[Serious] For former Christians only, why did you leave your faith?

[Neo-Scholastic]

The author of the article is simply wrong.  Even if he was conceding a point to make another, Saint Thomas Aquinas most certainly did not believe in a beginningless Universe:

"God is the first exemplar cause of all things. In proof whereof we must consider that if for the production of anything an exemplar is necessary, it is in order that the effect may receive a determinate form." (Summa Theologiae I, 44, 2)

Kalam is about a temporal cause, Thomas writes of an essential cause. These are very different. "First exemplar cause" means it is essential for anything else to exist, not that it started the thing to exist in time.

Thomas agreed with Aristotle that there is no logical proof to show that the universe had a temporal beginning. He accepted such a beginning as faith, but agreed that it couldn't be proven. That's not what the First Cause argument is about.

Yeah, while Aquinas may have believed in a temporal beginning he knew that an essential first cause did not exclude an infinite past of pagan belief.

But I have ask Bella if you have ever questioned the premise that only things in act have causal power. I sometimes wonder if there is potency in the abyss.

[Belacqua]

Yeah, while Aquinas may have believed in a temporal beginning he knew that an essential first cause did not exclude an infinite past of pagan belief.

I suppose I should specify, yet again, that when I say "Kalam said" or "Thomas said," what I am arguing is that those people said those things. I am not arguing that what they said is true. 

Before we can argue whether their statements were true, we first have to know what they really said. And that has proven to be a very difficult thing on this forum.

But I have ask Bella if you have ever questioned the premise that only things in act have causal power. I sometimes wonder if there is potency in the abyss.

I very much don't know. I hold all those premises in a state of suspended belief, because I know that they turn out to be surprisingly difficult, and people who know far more about them than I do have good faith disagreements. I enjoy learning about them -- and I try not to misstate them, as others do. 

As for the abyss, and its potential... This of course brings us to Jacob Boehme, whose concept of the Ungrund is usually translated as "Abyss." Have you read him much? He is a fascinating and challenging thinker -- a mystic -- but without him there would be no German Idealism. He certainly thought that the original presence of this Abyss is necessary for the existence of God, so there is some kind of causal power there. 

But I am a beginner on this subject, and still working on all of it. (Currently reading a book on Schelling, who has clearly stolen a great deal from Boehme.)

[Jehanne]

Kalam is about a temporal cause, Thomas writes of an essential cause. These are very different. "First exemplar cause" means it is essential for anything else to exist, not that it started the thing to exist in time.

Thomas agreed with Aristotle that there is no logical proof to show that the universe had a temporal beginning. He accepted such a beginning as faith, but agreed that it couldn't be proven. That's not what the First Cause argument is about.

Yeah, while Aquinas may have believed in a temporal beginning he knew that an essential first cause did not exclude an infinite past of pagan belief.

But I have ask Bella if you have ever questioned the premise that only things in act have causal power. I sometimes wonder if there is potency in the abyss.

Well, Thomas had no qualms about the "secular arm" burning relapsed heretics at the stake for any "pagan beliefs" that such individuals may have embraced, which Thomas, based upon divine revelation, regarded as having been intrinsically false, even if such beliefs were "not disprovable".

[Orbit]

I was raised in the Presbyterian Church USA. It wasn't until I was 50 that I decided I wanted to know if the religion was true or not, because God didn't seem to be anywhere. I re-read the Bible (KJV) starting with Genesis and Genesis was enough to have me doubt a literal interpretation of the Bible. I researched Bible contradictions, history, Near East culture, and other religions. In the end I decided that mystical experiences were brain chemistry and the origins of the universe were unknowable.

[Gwaithmir]

I debunked the Kalam Cosmological Argument as it had been interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas describes in detail why he rejects the Kalam argument.

Unfortunately, I cannot cite the textbook or author who described Aquinas' version of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but it was discussed extensively by the priest who taught the religion class when I was a senior in Catholic high school and no mention was ever made of Aquinas' alleged rejection of it. Perhaps this was because the last thing our "educators" wanted was for Catholic students to research the issue on our own. We were in that class to be indoctrinated, not to learn how to think rationally about Catholic theology. What caused me to question Aquinas' ideas was the fact that astronomy was a hobby of mine and I had already constructed my own backyard observatory with a 3" refracting telescope.

[Belacqua]

Aquinas' version of the Kalam Cosmological Argument

I suspect you were hearing about Aquinas' version of the Cosmological argument. It would be correct to say that both Kalam and the Thomist argument are versions of the Cosmological argument.

Both derive ultimately from Aristotle. Aristotle's and Thomas' are pretty much the same, while Kalam is later than Aristotle and explains things very differently. So both are a version of the Cosmological argument, but Thomas is not a version of Kalam.

