/lit/ - Literature

Aquinas' Five Proofs are pretty good, and I think the Unmoved Mover tops them all. I've never seen an atheist successfully refute the Unmoved Mover, especially now that we know the universe has an actual beginning rather than just being unchanging and eternal (as some of the pagan philosophers have held). The natural sciences, by discovering the Big Bang, have made it MORE likely that Aquinas is right in his proofs, not less.

Descartes' "I think therefore I am" is merely a restating of Saint Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof of the existence of God, but with the self coming first rather than God coming first.

Fun fact: Descartes' contemporaries were embarrassed by "I think therefore I am," because they recognized it as similar to Anselm's proof, and because Thomas Aquinas had refuted Anselm's proof so definitively that nobody touched it again until Descartes himself, 400 years later.

>>21571344
>He and his ilk aren't going to rule the Church forever

This really is the correct attitude. I think Francis is one of the worst Popes in the entire history of the Church, but we HAVE survived people as bad as him before. We survived Alexander VI. We survived Formosa. We survived the antipopes.

Pray, work for reform, and trust in God. This too shall past.

>>21441799
>I have no idea why people think that post-Christ thinkers being influenced by pagan philosophy is some kind of BANTZ... Christ did not come to deliver a definitive philosophy, but to reveal the truth about man and God. Absolute Truth of course can be reconciled with philosophical truth, there's literally no reason why it couldn't.

Holy shit someone who's actually intelligent.

The entire reason scholastic theology even exists is because when the West regained Aristotle he seemed to have definitive answers for a lot of topics and questions. Christians could either stick their heads in the sand and ignore him, or they could engage with him. They did the latter, and so we get Aquinas, Bonaventure, Scotus, etc..

It's not wrong to pull what's True from non-Christian traditions and make use of it. You just need to keep in mind that Scripture has the final word when there's a dispute.

>>18204175
>I guess my point of interest would be philosophy of religion currently
assuming you are speaking of Christianity, I highly recommend you start with the socratics (Socrates, Plato, and esp. Aristotle) so you can understand what the Christian philosophers were talking about.
>St. Augustine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_libero_arbitrio_(Augustine_book)
>St. Aquinas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Theologica

>>15351000
Well the argument stems more from Aristotle, but Aquinas refined it and used it as the "first way". As for the "infinitely long chain of events" argument, you seem to misunderstand what is meant by this statement. The infinitely long chain of events being discussed is not just a infinite regress, but an infinite hierarchical regress, which is to say a regress that is happening here, now, and at all times. It is not like an infinite life of dominoes falling, but more like an infinity long wire, but that inst plugged into anything, or an infinitely long paint brush with no painter. It ties into the argument from contingency, it doesn't matter how far back you go in time, if all things are fundamentally contingent, than nothing can exist at all, that is why there must be an contingency ground of contingency (or in the case of the first way, and un-actualized actualizer), and this we call God.

>>14839092
>Book ends due to divine revelation.