Philosophical Proof of a Creator/Beats Aquinas!

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Dear Dameedna,

You write: “The problem is, what if the universe is not finite? What if it is in fact infinite?”

The claim of naturalism has always been that Nature simply IS, or explains itself.

As I have said, the point of any valid proof for God is to show that the finite world does not explain itself, but has need of a transcendent Cause.

Part of the problem in understanding all this is the meaning of the term, “infinite.” “Infinite” basically means “not finite” or “not measurable” – meaning not limited (from the Latin, “finis”).

But a thing can be “not limited” in many different respects. It may, for example, mean without beginning, or without end, or without either beginning or end – in temporal duration. It may mean, as in the case of a simple ring, having no point of beginning or end. It may mean spatially without boundaries. Or, any other formal aspect of a thing which has no limit.

Hypothetically, the Universe could be without temporal beginning, and, in that sense, be infinite in duration. Or, it could be without boundaries spatially… On the other hand, the Universe appears finite spatially, since we can give a measurement of its ever-expanding size. Or, the Cosmos might be considered infinite if the number of celestial bodies is without measure.

But all these meanings of “infinite,” when applied to the Universe are understood in respect to some particular formal aspect. Conversely, the concept of “Infinite Being,” as applied to the traditional notion of God means “that which contains every possible aspect or perfection of reality.” God is infinite in EVERY respect, not merely some particular aspect.

Moreover, the physical Universe is itself limited inherently by reason of being a physical entity (or composed of myriad physical entities). Now every physical entity expresses itself as extended in, and thereby limited to, definite co-ordinates of space and time (or space-time for Einsteinians). Hence, even in physical dimensions, it is finite. Thus, while the Cosmos might be infinite in temporal duration, it would still not be the Infinite Being, but rather a myriad of finite beings infinite in duration or infinite in number.

The proofs for God’s existence aim at these very limitations found in finite beings, and offer arguments to show that their limited natures – which are subject to change and varying perfection and coming into being and out of being and ordered to certain specific outcomes – all demand as a sole adequate explanation something which transcends (goes beyond) the limited horizon of the finite Universe itself.

Each of St. Thomas’ Five Ways starts with some limited aspect of being or beings, and shows that that phenomena demands an explanation beyond themselves. In seeking that explanation we discover that no other limited being or beings can provide an adequate total explanation for them, and that we must ultimately come to a First Unmoved Mover or Uncaused Cause or Necessary Being, and so forth, in order to find an adequate explanation.

St. Thomas is well aware of the need to prove Nature inadequate unto itself. In objection 2, of the Five Ways (S.T. I, 2, 3, ob. 2), he entertains the claim that "…all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature…" In the reply to that same objection, he writes: “Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must be traceed back to God as to its first cause. …for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as has been shown.”

Again, I am not offering the actual proofs here, but simply showing why Nature or the Universe itself is not the same thing as the Infinite Being which is God.
 
But all these meanings of “infinite,” when applied to the Universe are understood in respect to some particular formal aspect. Conversely, the concept of “Infinite Being,” as applied to the traditional notion of God means “that which contains every possible aspect or perfection of reality.” God is infinite in EVERY respect, not merely some particular aspect.
And this is why through much pain and frustration I still come to these forums. 🙂 Some-one who can actually explain their argument. Thanks for the post. :). I think some of these concepts are a bit beyond my thinking, probably because I’m not used to it, but I will think on this more. 😃

I’m back down to the same issue, that I was with the ontological argument. That this “God” is ultimately conceptual and has no meaning for me whatsoever. I’m not entirely sure why it would to anyone else either except as an intellectual exercise?
 
St. Thomas is well aware of the need to prove Nature inadequate unto itself. In objection 2, of the Five Ways (S.T. I, 2, 3, ob. 2), he entertains the claim that "…all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature…" In the reply to that same objection, he writes: “Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must be traceed back to God as to its first cause. …for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as has been shown.”
Just a comment on this. “Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction a higher agent”.

