St. Thomas' Motion Argument and Modern Physics

[belorg]

???

Which property, exactly?

And how can a property become an object?

Which property exactly? You are the Schmod-expert, Eleve.
But let’s say “Schmod’s creative power”. And I do not know how exactly creative powers become something, but at least that would be logically possible, whereas notjing becoming something contradicts ex nihilio nihil fit.

 

[belorg]

Because science does not posit truth on the issue of the beginning of motion. There are theories on HOW the universe developed after the instant of creation but there is no scientific truth defining HOW the universe came to be.In the scientific community theories are generally accepted as theory if the said theory can be falsified. Big Bang Theory and the Standard Model does not define or attempt to define how the universe came to be.The Bouncing Universe or Big Crunch theory, multi universe theory and brane or string theory of everything cannot be falsified because they cannot be observed or tested. One can say whatever they like and make all kinds of assumptions safe in the knowledge that they cannot be proved to be untrue in the physical sense. There is nothing in science that threatens St.Thomas’s first of 5 ways that prove (theologically) the existence of God.

Can you evidence otherwise?

Now that you have received a response Linux and Belorg you are invited to respond in a rational way with supporting evidence as to you seeming to suggest science does effect St. Thomas’s statement on motion.

If you are not so suggesting ,well and good. If you are so suggesting we trust we will be given reasoned analysis. Rather than the one liners we are used to receiving which nearly always attempts to turn the issue back to the poster and avoiding the issue or question put to you may we have some proper rationale and back up evidence?

Science affects Aquinas’ statement on motion because it shows that it may be possible for something to move out of itself. Science cannot as yet prove this, but then again, Aquinas cannot prove that it is impossible either, and as I have shown, his cosmology leads to logical contradictions.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

But you do the same thing. For example you assert that God can create esse in the absence of esse (from nothing). When pushed to demonstrate how that is logically possible you asset that it is either not possible to know or you make an argument from authority followed by an arrogant demand that people should accept this to be possible regardless of there being no rational basis for that acceptance.

I saw no assertions but rather I saw concerns, and you assert that Aquinas has the answer.

As to your first statement, I never made such a statement. I said it is impossible to explain how God created the universe from nothing. And I never suggested that either Scripture or the Catholic Church could gove the answer either. All I said is that it is by Divine Revelation that we know for certain that God created the universe from nothing, not that we could say HOW he did it. Two entirely different things.

As to your second statement, you need to look again. Linus2nd

 

[Love4All]

A possible world is merely a way of looking at reality, it is not another form of reality, so wG does not really have different properties. Neither G not wG have the property of being changeable.

A possible world with God alone in it has different properties from God alone. The most relevant difference to this discussion is the fact that wG is mutable whereas G is not.

A world with God alone in it is mutable, since God can create something outside of Himself, changing world wG from a world without a Creation to a world with a Creation. G does not change, ever, but wG is necessarily mutable, and thus has at least one property different from G.

 

[Love4All]

I do not believe that something can come from nothing and that’s why I do not believe that any entity can create something from nothing.

You seem to be saying that to say that something can come from nothing and to say that God can create something from nothing are saying the same thing. I don’t think that they are. There is clear logic supporting the belief that nothing can come from nothing, and there is not similar logic supporting the belief that God cannot create something from nothing.

The logic in the belief that nothing comes from nothing is as follows: every actual motion is caused by something actual. Now the motion from nonexistence to existence is an actual motion, reality actually changes, so that motion must be caused by something actual. But the thing being brought into existence cannot itself be the cause of its own coming into existence, because before it exists it has no actuality and thus no ability to cause anything.

We do not encounter a similar problem when we say that God created entities from nothing, since God is the cause of their coming into existence. Thus there is nothing missing from the chain of causality, and nothing missing from the logic. If you have some supporting reason why you would think it impossible for God to bring things into existence from nothing, then please elucidate it. Otherwise, it seems arbitrary to dismiss it.

