Everything that exists depends on God for its existence.

I think it false to say that it is impossible to find evidence of Him. The fact that we exist depends on His causing our existence. Everything that exists depends on God for its existence.

But now, we're moving away from the initial topic. I never claimed that bad things happened merely because of the devil; in reality, the answer to that is a great deal more complex.

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,

StMichael 

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Your alleged proofs rest upon the Aristotelian misunderstanding of the nature of motion.

I see no such misunderstanding. His concept of motion is different from physical motion, but the notion still holds. Just saying that Aristotle misunderstood motion is not proof that he did do so.

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The leap to declaring that the Prime Mover must be a conscious, sentient, willful personality is supported by nothing whatsoever.

I would argue that it is, but I have not yet done so. The first step to prove this would be to prove that a Prime Mover exists. It would not make sense if I was to leap to my conclusion without firmly establishing my first principles.

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Against this, we have mountains of evidence to show that consciousness, mind, will, are characteristics only observed in evolved life forms.

These characteristics only make sense in the context of evolved life forms.

Ah, but that is your contention. Further, I would disagree with this statement as unsupported. Lastly, I would counter that we do not need to reference any exterior evidence outside of the chain of reasoning that supports the Prime Mover and His necessary attributes (such as mind or will).

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Aristotle's Great Chain of Being, from base matter at the bottom to pure spirit at the top (with man just one step down, of course), is the context in which a sentient deity seems to fit, but we now know that the GCOB was merely a misinterpretation of the evidence that in truth supports an evolutionary view.

I do not see how this is a misinterpretation of fact, and I would also point out that the famous "Great Chain of Being" is in fact something more attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas and not to Aristotle.

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The final step of associating the Aristotelian Prime Mover with the deity presented in the Judaeo-Christian tradition would have been met with scorn from Aristotle himself.

I doubt that. Aristotle clearly identifies his Prime Mover in respect of His attributes to our concept of God. I believe it could be argued that Aristotle and many other pagan philosophers came to a knowledge of the one true God by their philosophy. 

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An honest and unbiased examination of reality does not show any evidence for a creator god, or for any such thing as dualistic spirit - spirit capable of existing separate from and independent of matter.

I think the first claim is totally unsupported. I think that the universe shows forth in many ways that God exists. In respect to the second claim, I believe that the argument that seperated substances can exist apart from matter is cogent. One can know this by examination of the powers of the human mind, or from rational inquiry into the nature of God (who must be a seperated substance).

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Those who seek to make the evidence seem to fit the hypotheses which they have already committed to, rather than studying the world with an open mind tempered by critical thinking, are led into ever more strained and belabored manipulations and explanations and justifications.

I find it odd that centuries of pagan philosophy in an open and "unbiased" way would then have discovered what I believe to be the true God. 

I find Christianity to be the completion of what natural human reason can know.  

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The same thing occurs when people try to defend the Bible. It is very clearly a book written by fallible humans, compiled over centuries and reflecting many different periods characterized by many different beliefs, and therefore wildly self-contradictory, and in places completely at odds with all modern concepts of physics and history and ethics.

Your contention. I find no such contradictions. I believe there is no intellectual difficulty with maintaing that the Scriptures were written by humans writing under inspiration of the Holy Spirit and, even further, are the most certain Revelation of God to humanity.

 

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All of your arguments are deeply mired in the obvious effects of a biased approach to understanding.

You have never shown a spirit of honest inquiry into truth, but rather a dogged determination to mold and shape the whole universe into an argument that supports not only a theist, not only a Christian, but specifically a Catholic view of the world.

I have no desire to twist the truth. But the truth cannot be twisted anyway. If I am speaking the truth, there is no question of it. If I am not, you can show how false my reasoning is. I argue for Catholicism and God because I believe that their doctrines clearly and truly define the nature of the universe and reality. I see no reason why this ought to cause my arguments to be false, any more than your own belief that God doesn't exist makes your arguments false or intellectually dishonest.

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 It doesn't hold up in the face of the real world as we have come to understand it over the past five centuries, nor did it ever really hold up logically even before we began to understand the physical world through the scientific approach.

But you have not proven anything here. You have merely asserted this to be the case. I, on the contrary, don't see this to be the case. I would point out that science itself as we know it was originated not by secular humanists, but by religious men and women during the High Middle Ages, by such greats as Albert the Great and Friar Roger Bacon and the great Dominicans and Franciscan scholars of the time. I see no reason why the knowledge of natural science ought to be at all incompatible with religious truth.

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,

StMichael 

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You see no such misunderstanding because you don't want to see the misunderstanding.

Aristotle's physics of motion were not about physical motion?

A perfect example of the kind of strained and ultimately incoherent explanations your approach to understanding is prone to.

Galileo overturned the Aristotelian notion that all bodies in motion tend to reach a state of rest. Aristotle was wrong about that, despite your refusal to see it.

OK, we are not talking about the same sort of motion here. Aristotelian motion is not the same to his theories of physical/local motion. He had theories about local motion, but local motion is not the same as "motion" in general. Motion, for Aristotle, is the movement of any thing from a state of potency to a state of acutality, or viceversa. Your misunderstanding of the nature of what sort of motion we are speaking about is the root of why this seems problematic.

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Even the Galilean/Newtonian concept of motion is now understood to be an approximation whose results do not hold true at scales far from those available to our senses - the modern understanding of motion is even less susceptible to use in support of your notions; from wikipedia:

"Modern physics is rife with examples of 'movement without any mover', seriously undermining the first premise of the cosmological argument, that every object in motion must be moved by another object in motion. Physicist Michio Kaku directly addresses the cosmological argument in his book Hyperspace, saying it is easily dismissed by the laws of conservation of mass and energy, and the laws governing molecular physics. He quotes one of many examples - "gas molecules may bounce against the walls of a container without requiring anything or anyone to get them moving." According to Kaku, these particles could move forever, without beginning or end. So, there is no need for a First Mover to explain the origins of motion"

You making a terrific mistake in what it means to move, or what a mover is in Aristotelian terms. A mover is any thing that effects change. Further, in this particular example, the gas molecules require energy in order to do their bouncing. Being made a gas is being made into a high-energy state which is what leads to such spontaneous bouncing. This increase of energy in the thing is a form of motion. Likewise, their existing in time is a forward movement in time. Nothing is in motion without a mover. Modern physics does not contradict such findings at all. In fact, if there were no movers necessary, there would be no point in physics investigating the cause of the motion of various things. It would merely end by saying, "well, they move in the way they do because they are just like that." Things in motion require movers.

