/lit/ - Literature

But dude he *literally* proved god

God is the same whatever the contingent organisation of created being happens to be. To be Being Itself is not to be one way among others, i.e., to exist in some finite, qualified sense, but precisely to be the unqualified act of existing itself.

The being of the universe is not God's being, but its own, qualified mode of being. The universe is dependent, not identical to God, so its being susceptible of change and contingency doesn't imply the same for God. In other words, God's extrinsic relations to creation may be contingent, but that's due to contingencies not in God himself, but in the created things.

>>6995746
>God is the same whatever the contingent organisation of created being happens to be. To be Being Itself is not to be one way among others, i.e., to exist in some finite, qualified sense, but precisely to be the unqualified act of existing itself.

Right, but the fact that creation has the potential to be done in another way and was not done that way shows that this infinite power has potentiality and thus God isn't truly pure actuality. That creation had a defined organization when it could be defined another way by God is precisely God's doing.

Why God made electrons when he didn't have to is an issue for the idea of pure actuality. If he did make something without electrons (multiverse, for example) you'd still have to explain why that multiverse is there and not here and explain the defined organization.

>>6995325
I swear I've seen OP and this first post like five times now, and I'm sure it's just deja vu.

>>6997398
pure actuality just means that it doesnt have any passive potentiality (capacity to being changed) not that it lacks active potentiality (capacity to change)

>>6997432
No, that's exactly what being immutable means. Incapacity to change.

>>6997447
yes, but not incapacity to exercise change
if something doesnt have any active potentiality then it doesnt exist

dimwits. god transcends all dichotomy, duality and paradox

god is not pure actuality/being
god is not pure potentiality/becoming
god is whole - there is nothing that god lacks. in this way you could say this is purely actual, but it is absurd to refer to god to this way as it is still a limitation
god has no limitation
you are still quantifying god, though abstractly, in a paradox of actual and potential. again, god being the source of all things, while not contingent in any relation to anything, is utterly beyond all things...

>>6997517
>Special pleading
Do you not see how this is erroneous? The statement "all x have y property" cannot be true if "except this specific x which does not" is also true.

>>6997517
stfu ockham luther is all your fault go back to writing logic lmao

>>6997540
what are you saying exactly?

>>6997471
That is true but that is irrelevant. Change is the actualization of potentials not previously actualized. Having active potentialities is just a different way of wording having actualities. God being pure actuality thus includes a lack of capacity to change.

You still have to get back as to why things are one way and not another.

>>6997432
Don't those two concepts contradict with each other? Before you decide to change something and act on it, something has to change within yourself. Having thoughts that are different from the thoughts you have previously is change. You can't do something without first making a decision to it. Making a decision is "passive potentiality".

>>6997584
>You still have to get back as to why things are one way and not another.
as to why there is this world instead of another possible world?

>>6997592
>You can't do something without first making a decision to it.
of course you can, or do you decide every single activity you do on a single day?

>>6997596
More general than that - why is the organization of creation defined in the way it is and not in another way?

I don't mean to ask what was God thinking but rather see what that says about God. God is pure actuality and thus has no potentials. The ability for God to have made something in a specific way when it could (and arguably still can) be made it in another way is a potentiality God would have. Thus, God could not have made creation in another way despite what Aquinas says.

>>6997626
>The ability for God to have made something in a specific way when it could (and arguably still can) be made it in another way is a potentiality God would have.
but it isnt the kind of potentiality we talk about when we say God is without potentiality. When we talk about God not having any potentials we mean he doesnt have any receptive potential.

>>6997626
>God is pure actuality and thus has no potentials.
Again, this is wrong. You are limiting God. God is not "this" or "that," God simply is. You're still dualizing the primacy of what is essentially absolute.

>>6997687
>God simply is
>is
Ayy.

>>6997687
Could you explain to me what you mean here?
Could you explain to me how what exists is just an actualization of what God could make?

I'm very curious and willing to listen. To seems that God being able to create a world without gravity is entirely possible due to God's omnipotence and remains a potentiality then.

>>6997687
how is Pure Actuality, that which is beyond any genus, Being itself, unrestricted by anything, limiting?

>>6997707
>To seems that God being able to create a world without gravity is entirely possible due to God's omnipotence and remains a potentiality then.
an active potentiality, yes
wholly compatible with a Purely Actual being

>>6995311

>>6997398

>Right, but the fact that creation has the potential to be done in another way and was not done that way

Does not entail

> that this infinite power has potentiality and thus God isn't truly pure actuality.

The potentiality is on the side of creation, not on the side of God. You're jumping past some inferences you are making here, because your conclusion does not deductively follow from your premises.

I think this may be an issue without time and modality. I'm trying to figure out exactly what you are getting at here.

Do you think that because the world could have been otherwise that this means that God needs to have potency in his power for the situation when he hypothetically does make it otherwise ? So that right now he has possible world X actualized, but has in him the capacity to instantiate possible world y and z potentially, but has yet to do so? If so your error is that you are temporally binding God.

God is eternal, thus all of time exists in a single eternal instant to him. There is no time on the side of God where God does something different from what he has done before, his act is all eternal and is singular.

There are two different sense of possibility you have to disambiguate here: the sense of what is possible qua God's actual power ( which is limitless) and what is possible qua it is "still open" to being instantiated in the world or not. You are running on the idea that if x is within God's power, that there must be some time t in the future that is undetermined where x may or may not come about, such that to say " God could possibly do x" is related to this temporal form of modality.

But " God could possibly do X" in this sense is only intelligible from our own view of time, in God's view of time there is only the instant- so "God could possibly do x" in reference to God's time must always been seen as " God could have done x". And "done" must be taken as simply meaning " God has the power to be like x rather than y" even though in a temporal sense, this will never come to be.

this is gonna be one cheeky thread

Aquinas is obtuse, boring, purposefully convoluted, outdated, and wrong.

This meme is unfunny.

>>6997731
But anon, how else would christposters fill their miserable days?

>>6997731
>unsubstantial claims
Knowledge was a mistake and totally worthless.

>>6997746
doesn't even exist xD

>>6997715

I should act that the " God could be like x rather than y" needs to be taken not in his self contained ontological status, but only in relation to his creation.

>>6997622
Instinctual actions are innate and are devoid of conscious processes. Habitual actions are learned. Learning is an internal change. If you do something without changing something inside yourself first, that would imply that your action doesn't stem from a conscious and intelligent decision-making process or that you're unaffected by your environment.

Intelligence and immutability are mutually exclusive. Without the need to learn due to not having any environmental pressure, there's no use for intelligence nor consciousness. If God is pure, knows all, and can do all, then he's not conscious nor intelligent. He's a pure machine.

>>6997762
why does intelligence needs to be able to learn?

God isn't even necessary.

The unmoved mover is unsubstantiated and expects us to take God's exceptionalism as fiat.

Furthermore, the actual faith Aquinas is arguing for has been revised in historical times in ways that contradict it's own former canon.

The "divine inspiration" argument, that later translators were "closer to the will of God" relies on all previous attempts at transcribing the will of God being flawed - which is nonsensical, because God is alleged to be "perfect", and as such, would communicate his will with utter clarity.

Has Christianity really become so debased that it's reduced to being a meme argued over on insonsequential web forums?

What an undignified battleground to die on.

When people like OP argue Aquinas in this way it almost feels like they're legitimizing Aquinas. You don't even have to fucking argue all this potentiality/actuality bullshit to dismantle Aquinas' retarded argument. The argument is self-defeating; just because parts of the system need to have a cause doesn't mean the system needs to have a cause. aka instead of being a fucking retard and jumping to the erroneous conclusion that God is the unmoved mover you can just end it there in which the universe itself is the unmoved mover

>>6997778
Universe is just everything that exists, if the parts of the universe have a cause then the universe has a cause. There is no fallacy in this argument from composition

>>6997707
>>6997709

Being implies becoming. Actuality implies potentiality. Hot implies cold, push implies pull, and all the way down the line.
When you say God is pure actuality and thus NOT potentiality, you limit what exists absolutely by dichotimizing it's nature. By splitting it into two, and thus fragmenting the essential transcendence of God.
Simply put, God is and isn't simultaneously. God is Prime and exists outside/above dichotomy, though dichotomy is a caused by God.

>>6997785
what the fuck are you talking about? NO! JUST BECAUSE SUBSETS OF THE GIVEN SYSTEM NEED A CAUSE DOESNT MEAN THE SYSTEM NEEDS A CAUSE! THATS JUST UTTER BULLSHIT! AND YES, ITS A NON SEQUITUR

>>6997769
Because otherwise it cannot react to out of context phenomena in any way.

Which would make it a machine.

>>6997770

>The unmoved mover is unsubstantiated and expects us to take God's exceptionalism as fiat.

You do realize that the actual establishment of the first cause as God goes beyond the regular form of the argument that establishes the first cause right ?. It's not Aquinas stopped at the first cause existing and just took the whole project as being done there.

>The "divine inspiration" argument, that later translators were "closer to the will of God" relies on all previous attempts at transcribing the will of God being flawed - which is nonsensical, because God is alleged to be "perfect", and as such, would communicate his will with utter clarity.

Error on the side of humanity is not error on the side of God. Not to mention that it could very well be that God's intention is for different interpretations of his one truth be communicated throughout history. Why does God need to communicate his will with "utter clarity" and finality in order to be perfect himself ? He only needs to be able to do so, not actually do so.

It may actually be the case that a greater perfection results by doing it this way. God is infinite while the world is finite, meaning that the fullness of God can never be fully instantiated in the world or comprehended by finite minds. Thus any communication of God onto the finite must be definition always be incomplete, not yet reaching the infinity of God, and never able to.

>>6997797
what? please explain
>>6997789
stfu ockham you hippie nominalist

>>6997805
>stfu ockham you hippie nominalist

literally what

>>6997803
Your arguments are transparent excuse-making.

Your faith has been revised multiple times - not under the will of God, but under the will of man.

It's derivation from particulate matter from other sources is evidence enough for this.

It's messianic archetype and angels borrowed wholesale from Zarathustra, and it;s base materials being archaic and Jewish.

Why as such, when the artificial geneaology of these ideas is so evident, should we consider your arguments to be anything but those of one who has already come to his concludion, and now seeks to find a proof for it?

Intellectual dishonesty is the hallmark of Christian rhetoric - your ideas need a razor taken to them - I suggest Occam's.

>>6997821
>your ideas need a razor taken to them - I suggest Occam's.

