/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14441819]

Edward Feser (1968–) is a Catholic / Christian apologist writer/

His book The Last Superstition claims to be a refutation of the New Atheism, which he accuses of "intellectual dishonesty, philosophical shallowness, and historical, theological, and scientific ignorance"; he tries to prove the existence of God starting with Aristotle's teleological metaphysics, in contrast to mechanical Newtonian metaphysics which he rejects.[5] So gravity is explained not by curvature of spacetime but the fact that stones naturally seek the centre of the Earth, and forming water via reaction is the final end of oxygen and hydrogen.[6] To most people this may appear monumentally nonsensical in comparison with Newtonian or Einsteinian physics, but maybe we should ask the stone what it's doing. If you believe that stones have a final purpose, it's not that far a step in terms of credulity to claim that God exists, but that's not really a strong argument for the existence of God.

[Anonymous No.14441832]

>>14441819
Edward pls go

[Anonymous No.14441841]

>>14441819
Bumping. Interested in this project. Read more when I wake. Godspeed, OP.

[Anonymous No.14442019]

>>14441819
Everything I've ever read about Feser makes him seem like an idiot. You can't just become an unreconstructed Thomist, or even an unreconstructed Kantian/Hegelian/whatever, in the current year. People like this, who willfully ignore hundreds of years of philosophical dialogue and pick low hanging fruit like "New Atheism" to oppose aren't worth your time.

Read MacIntyre, an intelligent and historically literate Thomist who understands that Aristotelianism isn't some completed scientific system like the Scholastics (and apparently Feser) thought, that has to be defended against any and all innovation.

[Anonymous No.14442121]

>>14441819
>So gravity is explained not by curvature of spacetime but the fact that stones naturally seek the centre of the Earth, and forming water via reaction is the final end of oxygen and hydrogen
Who writes this shit? That's not what he argues.

[Anonymous No.14442282]

>>14442121
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Edward_Feser

[Anonymous No.14442386]

>>14442282
>he tries to prove the existence of God starting with Aristotle's teleological metaphysics, in contrast to mechanical Newtonian metaphysics which he rejects.[5] So gravity is explained not by curvature of spacetime but the fact that stones naturally seek the centre of the Earth, and forming water via reaction is the final end of oxygen and hydrogen.[6] To most people this may appear monumentally nonsensical in comparison with Newtonian or Einsteinian physics, but maybe we should ask the stone what it's doing. If you believe that stones have a final purpose, it's not that far a step in terms of credulity to claim that God exists, but that's not really a strong argument for the existence of God.
Are they really so directly deceitful, or just stupid and disingenuous? This is exactly what Feser talks about, ironically.
"Mechanical Newtonian Metaphysics," an obvious anachronism in their use (and nonsensical one at that), has little do with what Metaphysics is, philosophically. They obviously don't understand or deliberately ignore the difference between the word metaphysics and physics as it exists today (which should be obvious, because it's in the name). Aristotelian metaphysics doesn't deal with physics as a science. The fact that gravity occurs from space-time curvature doesn't effect the issue. This is obvious to anyone who's read about this for more than 10 minutes. And the fact that Aristotle was wrong about something in physics (which was physically impossible for him to discover at the time), has no bearing on if a later adaptation from Aquinas of a very different part of his philosophy is true.

Rationalwiki my ass. Of course, they don't care about the truth at all, given they don't care about the truth in the simplest details. Nor do they care about reasoning through arguments using properly defined terms and logic, or, in other words: rationality. Rather, what we have is a series of vague dismissals and smug shit smelling contests, whatever suffices to dull critical thinking with the shame of a bad name.
They're conniving serpents enjoying the smell of the long grass. Anyone who thinks rationalwiki is a valid source for reading anything is gasoline sniffing retard.

[Anonymous No.14442456]

>>14442282
>rationalwiki

oh no no no no no

[Anonymous No.14442465]

>>14442019
There still isn't a better metaphysical understanding for the nature of change/causality than act and potency desu.

And Thomism should be coming back in vogue because it works really well with our understanding of Quantum Field Theory

http://www.quantum-thomist.co.uk/index.html