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Wesrock
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It might be better to make the distinction between transeunt and immanent causation.
Why you should think that the First-Cause has to be an Intelligent Cause
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AlNg
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If truths are eternal, the following statement is either true or false:
Torture is morally wrong.
Today that statement is true. During the inquisition, the statement was false.
What is true or false is not always eternal, but can be a matter of opinion.
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AlNg
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Suppose a flat table has nothing on it.STT:
Says the person who for at least a year has said knowledge must have form?o_mlly:
That is not true. 1+1=2 regardless if there is anyone knowing it or not.STT:
Truth, knowledge that conforms to reality, requires a being that is knowing.
If one rock is put beside another rock, there will be two rocks on the table?
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Hugh_Farey
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“Louis XIV is the King of France.” True? Eternally true? Once true? Never true?
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IWantGod
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Are you saying that objective truth is determined by peoples opinions alone? Are you saying that at one point torture was actually good because people thought it was good? Are you saying that 1 + 1 only equals 2 because people want it to be true? If that were really the case then true knowledge would be impossible.
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Wesrock
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I was questioning STT’s history on this position.Wesrock:
Suppose a flat table has nothing on it.STT:
Says the person who for at least a year has said knowledge must have form?o_mlly:
That is not true. 1+1=2 regardless if there is anyone knowing it or not.STT:
Truth, knowledge that conforms to reality, requires a being that is knowing.
If one rock is put beside another rock, there will be two rocks on the table?
I say “yes,” that is true and remains true. Mathematical objects are real. That said, people who subscribe to mathematical nominalism would dent that it is an objective truth or principle and is just a fiction of the human mind. (There are subdivisions within nominalism itself.)
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AlNg
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I think that one plus one equals two because of the definition of two. This is seen because of the way that the Romans or Mayans or Chinese, etc. write two.
The infallible Catholic Church allowed torture in the past, but now the infallible Catholic Church does not allow it.
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Wesrock
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This has nothing to do with how the concept of two is written or represented…IWantGod:
I think that one plus one equals two because of the definition of two. This is seen because of the way that the Romans or Mayans or Chinese, etc. write two.
The infallible Catholic Church allowed torture in the past, but now the infallible Catholic Church does not allow it.
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Hugh_Farey
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Not a lot.
Say a boulder, rolling down a hill, always acts according to the law of gravity. So far, so good …
Eh? The best result for whom? For the person whose house it smashes? I don’t follow where Aquinas got that idea from.
They follow the laws of physics, yes.
No. It is directed by the force of gravity. A being endowed with knowledge and intelligence would make it bounce over the house, not smash into it.
No. Not everything is so directed.
Intelligent again. But there is nothing obviously intelligent about the laws of physics. I think, to believe in an “intelligent Cause” we have to believe in “knowledge” and “purpose”, but these qualities are not obvious from observation of the natural world.
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AlNg
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Of course. If you apply the arrow on the upper right side of the post, you will find the complete text of IWantGod that I was replying to.
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Wesrock
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That is, according to its nature as inanimate stone pressed together and circumstances. It’s kind of why we expect results to be repeatable in scientific experiments. In the case of a tree, it would be its tendency to dig roots deep and grow leaves up to the sun such thag it flourishes, or a human making choices to obtain some good (not necessarily moral good).
The Fifth Way is rather hard to wrap the mind around by today’s standards, but the above objections seem somewhat flippant. Anyway…
Hold it! What is a “law of physics?” You write rather surely as if you know it’s some abstract object with causal power. Certainly objects move in ways that can be described by a law of physics, but is that what you’re affirming? And, if you are, do you deny that God is not omnipotent in that he doesn’t create and sustain such laws? Even so, Aquinas would not have held to this view. Laws of physics are not causally powerful abstract objects, they simply describe the natural behaviors intrinsic to things that exist. That is, it just is in the nature of an object with mass to create what we call a gravtiy well around it, and in the nature of space to be warped in that way.
See previous comment.
There are things that don’t obtain to specific natural ends or behaviors?