It seems this “proof” is actually based on a faith in something. It’s not a blank canvas(which is something I require when looking for truth in anything).

Proving God, by claiming nature works for a determinate end, seems…well…err. I’m sure there’s a word for it(circular reasoning?). How can this kind of reasoning be proof? I see this a lot. An assumption of something then becomes the reasoning for believing …in that same something. Does that make sense?

Cheers
 
That this “God” is ultimately conceptual and has no meaning for me whatsoever. I’m not entirely sure why it would to anyone else either except as an intellectual exercise?
Just this morning I caught your thoughtful post on another thread so I hope you don’t mind my attempt here again. I’m far from an expert but I think you’re asking the right question - “what does the concept of God mean to me?” – not what it means to scientists or even theologians. The best place to look first at the question of origins is to yourself. You possess life - it came from somewhere (via your parents). You’re spending many painful moments here, getting good and bad advice, seeing confusing arguments and perhaps a few insights. But you’re still asking questions, wondering, seeking some meaning …

These are attributes of yourself that you can factor into the question. In this case, a question: “why would God have meaning to anyone at all”?

It’s not merely the fulfillment of an intellectual exercise. Although, with hours spent in arguments with apologists (of varying qualities), it probably seems that way. It’s much more an exploration and a discovery. It’s looking for clues (evidence) and building faith.

It does require faith. Additionally, its not just intellect but a matter of the heart also. By the “heart” that means desire mainly. It’s wanting something – and if you question that, you’ll discover more. Physical, natural reality provides only a limited fulfillment. It’s transient at its best. Philosophical joys have more lasting value (as truths) – they perdure over time and grow in value. God is the fulfillment of those truths because God is permanent and eternal. More importantly, God is personal. So it’s no longer just an abstract truth that we possess, but unity with the creator and inventor of things like “personality” and “happiness”. So, this fulfills love and friendship and unity, in ways that intellectual arguments alone never could.
 
And this is why through much pain and frustration I still come to these forums. 🙂 Some-one who can actually explain their argument. Thanks for the post. :). I think some of these concepts are a bit beyond my thinking, probably because I’m not used to it, but I will think on this more. 😃

I’m back down to the same issue, that I was with the ontological argument. That this “God” is ultimately conceptual and has no meaning for me whatsoever. I’m not entirely sure why it would to anyone else either except as an intellectual exercise?[/QUOT*E]

Dear Dameedna,

Immanuel Kant reduced all proofs for God’s existence to a variation of the ontological argument. He really did not present St. Thomas’ arguments, and thus his approach, which is shared by most modern philosophers, is misleading. We need to go back to the Five Ways themselves and read them as originally presented and understood by his students.

The Five Ways are not merely conceptual, since they start at the other end of things. They start with sense experience, as St. Thomas clearly states in the first way. He writes:* “The first, however, and more manifest way is that which proceeds from motion. It is certain, and can be shown by our senses.”*
Thus, we begin with the evidence of our senses, and then seek an adequate explanation for this evidence. Reason demands an explanation for this motion, and since things do not move themselves, that explanation explores the realm of movers.

The argument ultimately (I do not give the steps here.) leads to a First Mover Unmoved. The other four ways add to our understanding of various attributes of this First Mover. In fact, St. Thomas does not “fill in” the conceptual content of this First Mover rather completely until you read the subsequent several questions in the Summa theologiae.

Thus, you see that we do NOT begin with a “mere concept,” as Kant suggests, but rather the opposite. We begin with a fact of experience, seek an adequate explanation of the fact, and then build the conceptual content which is implicit in that discovery.

This is NOT the ontological argument at all.*
 
Just a comment on this. “Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction a higher agent”.

It seems this “proof” is actually based on a faith in something. It’s not a blank canvas(which is something I require when looking for truth in anything).