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Leaving aside the claim - currently under debate - that "everything" is evidence of a willful sentient god, where do you see evidence of such characteristics existing outside of the physical bodies of biologically evolved life forms? 

 I see such a fact as following from God's nature, whose intelligence can be discovered by use of natural reason (following the consequences of His character as Prime Mover). However, I'd also point out that no intelligence or mind exists in bodies. That much is obvious from the character of our own minds, which are not dependent on matter for their existence.

 

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The GCOB is generally considered to be derived from Aristotelian thought, though by medieval times it had been "christianized," as modern historians recognize.

Aristotle himself was not led to a monotheistic viewpoint by his own reasoning.

That last phrase is totally unjustified. Aristotle clearly and explicitly believed in a single transcendent God.

Further, I see no reason Aristotle's "chain of being" (assuming such existed) needed to be "Christianized." 

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It had been fossilized into its christianized form into the structure of Catholic dogma by the 14th century, long before Aquinas.

That is also absolutely unjustified nonsense. I would further point out that you are only exposing your own ignorance of the topic when you say such things. The first place to begin in rectifying your idea is to point out that Saint Thomas lived in 1225-1275, which is clearly before the 14th century. Further, Catholic "dogma" has no such "fossil" among its tenets. It could be argued that it is essential or inherent in Catholic teaching in general, but there is no explicit dogma anywhere that says that Catholics must believe in a "great chain of being."

 

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Your argument that science was invented by clergymen has zero validity, since that was a predictable result of the church's attempts to control all learning, and to keep the masses in the abysmal ignorance that made them more controllable, and less likely to question the many absurdities of Catholic dogma.

That is also just gross ignorance. I don't know where to begin. The Catholic Church has never, ever, ever, had a desire to subdue people or to keep them ignorant. The case has always been the opposite. The medieval monasteries founded by Saint Benedict of Nursia were the strongholds of reason and learning in the ages of the Vandals and the Visigoths, and when the secular society was imploding. The only reason we have any of the learning we do today is because the Catholic Church both preserved it and increased it. The flourishing of education in the Middle Ages resulted from the stability of the Church. The cathedrals began to support grammar schools, as the monasteries also provided education. This wave of new learning evolved over time into the system of the university, which emerged in the High Middle Ages under the tutelge of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders. These two orders of mendicant friars virtually began the systematic development of university life, as well as the vibrant intellectual life which that entailed. These universities created modern systems of learning that are with us today, and encouraged a great deal of debate, such as quodlibetal questions and the like. Intellectual life was critical to the Middle Ages and came into existence almost solely as the result of the Church's sponsorship. The Church's goal has always been to sponsor systems of education, and it has had nothing to do with control. "The Truth will set you free." And the pursuit of truth in studies has been a prime goal of the Catholic Church, that by study of philosophy, literature, and the natural world, as well as theology, all men might praise God with the labor of their minds. 

Further, if the world of learning was invented by a Catholic Church intent on destroying learning, doesn't that seem a bit contradictory? A house divided against itself cannot stand....

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More revealing is the fact that in their pursuit of real understanding of the world, many of the early explorers of the scientific approach were led away from Catholicism, and even from Judaeo-Christian belief generally - despite the fact that they were thoroughly indoctrinated to believe.

Nonsense. Total and utter nonsense. Saints have been some of the foremost scientists of their time. The famous Society of Jesus boasted for almost all of its history to have the brightest and best minds in their respective fields of history, theology, philosophy, natural sciences (chemistry, biology, anatomical science, medicine, physics), and the like. Even today, the Jesuit Order contains some of the brightest scientists in the world. The Church herself today remains in sponsorship of science and promotes a great deal of such endeavors. For example, the Vatican Observatory. Just for fun, here is the biography of the Jesuit Father who is the director of the Observatory, so you can't claim he is a scientific bufoon:

José G. Funes, S.J.
Director of the Vatican ObservatoryTel: (520) 795-1918 in Tucson or 39-06-698 85266 in Rome E-Mail:
Funes, born January 31, 1963, in Cordoba, Argentina, completed his masters' degree in astronomy (licenciado en astronomia) at the National University of Cordoba, in 1985. The theme of his master thesis was the computational analysis of the photoelectric photometry of eclipsing binary stars. In 2000 he obtained his doctorate in astronomy at the University of Padua with the study of the kinematics of the ionized gas in the inner regions of 25 disk galaxies. Funes entered the Society of Jesus in 1985, obtaining a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1990 at the Universidad del Salvador in San Miguel, Argentina. In the same university he attained the master in philosphy (licenciado en filosofia) in 1996. In the master thesis he discussed cosmology as a science from the point of view of scientific realism. In 1995 after completing the bachelor's degree in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he was ordained to the priesthood. He joined the Vatican Observatory Research Group as staff astronomer in March 2000, and he was appointed Director of the Vatican Observatory in August 2006. Research Interests: Funes specializes in extragalactic astronomy. His field of research includes the kinematics and dynamics of disk galaxies, the star formation in the local universe. the relationship between gravitational interaction and galalctic activity. He studies the kinematics of stars and gas in the inner regions of disk galaxies. By studying the bi-dimensional shape of the emission lines obtained from high spatial resolution, long-slit spectra along the major axes of disk galaxies, it is possible to put constraints on the mass of central supermassive black holes, which in the standard paradigm are believed to be nearly ubiquitous in galaxy centers and the engine of the phenomena related to the Active Galactic Nuclei. The goal is to extend demographics studies about super massive black holes in galaxies, in order to better define the relation between their mass and those of the spheroidal components of the hosting galaxies. This relation offers strong clues to galaxy formation and evolution. Moreover, a detailed study of the stellar and gaseous kinematics of Sa galaxies has shown an interesting phenomenon of bulge-disk orthogonal geometric and kinematical decoupling. This peculiarity suggests that the disk could be formed by accretion of material around the spheroidal component that we observe today. VATT science: One of the major problems in Astrophysics is the understanding of the galaxy formation process. In this process, the history of the star formation rate in the universe plays a very important role. For a better comprehension of the star formation in the local universe (galaxies within 11 Mpc), Funes is conducting a deep H-alpha imaging survey using VATT. These data will provide in-depth information on the distributions of local star formation in terms of galaxy types, luminosities, and interstellar environments, and provide critical tests of the methodology used in constructing the history of the star formation rate in the universe. In addition to this project Funes is investigating the relationship between gravitational interaction and galactic activity. To demonstrate that most Seyfert galaxies (a class of Active Galactic Nuclei) have undergone interactions, he has started a program aimed at taking deep images through the B, R, and H-alpha filters of a spectroscopically selected sample of Seyfert galaxies. The images obtained with VATT were analyzed using an adaptive filtering technique designed to emphasize faint structures and knots and to reveal disturbed morphologies (distortions in the circumnuclear regions and small bars, double nuclei, faint companions, faint tidal tails) that can be interpreted as the effect of gravitational interaction.