Well, rather, unintelligent things that can’t causally conserve their own existence can’t cause their own natures or direct their own natures to obtain their natural ends. You might not have understood what you were doing, but you also posited that natural things can’t direct themselves, but attempt to explain it with abstract, causally powerful realities that God didn’t create. You just have these physical laws being the cause, or rather, the things that draw the arrow.
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Wesrock
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The Fifth Way is the most abstract of the five ways presented, and what’s in the ST is incredibly cursory and condensed. Many people don’t dig deeper to try to figure out what Aquinas was writing about to really know what they’re rejecting or accepting. It just looks wonky at first glance.
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Hugh_Farey
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I don’t think so. The flippancy, if there was any, was in describing the action of inanimate objects, “acting always, or nearly always, in the same way” as “to obtain the best result.” This is clearly a judgement. It is not a reference to repeatability - that is covered by "“acting always, or nearly always, in the same way”. If it is a reference to the fact that it is “best” for plants that their roots grow down and their leaves grow up (which I agree is better than the other way round), then I think that Aquinas is in danger of circularity. This “best” result is an inevitable consequence of things “acting always, or nearly always, in the same way”, not a fortuitous one.
No. I’ve never said that the laws of physics in themselves have any casual power. I have, several times, declared that they don’t. I have spoken of the ‘potentiality’ of the First Cause, as distinct from the laws which that potentiality obliges things to fiollow.
Yes.
No, I don’t. What I deny is that it is strictly logical to infer that the creator and sustainer of these laws must be “intelligent”.
Clearly.
Yes; I agree with that.
Not sure what that means.
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Hugh_Farey
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No. You’ve missed the point of practically all my posts on this thread. I begin, as others have, with the assumption that the universe had a beginning. I expand that, as some have found more challenging, to say that time began with the universe, such that if there is anything else, it is a-temporal - it does not exist before or after time, it encapsulates it. And whatever is outside the universe contains both its cause, the power to sustain it, and the laws by which it operates. All this I think (and no doubt he’ll correct me if I’m wrong) would be acceptable to atheists as well as theists.
But the question posed by the OP is why we should think that this a-temporal cause should be ‘intelligent.’ Why does it necessarily have to have an intention to do what it does, a purpose behind its intention, or a conscious knowledge of what is going on? That, I suspect, is the crux where theists and atheists differ in their views, and for the life of me I cannot think of a logical way of bringing Bradskii round. Neither, so far, has anyone else.
I can, of course, think of lots of emotional ways, but neither scientists nor atheists will accept these as binding.
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Wesrock
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Why are you breaking up the wording? We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result.
It’s one thought, not two. Aquinas is simply speaking of thing’s natural tendencies and obtaining their natural ends. For non-living objects this just refers to their natural tendencies to obtain results consistent with how they’re described mathematically. Aquinas, who would not have had the modern physical knowledge today, would have seen it as the natural tendency of an object to move down towards the Earth, and this natural tendency could be interrupted or prevented from obtaining by other factors. Still, the principle is the same. As for “best,” do you lack the context that Aquinas has on the convertibility of being and goodness? The better something obtains its natural ends the better it instantiates what it is. Therefore, when something obtains to its natural ends, it is good in itself, it is in a sense tending towards its own perfection, insofar as it’s “being what it is”.
I had more on the Intelligence of God in general, but have decided not to post it now. Needs more time and effort, and some prior efforts I’ve made have yet to even be responded to.
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Wesrock
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Why start with that premise? Not all of us have.
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fisherman_carl
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To me it much simpler that intelligence should have always existed rather than it should have come about through random chance. We all agree that something always existed so that there is something now. Is it not also reasonable to conclude that intelligence always existed so that we have intelligence now?
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Hugh_Farey
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Well I think I follow that. Its just that for an object to achieve the ‘best’ result implies that there are ‘worse’ results. An example of something inanimate acting in its natural way and achieving a worse result than something else doing the same would clarify things further, I think.
It saves time, in this particular discussion.
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Hugh_Farey
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It seems simple, but can the same be true of other human attributes? Curiosity, or patience, for example. Have they always existed too?
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