>>6997821
>your ideas need a razor taken to them - I suggest Occam's.
>Occam's
Here is a paper that deserves to be better known. In an article published in Mind 27 (1918), 345-353, William Thorburn gives convincing evidence that what is now called 'Ockham's Razor', the principle that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, is a 'modern myth'. He concludes

1. That the maxim 'Entities should not be multiplied without necessity' (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem is not medieval at all, but was invented in 1639, substantially in its present wording, by the Scotist Commentator, John Ponce of Cork.
2. It does capture the spirit of genuinely medieval maxims of the form 'plurality is not to be supposed without necessity (Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate).
3. However, these maxims, though employed by Ockham, did not originate with him. Earlier philosophers, such as Scotus, also used them.
4. The maxim 'Entia non sunt &c' was first associated with Nominalism by Leibniz in 1670.
5. The label 'Ockham's Razor' was first applied in 1852 by Sir William Hamilton.

>>6997778

Yeah, you don't get the argument. The universe changes, implying that it has potencies that are actualized. The argument establishes that for there to be a causal series at all, I.E. in which the members have potencies that are actualized, that there must be something purely actual and unchanging( as otherwise there would have to be something for it to receive the actuality for these potentialities from, and that thing would be the first cause, not it), that has causal power/ actuality primarily for these things to derive their actuality from. What ever is that from which this actuality is derived from by definition cannot have any unactualized potencies in it and therefore is eternal and unchanging itself. The universe does not fit this definition.

Thus itt god was proven once again

>>6997865
*literally *

>>6997769
The point of intelligence is for learning. If there's no need to learn because, in God's case, he's all-knowing, then whatever actions that occur would logically be subconscious with no decision-making involved. There's no point in thinking when you already know the result of all possible combination of actions.

There's a study that shows intelligent people actually use less of their brain than less-intelligent people. The article suggests that intelligent people's minds are less active because their neural connections are more efficient. If you scale brain power up to infinity, an infinitely intelligent brain would be completely inactive. A problem, even if it's infinitely complicated, would instantly yield a solution.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-butterfly/201006/oxymoron-intelligent-people-use-less-their-brain

God, if he exists, does not need to think at all.

>>6997875
Tbh (to be honest)

>>6997821

>Why as such, when the artificial geneaology of these ideas is so evident, should we consider your arguments to be anything but those of one who has already come to his concludion, and now seeks to find a proof for it?

Because I can actually make arguments where the conclusions follow from the premises, where you cannot answer them rationally, nor have coherent arguments.

> Other religions had similar elements to your religion, and even influenced it's formation.
> Therefore you are arguing dishonestly for your religion's conclusions.

Is a momentous non-sequitur.

All this post has pointed out is that God had already begun instantiating his truth through other religions before instantiating the true one through Christ.

>>6997858
The key issue I take with you, is not the needless complexity of the forms you present, but the intellectual dishonesty with which you and your ilk present them.

The razor is just the barb at the end.

Every Christian apolgist is a liar, and a knowing one.

>>6997878
>The point of intelligence is for learning.
is to attain truth
> If there's no need to learn because, in God's case, he's all-knowing, then whatever actions that occur would logically be subconscious with no decision-making involved.
that doesnt follow, he would still have to choose whether a,b or c will happen or not.
Also, why apply subconcious to God? That implies an essence/existence distinction, which isnt in God

>>6997894
Intentional misinterpretation is not an argument.

Try again.

And stop lying - if your reverence for God is so great, then you should not speak falsehood in his name, worm.

>>6997894
Was getting caught part of his plan?

>>6997878
Then, why follow the mandates of a being that does not think?

Why not break the machine for the sheer hell of it?

What moral authority can a creature without a mind possess?

>>6997905

Explain how I've misinterpreted you then. And demonstrate how I am lying.

>>6997862
No, you don't get my argument clearly. All this actuality potentiality bullshit only applies to subsets of the system; you simply can't fucking say that the universe can't cause things without needing a cause. The conclusion doesn't follow the premises.

>>6997913

>What moral authority can a creature without a mind possess?

The term "creature" implies being created by God, God did not create himself. I could also ask " why follow the mandates of a being that is so limited that they have to think?" in order to support why divine authority should be respected. Being limited by having to think about things to know them is the deprivation here.

>>6997917
You know yourself a liar and an excuse maker, though you deny it publically as a matter of course. What need have I to convince you?

You use no proofs, because proof is meaningless when arguing for a nothing - so you can do nothing but interpret and warp.

Your book is ahistorical, and when pestered over this the usual response is that the parts taken issue with are Allegorical, in contravention to prior church stances.

Your faith is the sheerest essence of inconsistency, and you plug these inconsistencies with transparent excuses postulated from out of thine arse.

You are a liar before your God, and more importantly, before your fellow man.

>>6997946
Still not convincing that God has any rightful authority over me.

Did you guys know that Aquinas almost rhymes with Vaginas???

>knows that the universe is simply a linear progression of causes
>my beliefs were just caused by things eventually going back to a mover that can't be moved
>but I know this to be true
>lol

>>6997928

>All this actuality potentiality bullshit only applies to subsets of the system

Is equivalent to saying

> The universe does not undergo change.

And my argument holds because the premise is false, the universe does undergo change because when something changes in the universe, the universe itself changes. This is true unless you want to say that there is something that is "the universe" that does not extend to things we would normally claim to be within the universe- such that the creation of several galaxies does nothing to change "the universe". Then you would be saying that there is something distinct from the causal series we experience in our day to day life called " the universe" and that this causes the actual causal series itself.

Also, how is the universe " a system", rather than a collection of beings, forces, and the like ? There is an underlying systematic regularity in the universe surely, but the "system" is something we abstract from the real things in the universe. It does not causally effect them in any way, it is an abstraction that we take from these real things.

>>6997821
All your posts reek of being an intellectual try hard.

The genealogy of religion proves none of the things that you suggested and in the grander scale can be promoted to further the trial of man under God, ultimately which is the path of the faithful.

You are aware of none of these things that have been debated centuries before we existed.

Read a book once in a while.

>>6997992
I don't need to.

I can smell a rat down nine thousand miles of ethernet cable.

You are a spreader of falsehoods, and a great Satan.

Your glib excuses are not sufficient to fill the yawning holes in what you are trying to defend, and you debase the thing itself with your dishonesty.

In the end, you will taint the thing you seek to defend by betraying it's principals.

>>6997958

So no actual arguments for your position then ?
No actual response to >>6997803 ?

I love how the Anti Thomists always have to resort to ad hominem because they can't argue their positions. OP is an exception to this rule, that was a good question OP. I hope to see more like it in the future.

>>6997962
What entails "rightful authority" to you ?

>>6998010
Whatever power I consent to follow.
- None.
Ego Vult.

>>6998010
You are a charlatan, what argument is necessary to refute you besides a clip round the ear for your poor character?

>>6997899
>that doesnt follow, he would still have to choose whether a,b or c will happen or not.

Choice implies several things: thinking and lack of complete control. For a truly omniscient and ominopotent entity, there's no need to make a choice. The action to take would be immediately obvious.

>Also, why apply subconcious to God? That implies an essence/existence distinction, which isnt in God

I was trying illustrate why there's no need for God to think, not suggesting that he had some sort of physical or biological component.

>>6998009
Nice way to deflect from the fact you don't shit about what you're talking about.

Your post here is a perfect example of every post you've made so far. A bunch of nothing from someone who knows nothing.

Move on folks, you're debating with a literal retard.

Itt
Thomists deperately trying not to choke on low grade bait but failing.
Protip: Gluttony is an actual sin

>>6998037
LIAR
I
A
R

Liar.

>>6998015

>>6998033
God still needs to chose, but he doesn't chose in time, all of his choices are instantaneous and fully informed. Hence while his intellect is without choice or variation, his will to, for example, chose being x to exist instead of being y, is a choice, he atemporally deliberates/deliberated. But >>6997592 still does not hold, for reasons explained here >>6997715 .

>>6998018
Well actually establishing the truth of
>You are a charlatan
would be a good start. But I'm pretty sure you are a troll now, so good job in getting me to respond.

>>6998045

On the other hand, Charity is a virtue, and this guy may actually be so retarded that he is serious. Thus we should be charitable and try to dissuade him from his error.

>>6998059
How do you know what god does?

>>6998059

Oh hey I forgot to respond to >>6998015


Why does " the power you consent to follow" entail rightful authority over you? This would mean that any ruler, no matter how stupid, malicious, or petty has rightful authority over anyone who consents to their authority. Why is it that qualitative superiority of one rule over the other means nothing to you ?

>>6997981
really I don't understand what you're trying to say

I don't see the equivalence; I wish you'd restate your argument before saying it holds; how you can say the universe needs a cause

I just can't follow this argument;

>>6998094
The quality of my superior is for me to judge alone.

A man chooses who to follow - an Alexander or a Napoleon.

Rather a mighty Warlord than a figment.

Throw down your scripture and worship at the altar of Heroism.

>>6998116
So in other words you like sucking dick.

>>6998129
Categorically, I'd prefer to get mine sucked, but hey, you take what you can get.

>>6998088

Well I start with what is known to me about the natural world, mix in deductive reasoning based on logical truths, come to the conception of a being that I call God as the first cause . From this I show how the contingent or even possible existence of this first cause entails the necessity of it's existence( since we COULD have had a world where the contingent facts like the existence of causation, etc, were not so, this step is necessary), and then find what is logically necessary from this concept to complete it. When all is said and done the God of Christian Scripture ends up being almost completely identical to the first cause and we can know quite a bit a about his workings.

Though, of course, God is infinite, so it is not clear that humans can have full knowledge of him while in our current state. We would have to determine if it is possible for humans to actually receive infinite knowledge.

Also, a few things, like the Trinity, I take on faith in divine revelation, though I am confident that it can be shown to not be logically inconsistent. Given how much else of the scriptures are correct, this makes it's truth highly probable and definitely acceptable to hold on faith. So my total knowledge of God has varying degrees in it.

>>6998097

It may help to actually go over the argument from the beginning. To get it clear what exactly is being argued for.

1. Causation exists.( Empirical Premise)

2. Act and Potency are terms that we can use to explain causation: When something is in Potency it has the capacity to become something else, but is not it yet. A fertilized egg has the potency to turn into a chick, an unfertilized egg does not. When a potency is realized, it is actual. To actualize a potency is to take a property that something had in potency and make it actually inhere in the thing.

3. When we find an instance of causation in the world we find some potency being actualized.

4. Something that is only in potency cannot actualize anything.

5. For some potency to be actualized something actual must actualize it.

6. If A is actualized by B, then B must first be actual.

7. Either something must have actualized B from being in potency to be in actuality. Or B is either necessarily actual, having never been in potency before. ( A v B)

8. If the left disjunct “A” is true then premise 7 applies to a new cause C.

9. If disjunct “B” is true there is a “first” uncaused cause that is pure actuality.

10. If disjunct “B” is never the case then there is an infinite series of actualizations. And we can apply 7 to C, then to a new cause D, and so forth. With every being having its actuality derived from another being.

