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6/10/2017 9:27 am  #1


Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

 

6/10/2017 1:12 pm  #2


Re: Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

It would be a good idea if Dr Feser himself replies to this see
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2016/04/craig-on-divine-simplicity-and-theistic.html?m=1

 

6/10/2017 2:00 pm  #3


Re: Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

You know, if you guys want, we can schedule some disputations with the Reasonable Faith Forum gentlemen. We might have to do half in debate form at RF, but I recommend we hold the rest in the form of scholastic disputations (which tend to focus more on theses' truth than swaying crowds) here.

(One catch: the people who want to debate or dispute must be the ones to participate in them. I'll be busy enjoying the brief summer this part of my country offers, and then I'm off to London for a while.)

 

6/10/2017 6:57 pm  #4


Re: Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

Jason wrote:

It would be a good idea if Dr Feser himself replies to this see
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2016/04/craig-on-divine-simplicity-and-theistic.html?m=1

What I would pay to see a live debate between Craig and Feser on theistic personalism....

     Thread Starter
 

6/12/2017 2:45 am  #5


Re: Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

I have an unethical suggestion: let us start by naming the best Thomist representatives from this forum and ask them to defend Thomism against RF. We can implement our plans by raiding their house with pitchforks .


Terrible jokes aside, I would nominate Greg (if he's willing to do this of course)!

 

6/12/2017 3:11 pm  #6


Re: Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

Why don't you do it?
(It would be good practice.)

 

6/12/2017 4:15 pm  #7


Re: Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

I. For starters, I don't see what Craig means by the Thomist being an agnostic with respect to identifying God with existence itself. I don't find his critique, that is to say, classify God as a being among other beings, convincing, simply because that classifying God as being itself would mean that he just is the ground of being which imparts existence to all other beings which are non-Being itself.His critique about univocal knowledge concerning God is fair enough, I don't have a problem with that, but God's essence just is existence itself/underived existence/pure act of being. I don't see a special problem in grasping this concept. So, I'm going to assume I'm missing something.

II. The accounting of what miracles amount to, seems to require a study of its own, and that's something I've not done. Maybe some miracles require that God just suspends the laws of nature, or stops conserving the said things which cause someone harm, but, maybe some miracles require that God directly intervenes (e.g. restoring a limb).

III. To give an account of what personhood constitutes is beyond my capabilities for now. I can't just naively say that a person is a substance which is intrinsically/extrinsically endowed powers of rationality! I don't have a settled account on analogy, and I'm pretty sure there are people here who can do better than me, (e.g. Greg, and Alexander, yes, another person's house to end up at with pitchforks ).

IV. Either way, my reluctance consists in not having a proper grasp on analogical predication, which is in turn dependent upon some form of Thomistic proof(s). And I'm sure the two people mentioned above, along with others on the forum have spent more time on these proofs than I have. I'll take part in the discussion and lay out my thoughts if necessary, but someone else has to be the disputant! So the number of nominees have increased. 

V. If I could, I'd rather go the way of defending divine attributes in the way of apophatic theology, maintaining that there are truths about God that we know, but they fail to carve reality at it joints. This seems to be a relatively easier way to do things. However, I'm pretty sure it is more vulnerable to attack, since certain folk would immediately contest the fact that if we don't know something fundamentally, then we just don't know it. So propositions like "The table is brown," would not be true, but instead need a translation into, "Molecules are arranged table-wise," where the latter statement is true, the former one is false, as there are no such things as tables and (if an elimination  of colors is allowed) no such thing as colors.

Why in the world would you have me debating this there? :D Jokes aside, I do really need to spend time and settling my stance on these things, but for now (unfortunately), they have to wait. It wouldn't be a mark of intellectual honesty to 'crowdsource' arguments, and I don't think I'm capable of doing the argumentation alone. With that said, time to go read Lagrange on God and attributes to make up for my deficits.

 

6/12/2017 4:21 pm  #8


Re: Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

You know, there are other, debate-worthy disagreements between Thomists and Craig (e.g. natural law v. divine command theory).

 

6/15/2017 5:21 pm  #9


Re: Dr. Craig criticizes the Thomist God (video)

BTW, I think it is worth noting that the "theistic personalism" that Hart and Feser are objecting to is very different from the "Christian personalism" that I have mentioned before in connection with JPII, Gabriel Marcel, and Dietrich von Hildebrand et al.

 

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