Teleological Argument (Aquinas)

[ratiocinator]

You are not capable of having this conversation. Your head is stuck in "science" (materialism) and cannot think past it.

No, it's actually you who keeps bringing it back to science, because it seems you don't get that time is part of science and the material world.

I'm perfectly happy to not talk about science at all. As I said, the mystery you seem to want is still a mystery, it's just not connected to the material world in the way you seem determined to make it with the stuff like nothingness being eternal and something having to happen to nothingness to make it something.

It is you who will not let go of the material world and talk about it as a purely logical or philosophical question, not me.

This:

No, I am stating that nothingness is an eternal, perfect state. Something(ness) is not. Yet something is what we have, now. So that eternal perfect state is no longer eternal or perfect. It has been usurped. How? Why?

Is a statement about time and hence science.

When we were last debating this, it was you who set up three options, of 'poofing', enteral past, or God. That again, is to bring time and hence the material world and science into the question.

None of this is about space or time or matter or energy. It's about possibility and impossibility. About nothing or something. But you're not comprehending this because it's metaphysical, and not physical. It's philosophy and not science. And your materialist worldview cannot reach into that realm.

It is you who are getting confused between the two. You can't seem to get out of the physical-based mindset that thinks nothingness is perfect and eternal, and simply asked the entirely stripped down question of why this reality, rather than another, or none, then you could say it's got nothing to do with materialism or science.

The problem is that you don't seem to even want to do that. And it's quite easy to see why, because then, you have nothing to hang your pseudo-logic on. There is simply no answer that's any more logical than any other. No natural state that you might expect. There is nothing but total and complete ignorance with no logical way forward.

 

[Koldo]

That's quite irrelevant. Faith in this mystery source aids and sustains billions of your fellow humans. And the fact that they can all tailor that mystery source to better suit their own natures just makes it that much more effective. So your quibbles over who chooses what concept or that you don't think it's sufficiently effective or positive is not pertinent.

It is not faith in the mystery source that aids billions of people. It is faith in heavens, the second coming, Jannah, faith healing, etc.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

You are not capable of having this conversation. Your head is stuck in "science" (materialism) and cannot think past it.

None of this is about space or time or matter or energy. It's about possibility and impossibility. About nothing or something. But you're not comprehending this because it's metaphysical, and not physical. It's philosophy and not science. And your materialist worldview cannot reach into that realm.

Philosophy can reach many conclusions about all sorts of things -- and be wrong in all of them.

One possibility, that physics could potentially show, is that "nothing" is unstable, and breaks down naturally into positive and negative "somethings." This would require no metaphysics at all -- and once there, materialism would be a real thing.

 

[PureX]

It is not faith in the mystery source that aids billions of people. It is faith in heavens, the second coming, Jannah, faith healing, etc.

It doesn't matter how they envision it, it's the faith that works for them, or doesn't. And for many, it does work in a positive and effective way.

What they need depends on who they are. So how they envision that mystery, and how they act on their faith in it, will relate to what they need to gain from it, and to helping them either get it, or get past needing it.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Hubris.

This idea of "goal-directedness in nature" seems to come from two underlying thoughts:

- when the consequence of an event is important to me, those consequences are universally significant.

- processes that don't produce results that I care about are universally insignificant.


If you're willing to just be open-minded and approach the universe as it is without imposing your own values on it, the idea of "goal-directedness" just disappears.

Edit: there's no rational way to get from "X happened" to "the universe was trying to make X happen" without bringing a whole host of assumptions into it. Those assumptions - i.e. the foundation of the idea of "goal-directedness in nature" are unnecessary.

An apple falls from an apple tree regardless of my care or importance to me. It is as it is.

 

[PureX]

Philosophy can reach many conclusions about all sorts of things -- and be wrong in all of them.

But in this case, "wrong" is irrelevant. Since none of us can know.

One possibility, that physics could potentially show, is that "nothing" is unstable, and breaks down naturally into positive and negative "somethings."

You apparently don't understand what the term "nothing" means. You think it's some sort of physical phenomena that can "break down".

 

[Ostronomos]

Sounds like a mix of "I'm so awesome that I can't have arisen by accident" and "if there isn't a giant magical being on top of the cloud, how could lightning bolts be thrown out of it?"

I am a living miracle.

However that is not what motivates my argument for a deity.

What motivates my argument is what I call "the seeing" that I occasionally receive.

I am not about to lend authority to ignorance on the matter of God. As I am 100% aware of the fact that a God is real. Reality.

At the moment I am not as intelligent as I am on those fleeting occasions in which I can actually prove that God resides at the edge of existence and is nowhere absent.

I find atheism to be a pitiful and disgraceful state of affairs. Because not only do they not know that God is real, they buy into the false narrative of materialist reductionism.

That, my friend, is laughable.

 

[Koldo]

It doesn't matter how they envision it, it's the faith that works for them, or doesn't. And for many, it does work in a positive and effective way.

What they need depends on who they are. So how they envision that mystery, and how they act on their faith in it, will relate to what they need to gain from it, and to helping them either get it, or get past needing it.

I think I may not have gotten my point across, so I am going to phrase it this way: they don't have any faith in a mystery.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

But in this case, "wrong" is irrelevant. Since none of us can know.

You apparently don't understand what the term "nothing" means. You think it's some sort of physical phenomena that can "break down".

