St. Thomas' Motion Argument and Modern Physics

[Love4All]

Anyway, further on you argue,

“I can explain how an eternally existing univrese could be uncaused. The same way an allegedly eternal God could be uncaused.”

To formalize once again, you seem to be going for,

1. God is Uncaused.
2. God and the Universe are fundamentally similar.
3. Therefore, the Universe might be Uncaused.

I think you can find the flaw yourself, if you remember what was said earlier about bad analogies. (Hint: the unsupported premise is 2.)

Moving on again. I see that you actually have advanced a number of arguments. I guess I didn’t notice how many before, because I was looking for good ones. Anyway, next we have,

“Under Thomism, God is immutable, so he cannot possibly ‘judge’ anything.”

So, to formalize,

1. God is immutable.
2. That which is immutable cannot judge anything.
3. Therefore God cannot judge anything.

Unsupported 2 again, but let’s take a deeper look:

1. Judging is mutating.
2. Therefore that which is immutable cannot judge anything.

Now, to mutate means, of course, to change. So your premise 1 appears to assume that in order to make a judgment, the one judging must change. What about the judge has to change? I will let you answer, I think I’ve analyzed as much as I can from what you’ve already said. I don’t have any idea why anyone would hold that something must change in a judge when he judges, or before, or after.

A little further on, you attempt to throw away causality as unnecessary. I’m not going to analyze your arguments to that effect, you are free to present them again or claim you already did, which is more your normal M.O., or, just assume you are correct because you wanna be. But it is a little absurd to be discussing the Cosmological Argument at all, if you are willing to discard causality. Anyway. . .

You made a comment,

“The problem with a Thomistic universe is that it pops out of even less than potency.”

Wrong. The “Thomistic universe,” by which you can only mean The universe, doesn’t “pop out of” anything. It was created, in its whole substance, out of nothing, by God. To say that God is “even less than potency” is to assume your favorite cherished belief, but you don’t get to assume that here. God is Infinite Being, substantially greater than anything that can even be imagined. And nothing, is just nothing. God creates the universe out of nothing, it doesn’t “pop out of even less than potency.”

Ah! NOW, I think I’ve located the original post where you first stated your argument. This must be the prize you sent me off in search of. Well, as a good hunter prepares his meal and then rejoices in his kill, I shall be happy to expose your fallacy. I hope it is worth it to you.

 

[Love4All]

You wrote,

“My argument is that if God is the cerator of everything, it follows that there is a possible world in which God is alone.
In such a world there is act but no potency. Hence, since God is immutable, there can never be potency. Hence God cannot create potency. Hence potency cannot have been crated by God. Hence, either potency is eternal and uncreated, which contradicts Cattholic doctrine, or potency can be crated, which contradicts the fact that God is pure act.”

O.K., there it is. Couldn’t ask for a more blatant statement of your argument than that, now could we? It is even starts, “My argument is that. . .” I am going to assume that I have now located that which you required of me to seek, and if you again dissemble, then I am going to drop you like the little troll you are. Fair warning!

Formalization of your argument above:

1. God is the Creator of everything.
2. Therefore in some possible world — call it ‘wG’ — God is alone.
3. God is Pure Act.
4. Therefore in wG there is only Pure Act, and thus no potency.
5. Further, there can never be potency. (why not?)
6. God cannot create potency (from 5).
7. Therefore either,

7a. Potency is uncreated and eternal (and thus God!) or,
7b. God can create potency, contradicting 6.

6 derives all its visible support from 5, and 5 is unsupported. So it would seem, philosophically speaking, the most likely candidate for the chopping block is 5 and thus 6. Lose 5 and 6, and there is nothing preventing 7b, which is Catholic Doctrine.

Why did you think it was valid to assert that because there is no potency in a world where God is alone, there can never be potency? Certainly, when God brings potency into existence, then it is no longer the world with God alone, but it is the same world in which God used to be alone, before He created. And that is a change in the world, not in God. But you knew all this, I’m sure.

You recognize that 7b contradicts only 6, and not 3. You sort of want to pass off 6 and 3 as synonyms, but they’re not. You seem to want to imply that God cannot create potency because He is (supposed to be) Pure Act. But how does that follow? Pure Act cannot create things that, themselves, are not Pure Act?