 

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Indeed there should be no conflict between science and religion if the religion were true, but there is enormous conflict between science and all religious, or dualistic, or supernatural belief systems, despite your inability or refusal to see it.

If I don't see it, point it out to me. As far as I have seen, it does not exist. Further, I can show that many of the tenets of my religion that you attack as being in conflict with what science shows are true from natural reason, absent any consideration of faith.

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My disbelief in god is not an assumption I made prior to trying to understand the world, it is a result of those efforts.

I can say the same thing.

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,

 StMichael

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All evasions to the contrary, Aristotle's whole chain of reasoning leading to the unmoved mover relies upon his misunderstanding of the nature of physical motion. It is the false belief that objects naturally tend toward rest, and require an input of energy of some kind in order to be in miotion or to remain in motion.

It has nothing to do with things tending toward rest. It has a great deal to do with the fact that motion in things cannot exist without a mover acting on the thing. Just as, for example, the log cannot catch on fire (though potentially hot) unless an actual heat source is brought into contact with the fire. In which case, the potentially hot log moves from potentially hot to actually hot and catches on fire. This sort of motion exists in all changable things and requires, logically speaking, a mover in order to cause the potential thing to become actual. Physical motion is only one example of this movement.

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My statement that Aristotle did not have monothesitic beliefs was too general. Aristotle's notion of god could be called monotheistic, though it differed from Judeao-Christian monotheism in important ways...

 Note the sentence:

"Will and intellect are incompatible with the eternal unchangeableness of His being."

This is not at all compatible with the Judaeo-Christian concept of god.

That is untrue. I don't know what the article means by this, but this obviously contradicts Aristotle's doctrine that God is an mind who thinks Himself. There is no ambiguity in this respect. In fact, the article itself makes that claim when it refers to God as a self-thinking thought. I think what the article means is that Aristotle would see God's will and intellect as unchanging, or as not a potential intellect or will, which is true. In fact, Christians would likewise find that God's will and intellect are immutable. This is compatible.

 

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Note also that the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle cannot participate in any active way in either the creation or the subsequent activity of the world. So your active Judaeo-Christian deity fails to be justified by the Aristotelian logic, even if that logic were valid in the light of modern scientific understanding, which it is not.

I would argue that the God discovered by natural reason clearly can interact with the world. This is proven by way of its thinking of itself would necessarily include thinking of its effects (I take liberty here, because I see no need to prove this immediately; I am sure that we can wait until later to prove my claim here). God knows and thus governs the world that He intelligently causes. His cause of the world is intentional in nature. While Aristotle may not have seen this, I see no reason why this is incompatible fundamentally with his notion of God. In fact, I see it as a complement to his philosophical position.

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 In consequence, I'll concede that Aquinas very likely is largely responsible for the Christianized version of the GCOB that became a part of the body of dogma. But this was a Christianization, because as explained above, Aristotle's god-concept is not al all compatible with the Judaeo-Christian concept.

Aquinas is not responsible, but I would argue that, at least, Pseudo-Dionysius is, who was far before Aquinas. Even further than him, I would argue that the same thought is found in Sacred Scripture in many places and is not without grounding in the Christian tradition. Aristotle has a notion of hierarchy in being, but it is quite close to the Christian understanding; in fact, Aristotle even posits angels in his seperated spiritual substances. However, despite differences in details, I think it is entirely and fundamentally compatible with what Christians believe.

 

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In the world ruled by the alliance of feudal aristocracy and the catholic clergy (we call it the Dark Ages), and leading all the way up to he protestant reformation and beyond, the church consistently opposed knowledge and literacy for the masses, for the simple reason that knowledge and literacy contributed to disagreemant with the church and fostered heresy.

Total nonsense. You need to support such a silly claim. The Church has consistently fostered open learning for everyone. Again, my proof of the cathedral schools, monasteries, free education for the commoners, universities, up until the present day refutes your argument soundly. The problem is a skewed understanding of history that is not grounded in fact. 

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The church promoted knowledge and literacy, but only if it was acquired within the structure and under the watchful eye of church authority.

I don't know what to make of this. The Church promoted knowledge, but it didn't? Make up your mind. I don't believe you can deny the fact that the Catholic Church built the very foundations of Western civilization and the entire corpus of Western knowledge was almost exclusively derived from her bosom. It is a fact of history, regardless of whether you disagree with the Church's teachings.

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When you talked about Christians who were influential in the development of science, I thought you were talking about those, like Copernicus or Bruno, who dared to think outside the box of Catholic dogma.

Fr. Copernicus was a faithful Catholic until the day of his death who never once contradicted a single Catholic dogma. He never was in trouble with any Church officials, and he had no problem proposing his view of heliocentrism. In fact, his work was widely held by many Church authorities, bishops and cardinals, without a tinge of blame even during the time of Galileo's trial. Bruno's execution had little to do with his scientific theories (which were not even, to my knowledge, listed in his condemnation) and a great deal more to do with his rampant heresies in other areas.

