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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 2:50 am
Is this one of those first cause/ prime mover topics? Like "everything needs a cause," then there must have been a first cause (or Prime Mover), until you realize that the premise is really saying "everything (except God) needs a cause (Prime Mover)"?
The Prime Mover concept was debunked long ago because when the "Prime Mover" idea was conceived by Aristotle and Aquinas, people believed that the movements of bodies were the result of spiritual action, with God as the prime mover. It was Descartes who replaced spiritual causality with mechanical causality, in which inanimate bodies and animals were machines moved around by natural forces with the exception of the human being.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 6:56 am
(April 25, 2021 at 6:18 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: Moderator Notice
Post deleted. Copy/pasting what you have written for a different forum is considered spam. Please familiarize yourself with the rules.
Sorry for spamming. It's true, I had a very similar post in another forum, but it wasn't really discussed there. The replies were mostly off topic or not directly related to my text.
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 7:33 am
(April 26, 2021 at 6:56 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: (April 25, 2021 at 6:18 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: Moderator Notice
Post deleted. Copy/pasting what you have written for a different forum is considered spam. Please familiarize yourself with the rules.
Sorry for spamming. It's true, I had a very similar post in another forum, but it wasn't really discussed there. The replies were mostly off topic or not directly related to my text.
Can you try maybe reposting a third at a time and answering questions/responding to comments?
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 7:36 am
(April 26, 2021 at 6:56 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: (April 25, 2021 at 6:18 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: Moderator Notice
Post deleted. Copy/pasting what you have written for a different forum is considered spam. Please familiarize yourself with the rules.
Sorry for spamming. It's true, I had a very similar post in another forum, but it wasn't really discussed there. The replies were mostly off topic or not directly related to my text.
Can we interest you in an introduction thread? Maybe then you can ease back into a discussion of your critique.
Being told you're delusional does not necessarily mean you're mental.
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 7:43 am
(April 26, 2021 at 6:56 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: (April 25, 2021 at 6:18 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: Moderator Notice
Post deleted. Copy/pasting what you have written for a different forum is considered spam. Please familiarize yourself with the rules.
Sorry for spamming. It's true, I had a very similar post in another forum, but it wasn't really discussed there. The replies were mostly off topic or not directly related to my text.
Immaterial.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 8:27 am
(April 26, 2021 at 7:33 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: (April 26, 2021 at 6:56 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: Sorry for spamming. It's true, I had a very similar post in another forum, but it wasn't really discussed there. The replies were mostly off topic or not directly related to my text.
Can you try maybe reposting a third at a time and answering questions/responding to comments?
I have read through the forum rules again. I would also be breaking the rules with a repost chunked into three parts or some other modified form from the OP. Apparently nothing can be done about that. But it was worth a try.
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 8:30 am
(April 26, 2021 at 8:27 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: ......
Click here, make an introduction thread
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 8:53 am
(April 26, 2021 at 8:27 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: (April 26, 2021 at 7:33 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: Can you try maybe reposting a third at a time and answering questions/responding to comments?
I have read through the forum rules again. I would also be breaking the rules with a repost chunked into three parts or some other modified form from the OP. Apparently nothing can be done about that. But it was worth a try.
Yeah man. Introduce yourself. I and some others here like to chat about philosophy though, admittedly, I may be slower on the curve compared to you. Especially concerning Aristotelian metaphysics.
After you make some posts you'll no longer be considered a spammer, and we can discuss your criticism of Aquinas.
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 9:07 am
(April 26, 2021 at 8:27 am)spirit-salamander Wrote: But it was worth a try.
The Conformity Enforcers are quite strict here, as in any tight clique. There are written rules and unwritten rules and an easy willingness to scold or insult. So it's tricky for newcomers.
If you make a few posts like "Religious people are STOOPID. Duh. Hitchens ROOLZ!!!" you'll be met with more approval. Then later you can start a more casual thread that looks at a portion of your original evil unacceptable must-be-censored OP.
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RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 9:09 am
(This post was last modified: April 26, 2021 at 9:11 am by polymath257.)
(April 25, 2021 at 9:40 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: We owe an enormous debt to the Greeks for laying the groundwork for math and science as we know them today. These things didn't appear out of thin air in the 1700s. True, ancient postulates are ill-informed compared to modern scientific theories... but there is a reason so many of the scientific terms we use today are Greek words.
And Belaqua made an excellent point. Some of the ancients were way smarter than we take them to be. I used to think of ancients like ignorant children who hadn't discovered science yet. Then I read some of what they wrote and learned that I was the ignorant child.
Humans have been as 'smart' as they are now since Homo sapiens sapiens appeared on the scene. The difference is how and how fast we have accumulated knowledge.
The ancient Greek philosophers were incredibly smart people. They were attempting to understand the universe around them using limited tools and were the first to make a concerted effort to do so across several areas of knowledge.
But the concepts they used are NOT the modern concepts. For example, the notions of causality used by Aristotle are very different than what we would label 'causes' today. For example, the formal cause is not at all something most people today would call a cause at all.
Also, the notion of movement was much, much more general. ANY change was seen as being a movement, not just a change of position in space. So, a chameleon changing colors would have been considered a type of movement.
But, being the first to investigate a subject means that it is likely you will be wrong in many, even most, of your conclusions. That doesn't make you stupid. It simply means you are un-informed or ill-informed. And that is almost inevitable at the beginning of any study.
So, Aristotle was wrong in many, many ways. That doesn't make him stupid. it just makes him wrong. But making the first attempt was a crucial step.
I have always been impressed how Lucretius used the way dust moves in a beam of sunlight to argue for the existence of atoms. His argument was in many ways similar to the much later use of Brownian motion to show atoms exist.
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