Plotinus's God

Here's me again playing God's advocate:
All the things around us have causes or parts.

Is it possible to conceive something that has no parts, no causes?
If we look into the history of Thought, it would seem so. Theres even a word for that thing which has no parts, its called atom.
Greek philosopher Parmenides had the idea (or the metaphor) of Being as a homogeneous sphere with no parts, no divisions, no beginning, no end but no movement either. That idea was somehow transformed by Democritus (and later by Epicurus and Lucretius) to create the first theory of atoms as indivisible things whose movements, collisions, coalitions made up all nature phenomena in an endless chain of cause and effect. The atoms were the elements or parts of all things, their movements were the causes of all, but they themselves were indivisible and indestructible and causeless.
But Parmenides didnt invent that metaphor he took it form Xenophanes, and in Xenophanes poems we can find that indivisible sphere as a metaphor for the God among Gods. And indivisible and One is the God of Plotinus.
Plotinuss God is not a thing, nor the sum of all things but a transcending absolute; it has no attributes, no desires, no beginning, no end, its even beyond existence or inexistence. And yet, Plotinus affirms its the source and the beginning of all things, all that exists is consequence of the One. And how does the One causes all things? By emanations, says Plotinus, like someone casts its own shadow on the floor without diminishing his or herself in doing so.
So this is Test 2, KJ, how would you disprove Plotinus faceless God?

Edit, check out this quote from Enneads, VI, 7, 3:
The Unity, then, is not Intellectual-Principle but something higher still: Intellectual-Principle is still a being but that First is no being but precedent to all Being; it cannot be a being, for a being has what we may call the shape of its reality but The Unity is without shape, even shape Intellectual.
Generative of all, The Unity is none of all; neither thing nor quantity nor quality nor intellect nor soul; not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time: it is the self-defined, unique in form or, better, formless, existing before Form was, or Movement or Rest, all of which are attachments of Being and make Being the manifold it is.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Plotinus
• Parmenides
• Xenophanes
• Demoritus
• Lucretius
• Epicurus
• disproof of God

[alZiiHardstylez]

Towards the start of your video you talk about the atom, the atom being the smallest thing and is built up of nothing. I believe you're wrong, the atom is not the smallest possible thing to date, a 'quark' is, even so, a quark must be able to be split, another thing to build that up, and then again something to build that up, never-ending.

[BlackLaval]

@alZiiHardstylez: I wasn't talking about the modern, scientific, concept of atom. I was talking about the classic philosophical concept, in a merely speculative or hipothetical manner.

In the classic concept, an atom is by definition, even by ethimology, that which has no parts.

[alZiiHardstylez]

@BlackLaval Oh, so you are telling us about the idea of Plotinus's God?

My bad, XD.

[BlackLaval]

@alZiiHardstylez Well... yeah, I was talking about that.

Besides, you may want to check out this: "If we look in the zoo for the smallest subatomic particle, we might find that the quark is a likely candidate. Even smaller is the string, which, though not a particle, may be the fundamental building block of matter." It's from wikianswers.

[megasayajinsongoku99]

@alZiiHardstylez I think the atom of the philosophers is not the ''atom'' of the physicians .... The atom that the philosophers meant was the smallest part of something that cannt be divided .... So it's not the modern atom.. maybe it's the string or something else ...

[Zephon9]

@BlackLaval The Atom was an ancient metaphysical concept. Later on in the development of modern science, when a certain incredibly microscopic body of matter was discovered, they named it the Atom, despite the fact that it did not fit the definition of what an Atom was. Scientists have a tendency of hijacking names to label things that do not fit the name's description (like the universe).

[Cathain78]

@Roelandvinken

No, Dean Inge was an Anglican wasn't he?

The Jesuit scholar was Paul Henry S.J.