11. If “10” is the case then there can be no actualization, as every being in the series has its actuality derived from another being, but there is no being with actuality on it's own to derive the actuality from.

12. If “10” is the case there is no causation

13. There is causation ( from premise 1)

14. Premise “10” is not the case.

15. If premise 10 is not the case, then at some point in the series “9” is the case.

16. There is a first cause, which is a being of pure actuality.

1/2

>>6998318

Now you want to say that we don't need God, but can instead have "the universe" take on this role as a first cause. So lets assume that “the universe” is the first cause described by the argument. “The universe” is therefore purely actual. If something changes from state A to state B then that means that the thing while in state A had the potency to have something actualized such that it would turn into state B. But if something is a first cause, no potencies in it can be actualized, as there is nothing prior to it to actualize these potencies in it. Thus the purely actual being cannot change. This means that the universe cannot change. But this is incoherent, for the definition of “the universe” is simply everything that exists "considered" as a whole. It is a vicious abstraction. When a planet explodes, the universe changes because the set of things being considered as a whole has changed. “The universe” does change, therefore it cannot be the first cause.
The only way you can get out of this is by saying that " the universe" is something distinct from the members of “the universe”, such that it does not change when something we experience changes ( like the causal series we experiencing resulting in new potencies being actualized in nature, t1 when the planet exists and t2 when the planet explodes must both correspond to an identical universe). These things that change cannot be members of “the universe”. To do this would just to say that there is something distinct from the other causes called " the universe" that is the first cause of our causal order. This is merely making “the universe” synonymous with God, not replacing God with something actually ontologically distinct from him.

2/2

>>6997821

>Your faith has been revised multiple times - not under the will of God, but under the will of man.

Religion is an attempt by human beings to understand something that is far beyond the comprehension of man. Of course it's subject to change, just like theories regarding the nature of the atom changed and are likely to change again.

>>6997962

It doesn't matter whether you acknowledge the rightful authority of God or not. God is the perfect being and the ultimate truth. If you want to cut yourself off from that (and hell is nothing but a metaphor for this estrangement) then that is entirely your affair. If you had studied the Torah at all then you'd realise that God provides guidance for the benefit of man, and not the other way around.

>>6998331
ok so I have a few questions, some perhaps more legitimate than others; if God is purely actual wouldn't he had to have changed to create a universe? and I don't get how the universe isn't separate from its parts; denoting the universe as the number "12", 7 + 5 = 12 is synthetic a priori (ie "=12" isn't contained within "7+5".

>>6997715
OP here I'm trying to grasp this post.

>Do you think that because the world could have been otherwise that this means that God needs to have potency in his power for the situation when he hypothetically does make it otherwise ? So that right now he has possible world X actualized, but has in him the capacity to instantiate possible world y and z potentially, but has yet to do so? If so your error is that you are temporally binding God.

How could this be when things such as the miraculous can be actualized in a specific point in time?

I think your post focuses too much on the idea that God could change things up at any moment rather than my core point that what God does create does not have to exist as it is. From your line:

>The potentiality is on the side of creation, not on the side of God

it seems like what you're getting at that God adds in the seed (this might be too temporal-sounding) or push that causes all things to exist at all times but could that seed or push exist in other forms? It is required that it lead to this organization?

If it doesn't, why has God allowed it to be this way and not another way? Further, how does God having the ability to make it one way relate to his status as pure actuality? It seems to contradict it.

If it does, does that put finite limits of expression on God?

>>6998408
>if God is purely actual wouldn't he had to have changed to create a universe?
nah not really, because of>>6997432
im not the ScholasticAnon tho

Threadly reminder that Aquinas rejected scholasticism in his later years.

>On the feast of St. Nicholas [in 1273, Aquinas] was celebrating Mass when he received a revelation that so affected him that he wrote and dictated no more, leaving his great work the Summa Theologiae unfinished. To Brother Reginald’s (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, "The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me." When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, "I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw."

>>6998469
No one is sure what revelation he received, don't talk baseless shit

>>6998461
>How could this be when things such as the miraculous can be actualized in a specific point in time?
not ScholasticAnon but
the miraculous arent intervertions, they are things that are of the world, just like a musician cant interfere with the music he plays, God cant interfere with the world he creates, because, like the musician's music, creation comes from him, and to interfere with the order of his creation would be to interfere with himself, which is contradictory.

>it seems like what you're getting at that God adds in the seed (this might be too temporal-sounding) or push that causes all things to exist at all times but could that seed or push exist in other forms?
Maybe, yes
> It is required that it lead to this organization?
No, since it is contingent
>If it doesn't, why has God allowed it to be this way and not another way?
because he wills it this way
>Further, how does God having the ability to make it one way relate to his status as pure actuality? It seems to contradict it.
it doesnt, see active/passive potentiality
>If it does, does that put finite limits of expression on God?
the only limits God can have are those which are of his nature (God cant be not Pure Actuality, God cant be non-rational, etc)

>>6998469
that doesnt sound like a rejection, it just means that the Glory of God is so awesome that it makes human philosophy so small, but not wrong. Also, havent you heard of
>You have written well of me, Thomas

>>6998461
>>6998461
>>6998461

>>6998531
>the miraculous arent intervertions, they are things that are of the world, just like a musician cant interfere with the music he plays, God cant interfere with the world he creates, because, like the musician's music, creation comes from him, and to interfere with the order of his creation would be to interfere with himself, which is contradictory.

Could you explain changing the water into wine as something in the world without intervention?

>it doesnt, see active/passive potentiality

Could you explain the distinction

>>6998487
His quote seems to implying something else...

>>6998487
>is sure what revelation he received

It was one the caused him to cease practicing scholasticism entirely and slander his previous works. You are being willingly ignorant if you think this is just a coincidence

>>6998531

>You have written well of me, Thomas

Thats an explanation cooked up by those who followed after him rather than an actual report from the man himself. Likewise if this writing was so good he doubtless would have denounced it and ceased the entire project.

>>6998551
>Could you explain changing the water into wine as something in the world without intervention?
it is a suspension of a contingent natural law.

An intervertion belongs more to a Demiurge or a Watchmaker Paley style God, but not of the Classical Theistic notion of God.

From Scholastic Metaphysics by Edward Feser

On the side of real or subjective potencies a further distinction is made between active potency, which is the capacity to bring about an effect, and passive potency, which is the capacity to be affected. Fire’s capacity to melt rubber is an active potency, whereas rubber’s capacity to be melted is a passive potency. An active potency is a power; a passive potency is a potentiality in the strict sense. (Cf. Coffey 1970, p. 56)
We will have much to say about active potency in the next section. For the moment let us note that for the Scholastic, active potency is, strictly speaking, a kind of act or actuality (in particular, what is called a “first actuality”); more precisely, it is a kind of act relative to the substance possessing it, though a kind of potency relative to the action it grounds (Koren 1955, p. 59). By “potency” what is usually meant is passive potency. (Cf. Koren 1960, p. 122; Renard 1946, p. 29) Pure active potency or power unmixed with any passive potency or potentiality is just pure actuality, and identified by the Scholastics with God; in everything other than God active potency is mixed with passive potency. This difference is marked by the Scholastic distinction between uncreated active potency and created active potency.

>>6998571
>cease practicing scholasticism entirely and slander his previous works.
he didnt do that though
>Thats an explanation cooked up by those who followed after him rather than an actual report from the man himself. Likewise if this writing was so good he doubtless would have denounced it and ceased the entire project.
>i accept this but deny this because it suits my whim
Ok

>>6997432
Can God change himself?

>>6998408

>if God is purely actual wouldn't he had to have changed to create a universe?

No, because there is no moment in time when God has not created the universe. The first temporal moment of the universe is simultaneous with the eternal moment that God resides in. So there is no change in God from the time when he has yet to create the universe and the time when he has created it, as there is no such moment. The world comes to be with the one unique, and eternal act of God. It just so happens that the power for there to have been another world is not lacking in God. This requires some subtle distinctions in regard to modality and time that I explained here
>>6997715 .

For the numbers example. In this case the set,I.E. "the universe", we are talking about is a collection of all the real things. It may be true that there is something more to the universe than just the raw identity of it's members, certainly a universal set where A is caused by B which is caused by C is distinct from a set where B is caused by C which is caused by A, even though all the members are the same. But in both cases, the whole set would certainly change, if for example, a new thing D was caused that was not there before. So perhaps it is the case the best description of the set we call the universe is " what is, in the way it is"- but the addition of a member, a subtraction of a member, or a change in a member would change both of the above stated criteria. In order for the universe to take up the role of the first cause it would have to, by definition, be completely unchanging. So in order to save it's status as first cause in light of the world it cannot be this extensional set that makes up it's definition.

I think the issue with the mathematics example is that (5+7) cannot be considered an extensional set in this same way the universe is. It is not about real things, but rather concepts ( unless one is a mathematical Platonist- though I'm not sure if even that is enough to ground the analogy). The analogy breaks down because we are dealing with qualitatively different kinds of things here, and It is not clear what exactly is supposed to be the set and what are supposed to be the constituents of the set in your example. If the set is: "Integers that when added together equal twelve" then we would have a set like <5,7> <x,y> <w,z,h> etc But if I changed one of the integers in the first member of the set such that it was now <5,8>, we could no longer call the set "Integers that when added together equal twelve", so the set would not only change, it would be a whole different set. I`m also not sure how 12 is not synonymous with `7+5, along with the other numbers that make up 12 when added together. I never really got Kant's reasoning behind that claim.

>>6998597
>it is a suspension of a contingent natural law.
Caused by what means?

>that distinction
Thank you! I'm confused though. How does that relate to my previous comment here

>Further, how does God having the ability to make it one way relate to his status as pure actuality? It seems to contradict it.

>>6998607
>he didnt do that though

Yeah he just ceased to write and dictate and referring to all his works as straw. Clearly and indicator that he was devoted to scholasticism.

>>i accept this but deny this because it suits my whim

I say this not on a whim but as the result of analysis of the information.

He had a vision as a result of which he refused to write or dictate or otherwise continue the Summa and not only that he stated that this work he had devoted so much time to was simply straw.

These actions do not seem to be consistent with what you are suggesting.

>>6998688
>Caused by what means?
By God suspending the contingent natural law

>How does that relate to my previous comment here
well i take your comment to mean that since the possible worlds God could have made exist only potentially, then God isnt pure actuality, but those possible worlds may be just active potentials which werent actualized. (God has the power for A, B or C, but he did A)

>>6998708
>Yeah he just ceased to write and dictate
he dictated just before he died though
>referring to all his works as straw
not wrong though

>analysing a statement this hard

>rejecting: "You have written well of me, Thomas" because it makes all my analysis fall apartui

>>6998461

>How could this be when things such as the miraculous can be actualized in a specific point in time?