The only thing that changes about a world with God alone when God creates, is that God is no longer alone in it. That is the meaning of Creatio ex Nihilo. It is not that it is impossible for God to be alone, nor that it is impossible for Him to create and then not be alone. It is impossible that an immutable God who is the whole world could create and remain as the whole world. I don’t think I’m explaining it well. I fear that you are still missing it, and I’d like to finish this discussion if I can. But not until you accept the truth.

You feel that you ought to be able to assert without contradiction that,

1. There is a possible world with God alone, and,
2. This world cannot change, because God cannot change.

The most I can grant you here, logically, is that the world cannot at the same time, both change AND remain the world with God alone. It is logically necessary that God either creates or does not create. If He does not create, the world does not change. If He does create, the world changes. You want to object that the world cannot change, because the world consists entirely in the changeless God. It sounds plausible. I’ll even give you that, that it sounds plausible, albeit in a sophistical rather than a logical way.

Set theory would rescue us here, except that you reject the validity of set theory. With set theory, we can legitimately represent possible worlds as sets, and it is easily demonstrated, as you well know, that G =/= {G}. But you want to say that G = {G}, or G = wG, which amounts to the same thing.

We tried, again, to rescue you by pinning you down to a clear definition of “possible world.” You defined “possible world” as “a state of affairs.” In such a case, in order to make G = wG you would have to assert that the state of affairs wherein God alone exists, IS God. Now, God is not “a state of affairs,” God is a Being, the one Being in fact whose very essence is to Be. I don’t know how you can equate a being with a state. Generally, we hold that beings undergo states or experience states, but we do not assert that a being is a state.

You may object that this is all semantics, but it is the result of your semantic use of “possible world.” How about if we drop that, altogether? Are we both capable of forming clear concepts without that particular one? Let’s give it a try.

Possibly, God alone exists, immutable. The End.

 

[Love4All]

Wow, no lie, I actually see where you are coming from now! If ALL THAT EXISTS cannot change, then nothing at all can ever change. That does indeed make perfect sense. It is an imaginary world, but I can see the logic in it.

Unfortunately for your argument but fortunately for you and for the truth, that helps me. Seeing where you are coming from helps me to help you out of that limited and limiting perspective.

It boils down to the Fact of No Change. If all that there is is the Fact of No Change, then that’s all there ever will be, because that Fact itself can never change. And there is a Fact of No Change about God. God does not change. Thus if God alone exists, is it necessarily the case that nothing else can ever exist? Where would it come from? The obvious answer is that God could create it, except that God cannot change. Except, if God can create without changing, then He can still create. So why, again, were we saying God could not create? Because to create is to change — something. To create is to change the situation from one in which there is no Creation to one in which there is. So it seems, there is something that can be changed — the situation. And what is a situation, if not a state of affairs? The situation with God alone can be changed into a situation with God and His Creation, if He creates. And He can create, by an Act of His Will. So what happened to the Fact of No Change? Well, as it turns out, that was never a limitation on God’s Power in the first place. There is no one to pass a law binding on God saying God is not allowed to change. It is simply that God does not change, that God is immutable by His very Nature, whereby we say that God “cannot” change. And by “change” we mean, to undergo mutation, and not, rather, to cause a change in something else. But, in a world with God alone there is nothing else that He could cause a change in. True. But to cause a change in existing things is not the only way it is possible to cause a change in “something else,” if under the category of “something else” we include the situation wherein there is God and nothing else. That is a situation, a state of affairs, so it seems that it is not possible, at least to me, to form clear concepts about the reality of Creation without referring to situations, or states of affairs, and thus, possible worlds under your definition. But I have come close. I have boiled it down to a Fact of No Change.

And the Fact of No Change applies only to God, and not to the Fact of God Alone Existing. There, perhaps, finally, is the point of confusion. In a possible world with God Alone, there are facts. These facts are nothing more or less than statements of the way things are. One fact is that God Cannot Change, and another fact is that God Alone Exists, but these two facts are not identical. The fact that God Cannot Change, cannot change, whereas the fact that God Alone Exists, can.