 

[yppop]

Science affects Aquinas’ statement on motion because it shows that it may be possible for something to move out of itself. Science cannot as yet prove this, but then again, Aquinas cannot prove that it is impossible either, and as I have shown, his cosmology leads to logical contradictions.

What are referring to when you write that “science shows that it may be possible for something to to move out of itself”? And what does “move out of itself” mean?

Yppop

 

[Linux]

There is clear logic supporting the belief that nothing can come from nothing, and there is not similar logic supporting the belief that God cannot create something from nothing.

Yes it is the same thing. They have the same logical consequences. Something cannot come from nothing precisely because nothing is absolutely no-thing at all. It is the absence of being thus nothing can come of it for it would be a violation of the absolute distinction between being and nothing. Positing an operative agent doesn’t change that fact since it would still involve an act of reality beginning to exist from no-thing at all.

And if you think it doesn’t then the ball is in you court to prove otherwise, since there is no self-evident reason why your opponent should accept it.

 

[belorg]

A possible world with God alone in it has different properties from God alone. The most relevant difference to this discussion is the fact that wG is mutable whereas G is not.

A world with God alone in it is mutable, since God can create something outside of Himself, changing world wG from a world without a Creation to a world with a Creation. G does not change, ever, but wG is necessarily mutable, and thus has at least one property different from G.

That’s simply question begging.

 

[tonyrey]

Yes it is the same thing. They have the same logical consequences. Something cannot come from nothing precisely because nothing is absolutely no-thing at all. It is the absence of being thus nothing can come of it for it would be a violation of the absolute distinction between being and nothing. Positing an operative agent doesn’t change that fact since it would still involve an act of reality beginning to exist from no-thing at all.

And if you think it doesn’t then the ball is in you court to prove otherwise, since there is no self-evident reason why your opponent should accept it.

All attempts to prove that everything has come from nothing presuppose knowledge of everything - which is rather presumptuous to say the least!

 

[robbodb]

Science affects Aquinas’ statement on motion because it shows that it may be possible for something to move out of itself. Science cannot as yet prove this, but then again, Aquinas cannot prove that it is impossible either, and as I have shown, his cosmology leads to logical contradictions.

Belorg.

Please send the paper(s) which “shows it may be possible for something to move out of itself”?

I take it that such papers are relevant to the creation of motion.Is that so?

Which scientific institutions are investigating this "possibility?

Is this “possibility” of an abstract nature or one that can be tested and/or observed?

St.Thomas’s works are not of a scientific nature.Science rather than speculative ideas will determine whether your “possibility” has merit or otherwise.

St.Thomas proved the existence of God in a scientific (theological) context. But this thread is not about this issue. Please stick to atheistic principles. There is IMO no need for you to rely on theism or on what St. Thomas does not deny or prove to support your argument because you don’t believe in God anyway. St.Thomas essentially used philosophy and theology in his works on God and his works.

 

[Love4All]

Yes it is the same thing. They have the same logical consequences. Something cannot come from nothing precisely because nothing is absolutely no-thing at all. It is the absence of being thus nothing can come of it for it would be a violation of the absolute distinction between being and nothing. Positing an operative agent doesn’t change that fact since it would still involve an act of reality beginning to exist from no-thing at all.

And if you think it doesn’t then the ball is in you court to prove otherwise, since there is no self-evident reason why your opponent should accept it.

You are really saying that God creating from nothing and things coming into existence by themselves is the same thing? How?

 

[Love4All]

Love4All:

A possible world with God alone in it has different properties from God alone. The most relevant difference to this discussion is the fact that wG is mutable whereas G is not.

A world with God alone in it is mutable, since God can create something outside of Himself, changing world wG from a world without a Creation to a world with a Creation. G does not change, ever, but wG is necessarily mutable, and thus has at least one property different from G.

That’s simply question begging.

Any world with God alone in it, real or possible, is mutable by virtue of the fact that God can create. How is that question begging?

 

[belorg]

Any world with God alone in it, real or possible, is mutable by virtue of the fact that God can create. How is that question begging?