The first part you quoted was me trying to make your position intelligible to myself, so I may be off here. Mainly, I am not sure what your reasoning behind your claim that there is a contradiction between God contingently causing things, such that the world is X but could have been Y, and God being purely actual.

>but could that seed or push exist in other forms? It is required that it lead to this organization?

This seems to me like you are asking if the world as it is is necessary, and could not be otherwise. Since the creation itself is not logically necessary ( the fact that it has a cause entails this since without the cause existing it could not exist) not it does not have to be just the way it is.

>If it doesn't, why has God allowed it to be this way and not another way?

Either his intellect has determined his will towards what ever is most fitting of his perfection, or if there was no logical way for one to be determined rather than another his will would have determined it alone.

What I don't see is how this

> Further, how does God having the ability to make it one way relate to his status as pure actuality?

leads you to here

>It seems to contradict it.

My post was the best I could do in filling in the blanks of why you think this. I still think that the problem is more than likely one based on the modal distinction I was running with in the post.
Since the merely temporally oriented modality I outlined would be required for

>Right, but the fact that creation has the potential to be done in another way and was not done that way

to entail

> that this infinite power has potentiality and thus God isn't truly pure actuality.

One has to do with "statistical" instantiation, and things being "open" in the future for instantiation. And the other, the one that applies to God,is one solely based on causal power itself, as all of time is "closed" and determined to God.

>>6998721
>By God suspending the contingent natural law
How does "God suspending ___" differ from intervention? It seems to be a distinction without a difference. Back up to my original point, how could this be when things such as the miraculous can be actualized in a specific point in time?

>>6998744
Suspension differs from intervention insofar as suspension understands God as being the source of all reality, while intervention understands him as meddling with reality

your original point was already responded to, miracles arent interventions to the natural order, they are part of the natural order

>>6998736
>he dictated just before he died though

He only dictated and wrote until he had his vision after that he refused. Had he continued to do so after his vision your point would be very important.

He didnt stop due to age or health but as a result of his new understanding of God.

>not wrong though

The not wrong part was communicated through his refusal to add to it despite being able. His context regarding it being straw provides context to this decision.

>rejecting: "You have written well of me, Thomas" because it makes all my analysis fall apartui

You still have avoided having to deal with his refusal to continue his project. Which undermines your reasoning. How many more posts will you ignore it for?

The fact that earlier visions or experiences attributed to him that state his work was good does not change his decisions and reasoning.

>>6998790
**
>The wrong part was communicated through his refusal to add to it despite being able. His context regarding it being straw provides context to this decision.

>>6998790
>He only dictated and wrote until he had his vision after that he refused.
no he didnt, he dictated just before his death to some monks trying to settle an issue.

you analized too much but you cant see that he didnt say his work was wrong, nor didi he deny the validity of it

>>6998818
>.no he didnt, he dictated just before his death to some monks trying to settle an issue.

Source?

>>6998835
He was already ill when he was commissioned by the Pope to attend the general council at Lyons, which had for its business the discussion of the reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches. He was to bring with him his treatise, <Against the Errors of the Greeks>. On the way he became so much worse that he was taken to the Cistercian abbey of Fossa Nuova near Terracina. Yielding to the entreaties of the monks, he began to expound the "Song of Songs," but was unable to finish the interpretation.

>>6998852
I meant an acutal source text I could look up that discusses him continuing his work after his vision

>>6998862
you could see any of his biographies, but the fact that he was on his way to debate the Eastern Schism and he dictated to some monks show youre wrong

Source of the quote btw http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/TOMAQUIN.htm

>>6998877
That seems to be inline with his previous actions though according to your page with him continuing on his journey out of obedience to the Pope than to his belief on the value of his doctrine.

>As a young friar in Paris, he was once mistakenly corrected, by the official corrector, while reading aloud the Latin text for the day in the refectory. He accepted the emendation and pronounced what he knew to be a false quantity. On being asked afterwards how he could consent to make so obvious a blunder, he replied, "It matters little whether a syllable be long or short, but it matters much to practice humility and obedience."

>During a stay in Bologna, a lay brother who did not know him ordered him to accompany him to the town where he had business to transact. The prior, it seemed, had told him to take as companion any brother he found disengaged. Thomas was lame and although he was aware that the brother was making a mistake, he followed him at once, and took several scoldings for walking so slowly. Later the lay brother discovered his identity, and was overcome with self-reproach. To his abject apologies Thomas replied simply, "Do not worry, dear brother.... I am the one to blame. . . . I am only sorry I could not be more useful." When others asked him why he had not explained who he was, he answered: "Obedience is the perfection of the religious life; for by it a man submits to man for the love of God, even as God made Himself obedient to men for their salvation."

>>6998915
that applies only to his actions, he was going to debate the Greek doctrine, which i doubt he took lightly like walking slowly or uttering a sentence. Thomas was devoted to God, and he would look with disgust the Greek schism (imagine if he had met Luther or Calvin lol)

but all of that misses my point, since as ive said there is no explicit condemnation on his doctrine by himself, only belittlement

>>6998737
>Mainly, I am not sure what your reasoning behind your claim that there is a contradiction between God contingently causing things, such that the world is X but could have been Y, and God being purely actual.

It comes from grasping what God does and what is.

A: "Why was gravity created? Is it necessary? Could God have not made gravity."
B: "It is not necessary and we do not know why it was created and God could have not made gravity."
A: "Then God's expression is not necessarily determined but due to a choice of the will that could have been different things. This implies potential in God to be doing something different."

Granted this often implies differences in time - which I'm sure you'd be eager to point out the issue with it - but I'm not aware how you could say that the idea that the fundamentals of the creation are not necessary and that God could have done differently (a world without gravity) if there is no prior time they weren't the case. More to the point, God creates from outside time and puts forth the scenario where certain things exist. By virtue of them being caused - you say - they do not have to exist (and by extension you say they don't need to exist in the form they do either) but is it not a realized potential that out of things that could be expressed, one is? You can't say "God could have made a world without gravity" and say God is pure actuality as what could have been done is unrealized potentials.
As a secondary point: that an actualization of creation is consistently happening how does it remain neutral to how creation is? Surely what is being actualized at the moment is different from the moment before and in long stretches of time things can be vastly different. How is this

>Either his intellect has determined his will towards what ever is most fitting of his perfection

Could you explain what you mean here

I'm sorry if I'm sounding difficult, I'm trying to understand.

>>6998936
>that applies only to his actions, he was going to debate the Greek doctrine, which i doubt he took lightly like walking slowly or uttering a sentence. Thomas was devoted to God, and he would look with disgust the Greek schism

Yes but these were times when he acted out of obediance to other monks. One would reasonably assume the Pope would inspire a much greater display from him.

>(imagine if he had met Luther or Calvin lol)

Yeah I know with his views on burning heretics it would have been to say the very least. Honestly though I think a meeting between him and Bacon or even Berkely and Wittgenstein would have been more interesting discussion wise theology wise. Averros would also have made for a good meeting.

>but all of that misses my point, since as ive said there is no explicit condemnation on his doctrine by himself, only belittlement

It is my point though that belittlement combined with a refusal to continue the summa on grounds outside of health amount to an effective condemnation. Its a shame he didnt leave a theological will behind

>>6998957
ive literally answered your argument many times, you are confusing powers with potentials

>>6998972
I actually thought of Luther because the man had a pretty short temper, in contrast to Thomas' patience(i imagine something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avep_1vbUOA ), just look at his feud with Erasmus.
He did dislike Averroes though, he considered him as the corruptor of Aristotle

but belittlement with refusal to continue the summa do not amount to condemnation, if he had burned the summa, maybe, but he didnt, and his friends would have avoided its distribution if it was against the wish of Thomas.

How does a nonphysical god interact with a physical world?

>>6999053
The god of classical theism doesn't, it generates that reality

>>6998721

>but those possible worlds may be just active potentials which werent actualized. (God has the power for A, B or C, but he did A)

This is bullshit. There must be some defining reason why A was done rather than B and C. Some distinction must be made between the options and the interest of the will of God so a choice could be made thus it isn't based on an active potency but a passive one as the situation caused God to act as he did.

>fire example
This requires other things to exist to act upon, not be emitting the thing in question.

>>6998182
>From this I show how the contingent or even possible existence of this first cause entails the necessity of it's existence( since we COULD have had a world where the contingent facts like the existence of causation, etc, were not so, this step is necessary)

how do you find the existence of the first cause being necessary by simply being possible?

>>6999122
the problem is that youre assuming God has passive potential since he can only act by something acting on him, which is begging the question.

Why did he chose this world? Perhaps it's the one which represents his glory more perfectly and rationaly (If youre an Intellectualist), or perhaps he did it because he wanted to (if youre a Voluntarist)

>>6999149

>Perhaps it's the one which represents his glory more perfectly and rationaly (If youre an Intellectualist), or perhaps he did it because he wanted to (if youre a Voluntarist)

Both of which are examples of what I'm talking about. The choices and their rational outcomes influenced God, which is why God chose that one over other choices. If they didn't, they had no real distinction between them and thus there is no reason to choose one or the other.

>>6998761
>miracles arent interventions to the natural order, they are part of the natural order

So Jesus' turning water into wine was part of the natural order when he suspended contingent natural law? Or rather, the wine was always meant to sporadically change from water to wine at that instant? I mean, quantum mechanics says if anything can happen as t->infinity, so it doesn't even have to violate the rules of the universe, and just be a "quantum event." Is that the kind of thing you're thinking of?

I'm not the guy you were talking to.

>they aren't breaking the laws
>they are suspending them by their very source
seems legit

>>6999149
>acting on him
How do you "act on God"?

>>6999311
it kinda makes sense to me

If you have to break your own laws you aren't much of a god, are you?

Hence why the guy said "miracles arent interventions to the natural order, they are part of the natural order." Therefore all miracles must be able to be explained rationally.

Most miracles are just right place at the right time events. Others like the Resurrection and water->wine are quantum events. Jesus also fed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, but how one violates the first law of thermodynamics in this case is a mystery.

Why does every thread on Aquinas only seem to be about the First Way?

Why is there only an infograph for the First Way?

Why are the other Four Ways never discussed?

>>6998973
This is'nt me. I am the one who posted >>6998737 , this person is not.

>>6998957

I think I finally see how to explain this. There was something missing in the explanation before that will make this more salient I hope.

>but I'm not aware how you could say that the idea that the fundamentals of the creation are not necessary and that God could have done differently (a world without gravity) if there is no prior time they weren't the case

refer to >>6997715

"God could have done otherwise" is not about what is "open" to instantiation in some future time, because there are no future times for God. It is what God has the actual causal power for, even if such a thing does not happen to be contained in his single act on the side of his creation. You have to differentiate the two forms of modality at work here that I outlined in my original post.

