Teleological Argument (Aquinas)

[Valjean]

Prayer and meditation predate psychotherapy by millennia, so putting their efficacy down to a field of study which is little over a hundred years old, is clearly meaningless. But of course, if your only values are material values, and the only progress you recognise is material progress, you are unlikely to even grasp the concept of spiritual growth. And if that’s the case, I’m sorry for you.

Psychotherapy is more than just Freudian psychoanalysis. Any psychologically therapeutic modality is a psychotherapy. A walk in the woods can be psychotherapeutic. Religion certainly is.
You presume that because I think rationally I reject spirituality. You are wrong.
As for prayer, it may be therapeutic for the prayer, but it doesn't actually accomplish the effect prayed for.

 

[wellwisher]

What do you think of "the 5th Way" of Aquinas? Summary and explanation of the argument (from Wikipedia):

Summary

We see various objects that lack intelligence in the world behaving in regular ways. This cannot be due to chance since then they would not behave with predictable results. So their behavior must be set. But it cannot be set by themselves since they are non-intelligent and have no notion of how to set behavior. Therefore, their behavior must be set by something else, and by implication something that must be intelligent. This everyone understands to be God.

Explanation

This is also known as the Teleological Argument. However, it is not a "Cosmic Watchmaker" argument from design (see below). Instead, as the 1920 Dominican translation puts it, The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world.

The Fifth Way uses Aristotle's final cause. Aristotle argued that a complete explanation of an object will involve knowledge of how it came to be (efficient cause), what material it consists of (material cause), how that material is structured (formal cause), and the specific behaviors associated with the type of thing it is (final cause). The concept of final causes involves the concept of dispositions or "ends": a specific goal or aim towards which something strives. For example, acorns regularly develop into oak trees but never into sea lions. The oak tree is the "end" towards which the acorn "points," its disposition, even if it fails to achieve maturity. The aims and goals of intelligent beings is easily explained by the fact that they consciously set those goals for themselves. The implication is that if something has a goal or end towards which it strives, it is either because it is intelligent or because something intelligent is guiding it.

Five Ways (Aquinas) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

One way to explain this is to start with the scenario of humans creating new things. Humans can create things that will not and do not appear naturally by natural laws; build a long suspension bridge made of alloyed steel. This bridge will not just appear by natural selection or by just natural physical forces. It can only start within the human imagination. It has an ethereal beginning, with the designer making it first on paper; or computer screen, before anything material or tangible starts to move. The designer will also have creative liberty, so the bridge does not have to stay within a strict design pattern. The selection process itself has wiggle room. Although, the design chosen will need to accommodate, the needs of physical reality; weather, wind, load weight, cost, etc.

Once the designed is approved, we then start site preparation and construction; moving matter, none of which is left to chance. The best planners make big bucks. This is all planned out in advance. We do not build the bridge, on a whim, in trial and error stages. Instead, we work from a preconceived master plan. A acorn becomes an oak tree. This is not left to chance. It follows a sequence of changing steps and needs, even with nature and weather not being homogeneous. This is in already built into the acorn design.

This human creation analysis, is why people often postulate God or a Cosmic Watchmaker, who plans things before they appear. Humans are a prime example of this process actually being possible, and more advanced than just chance. We do not build a bridge by gathering materials and throwing dice. It takes a lot of planning, in advance, to make it come out right.

I can explain deeper, with a simple spin on two basic science principles. We live in space-time, with space-time made firm by matter/mass. The mass of the sun, creates an expanding space-time zone, radially outward, based on its mass. This profile of space-time follows the sun's mass as the sun moves in the galaxy.

I postulate there is also independent space and independent time, where space and time are not tether bu mass, like we have with space-time. This other realm go independent space and time, is not based on matter or mass. It can only become matter, if space and time become tethered.

The bridge. above, being designed on paper, is not yet made of material, matter or mass. It exists more where space and time are not connected; imagination, which makes these ideas more ethereal, and not firmly fixed into material reality. In the imagination, we can make the bridge out of spaghetti, but that design cannot be tethered into space-time. But it is still humanly possible to imagine this. But since it cannot be tethered into space-time, it will fail in space-time or reality.