 

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I didn't know you meant the Jesuits. here's a link to a site with a brief overview of Jesuit scientific contributions from the formative years of modern science - from Loyola University, no less:

http://libraries.luc.edu/about/exhibits/jesuits/ 

It seems clear that while real science was finally getting under way, the Jesuits were spending centuries focusing most of their energies on vain attempts to deny Copernican theory.

 You ought to read the rest of that instead of just asserting that. There were Jesuit scientists of Galileo's time, as there were "real" secular scientists who opposed Galileo - in fact, surprise of surprises, most opposed his theory. Only later was his theory proven, and, even then, his theory was flawed in that it was likewise true that the sun moved (which Galileo rejected). Also, reading that biography of Jesuit scholars, there were only two or so mentioned who explicitly were attempting to refute Galileo's theory; Christoph Scheiner, 1575-1650 praised the work of Galileo, while he did not hold the Copernican system. The Jesuits were the "real" scientists of the era. 

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The church was hostile enough to any thinking that contradicted Catholic dogma that they were willing to torture and burn people for such "heresy."

Or do you deny this?

This is not, however, a denial of free thought in science. Even if we accept that they burned people for heresy, no scientific theory falls under heresy. As I pointed out earlier, the problem with Galileo was that he was making explicitly theological claims contrary to what the Church taught. Thus, he earned a censure. But no amount of natural science earns a condemnation from the Church.

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Did the church not threaten Galileo with torture to force him to (dishonestly) recant his support of heliocentrism?

Actually, the Church never, to my knowledge, threatened torture at all. Excommunication was the penalty for his actions, and as a penance, he lived his life in seclusion. The Church never tortured him or proposed to do so, to my knowledge. Further, the problem was not his support of heliocentrism, but his explicit contradiction of Catholic dogma. Heliocentrism itself does not contradict Catholic dogma, as many of the scientists in his time held the Copernican theory without error (such as a cardinal who was on the ecclesiastical commission to try Galileo for heresy).

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Where do you see evidence of mind or will or sentience outside the physical bodies or independent of the functioning of the physical bodies of living things?

I see it clearly present in my own mind, which is not dependent on matter for its ability to think. Likewise, it can be established from God's nature as the Prime Mover that He is likewise intelligent and has a will.

 

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The conflict between science and dualistic thinking is fundamental - dualistic explanations can be offered for any phenomenom, but science seeks explanations which do not rely on the whims of supernatural or spiritual entities.

Dualistic explanations? There is no contradiction at all. It just depends what you mean by "dualism." For example, I believe it is clearly able to be held that any physical substance is composed of a composite of matter and form - an immaterial reality and matter. This does not contradict in the least with scientific evidence. Or, for that matter, my own soul or the souls of other living things are likewise moving agents that come under the purview of physics, but the principle of life itself in this case is immaterial and cannot be shown with science. It has nothing to do with the "whims" of supernatural entities. It has a great deal to do with an accurate philosophical explanation of the world.

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It is also confirmed by the continual and total lack of any evidence for spirits or supernatural entities of any type having any effect on actual physical events.

My mind has an effect on physical events. God has an effect on physical events as the first cause. The form of a thing, or the soul of a creature, is an immaterial thing that easily has an effect on physical events, as it constantly provides the structure behind any thing.

 

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If you say that your attempts to understand the universe led you to your belief in the Judaeo-Chrsitian god and the truth of Catholic dogma, do you mean you had no faith in these things before trying to learn the truth about the world and how it works?

Actually, I did. I came to a belief in God based on my knowledge of science and philosophy.

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Seems like you favor the approach of Augustine:

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe."

or

"Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand."

This view has certainly been a foundation of the approach of Catholicism toward knowledge, even if you don't share it.

I share both of these viewpoints, but I do not see how they contradict any claim for reasonable natural knowledge of things. Faith is not a rejection of what we naturally know, but its perfection in knowing what we cannot naturally know - God Himself.

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,

StMichael 

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Was Aristotle's understanding of motion fundamentally flawed, and shown conclusively by Galileo and Newton to be fundamentally flawed?

No. This depends on what we mean by "motion," as I said earlier, as I would say that, clearly, Aristotle's concepts of local motion are wrong. But, hey, let's look at the consequences.

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If your answer is no, you demonstrate an ignorance of science and history so profound that it is pointless for any modern thinker to even try to discuss these issues with you.

Eww... I'm frightened. Why don't we try to discuss instead of just having you call me an ignorant twit every other word? Things will proceed much better then

 

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 If your answer is yes, then the burden is on you to show how this chain of reasoning (which makes statements about motion and through those statements arrives at the concept of a "Prime Mover" - not a prime firestarter or a prime converter of energies or any other such thing), is not connected to and not reliant upon Aristotle's flawed understanding of motion.

Which, of course, it isn't.

The motion described in my argument is not the same idea of local motion that is flawed in Aristotle. It has to do with the notion of "motion" in general, not just motion in physical bodies. A motion, according to Aristotle, is any actualization of a potency, or any moving from act to potency. In other words, "motion" is somewhat equivalent to "change."

I quote the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy to clearly indicate that I am truthfully speaking of Aristotle's philosophy:

"Aristotle defines motion, by which he means change of any kind, as the actuality of a potentiality as such (or as movable, or as a potentiality -- Physics 201a 10-11, 27-29, b 4-5)."

You can look up the Physics later. Also, I point to the further elevation of the Thomistic interpretation of Aristotelian motion, which is the source of modern theories of motion in things, as derived through Leibnitz:

"Motion will thus not have to be understood as the mysterious departure of things from rest, which alone can be described, but as the outcome of the action upon one another of divergent and conflicting innate tendencies of things. Rest will be the anomaly, since things will be understood as so constituted by nature as to pass over of themselves into certain states of activity, but states of rest will be explainable as dynamic states of balance among things with opposed tendencies. Leibniz, who criticized Descartes' physics and invented a science of dynamics, explicitly acknowledged his debt to Aristotle (see, e.g., Specimen Dynamicum), whose doctrine of entelecheia he regarded himself as restoring in a modified form. From Leibniz we derive our current notions of potential and kinetic energy, whose very names, pointing to the actuality which is potential and the actuality which is motion, preserve the Thomistic resolutions of the two paradoxes in Aristotle's definition of motion."
 

