A Necessary Being?

[Levi_Black]

You thought he could understand. Turns out he Kant.

I think if you assume he actually Kant, you are putting Descartes before the horse.

The thing is... no matter whether you're talking about an essential prediction or an accidental prediction. Kant objection is still sound

[Alex K]

I think if you assume he actually Kant, you are putting Descartes before the horse.

I like your Engel, very Hume-erous. You get top Marx.



Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I smell a Ruse, Gadamer! Are you Plotin something?

[Whateverist]

Is the idea of a necessary being possible? yeah, sure. Is it the only possible option? No.

But haven't you heard? The concept of a necessary being by necessity includes the property that it necessarily exists, ergo, God.

I'm pretty sure the OP was hoping for a long slow build up to that climax.  Your ejaculation may have come prematurely.

[ApeNotKillApe]

I like your Engel, very Hume-erous. You get top Marx.



Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I smell a Ruse, Gadamer! Are you Plotin something?

Surely, Euclid.

[LadyForCamus]

You thought he could understand. Turns out he Kant.

[emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

[Mudhammam]

I know you have me on ignore, but in case you get curious enough to glance at this: what makes an infinite regress impossible? For us dummies who aren't logicians, that is...

Edit/addition:

From my limited understanding, logical absolutes are only absolutely true in THIS universe, right? So, if there can exist some universe or reality where, say, A does not equal A, why can't there exist some universe or reality where infinite regress is logically possible? How can we possibly extrapolate what we know about our own universe to whatever may or may not lie beyond it? I don't see how anyone could be justified in even trying to presume such a thing.

That would be the height of nonsense! Sheer irrationality! Aye, there might be a Person who possesses two Natures and is himself among three Persons whose essence is a single Nature. Wait, what?

I'm going with the concepts of basic logic, such as the principles of identity and noncontradiction -- they seem to work fairly well.

Regarding Wooter's idea of infinite regress, I agree that it doesn't make any bit of sense to conceive of essential causes in a beginningless series, and that an eternal being would seem to be necessary. But insofar as this being has any causal relation to temporal events, I can't actually see how one can avoid a temporal infinite regress, or how that is separable from an ontologically uncaused cause. If anything is eternal, and has effect on sequences in time, it would seem to require that the sequences must be also be eternal, or that the cause was not essential. I know theists think that giving God a free will has advantage that a "spontaneous mechanism" arising from some atemporal state doesn't possess, but I don't see it. Both seem equally problematic.