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I don't recommend using this article as a serious source of knowledge about Aquinas. Some of the wording is a little iffy as well. For beginners, I would recomm

I don't recommend using this article as a serious source of knowledge about Aquinas. Some of the wording is a little iffy as well. For beginners, I would recommend "Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide" [0]. After that, if you want to dig deeper into Scholastic metaphysics in general, consider [1]. There are also books devoted to Aquinas's metaphysics exclusively, such as [2] and [3]. > The claim about the validity of Aquinas' ideas seem to only make sense if we accept his initial assumption which is the existence of God. Not at all. Aquinas does not begin with the existence of God. Rather, he shows how the existence of God can be inferred from basic metaphysical principles. So you have things exactly backwards. It is a common misconception that the existence of God must be assumed or that it is a matter of faith. > The confusion here is that there is no such thing as "universal good". It is always "good for something" and "good for somebody". Bad for something else, and bad for somebody else. So the claim seems to be that because something is good for somebody and bad for somebody else, there is perfection? No. What determines the good is the nature of a thing and its telos. To be a good human being is to more fully actualize human nature and its end. What it means to be a good turkey is to more fully actualize turkey nature and its end. Perfection is the case when a thing fully actualizes all its potential as the kind of thing it is; there is nothing left to actualize. (Accidentally, turkeys can exist for the sake of the good of others animals, but this is secondary to what is intrinsically good w.r.t. a kind of thing.) In the case of God, the nature of God is to exist, and God is goodness itself (a transcendental). -- I encourage you not to be flippant about metaphysics. It deserves and requires no less attention and seriousness than any other science, and indeed more, as metaphysical principles by definition underpin all of reality. Get them wrong, and things go wrong. [0] https://a.co/d/cTumDmM https://a.co/d/cTumDmM [1] https://a.co/d/24ssFeX https://a.co/d/24ssFeX [2] https://a.co/d/8F93mme https://a.co/d/8F93mme [3] https://a.co/d/25v7XMf https://a.co/d/25v7XMf

