Ed Feser's Aristotelian Proof of the Existence of God

[Minimalist]

Much of his arguments come from Aristotelean physics - something the real world has moved on from quite some time ago.

True, but your average theist is so fucking stupid that they are still impressed when someone trots out Aristotle because he was like some smart Greek of something.

It takes little to impress a theist. The god stories are proof of that.

[Anomalocaris]

The trouble with Aristotelian 'proofs' is this: Aristotle maintained that men had more teeth than women. He was married twice, and it never occurred to him to have either wife open her mouth, so he could check.

Boru

Perhaps he didn't need to. He knew himself to be a wife beater and consequently his wfe had fewer teeth than he did.

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Much of his arguments come from Aristotelean physics - something the real world has moved on from quite some time ago.

True, but your average theist is so fucking stupid that they are still impressed when someone trots out Aristotle because he was like some smart Greek of something.

It takes little to impress a theist. The god stories are proof of that.

The average Christian is impressed by anything that is misused to prove God, and it is not beyond most of them to misuse anything to prove God.

[Minimalist]

Ha! If he was married he should have known that getting women to open their mouths is never the problem!

[vorlon13]

The trouble with Aristotelian 'proofs' is this: Aristotle maintained that men had more teeth than women. He was married twice, and it never occurred to him to have either wife open her mouth, so he could check.

Boru

WOW!!

Had a high school chem teacher go on about that for an entire hour one day.

And that was 40 years ago! Haven't thought about women's teeth or Elmo ever since. Funny as hell you cited that !!!



Sorry, I digress, please resume topic . . .

[bennyboy]

If you are going to allow any quantity, X, to exist without needing to be created, or to support without needing to be supported, then should you a) not knowing what X is, call it God; b) not knowing what X is, start with the assumption that it is the universe itself?

I'm not a huge fan of Occam's razor, but adding variables for no good reason seems like a bad idea.

[Dolorian]

If, in that snapshot of the moment, you remove the table, the coffee still stays 3 ft above. It'll be 2.99999 ft in the next snapshot. The idea here being he wants to consider two independent modes of causality - linear and hierarchical - but doesn't acknowledge their relation.

Yep, that's actually a very good point.

[Neo-Scholastic]

If, in that snapshot of the moment, you remove the table, the coffee still stays 3 ft above. It'll be 2.99999 ft in the next snapshot. The idea here being he wants to consider two independent modes of causality - linear and hierarchical - but doesn't acknowledge their relation.

Yep, that's actually a very good point.

No, its a dumb point. The issue is about what remains consistent about contingent things despite the facts that they change. The physical universe is logically contingent on something prior that preserves its being between states, i.e. the space between 3 and 2.9999. Feser is spot on.

[genkaus]

No, its a dumb point. The issue is about what remains consistent about contingent things despite the facts that they change. The physical universe is logically contingent on something prior that preserves its being between states, i.e. the space between 3 and 2.9999. Feser is spot on.

"Remaining consistent" is the opposite of change - which was the actual point here. According to him, the cup remaining consistent at 3 ft was a change taking place - which is the actual dumb point.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The unfortunate fact is that reality doesn't bow to logic.

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The trouble with Aristotelian 'proofs' is this: Aristotle maintained that men had more teeth than women. He was married twice, and it never occurred to him to have either wife open her mouth, so he could check.

Boru

Which highlights another problem here -- calling something an "Aristotlean proof" is simply an argument from authority once removed.

[Mudhammam]

Wondering what some of the folks here think about his argument.

Ed Feser makes an argument for God by starting with change; using a hierarchical series of causes as opposed to a linear series (he even admits that a linear series could well be infinite, having no first member). What the argument seeks to establish is that at any given moment, the universe stands in need of being kept in existence by God (ie. the water is held up by the cup which is held up by the table which is itself held up by the floor, which in turn is held up by the earth, etc, all the way to God).

Feser makes this argument (more elaborately) in the first 30 minutes of this video. He also addresses some objections to the argument there:

This is the same basic illogic contained in all cosmological arguments except in a different guise--when logic or science is seemingly at the limit of comprehensibility, resort to making specific proclamations about whatever it is you're explicitly admitting is, at least in current appearance, incomprehensible. And be sure to call it God, adding on your cultural heritage's proclivities as anthropomorphic thoughts, dislikes, and wills that you can fit, absolutely of course, into your current little image of the world.