Because whether an immutable God can create something is precisely the issue here. asserting that he can is question-begging.

 

[belorg]

Belorg.

Please send the paper(s) which “shows it may be possible for something to move out of itself”?

I take it that such papers are relevant to the creation of motion.Is that so?

Which scientific institutions are investigating this "possibility?

Is this “possibility” of an abstract nature or one that can be tested and/or observed?

That virtual particles come into existence is testable.The Casimir effect is a well-known phenomenon.
Of course that does not prove that it wasn’t some unknownand undetectable entity that ‘created’ those VP’s. But it most certainly shows that the notion that things must be moved by something else is not certain, whihc renders the Argument from Motion just another God- of -the- gaps- argument

St.Thomas proved the existence of God in a scientific (theological) context. But this thread is not about this issue. Please stick to atheistic principles. There is IMO no need for you to rely on theism or on what St. Thomas does not deny or prove to support your argument because you don’t believe in God anyway. St.Thomas essen

Pelase don’t tell me how to discuss something.

 

[robbodb]

Belorg, I respond to your post 570.

Originally Posted by robbodb
Belorg.

Quote
“Is this “possibility” of an abstract nature or one that can be tested and/or observed?
That virtual particles come into existence is testable.The Casimir effect is a well-known phenomenon.
Of course that does not prove that it wasn’t some unknownand undetectable entity that ‘created’ those VP’s. But it most certainly shows that the notion that things must be moved by something else is not certain, whihc renders the Argument from Motion just another God- of -the- gaps- argument” End quote.

Belorg , seems we get another red herring from you as this post demonstrates. Of course “particles come into existence” You implicitly posit that the Casimer Effect demonstrates that particles come into existence from nowhere or that particles can pop out of nothing. Your statement is misleading and distorting to say the least.

The Casimer Effect experiments do no such thing. Putting it another way is to say that particles exist in a vacuum and have been seen to appear and then disappear. The time span which they are visible before they reappear varies.

If you have evidence (not opinions please) which is contrary to the content of the articles herein please provide it.

Incidentally I refer you to my previous post 534 part of which is immediately below on this issue which debunks the assertion of particles popping out of nothing.

"The following article debunks the whole concept.

lynnemctaggart.com/blog/1…out-of-nothing "

Belorg, If you disagree with the author of the article above please specify where giving solid reasons so we can reconsider.

Following are articles/comments on your post 570

Refer article in following link.

casimir-network.fr/IMG/pdf/Casimir_20effect.pdf

Extract follows:

"The Casimir effect: a force from nothing
Astrid Lambrecht

1 The Casimir forceIt was the Dutch theoretical physicist Hendrik Casimir (1909–2000) who first realized that when two mirrors face each other in a vacuum, fluctuations in the vacuum exert “radiation pressure” on them. On average the external pressure (red arrows) is greater than the internal pressure (green arrows). Both mirrors are mutually attracted to each other by what is termed the Casimir force. The force F ~ A/d 4, where A is the area of the mirrors and d is the distance between them.

Understanding the Casimir force
Although the Casimir force seems completely, it is actually well understood. In the old days of classical mechanics the idea of a vacuum was simple. The vacuum was what remained if you emptied a container of all its particles and lowered the temperature down to absolute zero. The arrival of quantum mechanics however
completely changed our notion of a vacuum. All fields – in particular elec- tromagnetic fields – have fluctuations. In other words at any given moment their actual value varies around a con- stant, mean value. Even a perfect vacuum at absolute zero has fluctuating fields known as “vacuum fluctuations”, the mean energy of which corresponds to half the energy of a photon.
However, vacuum fluctuations are not some abstraction of a physicist’s mind. They have observable consequences that can be directly visualized in experiments on a microscopic scale. For example, an atom in an excited state will not remain there infinitely long, but will return to its ground state by spontaneously emitting a photon. This phenomenon is a consequence of vacuum fluctuations."

Refer article in following link.

sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111118133050.htm

Extract follows:

"Light Created from a Vacuum: Casimir Effect Observed in Superconducting Circuit

The results have been published in the journal Nature.