Proving God, by claiming nature works for a determinate end, seems…well…err. I’m sure there’s a word for it(circular reasoning?). How can this kind of reasoning be proof? I see this a lot. An assumption of something then becomes the reasoning for believing …in that same something. Does that make sense?
**
Cheers*

Dear Dameedna,

The above citation I gave you is found at the very end of the Five Ways. It is a conclusion, NOT the reasoning leading to that conclusion. For the reasoning you have to look back into the earlier text, where the fifth way is given. Even then, the fifth way in the Five Ways is very sketchy, and needs much metaphysical elaboration. These Ways are not intended to be read out of context, or by novices. They were merely St. Thomas’ brief summaries of his own versions of arguments, largely taken from Aristotle, and already well known to his students, who themselves were already well-educated students of philosophy.

If you want a proper presentation of the Five Ways, read Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s God: His Existence and His Nature, volume I (B. Herder Book Co., 1934). Of some 400 pages, fully 240 are spent explaining and defending the epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions of the proofs. This includes defending the metaphysical first principles of identity, non-contradiction, sufficient reason, causality, and finality – against the errors of the idealists and modernists.

Just the opposite of an act of blind faith, the proofs for God’s existence entail a most thorough reasonable analysis of what the human mind can know and how that knowledge leads inevitably to the existence of what all men call God.

Faith is the end product of a wonderful personal journey to embrace what God has revealed. Contrary to claims that faith is irrational, it is the supreme act of reason to place one’s trust in the Infinite Intellect who reveals Himself to us in Christian history.

But reason also prepares the way for faith (the preambles to faith) by showing us that belief is reasonable because the evidence of our very own senses, combined with good logic and rational principles, leads us inevitably to the conclusion that God exists and can thus reveal Himself to us in that same Christian history.
 
Dameedna;5358661:
And this is why through much pain and frustration I still come to these forums. 🙂 Some-one who can actually explain their argument. Thanks for the post. :). I think some of these concepts are a bit beyond my thinking, probably because I’m not used to it, but I will think on this more. 😃

I’m back down to the same issue, that I was with the ontological argument. That this “God” is ultimately conceptual and has no meaning for me whatsoever. I’m not entirely sure why it would to anyone else either except as an intellectual exercise?[/QUOT*E]

Dear Dameedna,

Immanuel Kant reduced all proofs for God’s existence to a variation of the ontological argument. He really did not present St. Thomas’ arguments, and thus his approach, which is shared by most modern philosophers, is misleading. We need to go back to the Five Ways themselves and read them as originally presented and understood by his students.

The Five Ways are not merely conceptual, since they start at the other end of things. They start with sense experience, as St. Thomas clearly states in the first way. He writes:* “The first, however, and more manifest way is that which proceeds from motion. It is certain, and can be shown by our senses.”*
  • Thus, we begin with the evidence of our senses, and then seek an adequate explanation for this evidence. Reason demands an explanation for this motion, and since things do not move themselves, that explanation explores the realm of movers.
The argument ultimately (I do not give the steps here.) leads to a First Mover Unmoved. The other four ways add to our understanding of various attributes of this First Mover. In fact, St. Thomas does not “fill in” the conceptual content of this First Mover rather completely until you read the subsequent several questions in the Summa theologiae.

Thus, you see that we do NOT begin with a “mere concept,” as Kant suggests, but rather the opposite. We begin with a fact of experience, seek an adequate explanation of the fact, and then build the conceptual content which is implicit in that discovery.

This is NOT the ontological argument at all.

I never said it was the ontological argument, but simply that I end up in the same place as I did with that argument.
 
**

Dear Dameedna,

If you want a proper presentation of the Five Ways, read Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s God: His Existence and His Nature, volume I (B. Herder Book Co., 1934). Of some 400 pages, fully 240 are spent explaining and defending the epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions of the proofs. This includes defending the metaphysical first principles of identity, non-contradiction, sufficient reason, causality, and finality – against the errors of the idealists and modernists.
I am aware that not “every” person that has a belief in a “god” is a fool. These philosophers were the intellectual heavy weights of the day. I do not presume they were stupid, however I do think they were ignorant, as we still are.
Just the opposite of an act of blind faith, the proofs for God’s existence entail a most thorough reasonable analysis of what the human mind can know and how that knowledge leads inevitably to the existence of what all men call God.
Unfortunately a thorough reasonable analysis of what the human mind can know, does not inevitably lead to a belief in God or a “recognition” of it’s existance.

