Thomas Aquinas Proof for God

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Originally Posted by WyattGwyon

Proposition 5 has no basis or support in the earlier propositions. Proposition 7 is just stupid. Something that is actually hot is obviously potentially hot or it wouldn't be actually hot. So you would say Vengerov does not have the potential to be a great violinist because he is in actuality a great violinist. Ha ha hah!

I've wasted enough time here. Bye now.

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You obviously didn't understand the propositions. Maybe it's better that you have discontinued the discussion.

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Originally Posted by WyattGwyon

Proposition 5 has no basis or support in the earlier propositions. Proposition 7 is just stupid. Something that is actually hot is obviously potentially hot or it wouldn't be actually hot. So you would say Vengerov does not have the potential to be a great violinist because he is in actuality a great violinist. Ha ha hah!

I've wasted enough time here. Bye now.

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You seem to think that every argument is syllogistic when, clearly, that's not the case. That premise five is not an entailment of a previous premise does not affect the validity of the argument; in fact, it's fairly common in lengthy arguments for assertions to appear in the middle of things. The assertion in question is no more controversial than "everything that begins to exist has a cause."

There are always difficulties when rendering prose into standard logic form. You seem to think that Aquinas actually wrote his argument in the form I have provided when, really, he wrote a paragraph in prose. Anyone could do a better job arranging the argument, even Aquinas, but when you're transcribing the argument from an existing text, you should try to stay faithful to the meaning and order of the text. Aquinas isn't simply arguing in the passage but trying to explain, and if I had left out most of the explanation, you probably wouldn't even understand what was being said.

Your example of the violinist is, I think, bad. When I get sick, I am not in a state of potential sickness; to suggest that I am is just wrong. No, I am really sick. No one who had the flu would claim to be at risk of contracting the flu because risk would no longer be a factor. You would not approach a world class violinist and tell him that, with practice and determination, he could be a decent violinist; he's already a decent violinist!

More importantly, it's absurd to dismiss a text that everyone, even secularists, agree is a major text in western culture. You seem to think that because the Summa doesn't demonstrate modern standards of logical rigor that you are justified in dismissing it out of hand. You could, on similar grounds, dismiss Plato's The Republic, which, in case you forgot, describes a proto-fascistic hell no modern person would consider a viable society. You could dismiss nearly all of literature according to your standards. The truth is that, regardless of whether you believe in God, Aquinas was smarter than you and I, and we can both learn from him by seeing how he thought. Your dismissal is fairly typical of a university freshman who thinks that, since he knows it all already, his attendance at class is purely a formality.

"The only way for a permanent entity to cause a finite effect would be to choose to cause it."

I don't understand how you come to this conclusion. I can see that it would be possible. But why must it necessarily be so.

Doesn't the ability to choose preclude it from being a permanent entity... whatever exactly that might mean.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

First, you don't seem to understand that the prime mover argument is not about literal "motion," but about cause/change. The term "motion" is one Aquinas borrows from Aristotle. So the statements about kinetic energy are largely irrelevant. Moreover, the work of Aquinas is, by now, centuries old, and I have no interest in defending it, simply because the same arguments have much better modern articulations. The stuff about God not existing in any "real" sense is largely misguided as you don't seem to have a grasp on what "real" might mean. Is the number two real? Is love real? Is morality real? If you're a naturalist, you've got much bigger problems than the nature of God's existence.

Just to give you an idea of what sort of motion Aquinas is talking about:

"Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it."

Saint Aquinas Thomas. Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) / From the Complete American Edition (Kindle Locations 389-390).

The whole conversation about fallacies of composition in the Kalam cosmological argument has been ridiculous. There can't be any fallacy of composition in the first premise of the Kalam because it's a metaphysical statement in regards to "things." Moreover, you can't execute a fallacy of composition with a single statement. You have to deduce another statement.

The idea of a compositional component is so remote from the first premise that I can't believe you would even suggest it. If I say "stuff exists" I'm not talking about parts of something. The statement is so straight forward--everything that begins to exist has a cause--it blows my mind that it's such a problem for you to understand. This could only happen if you were trying to complicate the conversation. I mean, if the conclusion of the Kalam were "therefore, cupcakes have a cause" would you really suggest that the statement "everything that begins to exist has a cause" assumes a fallacy of composition because cupcakes are made from different components? The reason there can't be any fallacy about "the whole" of the universe in the first premise is because the first premise doesn't even explicitly reference the universe. If you were even going to mention it, it would have to be the second premise, but it still couldn't be a compositional fallacy because there's NO argument from composition.

Look, let me give you an example of a fallacy of composition.

1. The parts of airplanes are lightweight.
2. Therefore, airplanes are lightweight.

Try to compare that with the Kalam cosmological argument. There's nothing even remotely like that in it.

