How do atheist\scientists account for Thomas Aquinas?

[The once and future king]

You are his shadow because he says there can only be meaning if there is a God, and you say there isnt a God so there cant be meaning. You accept his propostion

Just to make sure we are clear on another common misconception, belief does not equal subjectivity. Belief is merely one potential quality of subjectivity it is not in unity with subjectivity.

[The once and future king]

Of course there is meaning. How else are we communicating in this thread.

This meaning is like all meaning man made. To you just as is it does Notready, this somehow invalidates it.

You both accept the proposion that meaning must refer to a transcendant qualifier to be valid. You are merely arguing about the existence of said qualifier.

However it is a manifest undisputable fact that meanings have effects on the subject they are in relation to. This is surely why you argue say, that we should have a scientific outlook, for the effect it has on the subject such an outlook is relational to. I would argue differently, and I would base that arguement entirely on the examination of the effect of such an outlook.

[NotReady]

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Of course there is meaning


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You are being contradictory. You believe the universe is ultimately irrational. That is presupposition 1. You also believe meaning is possible. That is presupposition 2. 1 and 2 are contradictory.

A statement such as "How else is communication possible" not only begs the question but proves the point that the universe is not irrational.

[The once and future king]

Please explain why the universe must be rational for there to be "human" meaning. I have said that meaning is relative or much more precise, relational to the subject. This is all the meaning we need and this is all the meaning we can know.

But I have actualy expressed no opinion about the rationality or irrationality of the universe. it might be rational, but there is no way for me a monkey to know. Therefore I dont waste my time wondering. I would suspect that the idea of rationality is something monkeys invented to help deal with a universe fundemenaly beyond there comprehension.

If you were observing more closely you would observe that I have avoided makeing statements about things I cannot know. I have not said God dosnt exist, but that it best to live as though he dosnt exist because I can deduce that this is so.

[NotReady]

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Please explain why the universe must be rational for there to be "human" meaning


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If all is chaos, if there is no absolute system of knowledge, then no fact can be related to any other fact - there can't even BE fact.

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I have not said God dosnt exist, but that it best to live as though he dosnt exist because I can deduce that this is so.


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First, if you live as if He doesn't exist you are as a practical matter stating He doesn't exist. Second, how can you know it's best to live as if He doesn't exist? Clearly, if He does exist and has communicated to us, you are wrong.

[The once and future king]

1."If all is chaos, if there is no absolute system of knowledge, then no fact can be related to any other fact - there can't even BE fact."

Explain how the above in any way precludes the possibility of human relational knowable meaning. Not that the above has anything to do with my arguements what so ever.

I dont suggest the universe is chaos. Again you are traped in the absence/presence of God mode of thinking. If God exists order if not chaos.

I simply point out the obvious that the human universe is composed entirely of the subjective and we can not as existing subjects (humans/monkeys with a slightly bigger brain) know anything beyond that. I then however validate the meanings that exist in the universe of human subjectivity and seek to examine them and there relations. I am only being practical.

You seek to constantly refer to some meta world outside this human universe even though you can have no contact with it and consequently domote the only meanings you can comprehend to meaningless. I cant think of a more stupid choice about how to live than that.


2. I have allready explained that the effect on the subject to have to obey a superior subject that is an object at the same time is basicaly to negate the subject. Or more simply if God exists it is immposible for a subject to be moral. It is immpossible if God exists to have free choice and it is immpossiible if God exists for there to be a plethora of oughts. This is because if God does exist, and he has communicated with us, then there is only one ought.

As existing subjects that ought is to give God the finger and be damned. There could be no other alternative.

I am begining to get that "Oh no I'm arguing with a Christian feeling." This is akin to the momant you feel those first wet flecks on your jeans and you realize you are pissing into the wind.

[NotReady]

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I am begining to get that "Oh no I'm arguing with a Christian feeling." This is akin to the momant you feel those first wet flecks on your jeans and you realize you are pissing into the wind.


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I suspect our debate is near an end. This is what people do when the sinking sand they've been standing on all their lives begins to melt away under the hurricane. No more reason and debate. Time for opinion and insult.