This is the problem. Those that end up with this conclusion, think it is reasonable, by their own reasoning. The reasoning of other’s, is usually considered…unreasonable. lol.!! At least this is what I see.
But reason also prepares the way for faith (the preambles to faith) by showing us that belief is reasonable because the evidence of our very own senses, combined with good logic and rational principles, leads us inevitably to the conclusion that God exists and can thus reveal Himself to us in that same Christian history.
I don’t find “faith” to be particularly reasonable in and of itself, but thank you for your answers. I appreciate it.

Cheers
 
I am aware that not “every” person that has a belief in a “god” is a fool. These philosophers were the intellectual heavy weights of the day. I do not presume they were stupid, however I do think they were ignorant, as we still are.
Dear Dameedna,

The word “ignorant” means simply “not knowing.” If you read Garrigou-Lagrange’s work, you will find that he was anything but “ignorant” of the difficulties attendant to proving God’s existence. He examines in great detail the arguments of Hume, Kant, Loisy, Tyrell, and others who raise all the standard arguments against proving God’s existence – objections which modern critics raise only as reflections of these earlier expressions. In fact, the only way you can say that Lagrange is “ignorant” is if you do not yourself know what he has written. After reading him, you might still want to claim that he is “wrong,” but “ignorant” is hardly the governing term.

Speaking of being “ignorant,” precisely what were these “intellectual heavy weights of the day” ignorant of? Lagrange addresses the metaphysical and epistemological presuppostions of the Five Ways as well as each of the logical steps in each of them leading to its proper conclusion. Most critics of the Five Ways are “ignorant” of the arguments themselves. Are they claiming that they know each of the Five Ways as well as all the presuppositions Lagrange analyses? They facilely reject the premise of “no infinite regress,” while often even failing to realize that it does not go back in time. I think I recall that even Bertrand Russell made that error in his famous debate with Fr. Copleston. Have you read my book on St. Thomas’ Five Ways? I ask this only because the most thorough analysis of the problem of infinite regress – at least in terms of length and detail – is given in that work.

It is easy to say that your opponent is “ignorant” of something, but to make that claim you must first make certain that you yourself know the facts of what you are claiming their ignorance. Otherwise, the case may be that you are simply unaware of their actual state of knowledge.

You also write: *"Unfortunately a thorough reasonable analysis of what the human mind can know, does not inevitably lead to a belief in God or a “recognition” of it’s existence.

This is the problem. Those that end up with this conclusion, think it is reasonable, by their own reasoning. The reasoning of others, is usually considered…unreasonable. lol.!! At least this is what I see."*

I have constantly told my students that you will have no philosophy except that which you yourself understand. Otherwise, you are merely doing the history of philosophy, memorizing what others have said. A proof for God’s existence works only in the mind of the person who actually understands the force of its conclusion. As Aristotle says, a scientific conclusion requires that we know that the conclusion is true, we know why it is true, and we know why it cannot be otherwise.

I do not claim that one can “prove” God to another. As Gabriel Marcel says, you never can do that, since it requires bringing the other person into your own personal circumstances and perspectives so that they see the world exactly as you yourself do – and that is nearly impossible. Vatican I merely defined that the existence of God “can be known” by the light of unaided reason. This requires that each person attempt to understand the evidence and its implications for himself. It does not mean that to be Catholic one must know how to prove God’s existence, but only that a Catholic must believe that it is possible for some people to come to this understanding. I hope that someday you can come to this understanding on your own, not because of the claims of others. Failing that, the gift of Faith is sufficient. This gift is usually combined with at least a global “intuition” that the world does not make itself, but somehow relies on God for its creation and continued being.*
 
I am aware that not “every” person that has a belief in a “god” is a fool. These philosophers were the intellectual heavy weights of the day. I do not presume they were stupid, however I do think they were ignorant, as we still are.

