RE: Becoming an angry atheist
December 17, 2014 at 1:51 pm
(This post was last modified: December 17, 2014 at 1:54 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(December 17, 2014 at 11:31 am)Parkers Tan Wrote:(December 16, 2014 at 6:54 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Efficient causes necessarily entail final causes.No. A landslide may have an efficient cause (rainfall softening the substrate), but there is no purpose behind it.
Again, your reasoning follows from misunderstandings about final cause. Final causes are not always inherently conscious. Left unimpeded by other factors efficient causes, like rain softening a substrate, are always directed toward actualizing a specific range of potentials, like a landslide, and not others, like forming diamonds. The alternatives are occationalism, which violates the principle of sufficient reason, and conceptualism, which is incoherent.
(December 17, 2014 at 11:31 am)Parkers Tan Wrote: …you still haven't answered my question as to how an immaterial being might affect material reality. I'd like an answer for that, please.Your question is nonsensical, because you do not recognize sensible bodies as hypostatic unions of forms, which are immaterial, and matter. Neither occurs apart from the other. Nevertheless as distinct principles they each have a causal role.