Botnst channels Aquinas - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

kerry · #1 02-12-2006, 05:44 PM

On a thread now closed, Botnst posted the following in one of his mystical moments where he confers with medieval intellectuals.

"Alright let's take it from the top.

When we say that something is logical it means that most people would agree that some construction of an argument that begins with known facts and procede to reasonably derived conclusions. This removes hallucinatory experiences and psychotic irrationality ("Look, I have a tomato in my left hand, therefore: whirled peas.")

Here is a proof of God's existence. It is logical. One may disagree with the conclusion buthe logic itself is clear and not irrational.

"The first and plainest is the method that proceeds from the point of view of motion. It is certain and in accord with experience, that things on earth undergo change. Now, everything that is moved is moved by something; nothing, indeed, is changed, except it is changed to something which it is in potentiality. Moreover, anything moves in accordance with something actually existing; change itself, is nothing else than to bring forth something from potentiality into actuality. Now, nothing can be brought from potentiality to actual existence except through something actually existing: thus heat in action, as fire, makes fire-wood, which is hot in potentiality, to be hot actually, and through this process, changes itself. The same thing cannot at the same time be actually and potentially the same thing, but only in regard to different things. What is actually hot cannot be at the same time potentially hot, but it is possible for it at the same time to be potentially cold. It is impossible, then, that anything should be both mover and the thing moved, in regard to the same thing and in the same way, or that it should move itself. Everything, therefore, is moved by something else. If, then, that by which it is moved, is also moved, this must be moved by something still different, and this, again, by something else. But this process cannot go on to infinity because there would not be any first mover, nor, because of this fact, anything else in motion, as the succeeding things would not move except because of what is moved by the first mover, just as a stick is not moved except through what is moved from the hand. Therefore it is necessary to go back to some first mover, which is itself moved by nothing---and this all men know as God."

The argument itself may be formally valid, but the premises upon which it is based are themselves questionable.

The argument claims that since all objects known to use are caused by other things, then 'Everything' must be caused by something (ie, the First Cause, Prime Mover or God). But this does not follow. To claim that each individuall thing we experience is caused by something else, says nothing about whether it makes to sense to think of the universe itself as having a cause. It takes a belief necessary to make sense of the universe we experience and applies it to a set of conditions that we have never known and cannot ever know, the creation of something out of nothing. Such a creative event is totally unknowable to us because were we to know it thru experience, we would have to exist, thereby violating the idea that something is being created out of nothing since things (us) would already exist.

So the argument should go something like this: "Were we to apply the reasoning processes we use to understand objects we experience, to the relationship between something and nothing, we would conclude that 'something' has a cause. In order to avoid the problem of thinking this additional thing must also have a cause, we will (arbitrarily or logically--you make the choice) say that the cause is itself not caused.
Of course, we realize we can't ever know such a creative event, so we will treat this elegant piece of reasoning as an interesting piece of philosophical speculation totally incapable of ever being tested.

Edwards channeling Hume.