btilly 1y ago
I encourage you to not be flippant about dismissing people who think that your metaphysical arguments don't hold water. Thomas Aquinas' actual first cause argument is trivially refuted by the possibility of infinite regress. Your musings about the nature of a thing and its telos, is an attempt to impose a human conceit about how we understand reality, on reality itself. The "human nature" that you're talking about "fully actualizing" is a concept that exists in human minds, not reality. While you might appeal to some sort of Platonic ideal, there is no evidence that any Platonic ideal actually exists. Any musings about "the nature of God" establishes nothing more than a concept in someone's mind. That concept has no existence, other than that granted by the thinking of people who have that concept. In particular, a concept created relatively recently by humans, did not create those humans. Let alone the world that those humans live in. These arguments are all sophistry. They do not, and cannot, establish any meaningful existence to the kind of God that is described in your favorite selection of religious texts. And they are only persuasive to people who are easily persuaded due to the conclusion fitting their preexisting religious beliefs.
- lo_zamoyski 1y ago
  If you're going to criticize a position, the least you can do is understand the basics of what you're attacking. Otherwise, why waste your time jousting with straw men? > Thomas Aquinas' actual first cause argument is trivially refuted by the possibility of infinite regress. Except it doesn't. That you claim it does means you are familiar with some caricature of the argument (Dawkins & co. are famous for these, but they are not alone). You even come across such claims in philosophy departments where actual knowledge of Aquinas is conspicuously absent and consequently where misconceptions easily flourish. This is basic stuff about Aquinas, not some rarefied debate about his finer points. > Your musings about the nature of a thing and its telos, is an attempt to impose a human conceit about how we understand reality First of all, I was correcting a misunderstanding of Aquinas, not defending telos. However, it is clear you are unfamiliar with the subject yourself. First, what you think of telos appears to be something like conscious human purpose (which is a species of telos, but not telos in the general sense). In fact, you need telos to explain the very regularity of efficient causality that empirical science presupposes. Why is it that striking a match predictably results in fire? Why doesn't it result in an elephant or a million dollars or something else each time, or nothing at all? It consistently results in fire because the match is causally ordered toward the effect of fire that is actualized by striking. The cause-effect relation is itself teleological. Furthermore, what characterizes minds is intentionality, and intentionality is teleological. Without telos, you have no intentionality, and without intentionality, you have no rationality. Second, given that Aquinas is an Aristotelian when it comes to the problem of universals, the notion of Platonic ideals is simply nonsensical and irrelevant in this context. Human nature is instantiated by human beings, and it is actualized as we develop and grow, to a significant degree by our choices and actions. > Any musings about "the nature of God" establishes nothing more than a concept in someone's mind. ...etc, etc... This just sounds like a convoluted way of saying you think God is a fiction. Okay, sure, you think God is a fiction. So what? (FWIW, according to Aquinas and others — and you see this in Exodus 3:14 as well — God cannot be conceptualized strictly speaking, except by means of analogical devices, as God, according to Aquinas and others, "is" the act of existence. Concepts are abstracted essences; "to be a sunflower" or "to be an alligator" signify the concepts "sunflower" and "alligator", but "to be" does not. There is no concept for "to be", strictly speaking.) > These arguments are all sophistry. I would encourage that you attain at least basic proficiency in the subject matter before drawing such hasty conclusions, but you don't seem to respond well to encouragement, so I'll leave it at that.
drdaeman 1y ago
> Aquinas does not begin with the existence of God. Excuse my poor knowledge and understanding of all this stuff - but he's absolutely depending on Aristotle, taking existence of telos as a foundation, doesn't he? And from this, inventing a God isn't a far stretch - if something axiomatically has an intrinsic purpose, it's probably not too hard to state that there should be something with agency to define it all, or something that's has a perfect nature, or however else one wants to define "God". This said, are any of those books a good read for someone who doesn't think there's any purpose, reason or goal to all of this?
- gtest 1y ago
  > taking existence of telos as a foundation Not the GP, but I suspect the GP meant that Aquinas's Summa and Aquinas's Contra (his major works) starts with discussing first whether there is a god. > are any of those books a good read for someone I am not Catholic. I wouldn't recommend Aquinas. However, I would recommend "reasonable faith" book by William Craig. Or if you want his lectures to listen to, you can start from his lectures on the existence of God[1] If you are talking about how can one believe in God in an "axiomatic" way, yet still be rational and warranted, I suggest Plantinga's "warranted Christian belief" or his more popular level book "Knowledge and Christian Belief". [1] https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-4/excursus-on-natural-theology/ https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-s...
- rawgabbit 1y ago
  I grew up Catholic. While I respect St Augustine as a doctor of the church, I find his writings not to my taste. I prefer modern apologetics like Peter Kreeft who taught at a Catholic university for a long time. https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-ex... My other favorite writer was Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict. The current Catechism was edited by him when he was the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9.HTM https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9.HTM The basic Catholic argument is that God created the world and mankind out of love. We are incapable of understanding why there is suffering and death. But we believe God sent his son to partially reveal his plan. The bulk of his teaching is the “sermon on the Mount.” Matthew chapters 5 to 7. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/5 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/5
hackingonempty 1y ago
> Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. > Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. > Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God. > Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God. > Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God. So he argues that there is a first mover, a first efficient cause, an independent necessary being, a cause of all other beings, and an intelligent director but he just assumes that each of those things is the god he believes in who has a son named Jesus, etc... Well, maybe his assumption is wrong and those things are actually aspects of Mother Nature, or an Invisible Pink Unicorn, or The Five Fairies. How could we possibly tell the difference?
- galaxyLogic 1y ago
  Right that's one thing I never understood about these theological arguments, if there is a cause of everything, why can't there be more than one cause? And if we assume or believe that there is a single cause for everyting, how does the rest of the stuff like " must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God" follow from that? They BELIEVE there is a single cause for everything but why do they believe that? I assume because they WANT to believe it. But even so what makes them believe that "single cause" is "the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection"? What about all the imperfections? Oh, it must be the Devil. Then why did God create Devil? (Or is Devil perhaps a 2nd God?) It seems we just created "Devil" because we could not otherwise explain "God". And all the while we were quite confident that, we simply cannot be wrong. :-)

btilly 1y ago

I encourage you to not be flippant about dismissing people who think that your metaphysical arguments don't hold water. Thomas Aquinas' actual first cause argument is trivially refuted by the possibility of infinite regress. Your musings about the nature of a thing and its telos, is an attempt to impose a human conceit about how we understand reality, on reality itself. The "human nature" that you're talking about "fully actualizing" is a concept that exists in human minds, not reality. While you might appeal to some sort of Platonic ideal, there is no evidence that any Platonic ideal actually exists. Any musings about "the nature of God" establishes nothing more than a concept in someone's mind. That concept has no existence, other than that granted by the thinking of people who have that concept. In particular, a concept created relatively recently by humans, did not create those humans. Let alone the world that those humans live in. These arguments are all sophistry. They do not, and cannot, establish any meaningful existence to the kind of God that is described in your favorite selection of religious texts. And they are only persuasive to people who are easily persuaded due to the conclusion fitting their preexisting religious beliefs.