No getting around it — there is something different between God Himself and a World with God Alone Existing. The former, cannot change, and the latter, can, BECAUSE it is a world, a situation, a state of affairs. We cannot, I think, conceptualize it more clearly than that. And yet I still wonder whether I’ve gotten through.

Anyway, I’m done at least for tonight. This is very long I know, but quite pointedly you did explicitly ask for it.

 

[ilikepizza1]

Aquinas’s first mover argument doesn’t prove the existence of god at all; it says nothing to prove that the first mover is a conscious being, much less the Catholic god or any god for that matter.

Of course Aquinas’ argument for a Prime mover doesn’t in and of itself prove that this mover is conscious/all good/pure love etc. That wasn’t his intention; his only purpose with that specific argument was to demonstrate a necessary first/pure cause. He argues elsewhere for the other qualities that Christianity applies to God.

What I think no one has ever considered, is that perhaps there is no beginning or end, only an infinite continuum of universes and time. Perhaps every motion made in this universe is countered by one in another balancing the movers; we simply do not know yet.

And in line with Aquinas’ argument, whether or not there is an infinite continuum of universes is irrelevant. An infinite number of universes would still require a Prime mover. When Aquinas speaks of a first mover he is not using it in the sense of temporally first, but rather in the sense of most fundamental.

However, claiming this lack of knowledge to be proof for god is irrational and fallacious, because it says nothing to prove the nature of the “mover”.

No one is claiming that lack of knowledge is proof of God. Aquinas makes positive arguments for His existence.

 

[belorg]

Wow, no lie, I actually see where you are coming from now! If ALL THAT EXISTS cannot change, then nothing at all can ever change. That does indeed make perfect sense. It is an imaginary world, but I can see the logic in it.

Unfortunately for your argument but fortunately for you and for the truth, that helps me. Seeing where you are coming from helps me to help you out of that limited and limiting perspective.

It boils down to the Fact of No Change. If all that there is is the Fact of No Change, then that’s all there ever will be, because that Fact itself can never change. And there is a Fact of No Change about God. God does not change. Thus if God alone exists, is it necessarily the case that nothing else can ever exist? Where would it come from? The obvious answer is that God could create it, except that God cannot change. Except, if God can create without changing, then He can still create. So why, again, were we saying God could not create? Because to create is to change — something. To create is to change the situation from one in which there is no Creation to one in which there is. So it seems, there is something that can be changed — the situation. And what is a situation, if not a state of affairs? The situation with God alone can be changed into a situation with God and His Creation, if He creates. And He can create, by an Act of His Will. So what happened to the Fact of No Change? Well, as it turns out, that was never a limitation on God’s Power in the first place. There is no one to pass a law binding on God saying God is not allowed to change. It is simply that God does not change, that God is immutable by His very Nature, whereby we say that God “cannot” change. And by “change” we mean, to undergo mutation, and not, rather, to cause a change in something else. But, in a world with God alone there is nothing else that He could cause a change in. True. But to cause a change in existing things is not the only way it is possible to cause a change in “something else,” if under the category of “something else” we include the situation wherein there is God and nothing else. That is a situation, a state of affairs, so it seems that it is not possible, at least to me, to form clear concepts about the reality of Creation without referring to situations, or states of affairs, and thus, possible worlds under your definition. But I have come close. I have boiled it down to a Fact of No Change.

And the Fact of No Change applies only to God, and not to the Fact of God Alone Existing. There, perhaps, finally, is the point of confusion. In a possible world with God Alone, there are facts. These facts are nothing more or less than statements of the way things are. One fact is that God Cannot Change, and another fact is that God Alone Exists, but these two facts are not identical. The fact that God Cannot Change, cannot change, whereas the fact that God Alone Exists, can.

No getting around it — there is something different between God Himself and a World with God Alone Existing. The former, cannot change, and the latter, can, BECAUSE it is a world, a situation, a state of affairs. We cannot, I think, conceptualize it more clearly than that. And yet I still wonder whether I’ve gotten through.

Anyway, I’m done at least for tonight. This is very long I know, but quite pointedly you did explicitly ask for it.

Wow, after more than 50 pages you have finally found what my argument is about. If only you had bothered to try to argue against my argument instead of spending so much time insulting me, we might have had a discussion after all.