>God creates from outside time and puts forth the scenario where certain things exist. By virtue of them being caused - you say - they do not have to exist (and by extension you say they don't need to exist in the form they do either) but is it not a realized potential that out of things that could be expressed, one is?

God has all actual possibles within him, some are made to be instantiated in creation by his single act, some are not. The possibles themselves are fully actual within God, but only as possibilities/"ideas", these possibles are that which God uses as causal "molds" so to determine how he sets out his causal power. So every potential being( in terms of what can be instantiated in creation) corresponds to an active possible "mental" content of God by which such a potency in his creation is actualized by. Those which are actually instantiated in his single act do not exhaust all these possibles though, even though the causal source that could have brought them about in the single eternal act are present and active. The way God contains the other possible ways the world could be within him are not through potencies, potencies only make sense in terms of God's creation, which can receive causal power from something else.

> You can't say "God could have made a world without gravity" and say God is pure actuality as what could have been done is unrealized potentials.

But they are not unrealized potencies in God. The potencies only inhere in creation, such that " everything in the set we call 'the universe' has the potency to be subjected to gravity". But there is not this exact same potency within God because he could never be subject to gravity himself. What he has is the "essence" or "idea" of gravity actualized within him by which gravity can or cannot( could or could have not in God's time) flow forth from in the single act creation.

>>6998957

>As a secondary point: that an actualization of creation is consistently happening how does it remain neutral to how creation is? Surely what is being actualized at the moment is different from the moment before and in long stretches of time things can be vastly different. How is this

I don't quite get what you mean with this comment. Becoming only exists in our perspective, in the true perspective of God all our choices and all becoming is all instantaneous with his first act, we just experience it as played out over time.

>>6999359

Scotus said that it would be foolish to say that God "breaks his own law", a King doesn't break his own law, he re-legislates the laws, adds in exceptional clauses ,ect.

>but how one violates the first law of thermodynamics in this case is a mystery.

Well God is omnipotent, he can always plug in more energy into creation when he sees fit.

I'm just going to claim which posts are mine in this thread. I think It gets confusing when multiple users are debating the same posts. having to follow 2 or 3 different lines of thoughts arguing similar but not identical positions gets confusing. Sorry to trip-fag, I won't let it get to my head.

>>6997715
>>6997761
>>6997803
>>6997862
>>6997894
>>6997917
>>6997946
>>6997981
>>6998059
>>6998074
>>6998094
>>6998182
>>6998318
>>6998331
>>6998643
>>6998737

I'll answer >>6999132 shortly.

>>6999132

It is certainly possible that the first cause is a necessary being, the cosmological argument doesn't preclude this possibility, it just can't gaurentee it. This is because the existence of God is only supported from the existence of causation- which is a contingent fact about creation. Thus it is only established contingently that God is the first cause, that this must necessarily be the case, even in a situation in which there was no causation, is yet to be established.

If it is possible for a being to necessarily exist then it is possible for that being to exist on it's own without support from another. If the necessary being does not exist( and we are actually talking about a non-necessary being) then it would not be possible for the being to exist on it's own without support from another. Therefore the necessary being exists.

So we have an argument roughly in this form.

A ( True premise: A possibly necessary being exists)
A = B( If and only if something is a possibly necessary being, it can possibly exists on it's own)
-C = -B ( If and only if the necessary being is non existent then it cannot possibly exist on it's own)
B ( It can possibly exists on it's own, as it is possibly necessary ( from first premise which gaurentees the truth of A)
----------
C ( The Necessary being exists, as -C= -B implies C = B. If A is true, which it is, B is true, and if B is true then C is true.)

Now the way Scotus argues this ( more or less, my version is slightly inventive, but not really) is that he establishes merely that it is possible for something to be produced, and he establishes- via the same general- structure of Aquinas' argument that it is possible for a first cause to exist. And then continues on with this.

>... Thus, an unqualifiedly first being capable of producing can exist in virtue of itself. What does not in fact exist on account of itself cannot exist on account of itself; otherwise the non-existent would produce the existence of something, which is impossible, even apart from the fact that in that case the thing would cause itself and thus would not be entirely uncausable.[ Consequently, an unqualifiedly first being capable of producing does in fact exist on account of itself]

So where my first premise is

>A ( True premise: A possibly necessary being exists)
Scotus' is
>A ( True premise: a necessary being possibly exists)

Now in the case per impossibili that it was established that the idea of a first cause was incoherent, that everything in the causal series HAD to have been produced. Then these premises would not hold. Likewise we cannot use this on any creature that we know to have been actually created or seen to undergo any kind of change, since that would logically preclude it being a necessary being- since it would be derived from the causality of another. So the cosmological argument is needed in some form or another. Where Scotus argues from possibility, I chose to argue from contingency instead.

>>6999484
OP here, thank you much for your responses. Still reading over everything.

Off topic question though: I hear that Scotus and Occam began an intellectual shift away from Aquinas that influenced Luther's thinking in the Reformation. Is this true? What do you think of it? Not sure what the influence truly is.

Thanks for putting the time in this thread, Scottist. Could you do me a favour and answer this guy? It's late here and I don't know if you've addressed his point.

>>6999248

>>6999607

You are very welcome. I write about this stuff in an academic setting and hope to make my livelihood off of teaching it and researching it one day. So I am always grateful for a chance to practice communicating all this. It is certainly not a simple kind of Theology/Philosophy and I am always happy for a friendly disputation,

Both Scotus and Ockham were Franciscans, where Aquinas was a Dominican. The Dominican's were very hard line Aristoteleans, where the Franciscans were always a little more skeptical about Aristotle, not that they wouldn't use him. They had a bit more of a Neo-Platonist bent. In 1277 there was a set of condemnations by the Church against the secular arts masters who were even greater Aristotelean's than the Dominicans. This lead to a widespread intellectual revolt against Aristotle and the advancement of new Theologies that were less Aristotelean ( though certainly no less subtle, powerfull, and intelligent). Scotus arises out of the aftermath of all this right at the turn of the 14th century, being willing to closely follow Aristotle in some cases( since the controversy had largely ended), rejecting him in others, and willing to follow more traditional Franciscan ideas in some cases, and rejecting them in others. He innovated a whole lot as well. I also think there is something of the logico-linguistic focus of the 12th century Theologians in him as well. Scotus was an enigma though, I think he is the hardest to shoe horn into an ideal historical category. . Ockham came along and took a fair amount from Scotus, while rejecting most of his positive conclusions in natural theology. Ockham wanted to show that reason and faith were incommensurable in service of the faith, he felt that Christiandom was being strangled by foreign ideas that it did not need. He was more of the type who believed in God's completely inscrutable omnipotence, that the intellect had no chance what so ever of even approaching. He lead to a wider separation between Theology and Philosophy than was seen before in the 13th century and in thinkers like Scotus. Luther took influence from Ockham in this regard, though unlike Luther Ockham still respected Philosophy and Aristotle.

>>6999672
Do you have any thoughts on Neoplatonism in particular figures like proclus?

How accurate would it be to say that the 20th Century analytics are the successors of Aristotle?

>>6999672
You certainly have a knack for it.

>In 1277 there was a set of condemnations by the Church against the secular arts masters who were even greater Aristotelean's than the Dominicans. This lead to a widespread intellectual revolt against Aristotle and the advancement of new Theologies that were less Aristotelean ( though certainly no less subtle, powerfull, and intelligent).

Simply because there are academic masters using the same line of thought they did outside the church they revolt? Why the interest in revolting?

>( though certainly no less subtle, powerfull, and intelligent)
Expressly denying systems of thought not on their own grounds but for political reasons is heinous in itself.

>>6999670

You are very welcome. I will try, I need to go and get studying soon so I will leave the thread after this post.

>>6999248
> The choices and their rational outcomes influenced God

Strictly speaking they did not influence God. Since God determines the outcome he does not "receive" the outcome. God selects not by being affected by the object of his choice itself, but rather he has the possibilities of these objects actively as a part of him and does everything he does instantaneously in his single eternal act without need for any sort of prolonged deliberation about which ones to instantiate, since he has all the "ideas" of them as a part of him. It is only when there are seperate moments involved and a lack of knowledge does choice need to be accompanied by passive deliberation. Such that in moment one I know not what to do and need to deliberate, and in moment two i deliberate, without this lack that can only be present in creatures outside of eternity, there is no need for something to go from potency to actuality in the case of choice.

I think the main thing that makes this intelligible gets covered by >>6999484 , in the largest paragraph.

>>6999505
>Becoming only exists in our perspective, in the true perspective of God all our choices and all becoming is all instantaneous with his first act, we just experience it as played out over time.
So in the act of creation, the "fullness of being" is emptied out at once and how we perceive it coming to us is over time and through all creation?

Ok i'll quickly do these as well, and then I will go.


>>6999701

Well some of the fullness of being remains internal to God. But yes, that is the general idea. It makes me think that the four dimensional block universe supporters are
correct actually.


>>6999686

I was into Plotinus and Emanationism before Scholasticism. The Enneads in their entirely are sitting on my book shelf. But I never got quite so big into it. Analytic Philosophy is certainly closer to Aristotle and Scholasticism than Continental Philosophy and German Idealism. Analytic Philosophy still has lots of influence from early modern Philosophy, Frege's logic, and mathematics that Aristotle of course did not have.

>>6999688

Thanks. In part is was also a revolt against the Dominicans. At one time Aquinas almost even got in some trouble. Most of the arts masters were going on saying things like: " according to Philosophy x is true, but according to Faith y is true" without being willing to subordinate Philosophies' claim to faiths claim. The Church did not like this. Certain parts of Aristotle's Philosophy could not be reconciled, and perhaps even could use some improvement on purely rational grounds. Aquinas was not totally opposed to this, he disagreed with Aristotle some of the time himself on rational grounds. The arts masters were kind of treating Aristotle as if his works were a kind of bible ( often they were going by Averroes' interpretation as well, which has some particularly heretical parts to it). This of course was not pleasing to the Church nor many theologians.And in some cases it was stagnating.

While the motivation may have not been great, the results were arguably a good thing, since allot of the innovations of modern science grew out of rejecting Aristotle on these grounds in the 14th century, like the possibility of heliocentricism and the possibility of a vacuume, which was established though never quite made into positive theories. Also I think that Scotus' Theology is probably the best thing to come out of the whole tradition, and I see that as being a direct result of the Philosophical culture of the post 1277 world. If it can be shown that Christianity is on higher grounds than Aristotelean Philosophy rationally then I see no need to fret why the project was undertaken in the first place, so as long as the results were good. Just as I could care less that Aquinas believed in God before he made his proofs, it is the actual content that matters to me, and in both cases the content is solid and rigorous. So while it might seem odd for me to throw Aristotle an Scholasticism under the bus after spending a thread defending it. Sometimes a push from the outside can help move a discipline along in a positive direction.

