St. Thomas' Motion Argument and Modern Physics

[Al_Moritz]

You misunderstand the Doctrine of Divine Immutability. Sure, it’s possible that God could change from to , or whatever. But classical theists only claim that the intrinsic properties of God are not subject to change.

Thanks a lot for that link, Eleve. I had concerns about the concept of God’s immutability just as Belorg has, and this article alleviated at least some of them.

Belorg, I suggest you carefully read the article too, as I did.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Thanks a lot for that link, Eleve. I had concerns about the concept of God’s immutability just as Belorg has, and this article alleviated at least some of them.

Belorg, I suggest you carefully read the article too, as I did.

Al, ST. Thomas discusses in the S.T. and the S.C.G. and other places as well. And also, this is the teaching of the Church.

Contrary to the groundless assertions of Belorg, I am not " trying to get out " of anything. I am giving you the doctrine of St.Thomas as amply expressed in Part 1 of the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles, which you can read on line for yourself. You don’t have to take my word for it. Also this is the Solemn teaching of the Church.

Belorg rejects reasoning by inference from the creatures of this universe to God’s existence and he rejects the validity of Divine Revelation. For him science has become Scientism - the only philosophy possible. So naturally he will reject any argument by which you or I or anyone else attempts to arrive at any truth that cannot be verified by the methods of science. So he will always say your argument is invalid or unreasonable.

But when he distorts what one says to bolster his beliefs or prove yours wrong, that is a " low blow. " In boxing and debate that would be a foul and would cost points. Futher, it is not very honorable.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Please cite where Thomas makes this claim. I believe you constructed a strawman of Thomism.

The logical connect is the four causes, material, formal, efficient, and final.

There is none. Belorg is pulling your chain or perhaps intentionally and irrationally sewing the seeds of doubt.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Theists don’t say that matter can’t come into existence. They just say that there needs to be some cause for it to do so.

Ex nihilo nihilo fit is not the doctrine that everything has to be made out of some pre-existing matter. It’s the doctrine that there has to be something in existence before there can be anything else.

Stick in there Elve. Follow the Catechims of the Catholic Church ant St. Thomas. Don’t let anyone give you a snow job.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

If matter can come ibnto existence from nothing, then ‘nothing’ has the potential to become matter, and this potential is uncaused, which contradicts the Catholic doctrine that God is the cause of everything.
Linus is trying to get around this by claiming that potentiality does not exist, but there clearly is a diffrence between complete nothingness and potentiality, so pptnetiality is something, hence in a way it exists.The problem is that under Thomism there is no logical connection between the something in existence (God) and the other things that come into existence.

And that is only your opinion. Here is the connection. The problem is that you don’t accept philosophical arguments from effect to cause. These arguments are a pasteriori, or based on inference from things that are measureable to what can’t be measured or seen. THAT IS THE LOGICAL CONNECTION.

So God exists eternally and is eternally unchanging. His creation had no prior potency as I tried to explain above and there was no prior being ( either God or from some kind of matter) out of which creation sprung ( if one is considering a beginning of space, time, matter). And even for an eternally existing universe it would still require a Creator existing outside the universe of space, time, and matter.

Again, potency is a being of the mind only, a concept, a mode of expression, it is not a really existing substance of any kind. It can be best descriped as the latent power existing in matter to bring new beings or modes of being into actuality under the influence of other acting powers which have real being.

I think one of the problems you have is that you have so dismissed the philosophical reasoning of St. Thomas and other Christian philosophers that you just don’t bother to read their works. Which is lamentable because they are available on line, or at least many of them are and require no investment except time and brain energy.

 

[belorg]

Thanks a lot for that link, Eleve. I had concerns about the concept of God’s immutability just as Belorg has, and this article alleviated at least some of them.

Belorg, I suggest you carefully read the article too, as I did.

I have read it carefully and it does not solve any of the problems with God’s immutability.

 

[belorg]

Please cite where Thomas makes this claim. I believe you constructed a strawman of Thomism.

The logical connect is the four causes, material, formal, efficient, and final.

Which “claim” would that be?