Separated space and time, has more options than just space-time. We can imagine fact and fiction. Space-time is a subset of separated space and separated time, since space-time cannot naturally build imaginary castles or alloy bridges. However, human can build these castles. The clock maker is not part of space-time, but he would be part of the larger set, called separated space and time, where planning can be done in infinite ways. However, with space-time a subset, only some of this endless ways, will not only work in separated space and time, but also within space-time; imagine and build a real castle.

The black box approach; statistical, appears to sense this fictional and fact nature of separated space and time, with not all fiction selected; mutation that does not add up to progressive reality. Not because its is bad, but because it cannot merge with space-time, but it remains ethereal. It can still be thought about, but natural laws of space-time cannot use it, directly. Learn from mistakes.

I also combine this to the second law of entropy, which states the entropy of the universe has to increase. Entropy is connected to complexity with separated space and time being a more complex state, since it has so many extra fictional options beyond space-time It appears, separated space and time, being of extreme entropy, is the drive behind the 2nd law in space-time. Since entropy has to increase in space-time, change is inevitable; clock maker. Since entropy has to increase within space-time, space-time itself, begins to look more like separated space and time; live and consciousness appears.; human creation advancing space-time.

 

[Ostronomos]

Physics gives us objective knowledge, technology and a common understanding of how the world and universe works. It does not claim to tell us about human nature or how to live. For that we have psychology, sociology, politics, &c -- which we largely ignore.
Religion, on the other hand, has suppressed human progress and understanding for thousands of years.

The mere utterance of these words are deserving of the following emoji .

Now that I have defeated you in argument, will you concede?

Faith is unwarranted belief; belief without evidence. How does that "work?"
Seeing us through difficult times? You're confusing ontology with psychotherapy.

It is actually atheism that is belief without evidence. Since God exists within all of us, atheism is a denial of our essential nature to embrace this God.

Atheists like to tout the virtues of rationality while dismissing the fact that God is the highest, most logical argument there is.

Prayer, as blinded studies have shown, simply does not work, except to calm the importunate.

The thing is, if you read my axioms of metaphysics (an attempt to further science and emerge from false materialism), the higher dimension contains the separation, effecting the non-separation. This is evidence that prayer works when the brain or mind (two separate things), connects to the higher dimension whereby thought influences events, or the probability of such events.

Meditation? More psychotherapy.
Confirmation from experience? People have been praying and blindly believing for thousands of years

This is a blind presumption on your part as to the efficacy of prayer.

-- with no consensus about anything, no technological progress, no social progress, no increase in general health or prosperity. I see no confirmation here.

How's this for scientific progress that serves to benefit mankind...

Your Consciousness Can Connect With the Whole Universe, Groundbreaking New Research Suggests

This clue about where consciousness comes from supports a Nobel-Prize winner’s theory about how quantum physics works in your brain, known as Orch OR Theory.

www.aol.com

It's science and empiricism that produce progress and understanding.

Why, thank you.

 

[wellwisher]

Separated space and time was proven to be a fact, by the experiments of Heisenberg. This effect is more obvious at the quantum level.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that there is inherent uncertainty in the act of measuring a variable of a particle. Commonly applied to the position and momentum of a particle, the principle states that the more precisely the position is known the more uncertain the momentum is and vice versa.

If the electron was only in space-time, the two variables, space and time, by bring tethered should move the same way. But instead, what Heisenberg notices time and space appears to be untethered, in a reverse relationship; going in different directions. This added uncertainty to space-time, that can be explained simply as space and time becoming more like two independent variables.

The quantum realm, which underlies macro-space-time appears to be where the clockmaker lives. The rules of space and time change at the quantum level. The quantum state is the interface between space-time and independent space and time. The electron has properties as existing in both realms. Imagination may have a quantum connection; bridge (proton-electron and water).

 

[PearlSeeker]

Which are the result of things having regular inherent properties, such as mass, charge, spin, etc. Those properties determine the strength of interactions via the forces of gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Those all have feedback loops that produce complexity and larger patterns.

These properties are just the mechanism by which a thing manifests the inherent powers it has.

 

[PearlSeeker]

That negates the need for the designer hypothesis.

And yet biology speaks what heart, hands, livers... are for.

 

[Tomef]

And yet biology speaks what heart, hands, livers... are for.

