Hi AKG, 

Don't worry about asking questions:

AKG wrote:

If Aquinas did how is God ultimately the ultimate necessary being and all derive necessity from Him? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, I really want to fully understand classical theism and the reasons it gives for God instead of straw man versions that most people know as I've heard when fully understood these reasons are irrefutable despite popular opinion as a Gnu would tell you.

Scott has given a good description of Aquinas's view of a being's necessity as its “not tending towards corruption”. 

I'll only add that the important point is that, for Aquinas's view, even if an angel did exist in every possible world[1], it would exist in every possible world only dependently on another Being—God—that exists in every possible world. In other words, the important point is that if God did not exist then the angel could not exist, but if the angel did not exist then it would have no impact on God's existence.


[1]Even though possible worlds is a notion Aquinas never used and that was not invented until Leibniz, hundreds of years after Aquinas's death.
[2]For the record, I don't think there are any such angels and probably neither did Aquinas. My point is just that, even if there were angels existing in every possible world, it would be completely irrelevant the sense of necessity used in the Third Way.

Okay. I take being-in-act (actuality) as a self-evident feature of reality. I don't think anyone (including people that deny the act/potency distinction) really denies—or can deny—actuality, for they would be demonstrating there is something actual even in their denial of it. 

With that in mind, I think your question can be reduced to the question, “Is there a way any one thing can become that it isn't already without ceasing to exist because of a change in identity?” If there is, then that thing has potencies. 

I'll stop here for now. If there are no questions about this, I can jot out more detailed argumentation some time later (unless, of course, others do so.)

Hi AKG,

AKG wrote:

A skeptics version of their argument goes like this: ''If the universe is consequence of the laws and the laws exist platonically, then the universe is necessary, according to this theory it can happen and anything that can happen will happen.''

As far as I can tell, the latter part of your statement is based on a kind of gambler's fallacy[1]. If I roll a six-sided die a hundred times, it is not the case that every time I roll a 1 it becomes more likely I will later roll a 6. Rather, it is equally probable that I will roll a 1 or a 6 every time I pick up the die for a new toss. Similarly, it does not necessarily follow that if there is indefinite time, everything that can occur must occur (even in a necessitarian universe, all that follows is that what does and will occur must occur).  

For more detailed argumentation and analysis, it would help to have a more specific argument or ontology (which might make an interesting thread in its own right). I don't want to go off the rails arguing about something you're not saying. Though, it looks like you may be going for a mathematical universe ontology. 


[1]As Scott writes, normally one would deal with these types of arguments individually as they're written out in full.
[2]The Third Way defender would probably just reply by arguing for a real distinction between essence and existence in the mathematical entities, and then proceeding with the argument as normal; Aquinas thought there are necessary beings besides God.

TomD wrote:

[...] that if God didn't will this world to be, it would seem as though His will would be different. Likewise with His knowledge.

The that entire statement seems to presume change in God; I think I used the word create in my post. I know you said you read the article I linked, but I'm going to quote the third last paragraph anyway:

How can this be so? As Brian Davies points out in his chapter on divine simplicity in An Introduction to Philosophy of Religion (3rd edition), what is essential to acting is the bringing about of an effect in another thing, not undergoing change oneself as one does so. What is essential to teaching, for example, is that one cause someone else to learn, and not that one lecture, write books, or the like. Of course, in created things, bringing about an effect is typically associated with undergoing change oneself (e.g. for us to cause another to learn typically requires lecturing, writing, or the like as a means). But that is accidental to agency per se, something true of us only because of our status as finite, created things. We should not expect the same thing to be true of a purely actual uncaused cause of the world. Hence there is no reason to suppose that God’s creation of the world entails a change in God Himself.

Hi musiclover,

A quick reply for now:

musiclover wrote:

Perhaps Tom's objection is something like this: God's knowledge of contingent truths seems to imply that God has contingent beliefs, since knowledge involves belief. But if God has contingent beliefs, then there is contingency in God, which conflicts with his simplicity - i.e. some parts of him are contingent, some parts aren't.)

If so, Tom may be mixing modal notions, getting his ontological priorities wrong, or misunderstanding possible worlds semantics. It's perfectly fine to say that God knows each possible world necessarily. They are Ideas grounded in God in the first place, after all. All that says is that each possible world is necessarily possible[1]. 

What would be absurd would be to say that God has the Ideas or that the Ideas are grounded in God, but that there are some possible worlds where God has those ideas and other possible worlds where he does not. That is to say, God has them, but sometimes doesn't. This is what Scott replied to in his first reply to Tom.  


[1]This is a helpful move for avoiding certain problems non-specific to theism anyway. David Lewis, for instance, holds that all his possible worlds necessarily exist.