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Your failure to "understand" the encyclopedia entry line that specifically contradicts your (and Aquinas' ) attempted retro-fitting of the Aristotelian "Prime Mover" to make it seem to support the Judaeo-Christian god-concept is, well - not very surprising.

I fail to see an argument here.

I easily believe that Aristotle gained such an understanding of the Christian God from observation of creation. His own theories of what this God coincide in the almost every way with the Christian God. From the point of view of Christianity, one need only cite Romans to see the easy movement from Aristotle's proof to Christian God: "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. His eternal power also and divinity: so that they are inexcusable." (Rom. 1:20).

 

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Your refusal to acknowledge the church's history of opposing freedom of thought and inquiry is just bizarre.

So says you, despite the fact that history does not support you.

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There is no contradiction in my claim that the church promoted literacy and learning - but not for the masses, and only within the rigid controls of the church hierarchy.

You claim the church promoted literacy and learning for the masses - show me some evidence of that, before the Reformation.

Umm... let's see... the cathedral schools, the monastic schools, the preservation of books in monasteries... all of which are pre-Reformation and open to the "masses."

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While the church held a virtual monopoly on literacy and learning, it was inevitable that what few advances could sneak past the censors would of course come through the church.

That is such an ignorant statement it is not even funny. The Church was the cause, for example, of the Carolignian renaissance, or the movement toward universities that caused the greater learning of the higher Middle Ages. The Church has consistenly fostered learning and the arts. I recommend the books, "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization," or, "How the Irish Saved the Civilization"

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 It was no coincidence that the years of the church's total domination of Europe were a period of unequaled lack of intellectual and philosophical and economic progress for Europe.

Also ridiculous. The leap in learning took off as a direct result of the Church's sponsorship of learning after the fall of the Roman Empire. The high Middle Ages and the early Renaissance were a "Church-sponsored" event.

 

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 It was no coincidence that true science in the modern sense did not arise until the church lost its stranglehold on European thought, nor that the vast majority of the people who truly contributed to the early development of modern science and philosophy were not Catholics, i.e.: Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, Hooke, Liebniz, Boyle, Huygens, to name a few...

Bah. The Catholic intellectuals of the Renaissance and the later half of the Middle Ages were the foundations for the work of these later figures. Again, a lack of facts.

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An exception that proves the rule (like Galileo) is Rene Descartes - here are a couple of items from his biography that demonstrate the church's true attitude towards freedom of thought, and the effect of that attitude on the advancement of knowledge:

In 1633, Galileo was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, and Descartes abandoned plans to publish Treatise on the World, his work of the previous four years.

In 1663, the Pope placed his [Descartes] works on the Index of Prohibited Books.

It is you that looks at the Catholic church through a filter of nonsensical idealization.

And you of course omit to mention what of Descartes was placed on the Index. Not a scientific work, mind you. Rather, his book of metaphysics. 

 

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The Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of Jews and the violent suppression of dissent, the collusion with the Nazis, the protection of child-molesting priests and the reassignment of the same to new parishes with new victims - no doubt you have answers or agile evasive dances for all of these.

Of course, none of these affects the truth of the Catholic Church's positions. I am sure to find atheists who caused wars (for example, the atheist Nazis and Communists), or atheists who tortued people (remember Stalin, Mao, and Hitler?), or atheists who molested children.

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What was it Jesus is supposed to have said about trees and the fruit they bring forth? Not that I agree with this rather foolish analogy myself, but how do you as a believer escape its implications for the Catholic church?

I see the Catholic Church as producing good fruit. These other things do not proceed from the Church itself, but from its members who, in these cases, were of course not practicing what the Church taught or believed.

 

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Galileo (who probably contributed more to real human understanding than all the priests and theologians who ever lived) was brought before the Inquisition.

Total nonsense. Galileo's theories were disproven relatively quickly. Keppler's theories took precedence and so on and so forth. Priests confirmed the heliocentric theories of Keppler in particular, and have been instrumental throughout history in science. Take, for example, Copernicus. Galileo relied on Copernicus for his major theories.

 

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This is an implicit threat of torture, since the church held that torture was an acceptable tool for controlling freedom of thought - which they called heresy, if it disagreed with the church's views.

Torture is not an issue. It does not matter if heresy was involved here or not. Torture was never threatened in reality or in theory.

 

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 The Jesuits...I did read it. I saw not one name that is remembered as influential in the development of science. I saw many references to attempts to disprove Copernican and Galilean theories. 

Nonsense. Just look at a history of seismology to see the influence of Jesuits on science. The entire science was invented and virtually dominated by Jesuits exclusively until very recently. Archeology is likewise a science that the Jesuits specialized in. Biology remains a strong point. Astronomy is also one in which the Jesuits were key. Their observations eventually were the ones to verify the heliocentric character of the universe. Big names are Clavius, Kircher, and Grimaldi.

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  Duality...

Since you are a living being, a product of biological and your brain is functioning (as best it can constrained by the blinders of your faith), I fail to see how you cite yourself as an example opf mind existing outside the context of evolved living organisms. Your claim of god as the other example, is of course, mere presumption.

Your premise is that my mind is merely my brain. There is no reason to assume this. I think it rather obvious that the mind must be seperated from matter for at least three reasons: [1] universals cannot exist in matter and the mind thinks in universals and is hence immaterial, [2] the mind knows intelligible things more clearly in opposition to sense organs, which sense things less the more sensible they are, and [3] the mind can know all bodies, whereas any bodily organ (if the mind were just a brain) would only know one species of body.

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It also contradicts the true nature of Aristotle's view, which was that in order to qualify as the "Prime Mover" his "God" could not act, and could not have will or intellect.

OK, if you are so insistent on asserting that this is the case, cite Aristotle. You will not find a single statement in favor of your views because they do not exist.

 

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Since you claim that it was your search for understanding that brought you to the your remarkable conclusions, does that mean you were not born into a Catholic family?

