If Jesus was God, why wasn't He more obvious?

[Byblos]

Im guessing Aristotle was not talking about the Christian God, tho.

If you're referring to Aristotle's argument for an uncaused cause then he certainly was referring to the Christian God (though of course, he didn't refer to him as such) as, by definition, there can be one and only one uncaused cause.

[1over137]

Something for you to look at, Audie

http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... er#p157478

[Audie]

Im guessing Aristotle was not talking about the Christian God, tho.

If you're referring to Aristotle's argument for an uncaused cause then he certainly was referring to the Christian God (though of course, he didn't refer to him as such) as, by definition, there can be one and only one uncaused cause.

Oh? what definition is that?

[Byblos]

Im guessing Aristotle was not talking about the Christian God, tho.

If you're referring to Aristotle's argument for an uncaused cause then he certainly was referring to the Christian God (though of course, he didn't refer to him as such) as, by definition, there can be one and only one uncaused cause.

Oh? what definition is that?

The logical one.

- From nothing nothing comes
- A contingent being/thing must have a cause outside of itself (it is what it means to be contingent)
- Infinite regress precludes an infinity of contingent beings
- Therefore a necessary being is, well, necessary (what we call pure act with no potency whatsoever) and to which all existence of contingent beings/things are attributed
- There can be one and only one pure act for the following reason:
If there were 2 pure acts then there must be a way to distinguish them, i.e. one must have some quality or characteristic that the other one lacks. But if an act is lacking something then it cannot be a pure act for it would be contigent on another. But if both pure acts are indistinguishable then they must be identical and therefore one and the same. Therefore there must be one and only one necessary being who is pure act (or an uncaused cause in Aristotle's vocabulary).

Note that in any of the above I did not mention God, the bible, or christianity.

[Audie]

- From nothing nothing comes

ok

And then the next thing is to say that is not really true.

In there is some sort of assumption about whether there ever was a time of "nothing".
Except in the nothing there was something.. sheesh.

That does not seem much like logic to me. And it sure is not a definition.

[Jac3510]

Regarding an actual definition, what you are looking for is ipsum esse subsistens. Another is actus purus. It takes a logical argument to show the equivalence of the two definitions, just as it would take a logical argument to show the equivalence of "the morning star" and "the planet venus."

Granted, I wouldn't expect you to immediately see how either definition necessitates that there be only one God. But then again, I wouldn't expect someone who has never studied geometry to immediately see that the definition of a triangle necessitates that ABC + BCA + CAB = 180. But, analytically (not synthetically), such does flow necessarily out of the definition, and so, too, with God. And so Aristotle was referring to the Christian God.

It is, of course, possible that Aristotle was talking about the Christian God and not know it . . . that is, that his reason had led him to the One God but that he attributed what he had discovered to a false god. An analogy here is the debated question over whether or not Allah and Yahweh are the same. On that question, I argued on another board:

• I do want to share my own concerns as to the equation of the Allah with the God of classical theism (in any sense of the word). . . . One of the problems with descriptivist theories is called the modal problem or the problem of rigidity. On such a view, names point by description to a particular, and thus any individual that matches that unique description is so named. So I name Aristotle as "the greatest Greek philosopher," and I also name him, "one who liked dogs." But now let's imagine a world the same in ours in every way except for this: Aristotle died in infancy. Suppose also that Plato did, in fact, like dogs. This would mean that the name "Aristotle" referred, in fact, to Plato, because Plato is now "the greatest Greek philosopher" and was also "one who liked dogs." But it seems obvious that "Aristotle" can't really refer to Plato, or anyone else for that matter! The conclusion is that names are not flexible; that is, they do not change their referents based on which one satisfies the description. Names refer to concrete particulars, and they do so rigidly.
  
