What is the Catholic Church’s stance on Zino of Elea’s Philosophy

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Does The Catholic Church agree with Zino’s fundamental thinking in regards to time being an illusion or that motion is merely an illusion. If so, would this paradox pose a theological conflict to Catholic faith and the reality of God? If so how would an apologetic refute this?
 
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Are my thoughts now different to my thoughts then? Then at the least, regardless of external realities, the most direct experience I have is that of sequential change. Again, not measuring the outside world, but my actual consciousness. It would seem asinine to say otherwise.
 
I’m not familiar with Zeno but from what you stated it seems to be contrary to the Catholic understanding of reality. If time and motion are just illusions then we couldn’t be certain of anything happening at any time. It would seem that that understanding would lead one into extreme skepticism or even agnostism.
 
I would agree too. However I just wanted to know if there was a firm answer in the Church’s stance. My philosophy professor was just giving a lecture on how he believes that there is no such thing as the past since we can only experience the “now” which is continuous. Basically stating you cannot draw a line saying this is where it began. And then when he brought up Zino’s paradoxes it flushed in a lot of skepticism and doubts with my Catholic faith, wanting to question it more.
 
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Zeno’s most famous paradoxes are resolved by simple calculus. We can see that the the sums of infinitesimals (what puzzled Zeno) can converge to a finite limit.

There’s lots of ways to address Zeno and his paradoxes of time and motion. For instance, it’s said that when Diogenes the Cynic was told Zeno’s argument for motion being an illusion, he simply got up and left. (thus proving the argument wrong).

I don’t know about official Catholic teaching regarding the pre-Socratics. I think they’re important because it shows the advent and approach of critical thought, and how we can use critical thought in our lives. Xeno’s methods are still used in philosophy and other disciplines today.
 
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So he’s a proponent of Last Thursdayism? The problem with that philosophy is that it take much more effort explaining away things that people have experienced in the past rather than just admitting that there is a past.

I don’t think the Church has an official position but I’m sure Aquinas addresses something similar in his works.
 
Probably. It’s hard to follow along his convoluted logic… Let alone he doesn’t even believe in logic… Nor does he accept the idea of “re absoluta” which is my way of saying absolute reality. I’ll just say he’s a very puzzled old man who likes messing with your head. Which I don’t mind because I guess it gets you to think outside the box. However, he’s very bias and won’t even accept my logical arguments, rather he will continue on questioning my rebuttals and try dodging my questions with another question.
 
I would agree that there is no past and that time is an illusion.

I wouldn’t feel the need to refute this from a Theological position but instead embrace it as pointing towards our experience being created from a deeper reality for an intellectual purpose.

i.e. God.
 
But from my understanding unless you can state otherwise. It would pose contradiction to theological thinking because for one. If time is an illusion does that then mean we are infinite? How then can a all powerful God who is also infinite create something that isn’t finite?
 
I don’t know why people wanna profess things that are just totally contradicted by common sense and human experience. I guess there’s always that longing for some sort of “hidden knowledge”, but that longing is rightly pointed toward what is revealed by God and His Mysteries, I’d think.
 
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I don’t think you’re understanding your professor correctly. Zeno claimed that nothing ever changes, and he also almost certainly claimed that all our experiences are illusions. That is clearly inconsistent with both Catholicism and common sense.
 
Oh no, I totally anticipated this type of response that some people would have, though it is unfounded as right reason can demonstrate. To deny that change occurs is totally opposite to collective and individual human experience.

Unlike that, what I as a Catholic profess is totally consistent with observed reality both personally and when taken as a collective of the human experience.
 
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No I understood him very well. Which is why I’m questioning it in the Catholic lense. Which if I do that, it becomes inconsistent with teaching and belief. And like you said common sense.
 
Does The Catholic Church agree with Zino’s fundamental thinking in regards to time being an illusion or that motion is merely an illusion. If so, would this paradox pose a theological conflict to Catholic faith and the reality of God? If so how would an apologetic refute this?
Whatever Zino wrote, motion, time being a component, can be understood as an illusion reflecting the nature of our spiritual soul. God as the fundamental Reality, is unchanging, and everything is His creation, existing as one Beatific Vision, in an eternal Now, encompassing all time and space, with events happening synchronously, within the entire universe, only at that point. We, as finite beings, a timeline within the grand symphony, have the capacity to know and to act with a free will. That capacity to know enables us to put ourselves anywhere within the trajectory of events, moving in time and space or otherwise undergoing change. We insert the past-present-future, which we are at those points. It is a reflection of our free will that carves the past in concrete; what is done cannot be undone, and we cannot move through time as we move through space. As a result of the fall, we are on a journey, as is all of nature, as a consequence of our original sin and, I would conjecture, that of the angels before us, towards final communion, through and in Jesus Christ, within the Trinity.
 
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Yes, he doesn’t believe nothing ever changes because that would contradict the idea of there being no motion and time.
 
Yes, he doesn’t believe nothing ever changes because that would contradict the idea of there being no motion and time.
Huh? “Nothing ever changes” is perfectly consistent with “there is no motion and no time.”
 
See I thought about that too, however I keep in mind with his other beliefs which is that reality isn’t absolute because it can change. If you can change a reality does that not involve time? So he does believe it and he doesn’t at the same time according to him? Unless I’m the one that’s just not getting it.
 
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Sorry I just realized I didn’t convey my whole thought. So let me restate what I said. Yes, he doesn’t believe nothing ever changes because IF there was a “change” in any instance, then that would contradict the idea of there being no motion and time.
 
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