Unfortunately a thorough reasonable analysis of what the human mind can know, does not inevitably lead to a belief in God or a “recognition” of it’s existence.

This is the problem. Those that end up with this conclusion, think it is reasonable, by their own reasoning. The reasoning of other’s, is usually considered…unreasonable. lol.!! At least this is what I see.

I don’t find “faith” to be particularly reasonable in and of itself, but thank you for your answers. I appreciate it.
But, Edna, you have “faith” in physics, biology and chemistry - even though, at their ultimate levels, where they supposedly provide important service to scientific endeavors, they have little or no certitude. Thus, faith does have reasonableness to you.

jd
 
But, Edna, you have “faith” in physics, biology and chemistry - even though, at their ultimate levels, where they supposedly provide important service to scientific endeavors, they have little or no certitude. Thus, faith does have reasonableness to you.
Religious faith is not a faith shared by all. Everyone practices faith in some way, but not everyone is religious.
 
Religious faith is not a faith shared by all. Everyone practices faith in some way, but not everyone is religious.
Hey, Crow! How are you? Haven’t heard a peep from you in a long while.

To your question: I know that not everyone has religious faith, but, that’s not what she said or, meant. Dame Edna said, “I don’t find “faith” to be particularly reasonable in and of itself.” I could not presume that she meant religious faith from that.

jd
 
Hey, Crow! How are you? Haven’t heard a peep from you in a long while.

To your question: I know that not everyone has religious faith, but, that’s not what she said or, meant. Dame Edna said, “I don’t find “faith” to be particularly reasonable in and of itself.” I could not presume that she meant religious faith from that.

jd
Yes I did mean religious faith. That’s exactly what I meant.

I can have “faith” in many things, but for the most part they can be verified. And when I can be shown to be wrong, It may stick in my gutt that I am wrong but the world will show me to be only human. I will admit I’m wrong. I may have “faith”, but it is never in something that cannot be verified eventuallly.

Unless it’s faith in my own existance…that, I simply must accept to get anywhere. I have no choice.

So yes, when I say faith, I mean that “faith” is a belief in something that can never be verified.

IE God. 🙂 If a God cannot be verified, then either he doesn’t exist, doesn’t care if we believe, or has a reason for remaining unknown 🙂 ( I have some suspicions over the former and the latter 🙂 )

Cheers
 
If a God cannot be verified, then either he doesn’t exist, doesn’t care if we believe, or has a reason for remaining unknown 🙂 ( I have some suspicions over the former and the latter 🙂 )
By “verified” do you mean “verified by observation”? If so you cannot verify your mind and other minds exist but you take it for granted. To restrict verification to observation would rule out many scientific statements. It does not follow from the fact that something cannot be verified that it does not exist.

If by “verified” you mean “verified by our conscience and our power of reason” then it is not true that God cannot be verified. If we believe in the objective difference between good and evil, right and wrong, love and hatred we know reality has a moral and spiritual dimension. We may differ in our interpretation of that dimension and call it by different names, e.g. God or Nature or Reality, but we know goodness is not a human convention or invention. Even if the majority of people in the world believed it is right to torture a child it still would not be right.
 
Being new here, at least as to posting, I wanted to thank everyone involved with making this a very successful thread with a thousand views and over ninety responses; many of them lengthy, very thoughtful and enlightening. I have been reading them all and answered many. I only wish I had more time to answer each one and discuss matters more thoroughly. I am especially grateful to the esteemed Dr. Bonnette for taking time from his busy schedule to clarify for the benefit of one and all St. Thomas’s positions regarding his proofs of a Creator.

Also, thank you to the many who visited my website and read my own Proof of a Creator, and the several kind remarks that many left. I equally appreciated the (name removed by moderator)ut of those who felt it was not all that it could be. I am, admittedly, not a professional philosopher, let alone a theologian.

