Commentor Anonymous:
Even if you accept the argument that our reality is the result of an unmoved mover (and I don’t), you are left to ponder what sort of principle compels the existence of this “god”.Logic is the 'principle that compels the existence of God'.
Our existence argues strongly that a state of nothingness does not exist due to the fact that it could always be described or defined in relationship to our existence.I thought Derrida was dead. Atheism is gibberish, and accords with deconstructionism nicely. What atheism deconstructs is logic and reason.
I don’t see any reason why this apparent natural abhorrence of nothingness must necessarily lead to the existence of the Aquinas unmoved mover any more than it would lead to the existence of any other imaginable cosmology.
The reason the Prime Mover's existence is demonstrable is that an essentially ordered causal series of elevations of potency to act cannot go on to infinite regress. It is a logically rigorous way of demonstrating the truth of the view of most people that there has to be a cause of everything. They're right, and Aquinas shows why.
I find it more probable, and thus easier to believe, that nothingness spawned a tiny nugget of inflation field rather than omnipotent and omniscient god.Logic 101: Nothingness is no-thing, so it has no agency. It can't do anything because it doesn't exist. It can't create 'inflation fields', or unicorns, or pineapples. Nothing can't spawn anything, because its nothing.
If one asserts that logic doesn't count, and that we can simply assert that nothingness can do things, then we deny the principle of sufficient reason, which asserts that things have reasons for their existence.
If nothing can 'spawn' stuff, why not apply the 'nothingness spawns' principle to origin of species? Why bother with evolution, if you can just assert that trilobites and dinosaurs and monkeys were 'nothing's spawn'? If the whole damn universe is spawned by nothing, why not assert that everything in it is spawned by nothing. Poof here, magic there, no need for science. Sh*t just happens. Applied atheist metaphysics.
It is surely parsimonious, and spares us all of this federal funding for science.
This nothing nonsense results from attempts to explain a technical subject (such as cosmology) to a layman audience. The scientist tries to explain what he does in non-technical terms. The laymen don't get it and advise the scientist to take Logic 101.
ReplyDeleteExercise in futility.
@oleg:
ReplyDeleteYea. 'Everything came from nothing' is something I just can't wrap my mind around. It must be me though; atheists all believe it, and they're all really smart. They're scientists, you know.
Maybe you could explain 'everything from nothing' for me, but please don't use those big science words...
As I explained before, when I said “nothingness spawned..” I was speaking figuratively. I personally don’t believe a state of nothingness can exist.
ReplyDeletePhilosophers’ logic has never illuminated any truths of nature in the absence of observation. Statements like “an essentially ordered causal series of elevations of potency to act cannot go on to infinite regress.” Are little more than medieval gibberish and demonstrate absolutely nothing.
-KW