Yes, they are elements of a living organism. There's no need for some invented deity to give meaning to human actions, we act for ourselves and for others. Preferring a fictional explanation for that doesn't make the fiction any more real, I think you can only realise what really makes life worthwhile by abandoning outdated notions about gods and an eternal paradise. Basing your life on some phoney beliefs only gives you a simulacra of purpose.

 

[Polymath257]

These properties are just the mechanism by which a thing manifests the inherent powers it has.

Indeed. And no intelligent agent is required for things to have properties. In fact, an intelligent agent has to have the properties related to intelligence, so it *cannot* be an explanation for the order in things.

 

[PearlSeeker]

In what way is the "God" that Christianity refers to not quite the same as what this, particular, philosophical argument points to?

The Aristotelian Unmoved Mover is not the all-loving person of Christian theism. It "... does not concern himself with the affairs of men nor does he worry about other things in the world." (O. Höffe)

More on this:

Does Aristotle believe in a monotheistic God?

Many scholars of Aristotle regard him as a monotheistic theologian, one who sees humanity’s ultimate end as tied to a divine First Explanation. They do not go so far as to say Aristotle actua…

loveofallwisdom.com

I'd like to dig more into what is meant here by "intelligence"
It seems to me that we are discerning the ideation of the end and the intent which directs the causes towards the end.

In the example I gave of spinning the top, it's clear that the ideation and intent to spin the top were within my intelligence. So is my intelligence outside of this universe? Or is my intelligence within my physical body? Or do I not actually have intelligence?

A great topic for another thread. If you don't mind I'll create one on the nature of intellect.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Indeed. And no intelligent agent is required for things to have properties. In fact, an intelligent agent has to have the properties related to intelligence, so it *cannot* be an explanation for the order in things.

Having a certain form goes hand in hand with having a final cause or natural end. For example a plant is ordered toward taking in nutrients, growing and reproducing itself... Yes, human intellect is not responsible for this order. It's just able to grasp it.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes, physics works, especially when it tells us something meaningful about nature. But it doesn’t really tell us much about human nature, and nothing at all about how we should live.

Correct. Physics (and science in general) says absolutely nothing about 'should'. It only deals with 'is'.

In other words, it focuses on *truths* as opposed to *goals* or *opinions*.

Physics is not the only thing which works btw. So does faith, as anyone who has relied upon it to see them through difficult times will attest. And so do prayer and meditation, as those of us who make regular use of them can confirm, from experience.

Yes, any number of tricks can be used to 'get through' tough times. From what I have found, most of them amount to some sort of self-delusion to ignore the unpleasant facts you don't want to face.

So the question in my mind is the following: are you interested in truth? or are you interested in 'getting through difficult emotional times'?

There is a conflict because many truths are incredibly unpleasant and our egos often don't work well with the truths that reveal that we are not as important as we would like to think. But that means that to find truth we often have to excise pleasant falsehoods and self-delusions. It means we might have to give up cherished ideas and learn to accept (and deal with) facts that we would prefer to ignore. We have to strenuously guard against confirmation bias.

As for me, I am interested in the truth, even if it is unpleasant.

 

[Polymath257]

Prayer and meditation predate psychotherapy by millennia, so putting their efficacy down to a field of study which is little over a hundred years old, is clearly meaningless. But of course, if your only values are material values, and the only progress you recognise is material progress, you are unlikely to even grasp the concept of spiritual growth. And if that’s the case, I’m sorry for you.

That isn't the selling point you seem to think it is.

Usually, the first ideas we have in a subject of study are wrong. We have to start somewhere, but that means we usually start with biases and per-conceived notions that will later be shown to be incorrect.

So, for example, Aristotle was a brilliant thinker, but he was wrong about almost every single point in his ideas about physics. The same is true of most of his ideas in metaphysics. His brilliance does not imply he was correct. And, in fact, his being one of the first people to study many subjects means he would be wrong in most cases.

What is required is testable ideas that are subject to rigorous scrutiny and attempts to show them *wrong*. This is what has lead to the amazing advances in science over the last 400 years. And this is why the age of an idea is not itself a justification of that idea. Aristotle's teaching that heavy objects fall faster than lighter objects lasted for almost 2000 years, but it was still completely wrong.

As for 'spiritual growth', I frankly don't know what it means. If it means that I learn to get along with others and to appreciate my place in the universe and experience awe in the world around me, that is one thing (although i have no idea why that is related to a 'spirit').