  I hope you can see where I'm going with this. Let's take these two sentences:
  
  Allah is God
  Yahweh is God
  
  I don't think any Christian would deny that the former is false, but that's largely because we aren't intuitively inclined to use a descriptivist theory of names here. But the problem I'm seeing is that you also have sentences like this:
  
  Muslims worship the Creator
  Christians worship the Creator
  
  Here, people seem to be using a descriptivist theory of names, and the problem of rigidity becomes rather serious. So the logic of some would look something like this:
  
  1. God is the Creator
  2. Muslims worship the Creator
  3. Therefore (in some sense) Muslims worship God
  
  And then you take the logic from above and you get
  
  4. Yahweh is God
  5. Therefore (in some sense) Muslims worship Yahweh
  
  And this is where some Christians get worried! The problem is back at (2). I would say that Muslims do not worship the Creator. They certainly think they do. But they do not. They worship Allah, and they wrongly think that Allah is the Creator. The phrase "the Creator" does not refer descriptively to God. It is actually saying something about God. That is, it actually means (on my view), "(Yahweh, who is) Creator."
  
  In short, I would say that Muslims (and Jews) know that there is a Creator. I might even stipulate that a good many of them want to worship Him. But in fact they do not. Again, Muslims do not worship "(Yahweh, who is) the Creator"; they worship "(Allah, who is) the Creator." But the second entity does not exist. As such, they are both rejecting the worship of the One True God as well as setting up the worship of an idol, a false god of their own invention.

I trust you can see the parallel here, and I trust you can see the relevance to what Byblos is saying about Aristotle's God and the Christian God.

(edited intended section for clarity)

[Audie]

I dont get where he states an absolute about nothing, then immediately says its not really so.
How is that logic?

[Jac3510]

I'm not sure what is unclear. Regarding those two lines, he says:

- From nothing nothing comes

I don't know this needs a whole lot of defense. If X is Nothing, and X produces Y, then at minimum, X has the property being able to produce Y. But Nothing cannot have any properties, because then it would be a Something. In other words, to say that Nothing can produce Something is to violate the law of non-contradiction. So I think this is a far observation.

- A contingent being/thing must have a cause outside of itself (it is what it means to be contingent)

I don't see how if the first statement is true that this one isn't? I am a contingent thing. Therefore, I must have a cause outside of myself. You are, too, and so you must have a cause outside of yourself. My computer is a contingent thing, and therefore it must have a cause outside itself, and so on. As Byblos notes, that's just part of the definition of "contingent." For something to be contingent means that it depends on something else, but if something depends on something else, then the cause of the thing must be something else--that is, outside of itself.

What this means is that there must be something that is not contingent. Because if EVERYTHING were contingent, then EVERYTHING would be dependent on other things and therefore nothing would actually be. But on the flip side, if A is dependent on B and B on C and C on D but finally D is dependent on an E that does not, in fact, exist, then you are back to the Nothing producing Something (since E, which does not exist and is therefore Nothing, is causing D to exist so that C can exist so that B can exist so that A can exist). But we've already seen that can't happen. So the ONLY possibility here is that if any contingent thing exists (and contingent things obviously do exist), then there must be SOMETHING (not a nothing, which is a contradiction in terms) that is NOT contingent. That is, there must be something that is necessary. Something that cannot not exist. Once you get into a bit deeper philosophy, you find out that contingency must be explained what is termed actuality and potentiality, such that the necessarily existent thing must be pure actuality (that is, it can have no potentiality--no contingency--in it whatsoever). But just as someone who has studied geometry knows that for ANY given triangle the sum of the three angles is ALWAYS 180--that this fact is built into the definition of the triangle--so those who have studied this can see that if there is something that is pure actuality (actus purus), as I mentioned before, which is what Aristotle proved) then it is (to use the term loosely) sui generis. There can only be one such "thing." There cannot be two things that are pure actuality anymore than there can be a triangle that is 175 degrees.

In sum, if there exists any contingent thing, then because nothing cannot produce a something (thus, from nothing nothing comes), there MUST be a thing that is absolutely necessary. That Something must be pure actuality. And that pure actuality, when further analyzed, is quickly seen to be what Christians talk about when they use the word "God."

So, when I say that it is silly to deny God exists, I mean that very seriously. To say "God does not exist" is literally a self-refuting statement; and to deny God's existence is, frankly, to deny the law of non-contradiction, insofar as you must either argue that everything is contingent on other contingent things (which means that contingent things are therefore not contingent after all, in violation of the law) or else that everything is contingent upon a Nothing (which, again, violates the law).