>>6999742
What caused you to find Scholasticism closer to the truth than Neoplatonism?

Why wasn't aristotle very popular with the analytics outside of Anscombe?

Are there any good works that make a decent attempt at critiquing scholasticm? It seems like the only people who criticise it do so in strawmans and have very little understanding of Aristotle and the source materials.

Pythagoreanism>Hermetic Asatru Gnosticism>Epicurean Atomism>Death Buddhism>Finnish Hero Worship>Death Catholicism>Cynic Logic Worship>Hegelian Sikhism>>>>>>>>>>Rest

What's the stance of our resident christian LARPers on procreation?

https://antinatalism.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/should-christians-have-children-in-todays-world/

>>6999981
It doesn't matter. Whatever happens is God's plan and therefore a good thing.

>2015
>kike on a stick
shiggity

>>6999867

some of you are trying real hard to get the get

>>6995311
One of Aquinus' arguments mentioned by Dawkins in The God Delusion is that we measure things in magnitudes of degree as they relate to others. The highest degree against which all things are measured is God; therefore God exists. I don't really understand how even philosophers of the past wrestled with these inane arguments. The ontological argument by St. Anselm (also in Dawkins' book), for instance, is equally ridiculous to Aquinus' planks. The argument is that if you can imagine the most perfect being in the universe (God), He must be real, because a purely imaginary but otherwise omnipotent being is rendered imperfect by the fact of its non-existence. Therefore, God must exist for you to be able to imagine God.

>>7000145
This does prove the existence of God you moron.
It is irrefutable evidence for God as an imagined being.

>>7000154
But the point of the argument was that God can't be purely imaginary because the nature of the concept of God mandates for Him to be real.

>>7000158
They just misunderstood the science behind their actually legitimate argument.
God, some biochemical configuration of particles, is irrefutably real, and you should fuck off. Their argument is legitimate, it is everything that surrounds it which is illegitimate.

One can imagine God. Imagined things are real in reality. God is real in reality.

>>7000165
So's me fucking your mum then laddy ;)

>>7000165
>God is real in reality.
[citation needed]

>>7000171

That experience is as real as God is; she is the irrefutable presence of some biochemical configuration of particles.

What, did you think the mind was magical?

>>7000184
God is a configuration of particles? Where is he located? What does he look like? of what matter does he consist? Did he make the universe? Is he effecting events in the universe currently?

>>7000194
You're getting cucked right now in the reality of my mind B)

>>7000194
None of these things follow from the argument we were discussing.

God is, as far as human ability to investigate, a pattern in the firing of neurons.

>>7000199
Not just your mind, anon. I guess God must be real too. You got me there.

>>7000204
You seriously think Anon's mind isn't real?

That the biochemical processes involved in identifying (or creating, if you are a Kantian) patterns in reality are themselves not evidence of a pattern in reality?

>>7000202
You are being so obtuse, bro. Can we just can it with the mental masturbation? Are you referring to God in the traditional sense (a deity) or in the pantheistic sense (figurative personification of natural phenomena)?

>>7000211
Both of those are irrefutably real as biochemical phenomena.

The mind is either real or it isn't. If you resign to all human evidence that the mind has a physical, empirical basis, God existing within the mind does not exclude him from being real.

If you do not believe that the mind exists in reality, then go get a lobotomy; surely it can do your mind no harm.

>>7000145
>One of Aquinus' arguments mentioned by Dawkins in The God Delusion is that we measure things in magnitudes of degree as they relate to others. The highest degree against which all things are measured is God; therefore God exists. I don't really understand how even philosophers of the past wrestled with these inane arguments.

It's not inane. You just don't have the mind for it. It is metaphysics. Our judgements of goodness and perfection imply a standard of maximal goodness and perfection against which all relative goodnesses and perfections can be measured. Therefore, if there is any real goodness at all, there is an absolute goodness.

>>7000221
Don't bother. He is someone who believes the irrational statement that God existing equates with, and is thus tied to, the idea of God having all traits ascribed to him.

>>7000221
So if there's tasty things there must be a supreme tasty?

>>7000202
Humans don't investigate neurons. Neurons are that by which we investigate actual things. Pls.

>>7000229
These statements are not mutually exclusive. You're welcome.

>>7000227
Yes, but obviously the supreme "tasty" is only like the taste we have through our tongues in an analogous sense. A better word would be pleasure. There is a supreme pleasure.

>>7000232
Yes they are. We only investigate neurons in biological science. But that is not how he meant "investigate neurons"; he meant that EVERYTHING that we investigate is the investigation of neurons. This is false. It is more true to say that everything that we investigate is done through the neurons. Actually, the medieval scholastic philosophers more or less said this, because they thought that all of our knowledge was derived from the senses. Some of the Platonist philosophers disagreed though, saying that some of our knowledge is derived from an intelligible world without the mediation of the senses.

>>7000239
I don't understand how this statement is even relevant to my argument. I never said anything contrary to what you are arguing here. I claim we have some understanding of neurons- even the claim that everything that we investigate is done through the neurons, is an example of this.

That our understanding of neurons is underpinned by the workings of neurons has never been challenged, except by >>7000229.

>>7000221
Bot Anselm and Aquinus were Christian clerics. They were presumably using their arguments as proof that the Christian God is real. And anyway, you may say God isn't anthropomorphic, you may say he is not even a personal god. Then what is he? Did he create the universe? How can we infer his existence? Why do we say he must be 'good' or perfect?

>>7000248
Absolutely nothing you are saying follows from the arguments that are being discussed. Anselm and Aquinas, as Christian clerics, are capable of creating arguments that support other concepts of "God" than the one that they claim to believe in.
Nobody in this thread is claiming that Anselm and Aquinas' arguments are irrefutable proof for the Christian God and all things thrust upon him.

>>7000248
>They were presumably using their arguments as proof that the Christian God is real.

No, they knew that reason couldn't prove many Christian doctrines. They knew that their arguments for the existence of God only extended to the proof of one eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent, etc. being, and could not prove things such as the trinity, or the creation of the world from nothing, or the resurrection of Christ, etc.

>Then what is he? Did he create the universe? How can we infer his existence? Why do we say he must be 'good' or perfect?

Read the first part of the Summa because these are the questions Aquinas deal with there.

>>6998643
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition
so here essentially we're just making metaphysical assumptions about a supposed being outside of the frame of the universe and making assumptions upon the way in which an undefined necessary being views the universe when you earlier defined the universe as "simply everything that exists"

>>7000250
Sorry but I can't understand the discussion when you insist on saying God id real and then saying that what it means is that he 'exists' in the firing of neurons or something. What is God? Typically the term is either uses to refer either to a deity that created the universe or has some role in mediating it, or it is used metaphorically to refer to nature and its forces. Which is it, then? Is God real, or is God a concept?

>>7000259
What you're creating is a false real/concept dichotomy.
I'm telling you that concepts are real and that whether something is "real or a concept" breaks down under sufficiently rigorous investigation. We have every justifiable reason to believe that God has some kind of empirical manifestation in reality because we can imagine him and our imaginations are the result of patterns in matter.

Current understanding of the issue suggests that God is real as a neural phenomena.

>>7000251
Remind me of the argument for benevolence again?
>surely this is the best of all possible worlds or some similar retarded pollyanna

>>7001322
might is right

>>7000273
God is real.

He is not a neural phenomenon.

>>6998015
learn your latin anon

ego volo, non ego vult.

>>6995325

Haha, that statement isn't funny, what's funny is that you couldn't give a good argument in response.

>>7001476
nice refutation kid

>>7000251
>Read the first part of the Summa

not that guy but I've tried reading the Summa and I'm apparently too illiterate to actually understand his writing. It's a really hard read for me and tough to understand. Do you have any suggestions for someone who's not well versed in philosophy and its language?

>>7002116
Get Secondary Sources; Read Aristotle; Use the Plato Encyclopedia: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

>>7000257

I explained why the fallacy of composition does not apply to this case throughout the posts. It is true that " the members all need a cause" is not enough to ground that " the whole needs a cause", in this case we are arguing from what can fit the role of the first cause of the series as a purely actual being ( which was shown as being necessary if a causal order exists) and showing why " the universe" cannot satisfy this role.

Part of the definition of being a being of pure actuality is that it is eternal. The existence of the being of pure actuality was established here. >>6998318 . I don't consider God outside of the universe because I follow the classical definition of "universe" which is simply " all that is", but God is not limited to, posterior to, or bound to, time and space, certainly- and it and everything within it's bounds are what most people consider to be "the universe". Either way the term " universe" is a vicious abstraction. We can also, from the definition of the first cause as pure actuality, come to qualities like omnipotence, omniscienece, omnibenevolence etc. Those additions have not been considered in the thread. But when all is said and done, God is quite well defined. Nor are the considerations based on assumptions, but are rather grounded in deductive reasoning based on true premises.

>>7001322

1. There is a first cause who is a being of pure actuality.
2. To be purely actual means that no potencies can be actualized in it
3. The act of the first cause can never benefit it in any way by actualizing a potency
4. All actions of the first being must be the sake of actualizing potencies in something else
5. The first cause is omnibenevolent ( only acting for others)

If we combine this with the understanding that God is fully good, since evil is just a lack of some perfection- and God has all perfections actualized in him- it follows that God's actions are all for the sake of others and that they are all perfectly good.

>>7002157
Being born/created cannot in itself be a benefit to anyone (cf. Benatar), rather being benefitted happens in the context of already existing and having your needs satisfied. Existing isn't a benefit over never existing, especially with the risk of eternal hellfire and such since God's doing such a great job communicating his wishes to the world.

Also evil is an empty term (error theory).

>>7002157
I dunno if this is up your alley, but in another thread they're talking about whether exodus was historical or not.

>>7002028
>>7002070
>>7002102
>>7002156

What's your opinion on it?

>>7002214

>Being born/created cannot in itself be a benefit to anyone (cf. Benatar)

No benefit can be done to a being without the being being made to exist in the first place, meaning that being made to exist is a necessary condition for any kind of benefit, and far from being just another kind of benefit- is the prime form of it, the first benefit by which all other benefits are possible. Any particular benefit is a second actuality made only possible from the first actuality of being made able to receive benefit in the first place. Any benefit in the mode of a second actuality is concomitant and intimately bound up to this first actuality.

>rather being benefitted happens in the context of already existing and having your needs satisfied

This part is also false, since me having my wants satisfied is also beneficial to me, my needs are not the only thing that applies.

>Also evil is an empty term (error theory).

Yes, it is not considered to be a real genus or correspond to any real being, evil is an abstraction, like "universe" is, or "being" is in Scottian Theology. Regardless, it still corresponds to an ontological reality when considered. " Evil" is an accidental lack of property. It is still totally intelligible, even if it is an empty term considered qua evil. We simply have no reason to consider it in such an unqualified manner, so it is unproblematic.

