The Five Ways

A video for my introduction to philosophy class on St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways to prove the existence of God.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• God
• proof
• Aquinas
• philosophy
• religion

[Wrob99]

The five ways by Aquinas is a true gem in philosophy. Unfortunately, I find it is often unappreciated by many students.

[watergatewasnotajoke]

This is almost verbatim from The Summa Theologica.

As a result this video was pratically useless to me. Next time it might be useful to add a commentary on either the objections or replies to the five ways

[kajakpaddler92]

@Wrob99 Im glad to hear that! one of the things could be that our model of physics doesnt allow anything to be at absolute rest (for the uncertainty principle would be violated) also, you cannot use convectional logic when dealing with "critical points in nature" (e.g Very small or very high energy). If you are going to talk about the begining of the universe everything disolves into mathematics you cannot use language to explain it. I can show an easy example if you want.

[Wrob99]

@kajakpaddler92 Can you be more specific? I deleted my last post because, after listening to the clip again, I'm not actually sure where you're coming from. These arguments are metaphysical, and I'm not sure what we know about physics that contradicts these statements. If you could elaborate, it would be much appreciated. I'm actually not religious, so I don't really feel like I have any stake in the outcome, but I would like to learn more about the contemporary model of physics.

[kajakpaddler92]

@Wrob99 Its unapreciated because it contradicts many things we now know about physics...

[nightmeer6]

@watergatewasnotajoke He was just stating the basics, so students could learn about it. He wasn't trying to go in depth himself, but rather just give an easy understanding to the "noobs" of philosophy. this way, if students don't want to have their mind completely fucked by The Summa Theologica, they can just watch this basic video that is still useful, even if it was an almost exact replica.

[Murchad99]

4).. real justification, using example superlatives that are actually comparative. Perfection is as much an abstract and unprovable concept as infinity, and has equal standing.

5) Design has been a fantastic argument for Theism, because every time science demonstrates how something came to operate as it does or the inherent randomness of the universe and the trial and error struggle of life with tenuous states of equilibrium, the line is moved back and the design becomes "greater, more complex".

[Murchad99]

2 (continued)... The argument then goes on to define a boundless being that has always existed as the first cause, after working so hard to chip away at the concept of infinity.

3) Argues something cannot come from nothing, everything must come from something, and by abstract reduction there must be something that is excepted from all the other rules for no other reason than because it allows us to complete the argument.

4) This argument sets objective maximums and minimums with no

[Murchad99]

Short version:

1) Unwarranted assumption that motion is not a fundamental state, based on limited human experience. We now understand motion in relative terms, so there is no provable objective state of rest.

2) This argument attempts to disprove infinity by ignoring the definition of infinity. In every observable example upon which physical causality is based, any "beginning" we choose is arbitrarily defined, as it is itself the result of multiple (perhaps countless) contributing causes.

[Murchad99]

@poikilotherm1 "have now resorted to arguing in circles and making utterly ridiculous and rather embarassing statements"

Ah yes, the textbook definition of theological philosophy.