RE: The Best Logique Evidence of God Existence
July 16, 2019 at 8:22 am
(This post was last modified: July 16, 2019 at 8:39 am by Bucky Ball.)
(July 16, 2019 at 8:15 am)Belaqua Wrote:(July 16, 2019 at 7:40 am)Bucky Ball Wrote: Where did non-existence come from.I am pretty confident that some things currently exist.
Quote:A being cannot "decide to create" and THEN "create" without at least mental movement, thus the entire argument is nonsense.
Can you point me to the place in Thomas's works where he says that a being "decides to create" and then creates? All of the books about Thomas I've read are clear that, in his view, there is no decision involved -- no change or temporal element in creation. You are correct that this would require mental movement, and this is why both the Thomists and the Neoplatonists rule it out.
Saying you are confident things exist in no way addresses anything about non-existence. We can conceive of (and indeed in some systems it is asserted are impossible ie "God cannot created a 3 sided rectangle" (therefore it does NOT exist). Reality is not JUST about "existence".
It's Aquinas' works, not Thomas' works ... and I'll have to think about it. He was a Catholic (even though he was censured by the Archbishop of Paris for his views), so his god "did" all sorts of things "sent his son" etc etc ... he's hardly an unmoved mover.
In the Summa Theologica, Question 19, The Will of God, Article 4, "Whether the Will of God is the Cause of Things", in the second answer to the objections :
"Hence, since God is first in the order of agents, He must act by intellect and will".
The real question in all of this, is not cause or First cause ... it's the problem of the Principle of Causality. Where did *that* come from. How could a First Cause cause Causality, if the principle was not already in place. THAT is the real question, and there is no answer for it.
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. - Joseph Campbell 
Militant Atheist Commie Evolutionist

Militant Atheist Commie Evolutionist