Causation

[liamconnor]

Hello all,

I typically am over in the apologetics department, but sometimes have purely philosophical OPs which are always turned into apologetics.

So, hopefully frequenters of this forum can resist "reading between the lines".

I have a hard time conceptualizing the concept "the laws of nature" as any thing other than our assumption that our common experience must form an unalterable pattern.

As Hume pointed out, we can't perceive causes. All we can do is see what occurs when x is added to y under conditions z.

But would this not mean that our so-called supernatural/natural distinction is misleading. The supernatural would not mean "caused by a god" but merely "extremely unique". The difference between, say, a flower dying in the winter and springing back up in the spring, and a body three days dead reversing the processes of decay--well, it would not mean there was a god, but rather, that the one event is widespread, while the other is unique?

[4gold]

We have argued all of the major arguments for the existence of God here. None of them have resulted in anything close to satisfactory let alone ironclad. Please contribute to those debates your remarkable insight.

Hmmm...I only did a google search, but I only found one thread ever dedicated to Aquinas's proofs of God's existence. It was in 2010, and was three posts long.

But that's not really the point, is it? With your sarcastic comment, I can assume only one of two things. Either:

1. The peer-reviewed published works by academic philosophers still stands, and no one has ever created more than a stock objection to Aquinas's proofs for God's existence, or
2. McCulloch and others have done the unthinkable -- they created the first objection to Aquinas's proofs for God's existence, but instead of publishing it, they posted it on an internet forum.

Granted, I responded to your sarcasm with sarcasm of my own, which is never healthy...so let's start over. 750 years later, there has still not been a major objection to Aquinas's "Of Being and Essence". It stands undefeated after all these years...that is not proof of his being right, but it fits my definition of "ironclad".

[marco]

Evidence for the supernatural could come through personal revelation, as you suggest, but I would also add it could come through reason, logic, and philosophy.

We can apply mathematics and physics and come up with astonishing wonders, but not gods. Aquinas in his Summa did not set out to give an a priori proof of the existence of God; he accepted God existed and set about making "proofs" to solidify his faith in a quasi-intellectual way, as did Anselm.

In an infinite regression there is no end and perhaps no beginning; demanding a first cause is a human constraint. Arguments for a working watch in the desert requiring a designer are fine inside their limitations. But of course sensible conclusions in earthly or finite matters may are no meaning when applied to the infinite. We assume conclusions we make in daily life apply in general to all worlds. They don't. We can demonstrate this in mathematics or physics. Common sense lets us down.

Thus, your amazing faith in the learned doctor who maintained that sight, touch and taste are deceptive but what we hear is best taken as convincing, is based on hope not reason.