Now, i forgive you the insults. i now how frustrating it can be when your unshakable certainty gets shaken up.

But, actually this latest reply comes down to the same thing that you have been asserting ever since the beginning of our disagreement: “a state of affairs with only God is not a state of affairs with only God”.
That’s your claim, so you will have to account for it, and preferably with something more than question begging, like: “there is change, and God cannot change, so there must be something else changing.”.

 

[Love4All]

Wow, after more than 50 pages you have finally found what my argument is about. If only you had bothered to try to argue against my argument instead of spending so much time insulting me, we might have had a discussion after all.

Now, i forgive you the insults. i now how frustrating it can be when your unshakable certainty gets shaken up.

But, actually this latest reply comes down to the same thing that you have been asserting ever since the beginning of our disagreement: “a state of affairs with only God is not a state of affairs with only God”.
That’s your claim, so you will have to account for it, and preferably with something more than question begging, like: “there is change, and God cannot change, so there must be something else changing.”.

I never said what you claim. I said God is not a state of affairs.

 

[Love4All]

Wow, after more than 50 pages you have finally found what my argument is about.

No, belorg, I apparently wasted a lot of time at your behest, digging up the nearest thing I could find to the formal statement you were asked to provide several times, and refused. Further, I formalized it for you. Finally, I pointed out the principal flaw, basically bringing our conversation to the point it was at before you decided to take all this so personally and waste your time being offended instead of presenting arguments.

I already knew your argument, already knew it was unsound, and had already pointed out to you why, from several different angles in fact. This exercise that you insisted I go through was evidently pointless, since you still think you are right in the face of hard evidence to the contrary. Such is the blinding faith of those attached to your favorite belief!

If only you had bothered to try to argue against my argument instead of spending so much time insulting me, we might have had a discussion after all.

I spent very little time pointing out your errors, two of which have been trolling us and lying to us. Pointing out that you are a troll and a liar is nothing more or less than pointing out the observation that you have wasted the time of a lot of people pretending to argue a point with no merit (i.e. trolling) and pretending to begin from Catholic Doctrine when actually you were beginning from your own doctrine in contradiction to Catholic Doctrine (i.e. lying.)

I mean these two things observationally, not personally. I have no idea what you are like as a person, and I have no reason to think you are anything but a fine upstanding individual. I wasn’t making an assessment of your personality, which I don’t have enough evidence to assess; I was only making observations of your actions on this forum, which anyone can see.

Now you are pretending that it’s too late. It seems evident to me at this point that that is a face-saving pretense on your part, because you are aware that your “arguments” are done for, and you can’t bring yourself to admit it. It is easier for you to pretend I have hurt your feelings, and leave in a huff, than it is to admit that you were wrong.

You can prove me wrong, of course. I’m not holding my breath here, but you could.

 

[yppop]

Wow, after more than 50 pages you have finally found what my argument is about. If only you had bothered to try to argue against my argument instead of spending so much time insulting me, we might have had a discussion after all.

Now, i forgive you the insults. i now how frustrating it can be when your unshakable certainty gets shaken up.

But, actually this latest reply comes down to the same thing that you have been asserting ever since the beginning of our disagreement: “a state of affairs with only God is not a state of affairs with only God”.
That’s your claim, so you will have to account for it, and preferably with something more than question begging, like: “there is change, and God cannot change, so there must be something else changing.”.

belorg
This is a belorg classic. After 50 pages it isn’t Love4All that found what your argument is; it is you that found out what your argument is. Be honest belog, among all the obfuscation and blather that you threw at this thread, you didn’t know where to find your own argument. This has to be true for why else would you have been unable to answer the innumerable requests to present your argument in a understandable way. It also explains why you couldn’t respond to the numerous refutations that appeared in this thread, refutations that you could only respond to with your juvenile answers. For example here is a small sample of the best of belog:

