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February 12, 2014 at 12:09 pm (This post was last modified: February 12, 2014 at 12:13 pm by Rampant.A.I..)
(February 12, 2014 at 9:41 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: I am demonstrating how Gods existence/reality is necessary, this is the idea. You can't demonstrate Gods existence with science but you demonstrate it this way.
You are? Where?
Here are some historical objections to the claim you're presenting as "common sense," notably:
"We have no examples of necessary existence; we just have examples of necessary inferences or judgments. There can be no empirical necessities."
"The fact that many things exist when, if the argument were correct, the probability of objects existing is self-refuting since being must exist at the same time as these arguments in order to evaluate such arguments.
If God is an existent object in the universe, then by premise (1), it is possible for God not to exist. If God is a different kind of existent thing, then the argument commits the fallacy of petitio principii or the circularity of assuming in the premises what is to be proved.
The premise "If, for all existent objects, they do not exist at some time, then, given infinite time, there would be nothing in existence" commits the fallacy of composition. Simply because the parts of a group are limited, it does not follow that the group as a whole is limited. The properties of whole do not necessarily exhibit the properties of the parts.
Simply because all human beings have a finite life-span, it does not follow logically that someday the human race will come to an end— unless, of course, additional assumptions are made. Moreover, in Aristotelian philosophy, the corruption of one being is the generation of another—nothing ceases to exist without the generation of something else.
Necessity is a property of statements not of objects. It doesn't make sense to claim that an existent thing is logically necessary. Existent things just are, that's all. We have no examples of necessary existence; we just have examples of necessary inferences or judgments. There can be no empirical necessities.
As Kant notes, existence is not a real predicate or property; existence is not a characteristic which can be added to the concept of the subject. Thus, the concept of necessary existence is not meaningful. (Q.v., the notes Existence Is Not a Predicate)
The idea of necessary being is unintelligible. As Hume point out, any statement concerning existence can be denied. Hume writes, "The words, therefore "necessary existence," have no meaning, or which is the same thing, none of which is consistent." Whatever we can conceive as existent, we can also conceive as nonexistent.
Nevertheless, Charles Hartshorne claims that the predicate "necessary existence" does add something the concept of God and so is a real predicate or property. E. g., "necessary existence" is distinguished from contingent existence in that necessary existence cannot not exist.
Problem with Creation ex nihilo. Thomas' statement of our premiss (3) that nothing can come from nothing is expressed by him this way: "…that which does not exist begins to exist only through something already existing." This premise implies that the newly existent thing is only a transformation of the already existing thing; otherwise, there would be no way to account for the newly existing thing given the truth of the principle of the conservation of matter and energy. If Aquinas were to deny the principle of the conservation of matter and energy, then he would be tacitly denying the principle of creation ex nihilo for contingent things.
Thomas' does seem to presuppose the principle of the conservation of matter (and tacitly, anything equivalent to matter) in the implicit assumption that the universe is limited.
As reasonable as this assumption appears to be, consider Stephen Hawking's explanation of creation of matter and energy:
Where did they [i.e., 1080 particles in the universe] all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus, in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero.
The physicist Heinz Pagels speculates, "Maybe the universe itself sprang into existence out of nothingness—a gigantic vacuum fluctuation which we know today as the big bang. Remarkably, the laws of modern physics allow for this possibility."
Problem of Criterion of Counting. Are space and nature continuous or discrete? Where does one object end and another begin? Is a fist made from a closed hand something or nothing? Where does the fist go when the hand is opened? Where does a lap go when one stands up? In premise (2) there is a serious problem of criterion of counting objects and their parts. How could Thomas handle these and similar examples?
Problem of the Ultimate Consistent of the Universe. Ultimately is nature continuous or discrete? Do we have any good reasons for assuming with Thomas that nature is discrete rather than continuous?
As Hume points out in his Dialogues, nature, the universe itself, or something else could qualify as just as much a "necessary being" as God would. Why would we suppose that there could just be one necessary being in the universe?"