide about all they " know. " And of course the problem is even worse for the casual " apologist " or antagonist who, after reading a paper back or two, open up on Face Book and broadcast their ignorance to the wide world. And there are many on each side displaying their ignorance daily on these forums. Today, everyone is an expert. Ignorance does not faze them in the least.

But to correct you. Thomas says " and this we call God. " That simply means that a Being which causes the existence, possesses some of the qualities Christians attribute to the God of Revelation.

But I am curious. How would you defend your own faith. What makes you think what you read in the Bible is true?

Linus2nd

 

[Linux]

From the numerous rantings of post 89

99.99% of people who believe in God come to do so by upbringing or faith experiences of some kind,
not be getting at it through philosophy,
but our discussion was about what Aquinas wrote and what was his mission.

So your counterargument is empty. It’s besides the point.

Similarly, the other rantings in post 89 are easily torn apart.
Why bother?

Aquinas understood the value and importance of a philosophical argument for God in terms of the intellectual dignity of Christianity. Certainly a blind faith holds no intellectual value at all and Catholics are not fideists. Also, he understood that an argument for a temporal beginning (in a philosophical context) was not as important as showing the absolute contingency of the universe upon Gods existence. The five ways are not synonymous to the Kalam cosmological Argument.

Aquinas conceded for the sake of argument that a temporal beginning cannot be proven, but was something that he held by faith. In the context of philosophy what he held only by faith was unimportant. What was important for Aquinas is that metaphysical arguments allows God to be and existential cause by making him the very act of reality by which all potency is brought to act. If all potency (change) is required to be actualized by God, then it does not really matter whether or not Aquinas can prove a temporal beginning because Gods existence is proven by recognizing the necessity of a being that actualizes all and every instance of change from potency (and is not just a being that makes the first push in the past such as described by deist and the kalam cosmological argument), and this is so regardless of whether the past is infinite or not.

Thus to say that God is an unmoved mover is not to argue for a temporal beginning or that God created the first physical being in the past and let its existence evolve by itself; but rather it is to argue for a singular existential cause; it is to say that every instance of change (reduction of potency to act) regardless of whether change is infinite or not requires a being that is not itself moved (is not reduced from potency to act) and has the power to actualize all potency. This argument succeeds on the premise that, that which begins as potency has no power in itself to bring potency to act for it began as a mere potency and therefore its power is received and is not identical to it. A contingent being has no power in and of itself to bring potency to act and since more cannot come from less it must be said that true creative power (the power to bring potency to act) exists only in that which is actuality itself (pure actuality) and therefore such power cannot exist separately from pure actuality itself, and this is what we call God. Contingent beings only mediate Gods power, but Gods power does not at any point become a part of their nature and therefore God is required to sustain them at every instant of their activity.

If God is required to actualize all potency, then the infinite regression argument fails to disprove God or make him an unnecessary cause. That is the value of the Argument.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Aquinas understood the value and importance of a philosophical argument for God in terms of the intellectual dignity of Christianity. Certainly a blind faith holds no intellectual value at all and Catholics are not fideists. Also, he understood that an argument for a temporal beginning (in a philosophical context) was not as important as showing the absolute contingency of the universe upon Gods existence. The five ways are not synonymous to the Kalam cosmological Argument.

Aquinas conceded for the sake of argument that a temporal beginning cannot be proven, but was something that he held by faith. In the context of philosophy what he held only by faith was unimportant. What was important for Aquinas is that metaphysical arguments allows God to be and existential cause by making him the very act of reality by which all potency is brought to act. If all potency (change) is required to be actualized by God, then it does not really matter whether or not Aquinas can prove a temporal beginning because Gods existence is proven by recognizing the necessity of a being that actualizes all and every instance of change from potency (and is not just a being that makes the first push in the past such as described by deist and the kalam cosmological argument), and this is so regardless of whether the past is infinite or not.

Thus to say that God is an unmoved mover is not to argue for a temporal beginning or that God created the first physical being in the past and let its existence evolve by itself; but rather it is to argue for a singular existential cause; it is to say that every instance of change (reduction of potency to act) regardless of whether change is infinite or not requires a being that is not itself moved (is not reduced from potency to act) and has the power to actualize all potency. This argument succeeds on the premise that, that which begins as potency has no power in itself to bring potency to act for it began as a mere potency and therefore its power is received and is not identical to it. A contingent being has no power in and of itself to bring potency to act and since more cannot come from less it must be said that true creative power (the power to bring potency to act) exists only in that which is actuality itself (pure actuality) and therefore such power cannot exist separately from pure actuality itself, and this is what we call God. Contingent beings only mediate Gods power, but Gods power does not at any point become a part of their nature and therefore God is required to sustain them at every instant of their activity.