>>7002232
I have nothing on Biblical historicity unfortunately. It's an interesting top, but not one I am at all knowledgeable on.

>>7002325
Being created is a benefit doesn't follow from being created being a prequisite for future benefits. I can't be bothered to get entangled in all this potentiality horseshit but
>Regardless, it still corresponds to an ontological reality when considered.
No it doesn't, that was my point - objective oughtness isn't part of the fabric of the universe.

>>7002379

>Being created is a benefit doesn't follow from being created being a prequisite for future benefits

Then you can explain how someone could receive a benefit in a possible world where they do not exist. Existing is a pre-requisite for any benefit, and the only difference between being created and continuing to exist is by subjective consideration alone. In the first case we consider the existence of the thing in relation to its not existing before, in the later we consider the existence of the the thing in relation to it's existing before. Both are ontologically the same, it is only a subjective mode of human consideration that distinguishes the two.

>No it doesn't, that was my point - objective oughtness isn't part of the fabric of the universe.

That is only the case when you assume that these kind of moral properties are something radically distinct from regular descriptive ones in the first place- which comes from reducing ones descriptive ontology to materialist abstractions. "Goodness" is simply synonymous with Being, if it is, it is good. "Evil" is merely the lack of Being, hence if something has a teleological property that makes it tend towards a certain end, the less of the end that is actually reached the more "evil" involved- via negation. If something is lacking a perfection( a positive thing that could be attributable to it) then something is lacking in something and there for has a degree of "evil" in it- via negation. Evil is metaphysically grounded in this case, even if it does not respond to a particular form, or quality. We don't need any bizarre purely evaluative terms in this case to make sense of it. And it is the incommensurability between what is assumed to be purely evaluative and what is assumed to be purely descriptive that gives us Hume's Guillotine. It is bad ontological presuppositions that lead to a problem, not anything corresponding to reality. You are needlessly being trapped by Humeanism here.

>>7002867
>capitalized being
>teleology
>conflating prescriptions to descriptions because convoluted dogmatic metaphysics demands it praise jesus
I'm out, nn

>>7002912
>greentexting is refuting
shiggy

>>6998318
This logic is faulty. Other equally likely possibilities allowed by these axioms:

>There is no first cause; causation extends backwards to infinity

>Closed loop: Rather than extending to infinity, there is some "future" event which actually causes a "past" event.

You may argue that these are equally absurd, but I find them exactly as absurd as

>Causality has a finite extent; at some point in the past, there exists a cause which does not need any other cause preceding it.

>>7002958

>There is no first cause; causation extends backwards to infinity

I explained in the argument why this not possible, directly in 11.

>10. If disjunct “B” is never the case then there is an infinite series of actualizations. And we can apply 7 to C, then to a new cause D, and so forth. With every being having its actuality derived from another being.

>11. If “10” is the case then there can be no actualization, as every being in the series has its actuality derived from another being, but there is no being with actuality on it's own to derive the actuality from.

It's not just a matter of me finding it absurd for no reason. It is actually impossible.

>Closed loop: Rather than extending to infinity, there is some "future" event which actually causes a "past" event.

This runs into the same problem, each member of the series has it's actuality derivatively, and because of this there is nothing with actuality for them to derive it from.

>>7002912

You're the one who isn't giving any arguments from your ontological positions and just dismissing mine without addressing my points. How am I the "dogmatic" one?

>>6999778
Hey scotus can you respond to this post for me please.

Did time predate the universe?

>>6999778

Well Augustine was a Neoplatonist, and the whole tradition never fully gave up on Augustine. So there is something of Neoplatonism in Scholasticism. In part Scholasticism is about methodology, since Ockham and Aquinas, for example are radically different content wise, but are both certainly scholastics. A major part of the discipline is the mode of presentation and the way problems are worked through- it is all very formal and "textbook" like. So an example of the structure of a scholastic chapter in a book of theology would be like this:

The conclusion that will be reached is stated, a certain number of initial objections will be cited, they will be refuted. Then several arguments will be presented for the conclusion, then several arguments will be stated against the way the conclusion was reached, then those arguments will be refuted.

As a discipline it is incredibly meticulous, long winded, and is based around the idea that you have a whole guild's worth of Theologians working on these problems together, ones who you should be answering the potential objections of. So you get thinkers who are very rigorous in considering possible objections and making their point salient through many different arguments. Scholastics were also very based around formal logic, especially Aristotelean syllogisms ( as limited as they can be at times) and were even often innovators of logical ( Suppositional Logic for example). They also had a large ammount of set "terms of art" ( perfections, instants of nature, divided vs composite sense, etc), that were commonly used, wrote all their works in latin, and had a huge focus on language and what exactly is meant when someone utters a sentence, often point out several different ways a sentence can be interpreted to point out the right version.

>>7003743

Now most Neoplatonists just kind of wrote treatises in their own style, you did'nt have this cosmopolitan University based mass of Theologians and Philosophers all operating in such a formal way with that school of thought. Some people find the formality strangling, I find it useful and more rigorous. I also tend towards what I find to be more clear and direct rationally. Neoplatonism has much more mysticism in it. And while I have had some personal experiences of the divine, I'm far more interested in using my reason and getting everything clearly, rather than trying for mystic contemplation, something I am not suited for. In some ways it was Scholasticism's undoing that it was so rigorous, because these tendencies were never relaxed, and by the 17th century Scholastic works were insanely detailed, long winded and difficult. Daniel Novotny has written about it, and why we have so little good Scholarship on 17th century Scholasticism. Allot of the early moderns came about in rejecting that 900 word textbooks that they tried to slog through in school, and instead often opted for 60-200 page treatises, with a more isolated, and less rigorous and detailed orientation to them ( Anyone who's read Descartes Meditations knows what I am talking about). This was incredibly beneficial popularity wise and accessibility wise. The Scholastics also never gave up their old cosmology, which was counted as a black mark against the rest of their ideas.

In allot of ways there is a stylistic difference between Scholasticism and some Neoplatonism in the same way we have such a difference between continental and analytic philosophy in our time. Some people find analytic philosophy to be "boring" and excessively difficult, spending 5 pages on a mere linguistic distinction. To a scholastic that stuff all matters more than just a little bit.

Aristotle is pretty popular in most Analytic departments these days. Anscombe and Geach were some of the main ones in their times. I assume the reason why no one but them was super into Aristotle was because in the early 20th century people had allot more faith that mechanistic science coming to a complete understanding of reality. These far less people in serious academic circles believe this, it has opened up allot of room, and broken down allot of historical narratives.

In terms of a critique of Scholasticism. I personally find Hume's to be a bit weak. Kant's general critique is pretty interesting, though he gets allot wrong. Unfortunately, so many people are ignorant on the subject the best critiques often come from researchers who work on the topic. Feser may be a Christian Apologetic who wants to prove that Aquinas was right about everything( and there is nothing wrong with that), but allot of the researchers who work, and adore, Scholasticism- are quite willing to poke holes in their arguments.

>>7003207
There was no time before God's creation, the first moment of time in simultaneous with God's eternity.

>>7003748
By Gods creation do you mean the existence of God or the universe?

The existence of time and causality is something that causes me trouble.

>>7004011

All that which God created ( I.E. maybe it is more than just the universe we know. I leave this open).

>>7002157
I'm a little drunk so excuse me if this is stupid but you posit that the universe can't fill the role of God because the universe has to change when it's parts change? I don't see the problem there; I mean matter isn't being created nor destroyed in this case so I just kind of imagine, instead of 7+5=12 it's 8+4=12 I just the =12 is the same but the parts have changed a bit or whatever

>>7005039

It isn't stupid. It still counts as a change though, even if the quantity of matter involved stays the same. There would still be something receiving a new actuality- even if that reception results in the loss of that same actuality or some sort of actuality somewhere else. In the numbers example the whole stays the same insofar as we are just looking at what equations can lead to 12, but sets are equal in that regard. But if we had real things like a pile of 7 rocks and a pile of 5 rocks, taking one rock from the 5 pile and adding to the 7 pile to make it an 8 pile would still involve a change going in the set of piles, even if the total number of individual rocks within the set of piles remained the same.

>>7003748
Thank you greatly. When you start publishing will you share your works on lit?

Also when it comes to Christianity and other abramahic faiths how does one demonstrate that they are the unmoved mover and not a demiurge figure as platonic thought might suggest?

>In terms of a critique of Scholasticism. I personally find Hume's to be a bit weak. Kant's general critique is pretty interesting, though he gets allot wrong. Unfortunately, so many people are ignorant on the subject the best critiques often come from researchers who work on the topic. Feser may be a Christian Apologetic who wants to prove that Aquinas was right about everything( and there is nothing wrong with that), but allot of the researchers who work, and adore, Scholasticism- are quite willing to poke holes in their arguments.

I was worried that was the case. It seems like the only people who would be capable of demonstrating / revealing fault would be those who are so invested in it that such a thought would be untenable, much like those Marxists who are balls deep in Hegel, Gramsci, Lenin.

Do you have any experiance or opinions on Wittgenstein?

>>7004939
So how can God be a cause if causation could not exist until the universe/the uberverse you speak was there?

>>7000233

And that supreme pleasure would be the maximum amount of pleasure a brain could ever produce for a conscious being. Inserting God into this is completely unnecessary.

>>7005561

To be the cause of the effect- i.e., to be the being from which the effect's existence is derived, is clearly compatible with there being no causal relations before the effect exists. One doesn't need "causality," i.e., actual causal relations, to exist in order to "be the cause" in the sense relevant to Creation.

>>7005561

Originally you only asked about time. To which I said that.

>There was no time before God's creation, the first moment of time in simultaneous with God's eternity.

I only said that time did not exist before God created. There is no need to add on the "creation of causality" since creation is a mode of causality. Causation does not require a passing of time to exist. In fact, every instance of causation requires complete simultaneity between an effect and it's main cause. This is because if there is a moment between the cause and it's effect when it is not causing then we must account for what changed so that effect could happen in the next moment, why does the effect occur at t3 instead of t2? If there is any temporal distance between the cause and the effect at all then we can't really call it the cause of the effect because something new must still be for the actual effect to appear. The Medievals distinguished accidentally ordered causal series as those "causal" series of things throughout time, versus essentially ordered causal series, which were a series of causes all acting simultaneously. The former requires, and has it's "causal" activity primarily due to the latter.

So that first moment where time and God's creatures are first created is simultaneous with God's eternity. There is no time before the creation, there just is the first moment of creation, with God's eternity being ontologically prior, as opposed to temporally prior ( it requires God to be created and sustained, but God does not require it at all). It is primarily about the ontological priority of causal power that makes causation what it is, not acting within time. God is the first cause instantaneously with the first moment of time and with each moment, as he is the first cause at each moment in each essentially ordered series of causes that constitutes creation at that moment.