The experiment is based on one of the most counterintuitive, yet, one of the most important principles in quantum mechanics: that vacuum is by no means empty nothingness. In fact, the vacuum is full of various particles that are continuously fluctuating in and out of existence. They appear, exist for a brief moment and then disappear again. Since their existence is so fleeting, they are usually referred to as virtual particles.

What happens during the experiment is that the “mirror” transfers some of its kinetic energy to virtual photons, which helps them to materialise. According to quantum mechanics, there are many different types of virtual particles in vacuum, as mentioned earlier. Göran Johansson, Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics, explains that the reason why photons appear in the experiment is that they lack mass.

“Relatively little energy is therefore required in order to excite them out of their virtual state. In principle, one could also create other particles from vacuum, such as electrons or protons, but that would require a lot more energy.”

The scientists find the photons that appear in pairs in the experiment interesting to study in closer detail. They can perhaps be of use in the research field of quantum information, which includes the development of quantum computers.

However, the main value of the experiment is that it increases our understanding of basic physical concepts, such as vacuum fluctuations – the constant appearance and disappearance of virtual particles in vacuum. It is believed that vacuum fluctuations may have a connection with “dark energy” which drives the accelerated expansion of the universe."

refer article in following link:

economist.com/node/11402849

Extract follows:

"The Casimir effect

The Casimir effect, a curious consequence of quantum theory, may yet have practical applications

Much ado about nothing"

 

[belorg]

Belorg, I respond to your post 570.

Originally Posted by robbodb
Belorg.

Quote
“Is this “possibility” of an abstract nature or one that can be tested and/or observed?
That virtual particles come into existence is testable.The Casimir effect is a well-known phenomenon.
Of course that does not prove that it wasn’t some unknownand undetectable entity that ‘created’ those VP’s. But it most certainly shows that the notion that things must be moved by something else is not certain, whihc renders the Argument from Motion just another God- of -the- gaps- argument” End quote.

Belorg , seems we get another red herring from you as this post demonstrates. Of course “particles come into existence” You implicitly posit that the Casimer Effect demonstrates that particles come into existence from nowhere or that particles can pop out of nothing. Your statement is misleading and distorting to say the least.

The Casimer Effect experiments do no such thing. Putting it another way is to say that particles exist in a vacuum and have been seen to appear and then disappear. The time span which they are visible before they reappear varies.

If you have evidence (not opinions please) which is contrary to the content of the articles herein please provide it.

Incidentally I refer you to my previous post 534 part of which is immediately below on this issue which debunks the assertion of particles popping out of nothing.

"The following article debunks the whole concept.

lynnemctaggart.com/blog/1…out-of-nothing "

Belorg, If you disagree with the author of the article above please specify where giving solid reasons so we can reconsider.

Following are articles/comments on your post 570

Refer article in following link.

casimir-network.fr/IMG/pdf/Casimir_20effect.pdf

Extract follows:

"The Casimir effect: a force from nothing
Astrid Lambrecht

1 The Casimir forceIt was the Dutch theoretical physicist Hendrik Casimir (1909–2000) who first realized that when two mirrors face each other in a vacuum, fluctuations in the vacuum exert “radiation pressure” on them. On average the external pressure (red arrows) is greater than the internal pressure (green arrows). Both mirrors are mutually attracted to each other by what is termed the Casimir force. The force F ~ A/d 4, where A is the area of the mirrors and d is the distance between them.

Understanding the Casimir force
Although the Casimir force seems completely, it is actually well understood. In the old days of classical mechanics the idea of a vacuum was simple. The vacuum was what remained if you emptied a container of all its particles and lowered the temperature down to absolute zero. The arrival of quantum mechanics however
completely changed our notion of a vacuum. All fields – in particular elec- tromagnetic fields – have fluctuations. In other words at any given moment their actual value varies around a con- stant, mean value. Even a perfect vacuum at absolute zero has fluctuating fields known as “vacuum fluctuations”, the mean energy of which corresponds to half the energy of a photon.
However, vacuum fluctuations are not some abstraction of a physicist’s mind. They have observable consequences that can be directly visualized in experiments on a microscopic scale. For example, an atom in an excited state will not remain there infinitely long, but will return to its ground state by spontaneously emitting a photon. This phenomenon is a consequence of vacuum fluctuations."