If God is required to actualize all potency, then the infinite regression argument fails to disprove God or make him an unnecessary cause. That is the value of the Argument.

Thomas couldn’t have put it any better himself. We won’t tell him about the strange things you have elsewhere drawn from his philosophy.

Linus2nd

 

[polytropos]

The article you cited makes the common assumption that the argument is about God, but even in the form given by Aquinas the argument only attempts to prove a first cause rather than establish its nature.

Only by virtue of bafflement do we then throw up our hands and plead that it must be God for what else could it be (or as Thomas puts it more kindly “to which everyone gives the name of God”).

This is false (although it is a common misconception). First, you originally said in post #79 that there were obvious problems with the argument for an Unmoved Mover, not for God. So the argument in question is not assuming that the being in question is God. Much further argumentation is required to show that the Being which is Pure Act is God - but it is not taken strictly on faith.

Thomas uses the phrase “to which everyone gives the name God” after each of the Five Ways in ST because 1). the arguments there are summaries which he fleshes out in more detail in other places, like Summa Contra Gentiles (ST was an introductory text on philosophy and theology, and most people reading it already understood the Five Ways), and 2). because he is noting that he will go on to demonstrate that the Being which is Pure Act is God (which he does go on to do). That is not part of the argument for the Unmoved Mover.

But pasta-ists would likewise assume it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Yoda would assume it’s the Force, powerful it is.

Anyone who would suggest the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a reductio ad absurdum of the argument for the Unmoved Mover does not understand how the argument actually goes. Particularly, they do not understand fundamental principles of Thomistic metaphysics, like actuality and potentiality: the Unmoved Mover could not be unmoved unless it were Pure Act, which would entail its being immaterial (since anything composed of matter can move, or change). The Flying Spaghetti Monster would be a material being and would have potentiality, so it would be contradictory to call it Pure Act.

As far as the Force goes, the objection would require a lot more argumentation. If you mean the Force as shown in the Star Wars movies… then that does not seem to be part of our reality (in the sense that we can’t use the Force for telekenesis etc.).

I know there are supplementary arguments, but if the purpose of this type of argument is to “prove” God, it turns out there’s a much simpler alternative available even unto the unwashed, known as faith, which approves of much does Christ.

Faith alone can work, but doesn’t work for everyone. If the argument for an Unmoved Mover can help someone to faith who would not find it otherwise, then why object to it?

I think the argument for the Unmoved Mover, properly understood, can help a lot of otherwise obstinate people to believe - because it is a strong argument, and many people, understandably, are hesitant to make faith-based decisions that fly in the face of reason. The argument for the Unmoved Mover can help people to see that faith and reason are compatible.

Interestingly enough, it is the argument for the Unmoved Mover which rules out the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but blind faith which does not.

Then most of those who accept the argument also do so without understanding it!

Yes, it is widely misunderstood, even by some who support it, I agree. What is your point?

If the machinery behind the argument really is so complicated that it requires as much training as brain surgery or quantum physics, most people won’t have that training and so can only accept or reject it as an argument from authority.

In which case we have to ask what do these professional philosophers of religion think they are doing? If they can find no way to explain these complexities to the unwashed then all they can ever do is perpetuate their isolated way of life.

I mean if they can provide no evidence for their conclusions other than “trust me I’m a professional philosopher of religion”, how do we know all that training isn’t really just a lengthy acquisition of special glasses to see convoluted concepts which only exist in the minds of those who have gone through the indoctrination rites?

This, however, is not true. I did not say that one needs training in philosophy to understand the argument, and one certainly does not need “as much training as brain surgery or quantum physics.”

You said something to the effect of, “Educated people more easily see the flaws in the argument for the Unmoved Mover.” That is an appeal to authority, which is fallacious when there is no reason for the authority in question is qualified to assess the argument and unbiased. I brought up philosophers of religion only to propose a non-fallacious appeal to authority, since philosophers of religion are qualified to assess the argument and (in the case of atheist philosophers of religion and Christian philosophers who disagree with the First Way) are unbiased.

I am not saying that one cannot understand the argument unless one is a professional philosopher of religion. I think there are a lot of good, accessible books on the topic that would clear up most of the misconceptions (whether the people currently holding those misconceptions would yield to the argument or not). I am saying that appealing to the authority of educated people in general - who have largely been introduced to straw men, do not understand Aristotelian metaphysics (whether or not they agree with it), and have various other causes for bias - is fallacious.