But if it means something to do with a supernatural, I would first need some evidence that there *is* a supernatural. In particular, I would need to see some rigorous *tests* of that idea *before* accepting it as valid. Up to now, I have not seen such. Frankly, I doubt that is possible and, for what I can see, that makes the whole idea incoherent.

 

[Polymath257]

Having a certain form goes hand in hand with having a final cause or natural end.

Not usually. A star being a sphere has NOTHING to do with a 'final cause' or a 'natural end'.

For example a plant is ordered toward taking in nutrients, growing and reproducing itself... Yes, human intellect is not responsible for this order. It's just able to grasp it.

The problem is that this is exactly backwards. Those plants that did not have mechanisms for nourishment and growth did not reproduce and so their genes got eliminated. The changes that lead to genes giving benefits are NOT selected ahead of time: they are produced and *then* selection against those that fail occurs.

The *order* is simply the result of mutation and natural selection finding solutions to survival.

 

[Valjean]

And yet biology speaks what heart, hands, livers... are for.

In familiar, non-technical discussion, yes. But in technical discussion, biology speaks of these body parts' function.

 

[RestlessSoul]

That isn't the selling point you seem to think it is.

Usually, the first ideas we have in a subject of study are wrong. We have to start somewhere, but that means we usually start with biases and per-conceived notions that will later be shown to be incorrect.

So, for example, Aristotle was a brilliant thinker, but he was wrong about almost every single point in his ideas about physics. The same is true of most of his ideas in metaphysics. His brilliance does not imply he was correct. And, in fact, his being one of the first people to study many subjects means he would be wrong in most cases.

What is required is testable ideas that are subject to rigorous scrutiny and attempts to show them *wrong*. This is what has lead to the amazing advances in science over the last 400 years. And this is why the age of an idea is not itself a justification of that idea. Aristotle's teaching that heavy objects fall faster than lighter objects lasted for almost 2000 years, but it was still completely wrong.

As for 'spiritual growth', I frankly don't know what it means. If it means that I learn to get along with others and to appreciate my place in the universe and experience awe in the world around me, that is one thing (although i have no idea why that is related to a 'spirit').

But if it means something to do with a supernatural, I would first need some evidence that there *is* a supernatural. In particular, I would need to see some rigorous *tests* of that idea *before* accepting it as valid. Up to now, I have not seen such. Frankly, I doubt that is possible and, for what I can see, that makes the whole idea incoherent.

Well firstly, I’m not trying to sell anything.

As for Aristotle, wasn’t the principle of causality the most fundamental of his beliefs about the physical world? “We do not say we know a thing, until we know it’s causes.” Isn’t that one of the axioms of physics to this day? So he clearly wasn’t wrong about everything, and has in any case been subject to some re-evaluation in the last 70 years or so. Though I confess I’m not really up to speed with that.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/157866135.pdf

In any case, how much closer are we to truth now, than Aristotle was, the undoubted successes of post-enlightenment science notwithstanding? Isn’t it universally accepted nowadays, that physics can only ever give us approximate representations of reality? And that when it’s convenient to do so, realism, and by implication truth, can be abandoned altogether, as with the Copenhagenist approach to QM?

If we are seeking truth, we may require more than just the intellect to apprehend it. Intuitive insight, perhaps, such as that shared, a century apart and in quite different fields, by John Keats* and Paul
Dirac;

“Truth is beauty, beauty truth, and that is all
You know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

“The result is too beautiful to be false. It is more important to have beauty in one’s equations, than to have them fit experiment.”



Of course ideas should be tested, the God idea being no exception. If faith in God didn’t work for me personally, I would have abandoned it years ago: and more easily than contemporaries of Copernicus abandoned the Ptolemaic model of cosmology. The simple and well evidenced fact is that faith works, for millions of people, every day; and isn’t labelling reliance spiritual principles “a trick to get through tough times” simply to take a utilitarian approach? Something I imagine you’d be perfectly comfortable win other contexts.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Indeed. And no intelligent agent is required for things to have properties. In fact, an intelligent agent has to have the properties related to intelligence, so it *cannot* be an explanation for the order in things.

This is in effect an (as yet) unfalsifiable axiom of the materialist worldview. All we can say with absolute certainty is that, without the participation of a conscious observer, no evidence for the properties of any entity, can be discerned.

