How do atheist\scientists account for Thomas Aquinas?

[maurile]

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Unless my limited knowledge of quantum physics is flawed, almost all physicists believe that not every effect has a cause. For instance the decay of a subatomic particle.

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Your knowledge of quantum physics is correct on this point.

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Of course Aquinas would have had no reason to know this.

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Right, but he should have realized that it's not logically impossible and treated it as an unsolved empirical issue rather than a self-evident premise.

[gumpzilla]

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Of course Aquinas would have had no reason to know this. Even Einstein resisted the notion but was eventually pretty close to rigorously proven wrong (Bell's Theorem? plus of course mountains of experimental evidence).

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Bell's Theorem says that if you're going to have a hidden variable theory - meaning a theory of quantum mechanics that asserts that measurements are deterministic and represent averages or functions of "hidden variables" that are at least thus far experimentally inaccessible - it requires nonlocality.

[maurile]

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Of course Aquinas would have had no reason to know this. Even Einstein resisted the notion but was eventually pretty close to rigorously proven wrong (Bell's Theorem? plus of course mountains of experimental evidence).

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Bell's Theorem says that if you're going to have a hidden variable theory - meaning a theory of quantum mechanics that asserts that measurements are deterministic and represent averages or functions of "hidden variables" that are at least thus far experimentally inaccessible - it requires nonlocality.

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Everett's Many-Worlds interpretation is deterministic without resorting to nonlocality -- but that's a major hijack.

[David Sklansky]

Please define non locality.

[gumpzilla]

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Please define non locality.

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Say I have two entangled spins in the state |10> + |01>. If I measure spin A and find it to be 0, quantum mechanics tells me that if I measure spin B I must find it to be 1 (provided that I do the measurement quickly enough so that the wavefunction doesn't begin spreading, blah blah blah.) The separation of A and B don't matter, and the collapse is instantaneous. So it allows for faster-than-light influences, which is what nonlocality means in this context. The reason usually cited why this isn't so worrisome is that while there are correlations between the measurements, it takes classical information transfer between the two measurers to perceive these correlations, and so you can't use this property to do things that special relativity should forbid you to. It's a slightly dodgy argument. maurile's link looks interesting; I have a strong distaste for many-worlds, though.

[jon462]

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There "proofs" are terrible, and if you can't dissprove every single one of these, I feel sorry for you and your logic of logic.

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Starting out an argument by insulting your opponent is the sign of a weak intellectual mind, Zee. Nevertheless, should I feel sorry for your "logic of logic," because you havent done anything but talk in circles and have done nothing to disprove it.

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It is certain and in fact evident to our senses that some things in the world are moved. Everything that is moved, however, is moved by something else, for a thing cannot be moved unless that movement is potentially within it.

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I suck at physics, but there are constant forces. One is gravity, which is already enough to dissprove his first contention. I'm under the impression that recently the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force have all recently been combined into one force, but either way, they are a damn good explanation for movevement.

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Well that makes two of us that suck at physics, but I was under the assumption that gravity is only a constant force insomuch as there is matter to cause it. So it is fair to say gravity was "created" when the matter was created. In any rate, gravity is "caused" by the density of matter, it is not a force in of itself.

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For example, a stick moves only because it is moved by the hand. Thus it is necessary to proceed back to some prime mover which is moved by nothing else, and this is what everyone means by "God."


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If he defines the thing that moves other stuff as God, he is simply defining God as the forces of the universe that science can already explain.

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wtf? please do more than skim the post before you respond. He is not saying, for instance, God directly caused bodies to fall towards an object of denser matter. That is caused by gravity, quite obviously (although he may not have understood gravity, in that he wrote before Newton, he most definately understood scientific laws). The point is something causes gravity, and that thing is caused by something, and so on, and so on, and so on. It does not take very many "and so ons" at all before we are quite beyond what science can explain. Do you know what "causes" gravity? Although science may have an explanation for it, I am quite sure they cannot explain the cause of the cause. Regardless, that is beside the point - it is impossible for their regress ad infinitum explaining each cause (it violates logic) - at some point there must have been a first cause.

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We see in the world around us that there is an order of efficient causes. Nor is it ever found (in fact it is impossible) that something is its own efficient cause... Thus it is necessary to posit some first efficient cause, which everyone calls "God."

