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Old 07-15-2005, 04:51 PM
jon462 jon462 is offline
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Default Re: How do atheist\\scientists account for Thomas Aquinas?

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Since all possible things at one point exist and at one point do not exist - well given an infinite amount of time every possible combination of existence and non-existence would occur - including the instance of no possible existences existing.

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No, this does not follow. Say that object A and object B must always exist together, for example. Then you can't realize instances where object A and object B exist separately. More fundamentally, to say that given an infinite amount of time every possible combination must be reached is an assumption - not unlike the kinds of assumptions that go into statistical mechanics, incidentally. It could very well just cycle through a relatively small subset of possible combinations. If you assume a countable number of things, then it might be that there are a countable number of combinations that can be reached rather the uncountable number that you are suggesting by saying we must explore the entire power set of existence/nonexistence sets.

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I do not wish to defend his third law anymore. This is because I do not completely understand it, and I wasnt quite sure that the text you quoted made any sense as I wrote it - it was my feeble attempt to explain it and very possibly not what Aquinas would have meant. I am much more comfortable defending the first two. I am not conceding the point - I simply am not adequate to defend Aquinas here and do not wish to make an ass of myself.
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