 

[Paddy_Walker]

Let G be an immutable God.
let U be the universe.
So we have G, who becomes G+U. That’s a change, sin’t it? But G cannot change, so He cannot become G + U

but He doesn’t become g + u. the universe is not God. => the universe is in God but is not God. God remains as He always is.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

That’s only part of what I am talking about, Linux. I think the problem you are describing could be overcome by having God always creating, so that he does not have to change from ‘non-causing’ to ‘causing’.
The deeper problem is that, if, as Eleve claims, creation is from God (which would be creatio ex deo and not creatio ex nihilo) then something from an immutable God becomes the changing universe, which mean God is not altogether immutable. And that is the basic problem for Thomism.

The problem is that you don’t understand Thomas and won’t until you actually begin to read him as opposed to depending on commentary from folks, with an ax to grind, who haven’t read him either. Except for a few isolated cases he remains unread by anyone outside the universe of Catholic philosophers.

By definition God is outside the universe of his creation, He is absolutely other than the created universe. It is not part of Him and He is not part of it. Although He works within the universe, as I have explained before and as Thomas teaches, He does not interfere with the natural causation of the created universe. Its causality and the rules and laws thereof has been created with its being. However, He does directly maintain its existence and direct it toward its proper end. His continued support of existence is indeed described by Thomas as a continuation of His creative causality.

One needs to keep in mind that God’s eternal state accompanies His activity. In this sense eternity is all around us on account of God’s intimate activity within all things. Yet the two modes of existence, the eternal and the finite, are ever interlocked but absolutely separate.

Admittedly a difficult concept to understand and explain, one is blinded by the light, so to speak. We cannot understand God’s creative action, it is a mode of activity beyond any science but is necessary by inference. Linus

 

[belorg]

but He doesn’t become g + u. the universe is not God. => the universe is in God but is not God. God remains as He always is.

And what exactly ‘becomes’ U then? Nothing? But that is a violation of ex nihilo nihil fit.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

And what exactly ‘becomes’ U then? Nothing? But that is a violation of ex nihilo nihil fit.

you seem to be treating nothing as something, nothing is nothing, it is not.
there is only God before U. then He creates U by willing it into being. U is not God. U is not nothing turned into U. U simply was not until it was willed.

 

[belorg]

you seem to be treating nothing as something, nothing is nothing, it is not.
there is only God before U. then He creates U by willing it into being. U is not God. U is not nothing turned into U. U simply was not until it was willed.

If U was not, then U was nothing. “Nothing” seems to me the absense of all being.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Whether or not Belorg is correctly summarising Aquinas, he does raise two apparent contradictions that you need to deal with rationally.

1. The problem of something coming from nothing.
2. The problem of there being a relationship between a being that does not change and a being that is changing.

These two problems are normally avoided in these debates.

I wrote this for Belorg but you might profit from it.

The problem is that you don’t understand Thomas and won’t until you actually begin to read him as opposed to depending on commentary from folks, with an ax to grind, who haven’t read him either. Except for a few isolated cases he remains unread by anyone outside the universe of Catholic philosophers.

By definition God is outside the universe of his creation, He is absolutely other than the created universe. It is not part of Him and He is not part of it. Although He works within the universe, as I have explained before and as Thomas teaches, He does not interfere with the natural causation of the created universe. Its causality and the rules and laws thereof has been created with its being. However, He does directly maintain its existence and direct it toward its proper end. His continued support of existence is indeed described by Thomas as a continuation of His creative causality.

One needs to keep in mind that God’s eternal state accompanies His activity. In this sense eternity is all around us on account of God’s intimate activity within all things. Yet the two modes of existence, the eternal and the finite, are ever interlocked but absolutely separate.

Admittedly a difficult concept to understand and explain, one is blinded by the light, so to speak. We cannot understand God’s creative action, it is a mode of activity beyond any science but is necessary by inference.