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This A) assumes there is a beginning of time that we can pinpoint the first existence of matter, and we can't really assume there was a beginning.

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If you mean we cant pinpoint the first existence of matter, well of course this is true, and I doubt we ever will. But there have been a beginning. Even big bang theorists and similar theories posit a beginning of matter, and the idea that matter always existed is quite absurd.

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Also, it is a common flaw among "believers" to assume that atheists can't account for the beginning of the universe, but believers can. "God has always existed and God created everything else". If you can just assume God has always existed, I can just assume that the matter in the universe has always existed. It's that simply. "Believers" are just as clueless about the origin of the universe as atheists are, and saying that God always existed, but the rest of the universe hasn't is such a cop out.

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Ok, this comment seems to me quit beyond the scope of this discussion and just an exscuse for you to "dig" at Christians. No where did I attempt to prove the biblical explanation for the creation of the universe or defend commonly held beliefs by believers. Or does Aquinas discuss "how" God created the universe - I am quite willing to concede believers do not know how that happenned. As for matter, the notion that is has always existed is absurd. Over eons of time mountains crumble, oceans dry up, stars implode and planets are destroyed. I realize in the short term of millions of millenia this is just matter changing shape - nonetheless each change has a cause, which has a cause, which has a cause, etc. - and a basic understanding of logic will bring the conclusion that there must have been a first cause.

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We find that some things can either exist or not exist, for we find them springing up and then disappearing, thus sometimes existing and sometimes not. It is impossible, however, that everything should be such, for what can possibly not exist does not do so at some time... Thus we must to posit the existence of something which is necessary and owes its necessity to no cause outside itself. That is what everyone calls "God."

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Again, he is finding a hole in scientific understanding, and saying that he himself doesn't know the answer, but he is at the same defining the answer as God.

Let me make an analogy for you. "I lost my wallet this morning, but I haven't touched it since I sat it on my desk last night. Something must have moved my wallet, and that something is God."

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Your analogy is horrible, and shows your complete misunderstanding of the text (or perhaps your indifference to attempt to understand it). A more correct understanding would be: your wallet is missing because you got drunk last night and moved it, but forgot when you sobered up. You got drunk because you are an alcoholic. You are an alcoholic because you were beat by an alcoholic father. Your father was an acholic because x, x because y, y because... on and on and on. But eventually there has to be a first cause.

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Also, he is making the same cop out as in his 2nd point saying that God has always existed. What the [censored] gives God the ability to always exist without explanation, when everything else requires explanation?

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I cant tell here if you just dont understand the text or are intentionally distorting it. Regardless, there must be a first cause. Since this first cause could not have been caused (it is the first cause after all) it must have always existed. That is logic. I am not going to explain it further other than if you dont understand it an elementary logic course at a local community college wouldnt hurt. This doesnt mean the first cause necessarily has all the characteristics Christians and Jews and Muslims associate with God. But since the characteristics he has proven match some of those we believe about God, he calls it "God." "God" is just a name however, call is the "prime mover" if you wish - that is what Aristotle called it.

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This last point might have some flaws in it, but I'm going to make it anway for the sake of discussion:

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If it is possible for every particular thing not to exist, there must have been a time when nothing at all existed.

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Your assumption is false. It is NOT possible for ANY particular thing to have ever not existed. According to physics, mass can neither be created nor destroyed. If it cannot be created, we must assume that it has always existed. If matter has always existed, his entire 3rd point is completely disproven.

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Wow, perhaps you should alert the scientific community that there efforts to explain the creation of the universe over the past few decades (big bang, etc.) is a waste of time - ZeeJustin says that matter always existed!

[maurile]

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Please define non locality.

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It's what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance."

There's no simple way to describe it, but this tutorial and this essay are decent resources.

The two-sentence version is this. Edit: It ended up being far more than two sentences and was still oversimplified to the point of inaccuracy. So I'm deleting, and will just reiterate that there's no easy way to describe it.

[jon462]

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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.