b143 No, he isn’t
b154 I don’t think you are really grasping my argument, Eleve.
b355 Dogma has no place in a philosophical discussion
b372 Some a bit less polite people than I would call this hogwash. I just call it logically impossible.
b379 You started this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game.
b390 If you have nothing better to reply than this sort of nonsense, please do not waste my time anymore.
b414 I’ll respond to you once you have something more than baseless assertions.
b437 I suggest you learn how to read.
b458 Either way, your criticism of my argument is irrelevant.
b475 None of this has any sort of relevance to my argument.
b538 So, you cannot refute my argument and you decided to throw in some ad hominen? I am not interested in dogma and assertions. If you have a point, please make it. If you don’t, please stop wasting my time.
b689 I fail to see how that’s related to my argument.
b695 Well, I really don’t understand why you keep replying to something you do not understand.
b698 But nobody has actually tried to refute my central argument.
b706 So, no offense, but you simply do not know enough baout these issues to have a proper discussion.
b726 Those who disagree with me are simply wrong, however many they are.
b758 Yes, you don’t have anything to refute my argument, so just start calling me a troll.
b765 I do not know why I was thinking that I could discuss this with someone as closed-minded as you.

On the other hand, it has been fun reading your small-minded assertions; I found it amusing finding out how little you know about infinity, set theory, logic, Catholic Doctrine, Thomism and the forensic art while still thinking your were holding your own with respondents that know a great deal more about subjects you were obviously looking up on Wikipedia as you went along.

amor vincit omnia
Yppop

 

[Love4All]

Now, i forgive you the insults. i now how frustrating it can be when your unshakable certainty gets shaken up.

I’m sure you do, as I’m sure you are experiencing it now, albeit you are attempting to avoid feeling it by avoiding understanding the flaws in your argument.

I did not apologize to you for stating the truth, and if you wish to prove that I was wrong to call you a liar and troll, then start being honest with yourself and others, and stop trolling the forum. You can learn something here. It is the height of arrogance for you to think you can teach us something. Unless what you are trying to teach us is that your particular chosen cherished belief blinds one to logic. I already did suspect that, and you may be proving it, or, you may yet prove me wrong. I would be a lot happier to be proven wrong than right, but, I will accept that I am right if the evidence presents itself. In which case, you are attempting to “forgive” what is simply the truth about you, stated clearly by me.

Ball’s in your court. At the very least, present an argument refuting my refutation of yours. I will make it as clear as I can.

But, actually this latest reply comes down to the same thing that you have been asserting ever since the beginning of our disagreement: “a state of affairs with only God is not a state of affairs with only God”.

See, this is one more example of what we in the business call a bold-faced lie. You are unquestionably aware that I have never asserted any statement of the form, A =/= A. And yet, here, you are accusing me of just that. Not only once, but multiple times. You are accusing me of not only asserting, but also maintaining, the absurdity that A is different from A.

Retract your lie! Or if you will not, then accept the label, “liar,” since it plainly applies. Or, if you think you can prove your accusation, do that. Find the post where I stated, “a state of affairs with only God is not a state of affairs with only God”. If it turns out I really said that, THEN I will apologize to you for calling you a liar. Otherwise, no personal offense intended, spades are spades and should expect to be labeled as spades.

This is neither insult nor ad hominem. It is a simple statement of the fact that some of your statements of what other people say, and also some of your statements of what you yourself do, are simply inaccurate, and cannot be relied on as reports of the truth. I don’t much care why you lie, that is all on you. I just want you to stop doing it in this discussion with me, so that we can actually get some philosophy done here.

 

[Love4All]

That’s your claim, so you will have to account for it,

No, I don’t have to account for what I never said. I will maintain that,

1. God is not the world.
2. “God == the world” is pantheism.
3. Catholic Doctrine is not pantheist.
4. Your claim was that you were starting with Catholic Doctrine.

To be crystal clear, to remove any possibility that you can escape the logic here, I will state unequivocally that,

A state of affairs with only God IS a state of affairs with only God.

Your error is in your equivocation between “a state of affairs with only God,” and God. The reality, by contrast, and what I have actually been saying all along is the following:

1. God IS God.
2. A state of affairs with only God IS a state of affairs with only God.
3. A state of affairs with only God IS NOT God.
4. God IS NOT a state of affairs with only God.

and preferably with something more than question begging, like: “there is change, and God cannot change, so there must be something else changing.”.