I was, but I was not "raised" Catholic. Further, even assuming that that was the case, I know many people who were led from non-Catholic and atheistic backgrounds into a firm belief in God in the way I described.

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Your endorsement of Augustine's quotes implies that you are still refusing to recognize the fundamental importance of honest and unbiased inquiry, because if your inquiry is constrained to support the conclusions of your faith, you cannot be making an honest inquiry.

I see no reason why demonstrated truth "constrains" my knowledge. If it is demonstrably true that the earth revolves around the sun, or that 2+2=4, then that truth is necessary in order to understand other truths and to form a comprehensive knowledge of things. In a similar way, my faith informs my natural reason to discover truth. Truth leads to truth.

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,

StMichael

If Aristotle's physics is flawed - and we know that it is, it is up to you to show how the flaws in Aristotle's understanding of physics do not contaminate his metaphysics.

You have not done so.

You'll see this about Aristotle's concept:

"Aristotle made God passively responsible[....]

 Again, it is crystal-clear that this god is perfectly passive, and must be to qualify as the unmoved mover. He is not omniscient, but completely unaware even of the existence of the world.

Here's the beginning of the entry on Aquinas:

"Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) accepted both Aristotle and Christian revelation[....]

 So, what both Aquinas and you either fail or refuse to recognize is that in adding the characteristics of the Christian god to Aristotle's god-concept, you have completely undermined the support of Aristotle's argument for your god.

Check as many sources as you like, and you'll see the same. Since multiple reputable sources agree with this facet of Aristotle's god-concept, again, the burden is on you to demonstrate that Aristotle thought he was arguing for a sentient, active, caring, ruling god.

 

 

Instead, you adopt the view that the church gets credit for all the good it's done, but no blame for the evil - much like the Judaeo-Christian party line about god himself.

 

Why is it OK to torture people over what they believe and say?

If your premise that study of nature leads naturally to a Roman Catholic worldview is true, it's rather surprising that none of those greats of science that I mentioned (Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, Hooke, Liebniz, Boyle, Huygens) were led back to the Catholic fold by their studies.

They seemed not to see this wonderful harmony and concordance between science and Catholicism, unlike those unforgettable giants of scientific history you mentioned: Clavius, Kircher, and Grimaldi...

 

 In fact, if your premise is true, and the scripture is correct that nature confirms the existence of the Christian god - so that I am "without excuse" - where is the great conversion of scientists of all faiths and backgrounds to Catholicism, or even to Christianity?

 How is it that we instead have a very clear trend in the opposite direction?

 

The better a person understands the alleged Creation, the less likely they are to believe in the Judaeo-Christian creator-type deity.

How do you reconcile this data with your hypothesis?

I never said that your mind is "merely" your brain. I said that mind is something we observe only in biologically evolved life forms, and that only while they live.

You do not provide a valid counter-example to this argument unless you are an inanimate object, or dead, or a disembodied consciousness floating about.

 

So - you were born into a Catholic family. If you had been born into a Muslim family, and surrounded by Muslim influences, the simple statistical fact is that all of your investigations of the world would have led you to believe that Muhammad had it exactly right...

How do you explain that?

Demonstrated truth does not require faith.

 No faith is required to believe that 2+2=4 or that the earth revolves around the sun. God's existence does not fit into this category, obviously.

 

You can not show his existence in the way that you can show evidence of the earth's orbit of the sun, or the way any child could convince themselves of the truth of 2+2=4 with a handful of pebbles.

 

 Since god's existence is not demonstrated truth, nor is it compatible with modern non-dualistic science, your insistence on only seeing evidence that will support your view is clearly a result of a faith-based bias.

I think it false to say that it is impossible to find evidence of Him. The fact that we exist depends on His causing our existence. Everything that exists depends on God for its existence.

But now, we're moving away from the initial topic. I never claimed that bad things happened merely because of the devil; in reality, the answer to that is a great deal more complex.

 

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,

StMichael

You have not disproved the only idea of motion being relied on in this proof, which is the movement between potency and act. Show me how this contradicts modern physics. It does not.

No, I believe this is a perfection to Aristotle's argument. I believe it follows Aristotle's premises, even though he did not think this himself. In any event, it is still clear that Aristotle's God is a pretty close throw at the dart board.
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I never claimed that he was. I claimed that it follows from the nature of the unmoved mover that God is. And I think Aristotle's premises support this. If not, show where.

I think that members of the Church have done plenty evil. I just argued that your specific examples were bad, and that the Church itself can never do evil. Further, the fact that some evil members of the Church exist is no proof against the Church's teaching.
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I don't think it necessarily is. But I would maintain that the Church never did this. Or, if we want to assume for the sake of argument that it had happened (which you already have assumed), I would point out that such was the normal procedure of the day. The Church's decision in this case would be to permit the lesser evil.

Science and God, however, was no issue for Newton, or Hooke, or Leibniz, or Pasteur, or Spinoza, or Copernicus, or even Galileo.

In fact, if your premise is true, and the scripture is correct that nature confirms the existence of the Christian god - so that I am "without excuse" - where is the great conversion of scientists of all faiths and backgrounds to Catholicism, or even to Christianity?

Humans make mistakes. I personally never said that you were without excuse (though you probably are after this conversation ) But I would point to the overwhelming history of both Christian and general belief in God in the history of science. Nobody really seemed to have much of a widespread problem with it.

How is it that we instead have a very clear trend in the opposite direction?

HA!

The better a person understands the alleged Creation, the less likely they are to believe in the Judaeo-Christian creator-type deity.
How do you reconcile this data with your hypothesis?

I think the opposite is true. Most scientists throughout history have believed in God, even if they were merely deists like Aristotle.

The question of religious belief among US scientists has been debated since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever — almost total.
Research on this topic began with the eminent US psychologist James H. Leuba and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God, and that this figure rose to near 70% among the 400 "greater" scientists within his sample [1]. Leuba repeated his survey in somewhat different form 20 years later, and found that these percentages had increased to 67 and 85, respectively [2].
In 1996, we repeated Leuba's 1914 survey and reported our results in Nature [3]. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists generally, with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely imitated the second phase of Leuba's 1914 survey to gauge belief among "greater" scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever — a mere 7% of respondents.
Leuba attributed the higher level of disbelief and doubt among "greater" scientists to their "superior knowledge, understanding, and experience" [3]. Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins commented on our 1996 survey, "You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge." [4] Such comments led us to repeat the second phase of Leuba's study for an up-to-date comparison of the religious beliefs of "greater" and "lesser" scientists.
Our chosen group of "greater" scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality). Overall comparison figures for the 1914, 1933 and 1998 surveys appear in Table 1.

