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Theoretical Philosophy » God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent? » 10/02/2015 12:01 am

Scott wrote:

First: as others have noted with varying degrees of explicitness, the argument of the Third Way shows only that if even one contingent being exists, then a necessary being exists. That doesn't mean that if the antecedent is false (i.e., if no contingent beings exist), then no necessary being exists. At most, it would mean that the argument is silent on that point.

Yep. Thats what I meant when I said: "those arguments say nothing about the necessity...of God's existence if nothing else existed".

But second, and more fundamentally: as others have also at least alluded to, you're confusing two senses of "necessary." The arguments of the First, Second, and Third Ways show that if certain facts obtain, it necessarily follows that God exists. That is not what is meant by God's necessarily existing.

Absolutely. And I don't believe I'm confusing that at all. That use of "it necessarily follows" is simply another way of saying "it is logically implied" and that's not at all what I mean by the necessity of God's existence.

To say that God exists necessarily, in Thomistic thought, is to say that God, in and of Himself, can't not exist -- that He's a necessary being, not that His existence is the conclusion necessitated by the premises of an argument. The latter is a sort of epistemological necessity, not the metaphysical sort that Thomists and other classical theists ascribe to God.

Again, I get the difference. But my point is that in practice -- e.g. in the Summa Theo. -- the notion of God's ontological necessity *is* typically argued (i.e. taken to be epistemically necessary) from some premises (e.g. "There is change" or "There is contingency"), and I'm interested in finding out if there is another way of justifying that (ontological) necessity -- one that does not arise from inference from premisses.

Put another way: you no

Theoretical Philosophy » God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent? » 9/30/2015 1:09 pm

Summary: which (if either) of the following is correct:
A. God's existence is necessary if and only if something else other than God exists
B. God's existence is necessary

Details:
A range of arguments for God's existence have, as premisses, the observation that there exists change, or contingency, and so on. In other words, those arguments begin with the existence of something other than God and move from that to show that since those things exist, God's existence is necessary. But it seems important to see that those arguments say nothing about the neccessity (or actuality for that matter) of God's existence if nothing else existed.

But I was going back over one of Ed's older blog posts[1] about the whole somthing-from-nothing debate, and noticed his ending:

"The classical theist's claim is...'There could not have been nothing, and the reason is theism' "

That sounds like a stronger position; namely that God's existence is necessary, period. He's "there", and must be there, regardless of whether anything else exists.

Questions:
1. Am I interpreting that closing remark correctly -- i.e. does it mean that God necessarily exists, period?
2. If so, how can I find out more about the argument leading to that conclusion? Does it have a name? Who developed it?

thanks.

[1] "Steng Operation", April 23 2012 (As a forum newbie I can't post links yet)

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