How do atheist\scientists account for Thomas Aquinas?

[gumpzilla]

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Yes, the big bang. But what caused the big bang?

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What caused God?

Also, to say that you can call it whatever you like is kind of disingenuous if what you're going to call it is an entity that you are supposing elsewhere has particular properties. In other words, fine, suppose a first cause and call it God, but now take what we normally refer to as God and call it Blapskopolis or something.

[ZeeJustin]

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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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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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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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.

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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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."

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?

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.

[jon462]

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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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I don't think this makes a lick of sense. Let me make an analogy. Let's say I have a set of integers {1, 2, 3}. Now let's say that at each time step, I remove the smallest number in the set and add the smallest natural number not in the set to the set, i.e {1,2,3} -> {2,3,4} -> {3,4,5}. Consider membership in the set existence. Every natural number will be nonexistent at some point, but this does not demonstrate that there is a time where nothing exists - the set is never empty.

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Ok, Im not sure you will be satisfied with my answer, but here goes. The notion of possibility when applied to existence, in the Aristotelian\Thomistic since, implies that - given an infinite amount of time - a thing which can possibility exist must at sometimes exist and at other times not exist. If it always existed, then its existence would be necessary, not possible. 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. (clearly it is impossible for their to be a time when nothing existed, as then nothing could be created and there for nothing would ever exist, so their must be one thing which exists by necessity, i.e. God)

As for your above example, well maybe I will get really lucky and someone with a better understanding of Aquinas and\or mathematics will chime in. It seems to me you have set up an arbitrary rule that the universe does not follow. How can you say " remove the smallest number in the set and add the smallest natural number not in the set to the set" - who is to say that that the set will not be incresed to more than 3 numbers, or that 5 will change to -3, etc. - and at one point in time it will be reduced to 0 numbers?

[BZ_Zorro]

Science is based on the philosophy of naturalism. God is a metaphysical entity, by definition. Therefore, the existence of God cannot be proven scientifically.

Aquinas, eat your heart out.

[gumpzilla]

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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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While I agree with you that the statement you're arguing against is pretty much nonsensical, I don't think this is a strong argument. Conservation of mass doesn't mean that this chair that I'm sitting on has existed since the dawn of time, so we need to specify what we mean. If we just mean matter, then conservation of mass isn't the whole story here, either. Radioactive decay, as an obvious example, is going to produce energy and new atoms that didn't previously exist. While there was presumably the same amount of energy at the beginning of the universe, the form that it took was likely so wildly different from what we have now that I think it's not unreasonable to say that very little existed at that point.

[David Sklansky]

"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.

[maurile]

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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.

[ZeeJustin]

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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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While I agree with you that the statement you're arguing against is pretty much nonsensical, I don't think this is a strong argument. Conservation of mass doesn't mean that this chair that I'm sitting on has existed since the dawn of time, so we need to specify what we mean. If we just mean matter, then conservation of mass isn't the whole story here, either. Radioactive decay, as an obvious example, is going to produce energy and new atoms that didn't previously exist. While there was presumably the same amount of energy at the beginning of the universe, the form that it took was likely so wildly different from what we have now that I think it's not unreasonable to say that very little existed at that point.

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Obviously the matter in the universe has changed forms many times over throughout the course of time. I don't see how this is relevent to the question at hand.

[gumpzilla]

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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.

[gumpzilla]

Your earlier accout was oversimplified. I was pointing out that say, an atom of barium that was produced as a result of a nuclear fission reaction has not in any conventional sense existed since the dawn of time.