It's not possible to challenge the idea of essential causation with anything you can see through a telescope.

[Jehanne]

First off, one has to be careful reading medieval documents, which were written in a different language (usually Latin); any medievalist will tell you this.

As far as Saint Thomas and modern Catholicism, his catechism can be found here:

Catechism of the "Summa Theologica" of Saint Thomas Aquinas

It is stated:

V. OF THE CREATION
What is meant by saying that God is the Creator of all things?

It is meant that God made all things out of nothing (XLIV., XLV.).

There was then nothing at all beside God before He made all things?

Of a truth there was nothing beside God before He made all things, He Himself being by Himself, and all things else through Him (XLIV. 1).

When did God thus make all things out of nothing?

God made all things out of nothing when it pleased His will (XLIV.).

Had He so wished then, He need not have created the things He has made?

It is even so.

Why therefore did God wish to create at some given moment the things He has made?

God created the things He has made to make manifest His glory (XLIV. 4).

What is meant by this?

It is meant that God wished to make manifest the abundance of His goodness by communicating to others in part something of the infinite goodness which is none other than Himself.

It was not then through need, nor in order to acquire some perfection, that God created the things that He has made?

No, on the contrary, it was merely to give unto others something of what He Himself possesses in an infinite degree and out of sheer goodness that He created the things He has made.

Similarities to the Kalam argument abound.

[emjay]

Cognitive dissonance. I wish I could say, like so many here, that I reasoned my way out of it or critically thought my way out of it, but no, it wasn't like that at all, I wasn't even looking for an out, just a light bulb moment 'there is no God' came to me completely out of the blue one day when I was 18 and everything changed after that, as well as everything finally clicking and making sense (I mean as opposed to my fundamentalist/creationist beliefs before that).

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yeah, while Aquinas may have believed in a temporal beginning he knew that an essential first cause did not exclude an infinite past of pagan belief.

I suppose I should specify, yet again, that when I say "Kalam said" or "Thomas said," what I am arguing is that those people said those things. I am not arguing that what they said is true. 

Before we can argue whether their statements were true, we first have to know what they really said. And that has proven to be a very difficult thing on this forum.

But I have ask Bella if you have ever questioned the premise that only things in act have causal power. I sometimes wonder if there is potency in the abyss.

I very much don't know. I hold all those premises in a state of suspended belief, because I know that they turn out to be surprisingly difficult, and people who know far more about them than I do have good faith disagreements. I enjoy learning about them -- and I try not to misstate them, as others do. 

As for the abyss, and its potential... This of course brings us to Jacob Boehme, whose concept of the Ungrund is usually translated as "Abyss." Have you read him much? He is a fascinating and challenging thinker -- a mystic -- but without him there would be no German Idealism. He certainly thought that the original presence of this Abyss is necessary for the existence of God, so there is some kind of causal power there. 

But I am a beginner on this subject, and still working on all of it. (Currently reading a book on Schelling, who has clearly stolen a great deal from Boehme.)

I only know about Boehme from his engravings. I was always more intereseted in Swedenborg. So I will have to check out JBs texts if you could perhaps recommend a starting point.

Anyway, for quite some time I've been having a very intense Nietzschean experience of feeling like the bottomless pit of nihilistic absurdity is staring back at me in the place where eternal light shines into neverending darkness.

[Angrboda]

I suppose I should specify, yet again, that when I say "Kalam said" or "Thomas said," what I am arguing is that those people said those things. I am not arguing that what they said is true. 

Before we can argue whether their statements were true, we first have to know what they really said. And that has proven to be a very difficult thing on this forum.


I very much don't know. I hold all those premises in a state of suspended belief, because I know that they turn out to be surprisingly difficult, and people who know far more about them than I do have good faith disagreements. I enjoy learning about them -- and I try not to misstate them, as others do. 

As for the abyss, and its potential... This of course brings us to Jacob Boehme, whose concept of the Ungrund is usually translated as "Abyss." Have you read him much? He is a fascinating and challenging thinker -- a mystic -- but without him there would be no German Idealism. He certainly thought that the original presence of this Abyss is necessary for the existence of God, so there is some kind of causal power there. 

But I am a beginner on this subject, and still working on all of it. (Currently reading a book on Schelling, who has clearly stolen a great deal from Boehme.)

I only know about Boehme from his engravings. I was always more intereseted in Swedenborg. So I will have to check out JBs texts if you could perhaps recommend a starting point.

Anyway, for quite some time I've been having a very intense Nietzschean experience of feeling like the bottomless pit of nihilistic absurdity is staring back at me in the place where eternal light shines into neverending darkness.

Have you tried eating prunes?