RE: Thomism: Then & Now
October 12, 2021 at 4:53 am
(This post was last modified: October 12, 2021 at 5:28 am by The Grand Nudger.)
And this we call god. Never quite got there, just tacked some jesus on at the end. No matter where or what his arguments would lead to, god was always the answer.
Philosophy being the art of learning how to ask good questions, aquinas is instructive as a negative case. He was very explicitly trying to work backward from a desired conclusion. It was his life's work as he understood it. We can probably give him a mulligan for not knowing as much as we do now..but even he knew he'd fudged it a bit.
If there's an unmoved mover..then there's an unmoved mover..but jesus isn't an unmoved mover. He's a fabled personal demigod who intervenes in human affairs.
If caused things must have causes, then caused things have a cause..but, again, a demigod from the ane isn't a cause of anything. It's a story, caused by human beings...who may well have causes themselves, granted.
Things may be contingent, but the sun isn't contingent on a story about a demigod from the ane. Nor is the universe..you..me, or the housecat. Meanwhile, stories about personal demigods from the ane are very much contingent on man.
Most-good beings? Sorry, jesus is out of the running on principle. What with reason requiring an ability to differentiate between degrees of perfection, and me being reasonable..I'm comfortable positing that there are quite a few degrees between jesus and perfection.
Final causes or ends? The reason that things behave the way they do? The universe doesn't behave the way it does because someone told a ghost story 2k years ago even if there is such a thing as a final cause or end.
I suppose we could strike jesus out of all of it, just say god...but...all of the same statements would be true. Our gods aren't prime movers, first causes, necessary beings, most good beings, or final causes. If that sort of thing, or collection of things, is what we should be calling a god, what we should understand a god to be, none of ours qualify. Charitably speaking...which is to say assuming that if he had lived today and had access to textual criticism, comp myth, modern synth, contemporary physics, or contemporary philosophy and was diligent in their application..I don't think he'd have offered any of these arguments. We would probably expect something more like plantingas modal ontological argument.
Philosophy being the art of learning how to ask good questions, aquinas is instructive as a negative case. He was very explicitly trying to work backward from a desired conclusion. It was his life's work as he understood it. We can probably give him a mulligan for not knowing as much as we do now..but even he knew he'd fudged it a bit.
If there's an unmoved mover..then there's an unmoved mover..but jesus isn't an unmoved mover. He's a fabled personal demigod who intervenes in human affairs.
If caused things must have causes, then caused things have a cause..but, again, a demigod from the ane isn't a cause of anything. It's a story, caused by human beings...who may well have causes themselves, granted.
Things may be contingent, but the sun isn't contingent on a story about a demigod from the ane. Nor is the universe..you..me, or the housecat. Meanwhile, stories about personal demigods from the ane are very much contingent on man.
Most-good beings? Sorry, jesus is out of the running on principle. What with reason requiring an ability to differentiate between degrees of perfection, and me being reasonable..I'm comfortable positing that there are quite a few degrees between jesus and perfection.
Final causes or ends? The reason that things behave the way they do? The universe doesn't behave the way it does because someone told a ghost story 2k years ago even if there is such a thing as a final cause or end.
I suppose we could strike jesus out of all of it, just say god...but...all of the same statements would be true. Our gods aren't prime movers, first causes, necessary beings, most good beings, or final causes. If that sort of thing, or collection of things, is what we should be calling a god, what we should understand a god to be, none of ours qualify. Charitably speaking...which is to say assuming that if he had lived today and had access to textual criticism, comp myth, modern synth, contemporary physics, or contemporary philosophy and was diligent in their application..I don't think he'd have offered any of these arguments. We would probably expect something more like plantingas modal ontological argument.
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