|
PromiseLander -> RE: Philisophical proof of God the Creator (6/11/2008 3:23:55 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: hammurabi
Having a "power of being" doesn't actually say anything, however. Can you expand on what power this being possesses? or what power to affect this being would have. I think it's clear that before you can say things must have gradients of power of being, you need to first explicate what you mean by power and by being. Do you mean Being as the ability of beings to exist, or as that which substantiates beings?
It appears to me that you are invoking substance arguments from first cause, or from continual efficient causes. This is the way Spinoza understood God: as the immanent efficient and formal cause of all necessary effects. The problem is, that if you want this God to resemble anything other than immanence as such, then you are left with the logical possibility that God existed only for the temporally nonexistent moment at which all extant being exists; and haven't demonstrated the possibility of this Being existing at any other time, unless you attribute to him logical necessity of continual existence. So yes: your argument works if God resembles nothing other than the immanent efficient and formal cause; but you would have a hard time arguing to first cause from this God, since it allows for the logical possibility of an infinite regress; or the logically infinite regress of causation (which does not mean temporal).
This is the problem with your argument:
quote:
One molecule of anything is more than enough evidence to prove the existence of God, because if something "is" rather than "is not" then somehow, somewhere, something MUST exist that has the power of being. If nothing had the power of being, then nothing would exist... It's that simple.
There is no reason why anything other than the formal and efficient reasons for the effect of the molecule's existence to exist; which implies nothing other than the existence of Being itself; which implies that God understood traditionally is not logically necessary. Aquinas' proof from degrees of perfection is ridiculous and easily refuted; Plato from he Form of the Good, similarly. But neither of them during the course of these arguments attempted to do anything other than demonstrate that either a first; immanently efficient or formal; transcendentally efficient or formal; or temporally progressive efficient cause, existed. Demonstrate is the key word, and must be understood provisionally as a logical necessity - not of God, but of something possessing the causal properties we attribute to God.
quote:
Something out of nothing philosophy is as repugnant to Theology as it is to Science because it is utterly irrational.
Not true. The problem is in the designation of nothing. Nothingness is the state of being something without a thing, or without a thing attached to the some. Hence it could be a some. Or the possible "some." Virtual realities of possible beings qua Being understood as the temporal lack of Being is how some interpreters of Spinoza (and some religious existentialists) have interpreted this doctrine. Other than that, I question your ability to talk about nothing.
It's probably important to understand that "power" is usually equivalent to "perfection" in Scholastic philosophy too, which complicates the argument through metaphor.
Do you come with a commentary, or can I get the cliff notes for you?
|
|
|
|