Table 1 Comparison of survey answers among "greater" scientists
Belief in personal God ...1914......1933..........1998
Personal belief .............27.7.........15 ............7.0
Personal disbelief .........52.7.........68 ..........72.2
Doubt or agnosticism....20.9..........17...........20.8

Belief in
human immortality........1914.......1933..........1998
Personal belief............. 35.2.........18..............7.9
Personal disbelief..........25.4.........53............76.7
Doubt or agnosticism.....43.7.........29............23.3

I never said that your mind is "merely" your brain. I said that mind is something we observe only in biologically evolved life forms, and that only while they live.
You do not provide a valid counter-example to this argument unless you are an inanimate object, or dead, or a disembodied consciousness floating about.

I don't need to prove that such a thing exists because you could not prove it by an empirical example (you can't see, touch, or taste one by definition). You can show that, from what we know about our own minds, that they are subsistent without matter. You can likewise show that God exists and must be an immaterial substance. And this suffices. You can't know, except indirectly through material things, that an immaterial substance exists because of the way we know.

Demonstrated truth does not require faith.
No faith is required to believe that 2+2=4 or that the earth revolves around the sun. God's existence does not fit into this category, obviously.

God's existence most certainly does fall into that category. No faith necessary. You would need faith to believe that Christ was God, but that is a different kettle of fish entirely.

You can not show his existence in the way that you can show evidence of the earth's orbit of the sun, or the way any child could convince themselves of the truth of 2+2=4 with a handful of pebbles.

That is precisely what I am arguing that you can do.

Even if I was the most biased person in the world, my argument's truth still stands. I could be biased beyond belief as a Republican who wanted to prove to you that tax cuts were great things. I could have a personal association with the President. I could highly benefit personally in my buisness. I could have bribed people to pass tax cuts. But that all would not change the fact, assuming the truth of my statement, that tax cuts were good. Or, for example, I could be a mathematician whose entire life was spent working out a particular problem and whose entire professional career is determined by the outcome of my theorem. I could have millions of dollars invested in my work and millions in shady bank accounts looking to profit off its success. But that doesn't change the fact that, on proving this theorem, that the theorem is true.

I really have care very little about what Richard Dawkins has to say. I have both read his books and seen him speak and find his arguments very obviously shallow.

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Would you therefore care to tell me how Aristotle was referring to the Christian God, through "unmoved mover", more than 300 years BEFORE he was named and brought to light ?

I know Aristotle lived before Christ. But, you see, I think that human reason discovered God Himself. I think God is clearly evidenced by the natural world and that human reason, without revelation, can attain to knowledge of Him. 

Christian theology teaches us that he is. I'm sure someone will disagree with me and tell me that the true scotsman... err... Christian doesn't actually believe that god is everywhere, but I know when I was in bible school they taught me the word "omnipresent" and made me memorize it in conjunction with "Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent." That last one was always the one I couldn't remember... Anyway, there's a point to all this. What is hell? Many a theist on this site has said that hell is the complete removal of god's presence. Hell is total separation from god. How is that again? If god is everywhere, then hell can't exist... but if god is in hell, then what exactly is hell, and why would god want to hang around for eternity looking at billions of his creations suffering? Sounds like a masochist to me. Anybody want to tell me what I'm missing, and give me some scripture to back it up?

Third, while God sustains them in existence partly out of justice, for the guilt of their crimes, and also out of love. God loves them, and that is why they exist. It would be worse for them, in all reality, if they did not exist at all. You confuse, as I pointed out above, a sort of spiritual suicide with total annihilation. It might seem the same, but they are far different realities. There is no good of the being which ceases to exist.

I still see no reason how you have "proven" my bias and shown my arguments false. Let's review quickly your arguments showing how clearly wrong I am: Aristotle's physics = Aristotle's metaphysics. Assume Aristotle's physics is entirely faulty. Therefore, Aristotle's metaphysics is likewise entirely wrong. Then, proof for God's existence is also wrong. And, then, the ever-popular: Members of the Church have done bad things Therefore, all their claims are false.

StMichael wrote:
I still see no reason how you have "proven" my bias and shown my arguments false.
Let's review quickly your arguments showing how clearly wrong I am:
Aristotle's physics = Aristotle's metaphysics. Assume Aristotle's physics is entirely faulty. Therefore, Aristotle's metaphysics is likewise entirely wrong.
Then, proof for God's existence is also wrong.
No.
I did not say that either Aristotle's physics or his metaphysics was "entirely wrong." I said that both are known to be flawed.
You wish to use them for a "proof," which is a logical construction in which every step depends on the validity of all the steps that precede it.
To those of us who have actually spent some time and effort trying to understand the natural world as it is described by modern science (including relativistic and quantum theory), instead of wandering about in the murky trackless intellectual swamps of theology and apologetics, this "proof" appears to fail at many levels.
For example: The "proof" seems to rely upon Aristotle's misunderstanding of the nature of motion. That is, it seems to presume that motion is absolute and always tending toward a state of (absolute) rest without the continual input of extra force or energy. Your response that the proof does not rely upon "local motion" seems like a dodge – Aristotle's understanding of change and of causality seems to be predicated upon his misunderstanding of "local motion." The burden is on you to show that it does not.

The "proof" presumes, rather than proving in any sense, that infinite regress is impossible.

The "proof" presumes, rather than proving in any sense, that the world is dualistic – that "spirit" is fundamentally separate from and independent of matter.

That it was a force (indeed, the primary force) supporting the development and spread of literacy, learning and science – and never against those developments, that the scientific study of nature would tend to confirm not only the theistic view, but the Christian view, and indeed the Catholic view, that the Church is a transcendent entity that holds a monopoly on ultimate truth and can never do evil…
These claims are preposterous, but they have no impact upon the validity or lack thereof in your Angelically Doctored version of Aristotle's proof.