A state of nothing may be unstable​

Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek is credited with the aphorism that "nothing is unstable." Physicist Sean Carroll argues that this accounts merely for the existence of matter, but not the existence of quantum states, space-time, or the universe as a whole.

Why is there anything at all? - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[PureX]

I think I may not have gotten my point across, so I am going to phrase it this way: they don't have any faith in a mystery.

They have faith in how they choose to perceive that mystery. That's the beauty and power of the mystery. That we can each envision it as we need to, and as we choose to. And we can then try to live by that hope. And in doing that, help to make it so.

Instead, you want to sit around and poo-poo the fact that we can't know for certain that the vision we put our faith in is true? What a silly and defeatist thing to do.

 

[PearlSeeker]

The "goal seeking" we see in living things is understood and explained by evolution, with no need for intelligence at all. I'm not even sure what goals you think rocks, planets, stars, and so on, have. There is certainly regularity in nature, but I see no goals.

Calling a consequence a "goal" is unjustifiedly trying to sneak the idea of intent.

You are describing the behavior of some things. Why are you calling that a goal?

"For Aristotelians, conscious goal-directedness in the natural world is limited to animals and human beings, and most of the final causality that exists in the world is totally unconscious. Furthermore, and contrary to another common misunderstanding, most final causality has nothing to do with a thing’s having a “function” or “purpose” as those terms are usually understood (though function and purpose are indeed one kind of final causality). Thus it is no good to object that mountains or asteroids seem to serve no natural function or purpose, because Aristotelians do not claim that every object in the natural world necessarily serves some function. What they do claim is that everything in the world that serves as an efficient cause also exhibits final causality insofar as it is “directed toward” the production of some determinate range of effects. Thus (to repeat an earlier example) a match is “directed toward” the production of fire and heat rather than (say) frost or cold; that is the “goal” or “end” it “aims” at, even if it is never in fact struck."

(Edward Feser, The Last Superstition)

 

[Koldo]

They have faith in how they choose to perceive that mystery.

Nope. Just Nope. You are projecting here.

 

[Koldo]

"For Aristotelians, conscious goal-directedness in the natural world is limited to animals and human beings, and most of the final causality that exists in the world is totally unconscious. Furthermore, and contrary to another common misunderstanding, most final causality has nothing to do with a thing’s having a “function” or “purpose” as those terms are usually understood (though function and purpose are indeed one kind of final causality). Thus it is no good to object that mountains or asteroids seem to serve no natural function or purpose, because Aristotelians do not claim that every object in the natural world necessarily serves some function. What they do claim is that everything in the world that serves as an efficient cause also exhibits final causality insofar as it is “directed toward” the production of some determinate range of effects. Thus (to repeat an earlier example) a match is “directed toward” the production of fire and heat rather than (say) frost or cold; that is the “goal” or “end” it “aims” at, even if it is never in fact struck."

(Edward Feser, The Last Superstition)

And this would properly answer any of our posts because.... ? Elaborate.

 

[RestlessSoul]

It is not faith in the mystery source that aids billions of people. It is faith in heavens, the second coming, Jannah, faith healing, etc.

Nonsense. Who are you, who has no faith, to speak for all people who do?

 

[Koldo]

Nonsense. Who are you, who has no faith, to speak for all people who do?

What are you talking about? I said 'billions of people', not 'all people' on that post.

 

[PearlSeeker]

And this would properly answer any of our posts because.... ? Elaborate.

... because it shows there are "goals" or "ends" that nonconscious things "aim" at.

 

[RestlessSoul]

What are you talking about? I said 'billions of people', not 'all people' on that post.

Perhaps you might be more convincing if you spoke for yourself, rather than for ‘billions of people’. So, what do you have faith in?

 

[ratiocinator]

... because it shows there are "goals" or "ends" that nonconscious things "aim" at.

No, it's a claim that they do, a typical bit of Feser waffle, and the example at the end was an object manufactured to have a purpose.

I once subjected myself to an entire hour of a Feser lecture, one that I'll never get back. He took the first half of it saying "there must be something at the base of all existence", which was tedious in the extreme, and the second half trying to bash the square peg of the traditional attributes of a monotheistic God into the round hole he had made in the first half. At least that had some comedy value.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

"For Aristotelians, conscious goal-directedness in the natural world is limited to animals and human beings, and most of the final causality that exists in the world is totally unconscious. Furthermore, and contrary to another common misunderstanding, most final causality has nothing to do with a thing’s having a “function” or “purpose” as those terms are usually understood (though function and purpose are indeed one kind of final causality). Thus it is no good to object that mountains or asteroids seem to serve no natural function or purpose, because Aristotelians do not claim that every object in the natural world necessarily serves some function. What they do claim is that everything in the world that serves as an efficient cause also exhibits final causality insofar as it is “directed toward” the production of some determinate range of effects. Thus (to repeat an earlier example) a match is “directed toward” the production of fire and heat rather than (say) frost or cold; that is the “goal” or “end” it “aims” at, even if it is never in fact struck."

(Edward Feser, The Last Superstition)

What a self-centered - almost solpisistic - view of the universe.

"How *I* think a thing should be used tells me what its inherent 'purpose' is. If *I* see no use for a thing, then the thing has no purpose."

No. Reality doesn't care what you think of it. Reality is what it is regardless of how you view it.

 

[PureX]

Nope. Just Nope. You are projecting here.

How the hell would you know what faith is or isn't to a theist?