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Let me try and spell out my argument more clearly:

1. Some things came to exist. (some things, or "stuff" being parts.)
2. Therefore, the universe came to exist. (The Universe, or reality being the whole)

Hey look, it lines up fairly well with your airplane example. Funny that.

Further trouble is, there may exist within all of reality objects that have always existed (the proposed prime mover, for example), meaning, like airplane parts that are relatively heavy (the black box, hydrolics, etc.) they throw off the unified idea of the whole.

Also, the airplane is a poor example because it relies on the totaled weight of each part to provide the false conclusion: "lightweight" is a property that is not truly independent.

Here's a better example:
1 Human cells are invisible to the naked eye. (property of parts).
2 Humans are made up of human cells. (Parts add up to equal the whole).
3 Therefore, humans are invisible to the naked eye (false conclusion regarding the whole through fallacy of composition).

What I'm arguing is that step two of the above example does not have an equivalent within Kalam's proposition. Even if it did, there would exist composition and a fallacy.

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As for God being in the same class as a symbol for entirely human constructs, like "Two", "Love", "Morality", sure. I can believe that. In fact, that's likely the most accurate assessment of any conceivable divinity. Without human perception, they are not real. They're real enough to the people who understand them, sure.

Ultimately, for me, it's the difference between software and hardware: Hardware being reality, software being an application of said hardware. Prime mover or not, gods are real enough for humans to act on. Just like the number 2. The trouble with software is that it means different things to the hardware working it. 2 in binary (10) has a whole different meaning to different viewers. Things that are real (2 apples for example) do not suffer from such variation.

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Originally Posted by krymsonkyng

Let me try and spell out my argument more clearly:

1. Some things came to exist. (some things, or "stuff" being parts.)
2. Therefore, the universe came to exist. (The Universe, or reality being the whole)

Hey look, it lines up fairly well with your airplane example. Funny that.

Further trouble is, there may exist within all of reality objects that have always existed (the proposed prime mover, for example), meaning, like airplane parts that are relatively heavy (the black box, hydrolics, etc.) they throw off the unified idea of the whole.

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I don't think I'm following all the arguments about composition in this thread, but this is my take on what is at stake.

The first statement is: "Everything that begins to exist has a cause." If something doesn't begin to exist then I think it should be called "eternal" and so doesn't need a cause.

The second statement is not a conclusion from the first, but a statement of fact assuming the big bang theory is correct: "The universe began to exist."

So if one accepts current science, the conclusion follows: "The universe had a cause".

My take on the conclusion is that there is more to reality than the stuff that came out of the big bang.

Of course, one can come up with a competing theory to the big bang. That competing theory would test the current theory and either replace it or make the current theory stronger.

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Regarding a post I made earlier about vacuum fluctuations, since they involve particles that come to exist until they annihilate each other, these particles that began to exist must have a cause which I take is the vacuum space. Then I wonder why did the vacuum make these particles come into existence at some particular point in time? Was it chance? Or is chance just a short-hand way of saying: "We don't know."

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I don't think I'm following all the arguments about composition in this thread, but this is my take on what is at stake.

The first statement is: "Everything that begins to exist has a cause." If something doesn't begin to exist then I think it should be called "eternal" and so doesn't need a cause.

The second statement is not a conclusion from the first, but a statement of fact assuming the big bang theory is correct: "The universe began to exist."

So if one accepts current science, the conclusion follows: "The universe had a cause".

My take on the conclusion is that there is more to reality than the stuff that came out of the big bang.

Of course, one can come up with a competing theory to the big bang. That competing theory would test the current theory and either replace it or make the current theory stronger.

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Regarding a post I made earlier about vacuum fluctuations, since they involve particles that come to exist until they annihilate each other, these particles that began to exist must have a cause which I take is the vacuum space. Then I wonder why did the vacuum make these particles come into existence at some particular point in time? Was it chance? Or is chance just a short-hand way of saying: "We don't know."

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Ok, that makes sense then. The second is a premise independent of the first. There is no composition then. Thanks for clearing all that up :)

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Originally Posted by YesNo

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Regarding a post I made earlier about vacuum fluctuations, since they involve particles that come to exist until they annihilate each other, these particles that began to exist must have a cause which I take is the vacuum space. Then I wonder why did the vacuum make these particles come into existence at some particular point in time? Was it chance? Or is chance just a short-hand way of saying: "We don't know."

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Chance is always a short hand way of saying "we don't know."

If you flip a coin, you say the chance of it landing it heads is %50. In actuality the chance is 100% that it lands on what it will land on. If you knew the strength of the flick, the weight of the coin, the humidity, wind, acceleration due to gravity, initial angle of coin, etc etc ... you would be able to tell precisely how the coin would fall.

The chance is merely a way of averaging all the variables of which we are unsure.