Your error here is in attributing change, not to the situation, but to some being or substance. You are trying to make Nothing into Something, so as to assert that “there must be something else changing.” It will be helpful here to spell it out for you again in black and white, so that we can have that crystal clarity that characterizes the inescapability of logical truth.

1. Something is something.
2. Nothing is nothing.
3. Something is not nothing.
4. Nothing is not something.

It is an error to treat “no cats” as some cats. No cats is exactly the same lack of anything as no dogs. One cat, by contrast, is different from one dog. That is because things have characteristics, and a dog has different characteristics than a cat. But Nothing, does not have characteristics, because it is not any thing. So “no cats” is exactly the same as “no dogs” — both are nothing at all.

It is an error to treat “no cats” or “no dogs” as things having properties. “Nothing” has no properties. Yet, the phrase “no cats” has meaning. How can this be? The meaning of the phrase “no cats” cannot be found in the properties of any object, but rather in the semantics of a description of a situation. We are not talking about a catless object. We are only asserting that the situation is that all the cats have somehow gone missing. So really, whenever we posit, “nothing,” we are invoking possible worlds. The situation of “nothing” IS the situation of “nothing.” We have not produced an object, we have produced a semantical description. It is useful to produce semantical descriptions because a description is something that can be talked about. So:

1. Something is something.
2. Nothing is nothing.
3. Something is not nothing.
4. Nothing is not something.
5. A description of something is something.
6. A description of something is not the same thing as the thing described. (I.e. a description of a cat is not the cat.)
7. A description of a situation wherein there is nothing, is something.
8. A description of a situation wherein there is nothing, is not the same thing as the “nothing” described. Nothing is, in fact, nothing. Nothing is not a thing at all, so it could not possibly be the same thing as anything.

But descriptions are things. If we have a description of a situation, there is something we can talk about, namely the description of the situation. This is true even if the situation we are describing is the situation where there is nothing. The description of the situation wherein there is nothing, is something — it is a description of a situation.

Now, in set theory and number theory, we have exact correlations between sets and descriptions of situations. The situation wherein there is nothing is precisely mathematically described as {}. The null set. The empty set. The set with no members. The situation wherein there is nothing. 0. All these phrases are equivalent. They all describe the same empty set. They are all real descriptions of the situation wherein there is nothing.

{} = 0.

But the description, is something, not nothing. The description of the situation wherein there is nothing, is something, not nothing. The description of the situation wherein there is nothing, can also be represented precisely, mathematically, as {0}.

Now, PAY ATTENTION, as this is where your error comes in.

{0} =/= {}.
{0} =/= 0.

The description of the situation wherein there is nothing is not nothing. The set containing the empty set as its sole member is not the empty set.

{{}} =/= {}.

From here, it is facile to observe that, in general,

{x} =/= x.

The set containing x is not the same thing as x. This applies whether the value of x is positive, negative, or null. The set containing the empty set is not the empty set. The description of the situation wherein there is nothing is not nothing. The set containing x is not x. The description of the situation wherein there is x is not x.

The set containing God Alone is not God Alone. The description of the situation wherein there is God Alone is not God Alone.

wG =/= G.

Your move.

 

[inocente]

I spent very little time pointing out your errors, two of which have been trolling us and lying to us. Pointing out that you are a troll and a liar is nothing more or less than pointing out the observation that you have wasted the time of a lot of people pretending to argue a point with no merit (i.e. trolling) and pretending to begin from Catholic Doctrine when actually you were beginning from your own doctrine in contradiction to Catholic Doctrine (i.e. lying.)

You’d have been instantly banned for that on most science forums. Maybe CAF will do the same.

Did you read the NT yet?

 

[Love4All]

You’d have been instantly banned for that on most science forums. Maybe CAF will do the same.

Did you read the NT yet?

Do you mean New Testament?

I would think and hope that here as well as on science forums, the truth is important and respected. I, for one, have very little patience for those who are willing to throw truth under the bus in order to promote their own agenda. As I pointed out, the jury is still out on belorg. Let’s see what he does.

 

[inocente]

Do you mean New Testament?

I would think and hope that here as well as on science forums, the truth is important and respected. I, for one, have very little patience for those who are willing to throw truth under the bus in order to promote their own agenda. As I pointed out, the jury is still out on belorg. Let’s see what he does.