Beyond that, all statements about the relationship between object, observer, and the act of observation, are speculative.

 

[PearlSeeker]

A star being a sphere has NOTHING to do with a 'final cause' or a 'natural end'.

Stars shine and produce/recycle/distribute material in universe. Round shape is actually the best to reach all directions.

BTW "Form" is not only the shape. It means all characteristic features (essential properties).

The problem is that this is exactly backwards. Those plants that did not have mechanisms for nourishment and growth did not reproduce and so their genes got eliminated. The changes that lead to genes giving benefits are NOT selected ahead of time: they are produced and *then* selection against those that fail occurs.

The *order* is simply the result of mutation and natural selection finding solutions to survival.

We are talking about plants, right?

And DNA itself contains "directions", "code", "instructions" etc.

 

[PearlSeeker]

In familiar, non-technical discussion, yes. But in technical discussion, biology speaks of these body parts' function.

Does this change anything? Function is just another word for an example of final causality or goal-directedness.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Does this change anything? Function is just another word for an example of final causality or goal-directedness.

To the materialist, the world is animated only by physical forces arising from laws of nature: so all purpose, function and direction comes solely from those laws.

Which begs an awful lot of questions, such as why there are laws in the first place? and, if laws are observable order, what is the role of the observer? But only the philosophically inclined will even acknowledge the validity of such questions. And most, but not all materialists generally distrust philosophy as much as they do theology.

 

[Polymath257]

Well firstly, I’m not trying to sell anything.

As for Aristotle, wasn’t the principle of causality the most fundamental of his beliefs about the physical world? “We do not say we know a thing, until we know it’s causes.” Isn’t that one of the axioms of physics to this day?

No, it isn't. For example, quantum mechanics is not a causal theory. But we still regard it as a very good and well tested explanation for how the universe works.

So he clearly wasn’t wrong about everything, and has in any case been subject to some re-evaluation in the last 70 years or so. Though I confess I’m not really up to speed with that.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/157866135.pdf

In any case, how much closer are we to truth now, than Aristotle was, the undoubted successes of post-enlightenment science notwithstanding? Isn’t it universally accepted nowadays, that physics can only ever give us approximate representations of reality? And that when it’s convenient to do so, realism, and by implication truth, can be abandoned altogether, as with the Copenhagenist approach to QM?

Exactly. The old metaphysics has been found to not represent reality very well. We can only have approximations because there is no such thing as an absolutely accurate test.

No, there is still truth, but not where classical metaphysics says it would be. It is a truth that the universe is ultimately probabilistic and not realistic (be careful of technical terms here). it is a truth that causality as classically understood simply isn't how the universe works.

And yes, we are closer to truth now than we were 400 years ago, let alone 2300 years ago *because* we insist on testability of our ideas and dispense with those ideas that are not testable.

If we are seeking truth, we may require more than just the intellect to apprehend it. Intuitive insight, perhaps, such as that shared, a century apart and in quite different fields, by John Keats* and Paul
Dirac;

“Truth is beauty, beauty truth, and that is all
You know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

“The result is too beautiful to be false. It is more important to have beauty in one’s equations, than to have them fit experiment.”

Intuition is a wonderful way to get new ideas to test. It is a crucial aspect of our investigations. But intuition alone is not even close to being enough to establish truth. Whatever intuition says needs to then be tested thoroughly to see if it actually aligns with the real world. if it doesn't, then that intuition needs to be modified or discarded.

Of course ideas should be tested, the God idea being no exception. If faith in God didn’t work for me personally, I would have abandoned it years ago: and more easily than contemporaries of Copernicus abandoned the Ptolemaic model of cosmology. The simple and well evidenced fact is that faith works, for millions of people, every day; and isn’t labelling reliance spiritual principles “a trick to get through tough times” simply to take a utilitarian approach? Something I imagine you’d be perfectly comfortable win other contexts.

Faith is, almost by definition, not testable. You don't try to show that the ideas of your faith are wrong. You don't try to see when they fail. You don't approach them with skepticism and a deep understanding that they can be wrong and should not be trusted until tested.

For an idea to 'work' isn't simply that you can make it fit the data. Instead, it has to fit the data *even if you are trying to show it wrong*. That is how confirmation bias is guarded against.