[Audie]

Zero x zero is zero, sure. At least, as we humans understand things.

Im still not getting how you can get a "god" that exists w/o evident cause, who can make everything out of nothing as an uncaused thing...
but not mass / energy etc, which seem easier things to get than a mind greater, perhaps infinitely more so, than everything else put together.

[Byblos]

Im still not getting how you can get a "god" that exists w/o evident cause, who can make everything out of nothing as an uncaused thing...

If "god" needed an evident cause then he wouldn't be one. Remember, anything that needs a cause is contingent on something else. So as to not violate the law of non-contradiction we must arrive at a necessary being (pure act with no potency), otherwise everything is contingent, which is nonsensical. A pure act, again by definition, is etrenal.

but not mass / energy etc, which seem easier things to get than a mind greater, perhaps infinitely more so, than everything else put together.

It's not clear what you're getting at here but even if you postulate the etrernality of mass/energy (something that cannot be proven or disproven philosophically) the same exact argument can be formulated in terms of motion and without the "nothing" clause. This is known as Aquinas' first way from motion. Instead of an uncaused cause, however, the argument concludes in a prime mover. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Logically speaking both conclusions are inescapable.

[Jac3510]

Zero x zero is zero, sure. At least, as we humans understand things.

Im still not getting how you can get a "god" that exists w/o evident cause, who can make everything out of nothing as an uncaused thing...
but not mass / energy etc, which seem easier things to get than a mind greater, perhaps infinitely more so, than everything else put together.

Byblos is correct, again. But let me add to it this way. David Hume, who was obviously no Christian, recognized the importance of what we are saying. He thought he had an answer for this on atheistic grounds. I think his comments are rather enlightening. He says,

• But further, why may not the material universe be the necessarily existent being, according to this pretended explication of necessity? We dare not affirm that we know all the qualities of matter; and for aught we can determine, it may contain some qualities, which, were they known, would make its non- existence appear as great a contradiction as that twice two is five. I find only one argument employed to prove, that the material world is not the necessarily existent Being: and this argument is derived from the contingency both of the matter and the form of the world. "Any particle of matter," it is said, "may be conceived to be annihilated; and any form may be conceived to be altered. Such an annihilation or alteration, therefore, is not impossible." But it seems a great partiality not to perceive, that the same argument extends equally to the Deity, so far as we have any conception of him; and that the mind can at least imagine him to be non-existent, or his attributes to be altered. It must be some unknown, inconceivable qualities, which can make his non-existence appear impossible, or his attributes unalterable: and no reason can be assigned, why these qualities may not belong to matter. As they are altogether unknown and inconceivable, they can never be proved incompatible with it.

Now this is very interesting indeed! Hume, via Cleanthes, does not disprove the Second Way by saying that there is no necessary being. What he says is that the argument only proves that there must be some sort of necessary being and that being need not be God. He is saying that if we are to say that God is necessary is some mysterious way we cannot understand, then we ought to equally be able to say that the universe itself is necessary is some mysterious way we cannot understand. In other words, what is good for the goose is good for the gander!

And I side with Hume on this very important point. If what is composite can be necessary*, then this world may as well be considered the necessarily existent Being. So those Christians and others who insist that God is a composite Being (and we're talking everyone here from Mormons to some very good evangelical scholars like Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig) in fact undermine one of the primary ways they know God exists. For if God is composite, then either God needs a cause, too (and thus He is not God) or else a composite being may be necessary, in which case, the world, being composite, may be necessary. And that is to say that the second premise of Byblos' argument would fail--namely, that things like you and I are not contingent after all.