Yes, read Paul.

belorg has shown great restraint, you haven’t.

Although I must admit that these threads about folk who still believe in medieval nonsense are very entertaining.

Grief, Thomas himself said he wrote straw. Correcto mundo. In spades.

 

[ilikepizza1]

Yes, read Paul.

belorg has shown great restraint, you haven’t.

Although I must admit that these threads about folk who still believe in medieval nonsense are very entertaining.

Do you actually have an argument to provide or does simply calling something “nonsense” pass for rationality in your world?

 

[Love4All]

Yes, read Paul.

belorg has shown great restraint, you haven’t.

Although I must admit that these threads about folk who still believe in medieval nonsense are very entertaining.

Grief, Thomas himself said he wrote straw. Correcto mundo. In spades.

I apologize for my tone. belorg, I apologize if I’ve offended you.

 

[rom422]

Although I must admit that these threads about folk who still believe in medieval nonsense are very entertaining.

And it is equally entertaining to read posts alluding to truth becoming medieval or ancient. Hey, isn’t Holy Scripture even more ancient than the Summa?

Inocente, I think that if you want to discredit Thomism, you should do it by advancing your arguments, not by Belorg-style shots on the Thomist tradition.

 

[inocente]

I apologize for my tone. belorg, I apologize if I’ve offended you.

Apologizing isn’t easy, so well done and thanks,

 

[inocente]

Do you actually have an argument to provide or does simply calling something “nonsense” pass for rationality in your world?

All the standard arguments plus Paul again. In 1 Cor 1:18-31 he argues that all attempts to prove anything about God are foolishness, nonsense when put beside Christ crucified. Christ should be more than enough for us, looking elsewhere is a stumbling block, it impedes us.

Maybe Thomas finally understood that when he made his “straw” remark.

 

[inocente]

Inocente, I think that if you want to discredit Thomism, you should do it by advancing your arguments, not by Belorg-style shots on the Thomist tradition.

I’m a Christian, not a Thomist.

Revelation ended with Christ (CCC 66), so where Thomas interprets scripture he may be helpful, but that doesn’t apply here.

 

[belorg]

belorg
This is a belorg classic. After 50 pages it isn’t Love4All that found what your argument is; it is you that found out what your argument is. Be honest belog, among all the obfuscation and blather that you threw at this thread, you didn’t know where to find your own argument. This has to be true for why else would you have been unable to answer the innumerable requests to present your argument in a understandable way. It also explains why you couldn’t respond to the numerous refutations that appeared in this thread, refutations that you could only respond to with your juvenile answers. For example here is a small sample of the best of belog:

b143 No, he isn’t
b154 I don’t think you are really grasping my argument, Eleve.
b355 Dogma has no place in a philosophical discussion
b372 Some a bit less polite people than I would call this hogwash. I just call it logically impossible.
b379 You started this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game.
b390 If you have nothing better to reply than this sort of nonsense, please do not waste my time anymore.
b414 I’ll respond to you once you have something more than baseless assertions.
b437 I suggest you learn how to read.
b458 Either way, your criticism of my argument is irrelevant.
b475 None of this has any sort of relevance to my argument.
b538 So, you cannot refute my argument and you decided to throw in some ad hominen? I am not interested in dogma and assertions. If you have a point, please make it. If you don’t, please stop wasting my time.
b689 I fail to see how that’s related to my argument.
b695 Well, I really don’t understand why you keep replying to something you do not understand.
b698 But nobody has actually tried to refute my central argument.
b706 So, no offense, but you simply do not know enough baout these issues to have a proper discussion.
b726 Those who disagree with me are simply wrong, however many they are.
b758 Yes, you don’t have anything to refute my argument, so just start calling me a troll.
b765 I do not know why I was thinking that I could discuss this with someone as closed-minded as you.

On the other hand, it has been fun reading your small-minded assertions; I found it amusing finding out how little you know about infinity, set theory, logic, Catholic Doctrine, Thomism and the forensic art while still thinking your were holding your own with respondents that know a great deal more about subjects you were obviously looking up on Wikipedia as you went along.

amor vincit omnia
Yppop

Nice work, yppop. Now, do you aslo have some sort of argument?