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Abbt. Gregor Mendel, Armand David, Pierre Duhem, Fr. Paval Florensky, Robert Millikan, ET Whittaker, Arthur Compton, Michael Polyani, Fr. Carlos Filho, Arthur Peacocke, Charles Hard Townes, Stanley Yaki, Allan Sandage, Antonio Zichichi, Ghillean Prance, Fr. Michael Heller....

Let's step back in the context of this little piece of the debate. It arose when you made one of your exuberant allegations about how the scientific approach would naturally tend to confirm the Catholic viewpoint, because the Catholic viewpoint is unquestionably correct. You further claimed that the beginnings of science arose from within the Catholic Church.

I thought of a quick list of the great movers of early science, and realized that almost all of them were Protestant. I also realized that the great Catholic thinkers that occurred to me as belonging in that list all suffered some sort of repression of their thought and expression because they were led into conflict with Catholic teachings (heresy, according to the Church).
I did not sit down and put together a list of thinkers I knew to be Protestant, I simply thought of a few names I knew were profoundly important in the early history of science. It was only after I thought of the names that I checked on their Catholicism, and found (not at all to my surprise – and of course I already knew that the English ones were very unlikely to be Catholic) that none were Catholic, except Galileo and Descartes – who both were censored by the Church – to say the very least!
You responded with a list compiled in a very different way. It looks as though you scanned your memory or materials for the names of Catholic scientists who never ran afoul of the Church's censors, and offered them up as examples…Grimaldi, Kircher, somebody else I can't remember right now.
As if these people were anywhere near being in the same league with regard to the development of science as Bacon, Spinoza, Leibniz, Newton, Hooke, Boyle, Descartes or Galileo…you must know they were not.

Following your usual approach ("You're wrong! Even if you're not wrong, it doesn't matter! Even if it did matter, here's a slightly altered argument that evades your point!), you moved on to trying to use my examples as if they supported the notion that science tends to confirm Christianity, even if not Catholicism.
When I objected that we were talking about the scientific groundbreakers – who had no established scientific worldview to compare against the religions they had been indoctrinated into from the time they were born - and that as science progressed, the conflict between science and religion became ever clearer, you falsely characterized that as a "180" in my argument.
So I did the same thing again – thought of a few of the greatest names in the continuing development of science up to the modern day and then checked if they were theists – of course, again, I already knew some of them were atheists – but few could argue that my choices included many of the giants of scientific progress.
None of them were theists (despite your standard squirmy quasi-denials).

You responded with a list that - though better than your first list - includes nobody anywhere near the scientific stature needed to make my list, a list that apparently, again, began with the identification of theist scientists rather than with the identification of great scientists.

See how your bias shows up in all your arguments and undermines them?
I provided you with very strong evidence for my statement that the scientific study of the world is far more likely to lead people away from than toward theism - by 1998 fewer than 10% of members of the National Academy of Sciences identified themselves as theists, e.g. - and that's just the latest snapshot of a century-long trend that clearly supports my contention.
Your response to it was…no response at all.

That's one of your techniques; another is repeated but unsupported denials, like your response to my citing of multiple reputable sources that confirm that the Judaeo-Christian god cannot possibly be identified with the subject of Aristotle's Prime Mover because that god possesses attributes that directly contradict the nature of the Prime Mover as required by the proof!

StMichael wrote:
Or, Your "worldview" is old. Therefore, it is false.

Not "old" – outdated. As in, we now have a worldview that takes into account five centuries worth of scientific study that have totally invalidated many of the ideas that are central to Aristotelian and Scholastic thinking, so if you expect to convince anyone who is conversant with the current understanding of the world of the logic and reason you think characterizes your approach, you need to try to present it in a way that works in the modern context.

StMichael wrote:
Or, I cannot see or physically experience a spiritual thing. Therefore, spiritual realities cannot exist.
Or, A spiritual thing is not a body. Therefore, it cannot have an effect on bodies.


The second half of this is a (straw man caricature) version of Ryle's "Ghost in the Machine" objection to dualist thinking. Since a spirit is not physical, and is fundamentally separate from matter-energy, it cannot be the cause of physical effects in matter-energy systems. This is an objection to which no dualist has ever offered a reasonable answer.
The first half of your straw man is even more of a caricature, so I need a better explanation of what I'm really trying to convey.

Luckily, you have offered up an excellent example for thinking about this issue, as Todangst reminded me:

Todangst wrote:
His claim is based on the presumption that he can separate 'the church' from its members, as if 'the church' were a distinct entity apart from its leaders and adherents. He needs to back this up, and show how this can make sense.

Michael, your notion of this "transcendent" Church is a dualist notion.
Yet, I clearly do recognize the Catholic Church as something that exists in the universe, with real effects – both good and bad.
Where is this Church? It cannot be seen or directly physically experienced or measured on a mechanical device, it has no mass or weight or color or temperature – yet it would be preposterous to claim that it is not "real."
It cannot be localized in the buildings or real estate or material wealth of the Church, nor in the written records or teaching of the Church, nor in the bodies or minds of the Church's leaders or adherents currently living or long dead - and yet it is in all of those things.
It is a massive human institution, and like all such, it has an identity, which is shaped by its human participants even as it shapes them. But does this mean that there must be (or even can be!) some spectral, magical, other Church, separate and independent from all of the physical systems I identified?
Is there a Roman Catholic Church that would still exist, if the Earth were vaporized tomorrow?
Of course there isn't. There is no need to postulate any magical extra essence, and to do so is a violation of Occam.

Rather, the identity of the institution arises from the synergy of its actual physical components, and it has effects in the real world only through those components. Eliminate some critical portion of them, and the church ceases to exist.
You think there is some other essence there, since the Church is a magical entity in your view.

But The United Sates of America is also an entity that exists in precisely the same way. Would it exist also after our hypothetical vaporization? How about the USSR?

Or are these perhaps more like ordinary human souls, and therefore culpable in some sense for the evils they do, as opposed to the godlike soul of the Church, which (like god), can never be culpable, no matter what?