[The once and future king]

Better insults than self delusion. Hurricane indeed. It takes more than the suppostion that something that I cant see, cant touch, cant feel and cant in anyway prove or know must still somehow exist to make my sands sink away.

Anyway I was not insulting you. I was just colourfully pointing out the frustrating nature of debating with someone whos opinions are based on faith not intellectual investigation.

You have seen an easy way out and you have grapsed it with both hands. You choose to ignore the rest of the post which was full of debate. A debate that ultimately you can only answer the following way.

Dear God who isnt in Heaven, please make the fact that I am an slightly evolved homoniod of limited comprehension spining around a nuclear reaction on a rock in a universe so large I cant concieve it make some kind of ultimate sense that I can know.

Keep praying.

[chezlaw]

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1)it is possible that in another world God exists.

2)God is defined as being a necessary being (I think this is consistent with a judeo-Christian understanding of God)

3)Since God is a necesarry being, he must exist in either all possible worlds or no worlds.

4) God exists in at least one possible world

5)therefore, God exists in all possible worlds.

This is a more complex argument then what Aquinas originally came up with, and I'll leave it to y'all to figure out what is wrong with it. First to do so gets a gold star.

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I think buried in there is the argument:

Poss(Ness(God)) -> there is a world where Ness(God) is true
Ness(God) -> God is true in all worlds.

If that's allowed then I could also claim that god might be an impossibility and hence

Poss(Ness(not(God))) -> there is a world where Ness(not(God)) is true
Ness(not(God)) -> not(Got) is true in all worlds.

Therefore God and not(God) are true in all worlds.

I'm not terribly clued up on systems of modal logic but :

Poss(X) - > there exists a world in which Ness(X) is true

is true for all propositions X that do not contain modal modifiers but is not true for X = Ness(P)

Make any sense?

chez

[Cerril]

Most of the posters are correct. Even most religious philosophers don't bother much with the 5 ways anymore as being especially strong. My cousin went to college in a place that emphasized them far too strongly (she later found to her regret when exposed to a larger world), possibly Franciscan but honestly I can't remember. Even most junior college intro to philosophy courses spend a few sessions discussing these arguments and why they don't hold much weight, though.

1) The idea that there needs to be a first cause is really pretty arbitrary. Non-infinite time is no more or less plausible than infinite time. It's only a human difficulty of conceiving of huge (unlimited) spaces or spans of time that stops us. Additionally, an 'unmoved mover' is a direct violation of the principle that Aquinas is trying to establish as universal and applying to everything.

2) This is based on a simplistic definition of causality that hasn't been too valid for a long time. Quantum physics and what amounts to complete randomness in the universe on some level finishes the job. In fact, the idea that it is entirely possible that in an infinite time something just 'happened' and that it's pretty much working that way all the time (though we aren't prescient enough to see the multibillion year consequences of things which have 'just happened' in recorded history, even if we could identify those events). As with the first, an infinite chain actually causes -fewer- problems than an effect with no cause, even if those things can be described in terms of a non-divine event.

3) Again, Aquinas is content to just assume that infinity cannot exist. I've never understood why he has such an easy time discounting an infinite chain; but perhaps the progress in thinking, especially in math, has led that to be an easier concept to swallow for most of us. This one you can pretty much throw out in any modern scientific world. Things just don't cease to exist.

A more interesting rephrasing of the third would discuss entropy, but that's pretty far outside the scope of Aquinas and would take more rephrasing to make even a little strong than is at first obvious.

And last, in all cases, Aquinas is making a huge assumption. I'd say that if you ask any theist if their idea of God doesn't require that he have motives, qualities (other than having acted once), or even that He still exist, you'll be met with a blank stare at best. If you say that 'yes, God may just be the Big Bang, something which happened once and has not since had any effect on the world, much less existed, and which does or did not possess any qualities such as consciousness' then you're just arbitrarily defining things as God. It's not really any stronger an argument as me pointing at my roommate's cat and saying 'there, hard evidence of the existence of God, because that being has the qualities we all agree on are what we mean when we say 'God'.