>>7005546
Maybe I will. I'm not sure if I want to share my real identity here. I'll probably always come and bounced off ideas and explanations on the work I'm doing though. I also have to consider what will be good for me in academia, being known for 4chan may be detrimental to my standing in academia since the website has a bad reputation for /b/ and some of the other boards.

>Also when it comes to Christianity and other abramahic faiths how does one demonstrate that they are the unmoved mover and not a demiurge figure as platonic thought might suggest?

Well in Neoplatonism usually the Demiurge is not quite "the One"- that first principle that all else emanates from. I think the Demiurge would be closer to an Angel. " The One" would be God. In Manichean Neoplatonism you have something like the Demiurge which is evil, and God who is good. With the Demiurge ruling the world. This is the same with the Cathars. Aristotle's natural philosophy was by in large adopted by the Dominicans to combat the idea that the world was evil from the Cathars, and that there were two not all power full Gods. There is plenty in natural theology to show that there is only one first cause, rather than two. And much of the tradition on the Dominican side was based on just this showing that Cathar heresy was intellectually mistaken.

Also I think the existence of contingency is better dressed in the Aristotelean, rather than Neo-Platonic views of God. Emanationism usually implies that everything necessarily emanates from "The One", such that everything that was created must have been created. This is odd because creation turning out the way it did is far from logically necessary.

I can't say that I know anything about Wittgenstein.

>>7007395

>Well in Neoplatonism usually the Demiurge is not quite "the One"- that first principle that all else emanates from. I think the Demiurge would be closer to an Angel. " The One" would be God. In Manichean Neoplatonism you have something like the Demiurge which is evil, and God who is good. With the Demiurge ruling the world. This is the same with the Cathars. Aristotle's natural philosophy was by in large adopted by the Dominicans to combat the idea that the world was evil from the Cathars, and that there were two not all power full Gods. There is plenty in natural theology to show that there is only one first cause, rather than two. And much of the tradition on the Dominican side was based on just this showing that Cathar heresy was intellectually mistaken.

In respect to this though how do we know that the figure described in the bible is not just one of these angels. Why couldnt YWHV be a lesser and created entity would it not explain the imperfection of the world we inhabit? Surley the creator of our world could be a powerful but lesser entity that emerged from the one.

>>7008572
>would it not explain the imperfection of the world we inhabit?
not really, imperfection must necessarily be in creation, by being a potential/actual composite

>>7008822
>not really, imperfection must necessarily be in creation, by being a potential/actual composite

Yes but I was refering to the scale of imperfection. Humanity for isntance could still be much greater without being braking the limits impossed by the necessity of that composite

>>7008572

The god shown to exist by the natural theologians fits the description of the biblical God- and is necessarily uncreated/uncasued and a first cause. So, given that we have accepted the existence of such a being, the question would have to be whether it could be that the being that actually created the world was not God but one of his angels/the Demiurge instead. It would still be a secondary cause though, deriving its own causal power from God. So it would ultimately be a question of whether God created the world through intermediaries or not. I wouldn't doubt if this question and an answer was in someone's Quolibetal Questions somewhere, but I'm not sure if there is reason to believe that God created our world through secondary causes rather than directly.

>>7008835
what do you mean by greater? bigger?

or do you mean humanity's unableness to reach their goods?

>>7008835

This is counter-intuitive, but I don't think the amount of perfection in God's creation matters. God is infinite, the creation is finite, all finite numbers are equally distant from an actual infinity. No matter how much perfection is added to creation it is equally distant from the infinite perfection that is God. This is why I think design arguments on one hand, and the problem of evil on the other, fails. In the former we are supposed to believe that the ammount of rational perfections in the world entail God, but what exactly determines where this line is drawn where we have enough perfections to warrant a God ? It is totally arbitrary. It is the same deal with the problem of evil, it doesn't matter how much good is in the world ( evil is just the lack of good), any amount of good can always be infinitely added to so as long as we are dealing with something finite. The ammount of evil acceptable for God's existence is equally arbitrary. Part of God's infinite perfection is perfect freedom, saying that he "must" make a certain kind of world would negate his freedom, and to create something else actually infinite would make neither of them actually infinite, so speaking of two actual infinities within one causal order seems untenable as well.

>>6995311

edwardfeser blogspot

/thread

>>7008848
> fits the description of the biblical God

Despite the issues such as the trinity, wrath and fallibility with creation (at least the first time around)?

>>7008866
Greater as in better placed to follow Gods laws without sacrificing free will.

>>7008897
So why would God not create the most perfect world he could do then? Billions of those who he loves have and will suffer horrifically due to his decision to limit us in such a manner.


Side note

>( evil is just the lack of good)

How can you say that evil is the natural state and that it is the lack of evil that we see as good?

>>7008954
>Greater as in better placed to follow Gods laws without sacrificing free will.
Greek philosophy didnnt have an answer to that
only the Jewish people did

>So why would God not create the most perfect world he could do then?
because the most perfect world is a meaningless term when we're talking about a omnipotent and infinite creator

>>7008972
>Greek philosophy didnnt have an answer to that

I saw it as something that flows from Aristotles teleology

>because the most perfect world is a meaningless term when we're talking about a omnipotent and infinite creator

Not really under the circumstances and limitations of reality we can still resonably say whether this was the best possible world that could be created or not.

>>7008983
the best possible world is impossible, for God could make each world better ad finitum

Aristotle doesnt explain why it's hard for us to follow our nature

>>6995311
Why do people waste their time with Hackinas?

>>7008994
>the best possible world is impossible, for God could make each world better ad finitum

How do you come to this conclusion there is a limit to how far God could go when it comes to creating humans that loved him and obyed him without sacrificing free will.

>>7009002
He is close to being irrefutable

>>7008994
>Aristotle doesnt explain why it's hard for us to follow our nature

Isnt that where Aquinas comes in though?

>>7009020
there isnt a limit in how God can make a better world

Christianity holds that man lost God's grace when it commited Original Sin. But this goes out of the realm of natural theology

>>7009044
But what of a better man? Why is it necessarily the case that any creation of God if given free will would suffer a fall?

>>7009063
because the nature of free will is such that you can choose to turn away from what is good for you, otherwise it wouldnt be free will

>>7009072
Free will gives people the ability to skin themselves alive and roll in a vat of salt, that doesnt mean people would do this or likewise that not doing this would amount to there being no free will.

>>7009088
no, but it gives them that ability. And some choose to do it because of x reason (irrationality, corruption, etc)

>>7009102
Read the post again just because you give something the ability to do it doesn't mean they will more virtuous and intelligent humans would result in a far emptier hell

>>7009020
Usually when someone is/seems "irrefutable" we take it as a bad sign, namely because anyone can spout unfalsifiable garbage.
>inb4 you cant falsify falsifiability

>>7009326
No he is irrefutable. It's an objective fact.

>>7009208
>just because you give something the ability to do it doesn't mean they will
doesnt mean they wont though
>more virtuous and intelligent humans would result in a far emptier hell
i know

>>7008935

The Trinity can be taken on faith insofar as it is logically coherent, and is supported by a Religion that has constantly shown that the knowledge it takes from revelation is necessary. It may not be necessarily true, but I think that it is rational to believe in the trinity, since it is highly probable all things considered. I'm not sure what you mean by part of your sentence after the comma. Especially not " fallibility with creation" and what you are implying by that.

>>7008954

>How can you say that evil is the natural state and that it is the lack of evil that we see as good?

Evil is just a lack of being, everything that is is good. I explained this here. >>7002867

The problem with the claim that God should have made a better world is the arbitrariness issue still. God can always do better in terms of creating something with finite perfections, because a finite order and infinite order are incommensurable. You can't add something onto a finite number to get to actual infinity, you can just continually add on finite numbers to it.

>>7008983

>Not really under the circumstances and limitations of reality we can still resonably say whether this was the best possible world that could be created or not.

This is a bit vague, what limitations and circumstances ? The way the world just happens to be in terms of natural laws and the like are totally supersedeable by God's absolute power. God's power ends at instantiating utterances that can't actually correspond to anything real due to linguistic confusion like " x is z and not z unqualifidedly".

>>7009063

From my understanding of the Church's doctrine on Angels; many of the Angel's had free will and did not fall, as opposed to Lucifer and his rebellious angels.

The thing is, man being as good as he and not better or worse is totally contingent. No matter how much better you make him we can ask the same question " why not better ?", make man a bit brighter, a bit more generous, a bit stronger willed, etc, the question remains the exact same- because man can never instantiate these qualities infinitely. It is the same with the problem of evil, you may ask " why did God make it so so many people could easily damn themselves ?". It could always be just a little less harder to damn themselves. " Why does'nt God just stop children from being able to be murdered?", in the world where God did that someone would say " this just is'nt right, why does God allow children to get hurt?", this would go on even to the point where no one could be harmed, people would ask " why does God allow people to get bored?" in each case the question would have equal weight because it is our own subjective emotional worries that form these questions, there is no objective lower or upper limit were suddenly thing's become acceptable or are no longer acceptable.

>>7009326
If he was "irrefutable" insofar as there were no means by which one could even address his arguments, then it would be a problem. It is more so that when entering into deductive arguments people consistently fail to show anything wrong with Aquinas' arguments. Aquinas does not seem irrefutable prima facie. Most people dismiss his arguments at first glance because they have yet to really think about them and understand them and make unwarranted criticisms.

>>7009432

I doubt any of us have actually read every single argument that he has made so to make that claim. Aquinas was great, but we don't need to deify him. Though I suspect you are an anti-thomist troll from that comment.

You can't know whether god exists or not.

>>7009476
Well tbh you can't know nuffin

>>7009490
Pray tell anon, what way would you confirm that God exists or not? Keep in mind I want actual evidence and not mental gymnastics or sophism to actually arrive at such a conclusion.

>>7009498
Dying at becoming close to the LORD

>>7009506
And how do I know it's not some other entity fucking with me?

>>7009509
Because you will be close to the LORD

>>7009537
Yep, no arguments.
Go back to /pol/.

>>7009539
We can empirically observe potentiality

>>7009542
And that is related to god how?

>>7009543
Because it leads to there being Pure Actuality which is perfect in every way like God

>>7009549
cool deductive reasoning bro, come back when you actually have proof.

>>7009463
>Aquinas was great, but we don't need to deify him.

Yeah the Catholic Church has already done that

>>7010180
>being a saint is deification

>>7010210

>>7010227
how is that deification? the prayer is obviously not to Thomas

>>7010227
Look in the middle left

>mfw even if Christianity's assertions on theology, cosmology, and anthropology are refuted; as long as the idea something supernatural caused reality can't be disproved, that means Christianity was right

>>7010277
lmao