lo_zamoyski 1y ago
If you're going to criticize a position, the least you can do is understand the basics of what you're attacking. Otherwise, why waste your time jousting with straw men? > Thomas Aquinas' actual first cause argument is trivially refuted by the possibility of infinite regress. Except it doesn't. That you claim it does means you are familiar with some caricature of the argument (Dawkins & co. are famous for these, but they are not alone). You even come across such claims in philosophy departments where actual knowledge of Aquinas is conspicuously absent and consequently where misconceptions easily flourish. This is basic stuff about Aquinas, not some rarefied debate about his finer points. > Your musings about the nature of a thing and its telos, is an attempt to impose a human conceit about how we understand reality First of all, I was correcting a misunderstanding of Aquinas, not defending telos. However, it is clear you are unfamiliar with the subject yourself. First, what you think of telos appears to be something like conscious human purpose (which is a species of telos, but not telos in the general sense). In fact, you need telos to explain the very regularity of efficient causality that empirical science presupposes. Why is it that striking a match predictably results in fire? Why doesn't it result in an elephant or a million dollars or something else each time, or nothing at all? It consistently results in fire because the match is causally ordered toward the effect of fire that is actualized by striking. The cause-effect relation is itself teleological. Furthermore, what characterizes minds is intentionality, and intentionality is teleological. Without telos, you have no intentionality, and without intentionality, you have no rationality. Second, given that Aquinas is an Aristotelian when it comes to the problem of universals, the notion of Platonic ideals is simply nonsensical and irrelevant in this context. Human nature is instantiated by human beings, and it is actualized as we develop and grow, to a significant degree by our choices and actions. > Any musings about "the nature of God" establishes nothing more than a concept in someone's mind. ...etc, etc... This just sounds like a convoluted way of saying you think God is a fiction. Okay, sure, you think God is a fiction. So what? (FWIW, according to Aquinas and others — and you see this in Exodus 3:14 as well — God cannot be conceptualized strictly speaking, except by means of analogical devices, as God, according to Aquinas and others, "is" the act of existence. Concepts are abstracted essences; "to be a sunflower" or "to be an alligator" signify the concepts "sunflower" and "alligator", but "to be" does not. There is no concept for "to be", strictly speaking.) > These arguments are all sophistry. I would encourage that you attain at least basic proficiency in the subject matter before drawing such hasty conclusions, but you don't seem to respond well to encouragement, so I'll leave it at that.

drdaeman 1y ago

> Aquinas does not begin with the existence of God. Excuse my poor knowledge and understanding of all this stuff - but he's absolutely depending on Aristotle, taking existence of telos as a foundation, doesn't he? And from this, inventing a God isn't a far stretch - if something axiomatically has an intrinsic purpose, it's probably not too hard to state that there should be something with agency to define it all, or something that's has a perfect nature, or however else one wants to define "God". This said, are any of those books a good read for someone who doesn't think there's any purpose, reason or goal to all of this?

gtest 1y ago
> taking existence of telos as a foundation Not the GP, but I suspect the GP meant that Aquinas's Summa and Aquinas's Contra (his major works) starts with discussing first whether there is a god. > are any of those books a good read for someone I am not Catholic. I wouldn't recommend Aquinas. However, I would recommend "reasonable faith" book by William Craig. Or if you want his lectures to listen to, you can start from his lectures on the existence of God[1] If you are talking about how can one believe in God in an "axiomatic" way, yet still be rational and warranted, I suggest Plantinga's "warranted Christian belief" or his more popular level book "Knowledge and Christian Belief". [1] https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-4/excursus-on-natural-theology/ https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-s...
rawgabbit 1y ago
I grew up Catholic. While I respect St Augustine as a doctor of the church, I find his writings not to my taste. I prefer modern apologetics like Peter Kreeft who taught at a Catholic university for a long time. https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-ex... My other favorite writer was Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict. The current Catechism was edited by him when he was the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9.HTM https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9.HTM The basic Catholic argument is that God created the world and mankind out of love. We are incapable of understanding why there is suffering and death. But we believe God sent his son to partially reveal his plan. The bulk of his teaching is the “sermon on the Mount.” Matthew chapters 5 to 7. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/5 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/5

hackingonempty 1y ago

> Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. > Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. > Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God. > Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God. > Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God. So he argues that there is a first mover, a first efficient cause, an independent necessary being, a cause of all other beings, and an intelligent director but he just assumes that each of those things is the god he believes in who has a son named Jesus, etc... Well, maybe his assumption is wrong and those things are actually aspects of Mother Nature, or an Invisible Pink Unicorn, or The Five Fairies. How could we possibly tell the difference?

galaxyLogic 1y ago
Right that's one thing I never understood about these theological arguments, if there is a cause of everything, why can't there be more than one cause? And if we assume or believe that there is a single cause for everyting, how does the rest of the stuff like " must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God" follow from that? They BELIEVE there is a single cause for everything but why do they believe that? I assume because they WANT to believe it. But even so what makes them believe that "single cause" is "the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection"? What about all the imperfections? Oh, it must be the Devil. Then why did God create Devil? (Or is Devil perhaps a 2nd God?) It seems we just created "Devil" because we could not otherwise explain "God". And all the while we were quite confident that, we simply cannot be wrong. :-)