[jon462]

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"If you assume that every effect has a cause (which everyone who is not David Hume does),"

Unless my limited knowledge of quantum physics is flawed, almost all physicists believe that not every effect has a cause. For instance the decay of a subatomic particle. If it has a half life of three years it is even money to decay within that time and a 7-1 favorite to decay within nine years. More importantly is the understanding that the 7-1 you could lay, does not at all depend on how long it has existed up to the point you observed it and laid the price. Someone who has been watching it for many years previously has no advantage over you, the bookmaker who just walked into the room. This basically implies that nothing caused its decay. Other than a random number generator that itself could not be predicted. (Is God simply a pure random number generator? Not what Aquinas had in mind, I would guess.)

Of course Aquinas would have had no reason to know this. Even Einstein resisted the notion but was eventually pretty close to rigorously proven wrong (Bell's Theorem? plus of course mountains of experimental evidence). But the upshot of all this, I think, is that it no longer matters if any proof of God is otherwise flawed or not as long as it rests on the quote above. If God exists, quantum theory, not just Hume, says you can't prove it this way.

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It makes more sense to me that there is a cause which simply cannot be explained by science currently. But I have very little knowledge of quantum physics myself, so I do not claim that to be fact. It seems ironic to me, however, how much faith is required to accept many tenants of modern science, so much so that I think it is becoming more and more like a religion - and there have been many respected philosophers of science in the past few decades that agree with me (Thomas Kuhn, for example).

[jon462]

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However, as far as I am aware, no one has ever been able to disprove or even discredit Thomas Aquinas' proofs of God's existence, which are scientific in nature.

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Seriously?

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1. <snip> Therefore it is impossible that a thing could move itself, for that would involve simultaneously moving and being moved in the same respect. Thus whatever is moved must be moved by something, else, etc. This cannot go on to infinity, however, for if it did there would be no first mover and consequently no other movers, because these other movers are such only insofar as they are moved by a first mover. For example, a stick moves only because it is moved by the hand. Thus it is necessary to proceed back to some prime mover which is moved by nothing else, and this is what everyone means by "God."

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No, that's not at all what everyone means by "God." The "first mover" could be just some physical force such as gravity, but that doesn't mean we whould worship it.

Also, Aquinas provides no evidence that "This cannot go on to infinity." Maybe the past is infinite, maybe it isn't. But there's no logical reason that it can't be.

Also: Who moved God?

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2. The second way is based on the existence of efficient causality. We see in the world around us that there is an order of efficient causes. Nor is it ever found (in fact it is impossible) that something is its own efficient cause. If it were, it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Nevertheless, the order of efficient causes cannot proceed to infinity, for in any such order the first is cause of the middle (whether one or many) and the middle of the last. <snip> Thus it is necessary to posit some first efficient cause, which everyone calls "God."

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This is the exact same argument so the same objections apply. The first cause could be an abstract physical law, but that doesn't mean we should worship it. There may not be a first cause. And, who caused God?

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3. The third way is based on possibility and necessity. <snip> If, therefore, there had been a time when nothing existed, then nothing could ever have begun to exist, and thus there would be nothing now, which is clearly false. Therefore all beings cannot be merely possible. There must be one being which is necessary. <snip> Thus we must to posit the existence of something which is necessary and owes its necessity to no cause outside itself. That is what everyone calls "God."

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It's the same mistake again. Maybe the universe always existed, as an infinite chain of events (even if they occurred over a finite period -- think of an infinite series of numbers with a finite sum). That doesn't mean that the universe is what everyone calls "God." There's still no reason to worship it.

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Why are you hung up on whether we should worship The First mover or not? That is a matter of faith, not of logic. Indeed you could say Aquinas is not proving "God," so to speak, but that there is a prime mover, prime causer, who always existed. Since there can be only one, and the "prime mover" has the same characteristics as that thing which we call God, he labels it God. Perhaps so his audience will know what he is talking about? But as I said, you can call it "prime mover" or "Ginju" or whatever you want to call it.
Whether you worship it or not depends on whether you believe it to be benevolent, to love you and care for you well-being, to be worthy of your obedience, etc., and is entirely beyond the scope of this discussion.

As for Aquinas proving that we cannot regress through an infinity of causes.. surely you cannot be serious? You are going to have to explain to me how it could be possible, because it seems like common sense to me.