Our human intelligence is geared toward the Truths of the created universe, material beings and what we can learn from them. From them we can learn that God Is but can only understand that His nature is far beyond our comprehension. Likewise causality. We know physical causality and by inference arrive at Divine Causality, which includes Creation. We cannot understand how that happens, we just know that it is necessary. If we attempt to force the Creative act ( a round peg ) into human understanding of causality ( a square hole ) we naturally conclude that either God is a part of the universe or the universe is a part of God or that the universe exists as an uncaused reality. In other words we wind up in skepticism, agnosticism, or atheism. That will always happen when we try to make God fit human categories of thought and understanding. We just have to stand back in humility as say, " I know it happens, but I can’t explain how. " Linus

 

[belorg]

I wrote this for Belorg but you might profit from it.

The problem is that you don’t understand Thomas and won’t until you actually begin to read him as opposed to depending on commentary from folks, with an ax to grind, who haven’t read him either. Except for a few isolated cases he remains unread by anyone outside the universe of Catholic philosophers.

By definition God is outside the universe of his creation, He is absolutely other than the created universe. It is not part of Him and He is not part of it. Although He works within the universe, as I have explained before and as Thomas teaches, He does not interfere with the natural causation of the created universe. Its causality and the rules and laws thereof has been created with its being. However, He does directly maintain its existence and direct it toward its proper end. His continued support of existence is indeed described by Thomas as a continuation of His creative causality.

One needs to keep in mind that God’s eternal state accompanies His activity. In this sense eternity is all around us on account of God’s intimate activity within all things. Yet the two modes of existence, the eternal and the finite, are ever interlocked but absolutely separate.

Admittedly a difficult concept to understand and explain, one is blinded by the light, so to speak. We cannot understand God’s creative action, it is a mode of activity beyond any science but is necessary by inference.

Our human intelligence is geared toward the Truths of the created universe, material beings and what we can learn from them. From them we can learn that God Is but can only understand that His nature is far beyond our comprehension. Likewise causality. We know physical causality and by inference arrive at Divine Causality, which includes Creation. We cannot understand how that happens, we just know that it is necessary. If we attempt to force the Creative act ( a round peg ) into human understanding of causality ( a square hole ) we naturally conclude that either God is a part of the universe or the universe is a part of God or that the universe exists as an uncaused reality. In other words we wind up in skepticism, agnosticism, or atheism. That will always happen when we try to make God fit human categories of thought and understanding. We just have to stand back in humility as say, " I know it happens, but I can’t explain how. " Linus

Except: we do not know it happens.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

If U was not, then U was nothing. “Nothing” seems to me the absense of all being.

what about the presence of God and the absence of matter “and God said let us make…”

 

[belorg]

what about the presence of God and the absence of matter “and God said let us make…”

The presence of God has nothing to do with the absence of everything else.

 

[Eleve]

If U was not, then U was nothing. “Nothing” seems to me the absense of all being.

The word can mean to you whatever you want it to mean. But you won’t be able to discuss Ex nihilo nihil fit unless you discuss it under the same meaning as the one adopted by people who actually profess the doctrine.

This reddit post is a good primer on how philosophers interpret sentences containing the word “nothing.”

 

[belorg]

The word can mean to you whatever you want it to mean. But you won’t be able to discuss Ex nihilo nihil fit unless you discuss it under the same meaning as the one adopted by people who actually profess the doctrine.

The poblem with thtya, Eleve, is that among “the people who actually profess the doctrine” there is more than one meaning of the word.

This reddit post is a good primer on how philosophers interpret sentences containing the word “nothing.”

The same way I do.

 

[Eleve]

No. When you say something like “U was nothing,” you’re treating U as a singular term, which is exactly what the author of that post was writing against.

And if different theists do use the word differently, that still doesn’t make it terribly impressive to knock down the weakest version. Here, let me give what I take to be a clear explication of the theistic view:

If nothing exists, then nothing can begin to exist.

That is what I, and I would reckon anyone with an actual job in the philosophy of religion, take to be the meaning of Ex nihil nihilo fit. But how is that a problem for theism? According to classical theism, God always existed, so it was never the case that nothing existed.

 

[Linux]

That is what I, and I would reckon anyone with an actual job in the philosophy of religion, take to be the meaning of Ex nihil nihilo fit. But how is that a problem for theism? According to classical theism, God always existed, so it was never the case that nothing existed.

You cannot conclude from this alone that God, in the absence of pre-existing materials, can logically create something that did not exist. **Out of nothing comes nothing.
**