As anyone who has or ever will read my short story “Pride’s Prison” will understand, I did not find my parochial school days’ experience to have been one I would classify as a shining example of Christianity, by way of understatement. I could never—and can never—understand how some people can ostensibly devote their very lives to a cause and then seem to act in such abject contradiction to it. However, I have always struggled to separate the message from those who ostensibly deliver it. A wise friend of mine counseled me on that, and he’s an agnostic.

As many know, St. Thomas Aquinas suffered abuse himself as a student. He was labeled an “ox.” One of his professors retorted, “Yes, he’s an ox. But the entire world will one day hear him bellow!” Bravo!
 
Yes I did mean religious faith. That’s exactly what I meant.

I can have “faith” in many things, but for the most part they can be verified. And when I can be shown to be wrong, It may stick in my gutt that I am wrong but the world will show me to be only human. I will admit I’m wrong. I may have “faith”, but it is never in something that cannot be verified eventuallly.

Unless it’s faith in my own existance…that, I simply must accept to get anywhere. I have no choice.

So yes, when I say faith, I mean that “faith” is a belief in something that can never be verified.
Edna:

Bingo! Verify the atomic theory. Verify an electron. Verify a quark. Verify abiogenesis. Verify dark matter. Verify dark energy. Verify anything outside of the known universe. Verify an actual infinity. Verify the Big Bang. Verify a virtual particle. Ad infinitum.

jd
 
Those who thought we could verify everything empirically were best personified in the Twentieth Century by the members of the Vienna Circle, who posited the Principle of Empirical Verification. It states that a statement is meaningful if and only if its terms can be either directly or indirectly sense verifiable. Directly sense verifiable is obvious. Indirectly sense verifiable means by use of some sort of scientific instrument. Thus, we cannot directly observe atoms, but we can do so indirectly using an electron microscope which bounces particles off them to form an image which is big enough to be seen on a screen.

The difficulty with the Verification Principle is that it fails to pass its own test, since terms, such as “meaningful” turn out to be meaningless, since you cannot sense verify them either directly or indirectly. Thus, these Logical Positivists were forced to make the act of faith that their beloved principle would still be honored despite its evident deficiency. So “faith” lay at the foundation of this school of Scientific Materialism which so dominated the Twentieth Century.

But natural science itself is grounded in “faith” at its very foundations. The scientific method presumes the metaphysical first principles of identity, non-contradiction, sufficient reason, causality, and finality. What scientist working in a laboratory does not accept that the results of an experiment are what they are and not the opposite? Or, that phenomena need explanations? Or, would accept that an explosion was not caused by something? Or, that natural elements and laws do not behave in a consistent manner? The study of nature is the study of how things behave, and thus, can be categorized.

But what experimental or empirical observation can verify any of the above? Either these first principles are simply taken on “faith,” or else they must be defended. But they are not defended in natural science, rather they are assumed by the scientific method itself. The truth is that they are defended only in philosophy, especially metaphysics. For those who reject metaphysics, I must then suggest that they are reduced to simple “faith,” just like the religious believers they so easily chide.

Finally, natural science presupposes epistemological realism, namely, the fact that we can trust our senses to observe the external world. How does one empirically or experimentally prove that the senses can be trusted? If you do an experiment, you have to use your senses to get the results you would then employ to verify the validity of the senses you just used to verify your senses! Good luck. All the experimental psychology and biology and neurology and physics which tells us how our senses sense the world themselves presuppose the validity of the senses themselves in order to obtain our scientific knowledge of how the senses work. Science is caught in a hopeless vicious circle here. The truth is that sensation CAN be verified, but only by using the philosophical sciences of philosophical psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics. Again, reject these, and your entire natural scientific edifice reduces to “faith” in your senses with no empirical, experimental way of proving them.

Those who claim to “verify” everything by sensation and natural science fail to grasp the extent to which they are reduced either to pure faith or natural philosophy as the logical foundations for their scientific claims.

I do not resort to pure faith myself, since I have had the good fortune to have been shown by others how to establish the rational foundation for all the sciences, including natural science.
 