But, of course, it is absurd to say that you and I are not contingent. Clearly, we are. The solution, then, is to say what philosophers since Parmenides have said: the necessary being is simple (that is, non-composite). You say that you cannot understand how God cannot need a cause. That is because you haven't studied the necessary metaphysics. I don't doubt your sincerity here. I think you probably really don't see it. But then again, I don't doubt the sincerity of the person who has never studied geometry who is skeptical of the idea that you can know that the sum of ALL triangles is 180 degrees before measuring any of them. The defect is not in the person's sincerity or desire for truth. The defect is in his knowledge of the relevant discipline (in this case, geometry). And so it is here. Were you to study the matter, you would see this as clearly as the geometrician sees the truths of geometry. And thus, regarding the necessary existence of God, Thomas Aquinas can say,

• If, however, there are some to whom the essence of the predicate and subject is unknown, the proposition will be self-evident in itself, but not to those who do not know the meaning of the predicate and subject of the proposition. Therefore, it happens, as Boethius says (Hebdom., the title of which is: "Whether all that is, is good"), "that there are some mental concepts self-evident only to the learned, as that incorporeal substances are not in space." Therefore I say that this proposition, "God exists," of itself is self-evident, for the predicate is the same as the subject, because God is His own existence as will be hereafter shown (3, 4).

So, for him (and for others who have studied what he has studied), God's existence, and in particular His aseity (the fact that He is necessay and has no cause), is self-evident. I am not saying it is self-evident in some mystical sense (as if we just insist it must be true by faith), but rather that it is self-evident in the rigorous sense of something that is true by definition (or, in Thomas' words, that the predicate is contained in the subject). So all triangles have three sides, no married man is a bachelor, and if A is larger than B and B is larger than C then A is larger than C. These things are true by definition, and those of us who know what the words in question mean see that immediately. If others do not know what the words mean and therefore cannot see their self-evident truth, the defect is with them, not with those of us who have studied this.

And as an aside, I don't say any of this to suggest that I or Byblos or anyone is any smarter than you or anyone else. When I speak of study, I am not speaking of study in general, much less of notions like IQ or other such things. I don't regard myself as a particularly bright person. But I do think that I have put in enough hours that I know a lot about this very narrow area of reality, and while that does not qualify me to speak on a great many other areas--many, I'm sure, that you are highly qualified to speak in such that I could learn a great deal from you in them--it does qualify me to speak on this. And the good news is that, while learning this area takes hard work, it is not so hard that you can't do it. So I hope you take up Byblos' offer seriously to consider these things carefully.


*edit: Where Hume is wrong is that the only argument advanced against the universe not being necessary is its contingency. Actually, the main argument against it is the fact that it is composite. On this view, matter is potentiality, and what is potential cannot, by definition, be necessary. Thus, nothing material can be necessary insofar as all material things are at least actuality/potentiality composites. Only something that is pure actuality (and thus immaterial) can be necessary; put differently, if something is necessary, but must be pure actuality.

I also edited a few sentences for clarity. I don't know how much it helped, because this can be heavy stuff! But I tried to clarify all the same. (I fear, though, philip, that my wife woudl not be impressed with my efforts!)

[Philip]

And you wonder why Jac's wife tends to get headaches from his (HIGHLY) nuanced answers to even her simplest questions!

But, seriously, Audie, try to work your way through his points, as they make sense.

[Audie]

And you wonder why Jac's wife tends to get headaches from his answers to her simple questions!

But, seriously, Audie, try to work your way through his points, as they make sense.

Thanks guys. I will probably wait till I'm on that long flight to Hong Kong (Dec 22) to read for
comprehension, I dont the energy for it till classes are out.

[Philip]

Thanks guys. I will probably wait till I'm on that long flight to Hong Kong (Dec 22) to read for
comprehension, I dont the energy for it till classes are out.

Audie, I can remember in my last year of journalism school being so burned out with relentless assignments, papers due, some major project always hanging over my head, and thinking to myself that the day when I could read something because I actually wanted to and for pleasure, was going to be one happy day! And so it was! I used to end every semester pulling several all-nighters in a row, then come out of my last exam totally wiped out. Then I would go straight to the gym and play a couple of ours of basketball, and then go home and sleep for about 24 hours. Don't think I could do that nowadays.

Enjoy your break!

[Byblos]

Thanks guys. I will probably wait till I'm on that long flight to Hong Kong (Dec 22) to read for
comprehension, I dont the energy for it till classes are out.

Have a safe trip.