Albert Cipriani

Dear Automaton,
You assert that excepting God from the Unmoved Mover argument is "arbitrarily asserted." You argue that if only movement can beget movement, God Himself would have to have been moved to move the universe.

You ignore the non-temporal platform upon which the Unmoved Mover rests. You need to expand your imagination to entertain the possibility of an eternal 5th dimension, if you will, one in which time is a subset as the first dimension is a subset of the second and third dimensions.

Then, you would appreciate the logical impossibility of God being able to move. For as information and matter are synonymous concepts, so too are movement and time synonymous.

You ask:


Eternity likewise prevents other exceptions. Ergo, the unremitting nature of both hell and heaven. Once living beings pass from time-based being into eternally being, they, like God, can not move either.

You commit the argumentum ignorantium fallacy when you ask:


No doubt, there is a cause for all effects. Just because we do not yet know the cause is not reason enough to doubt a cause. If you persist in this nihilistic mindset, you are doomed to a life of either inconsistency or insipidity.

1) You'll be inconsistent every time you ask a question, for since you do not know the answer and are on record for believing that what we do not know does not exist, the act of questioning must be for you an act of absurdity.
2) Or, should your honesty compel you to conform your actions to your mindset, you will be made insipid by the dearth of answers and, consonant with Socrates' dictum, your unexamined life will not be worth living.

You correctly assert:


Bless you my son. This is good. In our judicial system, convictions can be made upon circumstantial (inferential) evidence. What's good enough for a conviction in a court of law ought to be good enough for our conviction that God exists.

Inferential arguments are not to be sneered at. If you are an atheists simply because theistic arguments are inferential, you are holding out for too high a standard of evidence and you and the jury of your peers ought to be hung!

You ask:


Hitler's immorality, i.e., his disordered value system, expressed itself most efficiently by his effecting a highly organized social and military apparatus. To imply the converse, as you do, is the fallacy of division. What is true of the part is not true of the whole and vice versa.

You ask:


Sure. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ February 26, 2002: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>

daemon

I'm sorry to have disappointed you, Albert, but I find Aquinas's proof no more compelling than any other form of first cause argumentation.

To address his argument:
Granted.
Odd phrasing by today's standards, and this is not entirely true. It is known that uncaused quantum effects are possible; there is no mover, only moved, in such a case. It is generally true of macroscopic events, however, so I'll grant it with some reservations.
Frankly, this doesn't make a lot of sense. If it is not possible for something that is hot to be potentially hot, does this not mean that, after any given amount of time, it will no longer be hot? This is obviously not the case.

Now perhaps Aquinas meant something different by "potential," as linguistic shifts are fairly common over the course of a few hundred years, but by it's plain current meaning, this is incorrect.
As this is drawn from the above, it is incorrect. In fact, it seems to be a direct contradiction of inertia.
This is both drawn from incorrect statements, as well as not entirely complete; it leaves out the possibility of simply being moved without cause, which, as I have shown, is not necessarily a warranted assumption.
This is a blatantly incorrect interpretation of an infinite chain of causes. There is no first, because there is always another mover before it in the chain. He is attempting here to redefine the playing field, by forcing an infinite chain to behave in the same fashion as a finite chain.
This part is interesting, because we have here a prime mover which Aquinas, through his choice of words, has assigned a wide variety of traits which he has not shown to be traits of said mover, i.e. sentience, omnipotence, etc. Now, if this is not his intent, and he clarifies further elsewhere, my apologies, but from this it appears he is trying to shoehorn a lot into the argument without proof.

Nope, not really--I quite like the mental exercise.

cheetah

Actually, it probably DID snow today in Death Valley! I was just there this weekend and there's snow all over. You know, Death Valley has some of the highest peaks in California? The Panamint Range is the highest, with Telescope Peak being the highest peak, at I believe, 11,049 feet. Cool, huh? That's part of why Death valley is sooooo awesome. No, there's still not snow at sea level or in Badwater, but there are literally a half dozen to a dozen mountain ranges in Death Valley NP. I was once snowed on there at just 4,000 feet! Our gallon water bottle froze overnight and I was in a sleeping bag that was rated to 15 degrees...I almost froze through, too. Death Valley is not just a place of extreme heat, but extreme everything!

Okay, sorry to hijack the thread momentarily, but since I started the thread, i think it's okay.

Back to the debate...

[ February 26, 2002: Message edited by: cheetah ]</p>

Technos

Of course Einstein lived in a time that restricted his understanding of such things. Einstein knew little of Quantum Mechanics, and actually knew little of atoms. Of course there's no way he could know what we have the ability to learn today, considering that so many things that should be common knowledge today were undiscovered or newly discovered a simple 30 years ago (when I was a kid).

When you've never even heard of a proto-cell and have yet to separate protons from neutrons it's hard to defend a naturalistic view is it not?

Technos

Ok, I keep seeing people talk about time, so I must ask, can anyone define time and explain how it works for me? I'm not asking out of ignorance (for those smart asses who would undoubtedly respond as if I were) but rather to stimulate thought. What time is and how it works seems to me little more than a subjective system of measurements that are only consistent so long as the movement of objects (including the atoms which we are composed of) maintain their motion at a constant rate. If for some reason we were near an area of increased gravity, the motion of the atoms would be effected, and we would be slowed (most likely unwittingly) to some extent. We would effectively lose time (or rather time would slow for us). Though we may only lose fractions of milliseconds, given the durability of some objects, time could be pulled nearly to a grinding halt to objects that near a black hole or a star or planet with a strong gravitational pull. A number of experiments with time have been performed with various results, mostly involving the use of an Air Plane to create a free fall environment or magnetic fields. Does anyone else have any imput on the physics of time? A theist maybe (hopeful grin)


Just a thought


PS: Sorry if this is getting too far off topic, which seems a bit far from what we've been talking about in the last few posts anyway

PSS: If this is a tired topic I also apologize, I'm kind of letting my enthusiasm from my new teaching conditions spill over into my online conversations.

[ February 26, 2002: Message edited by: Technos ]</p>

Technos

Unmoved mover arguments are good for those who do not wish to understand the nature of energy and the meaning of the words quantum atomic. Surly it's simpler to say "god did it" than to learn about quarks, and the quantum principles involved in the development or decay of an atom. I swear the argument that atoms magically appear in a vacuum because of some space time disturbance is more sound than "god did it".

PS: Do you really think that Atheist worship anything, as your above post seems to imply? There is a fine line between having a fondness of something and worship, you know that right?

[ February 26, 2002: Message edited by: Technos ]</p>

Albert Cipriani

Dear Technos,
The premire definition of time:

Movement

-- Albert the Traditional Catholic

Technos

I was kind of saying that

Albert Cipriani

Dear Technos,
You made a Freudian slip when you wrote:


"Surly" is right, as you are wrong to quote what I did not say. Asserting that straw man evidences your being surly.

"Slurly" would also qualify as you are slurring me by implying that I asserted what I've never asserted. "God did it," as an argument, explains nothing except that you are being surly. Disappointed, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Albert Cipriani

Dear Technos,
Forgive me for seeing red, blinded by that Freudian slip, I lost sight of your legitimate question.

Atheists cannot worship anything because worship by definition is reserved for God alone. Even Satanists do not worship the devil. No matter what they think they do, they are merely giving homage. I was speaking as loosely as that loose-fitting flowing silky slip you're wearing. -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic