ForumUser wrote:
ClassicalLiberal.Theist wrote:
ForumUser wrote:
I've been reading Ed Feser's Aquinas and after finishing with his discussion of Aquinas' First Way, and midway into the Second Way, it appears to me he neglected to answer the objection that a per se causal series can terminate with a natural thing. The rock's motion depends on the stick which depends on the hand, muscles, electrical stimuli, brain neurons, atoms, quarks. Is a quark made of anything? Perhaps not. Apparently not? Why doesn't the buck stop there, as far as this 'unmoved mover' argument is concerned? Why must you instead necessarily arrive at God, Creator of the Universe, for any per se causal event (or observation of some motion, i.e. potential becoming actualized)?
Per se causal series, can not even in principle, terminate in a natural thing. They must terminate in necessity and all natural things are contigent. Thus, they don't fit the bill. Attempting to end a per se causal series of contigent things, with a contigent thing (which would be all natural things, even if they're small), is incoherent. I could give you a more in-depth response, if you wish.
You'll definitely need to elaborate for me, because it is not self-evident that all matter and energy is contingent.
I also do not see how the fact that a collection of quarks was positioned at (x,y,z) instead of (x', y', z') prior to someone moving a stone with a stick implies God's existence. To phrase my problem another way, it is not clear to me why God's existence must be the brute fact rather than the universe's existence (i.e. the set of all matter and energy).
What matter or energy would be a necessary being?
It's possible that the A/T view has a different idea of what the basic metaphysical components of reality are.
I understand a brute fact as something whose existence has no cause and no explanation. The Thomistic arguments for the existence of God don't obviously seem to involve the idea that God is a brute fact of this kind.
It is possible to reject the first way by rejecting the existence of dynamic change in the universe. If this:
I also do not see how the fact that a collection of quarks was positioned at (x,y,z) instead of (x', y', z') prior to someone moving a stone with a stick implies God's existence.
is an objection to, say, the first way, I don't understand it. I guess the argument would be that the movement of quarks from position x,y,z to x2, y2, z2 etc. implies the existence of the unmoved mover.
Last edited by FZM (12/10/2018 4:44 am)