Refer article in following link.

sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111118133050.htm

Extract follows:

"Light Created from a Vacuum: Casimir Effect Observed in Superconducting Circuit

The results have been published in the journal Nature.

The experiment is based on one of the most counterintuitive, yet, one of the most important principles in quantum mechanics: that vacuum is by no means empty nothingness. In fact, the vacuum is full of various particles that are continuously fluctuating in and out of existence. They appear, exist for a brief moment and then disappear again. Since their existence is so fleeting, they are usually referred to as virtual particles.

What happens during the experiment is that the “mirror” transfers some of its kinetic energy to virtual photons, which helps them to materialise. According to quantum mechanics, there are many different types of virtual particles in vacuum, as mentioned earlier. Göran Johansson, Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics, explains that the reason why photons appear in the experiment is that they lack mass.

“Relatively little energy is therefore required in order to excite them out of their virtual state. In principle, one could also create other particles from vacuum, such as electrons or protons, but that would require a lot more energy.”

The scientists find the photons that appear in pairs in the experiment interesting to study in closer detail. They can perhaps be of use in the research field of quantum information, which includes the development of quantum computers.

However, the main value of the experiment is that it increases our understanding of basic physical concepts, such as vacuum fluctuations – the constant appearance and disappearance of virtual particles in vacuum. It is believed that vacuum fluctuations may have a connection with “dark energy” which drives the accelerated expansion of the universe."

refer article in following link:

economist.com/node/11402849

Extract follows:

"The Casimir effect

The Casimir effect, a curious consequence of quantum theory, may yet have practical applications

Much ado about nothing"

Why do you try to refute my argument by quoting articles that support it?

 

[belorg]

The logic in the belief that nothing comes from nothing is as follows: every actual motion is caused by something actual. Now the motion from nonexistence to existence is an actual motion, reality actually changes, so that motion must be caused by something actual. But the thing being brought into existence cannot itself be the cause of its own coming into existence, because before it exists it has no actuality and thus no ability to cause anything.

Just this addition. In the bolded part you shoot your own foot. What my argument shows is that the bolded part cannot be true, because there is a possible world (wG) that is unchangeable. And that is precisely because wG describes a reality with only God and nothing else.

 

[Love4All]

Because whether an immutable God can create something is precisely the issue here. asserting that he can is question-begging.

Oh. Why couldn’t an immutable God create something?

 

[Love4All]

Just this addition. In the bolded part you shoot your own foot. What my argument shows is that the bolded part cannot be true, because there is a possible world (wG) that is unchangeable. And that is precisely because wG describes a reality with only God and nothing else.

How is that reality unchangeable? It seems we are literally surrounded by hard evidence that that past reality changed. Are you asserting the nonexistence of everything?

Reality changes constantly. Are you asserting that reality cannot change? That is weird. how are you typing or reading without changing reality?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

All change is the actualization of potentiality. To explain the existence of change, you must begin with a being that is not the actualization of potentiality, but is instead that which actualizes potentiality. This being cannot be an object that is changing since the ultimate cause is not itself the actualization of potentiality.

If you remove the unmoved mover, then change cannot occur because there is nothing to actualize that which is merely potential. You would literally be getting change and being out of absolutely nothing. You cannot get change or being out of absolutely nothing, therefore there has to be an unmoved mover that gives being to potential objects or actualizes potentiality.

How an unmoved mover gives actuality to potential is irrelevant in so far as determining the necessity of such a being. Even if there is an apparent contradiction, Actual Existence logically and absolutely precedes potentiality or change. You cannot have potentiality or possibility without existence. Therefore we know that an unmoved mover exists.

Absolutely correct. Now just go on from there. Linus2nd