Dr. Bonnete,
Roman 1
20 For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.
Vatican I merely defined that the existence of God “can be known” by the light of unaided reason. This requires that each person attempt to understand the evidence and its implications for himself. It does not mean that to be Catholic one must know how to prove God’s existence, but only that a Catholic must believe that it is possible for some people to come to this understanding. I hope that someday you can come to this understanding on your own, not because of the claims of others. Failing that, the gift of Faith is sufficient. This gift is usually combined with at least a global “intuition” that the world does not make itself, but somehow relies on God for its creation and continued being.
I have understood Scripture and the Church to say that there is no excuse for not believing in God, because God’s existence is knowable TO ALL by nature. It’s not just knowable to St. Thomas or to “some people”, or even to those who have Faith, but to all. God’s creation reveals itself and Him to us.

Philosophy gives more thorough proofs of God’s existence based on a deeper philosophical understanding of the principles of existence, change, goodness, etc. It also reaches to some attributes of God knowable by analogy. But by Faith our knowledge of God comes to transcend reason, as well as to strengthen it.

You speak of the “global intuition” that “the world does not make itself, but somehow relies on God for its creation and continued being”. It seems to me that this is a reasonable intuition that St. Thomas had (along with his Faith) even before he set out to prove it more thoroughly to himself and to others. It seems to me that it is the same reasonable intuition that all men are expected to have, even if they don’t yet have faith.
 
Dear nkbeth re post 98:

You cite me:
*
“Vatican I merely defined that the existence of God “can be known” by the light of unaided reason. This requires that each person attempt to understand the evidence and its implications for himself. It does not mean that to be Catholic one must know how to prove God’s existence, but only that a Catholic must believe that it is possible for some people to come to this understanding. I hope that someday you can come to this understanding on your own, not because of the claims of others. Failing that, the gift of Faith is sufficient. This gift is usually combined with at least a global “intuition” that the world does not make itself, but somehow relies on God for its creation and continued being.”*

You then comment:

*"I have understood Scripture and the Church to say that there is no excuse for not believing in God, because God’s existence is knowable TO ALL by nature. It’s not just knowable to St. Thomas or to “some people”, or even to those who have Faith, but to all. God’s creation reveals itself and Him to us.

"Philosophy gives more thorough proofs of God’s existence based on a deeper philosophical understanding of the principles of existence, change, goodness, etc. It also reaches to some attributes of God knowable by analogy. But by Faith our knowledge of God comes to transcend reason, as well as to strengthen it.

“You speak of the “global intuition” that “the world does not make itself, but somehow relies on God for its creation and continued being”. It seems to me that this is a reasonable intuition that St. Thomas had (along with his Faith) even before he set out to prove it more thoroughly to himself and to others. It seems to me that it is the same reasonable intuition that all men are expected to have, even if they don’t yet have faith.”*

The last thing I intend to do is to place myself in opposition to the Magisterium – either extraordinary or ordinary. You write well and forcefully in defense of the Church’s doctrine, and I applaud you for doing so. And you are right to point out, especially, that all men, not just those of faith, are expected to know of God’s existence “from the things that He hath made.”

My point above was directed primarily at the question of a formal proof, since I am used to dealing with agnostics and atheists who deny such is possible. Not every Catholic is required to be a metaphysician, but you are quite correct in pointing out that every human being should have some natural knowledge of God.

Ludwig Ott clarifies the matter (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 15) when he says that *"…the proof of God’s existence is distinguished from the elementary knowledge of God only in that the basis for the knowledge is proposed in a more scientific form."
*
It is that “scientific form” to which my remarks were primarily addressed.

For any confusion, I apologize.
 
GOD needs no proof, it is we who are like mere children wandering and awestruck by the great number of works that we have only yet begun to comprehend. On this, the Lord’s Day, let us honor HIS NAME.

youtube.com/watch?v=1CBNE25rtnE&feature=related
John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His NAME:
Rev 15:4 Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your NAME? For You alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before You, For Your judgments have been manifested."
 
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