Aquinas wrote:I answer that, It can be shown from these three sources that God is one.
First from His simplicity. For it is manifest that the reason why any singular thing is "this particular thing" is because it cannot be communicated to many: since that whereby Socrates is a man, can be communicated to many; whereas, what makes him this particular man, is only communicable to one. Therefore, if Socrates were a man by what makes him to be this particular man, as there cannot be many Socrates, so there could not in that way be many men. Now this belongs to God alone; for God Himself is His own nature, as was shown above (3, 3). Therefore, in the very same way God is God, and He is this God. Impossible is it therefore that many Gods should exist.
...even the Bible proves that there are other beings called god ...Try... 2 Cor. 4:4 "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." You don't believe that Heavenly Father and Satan are the same god do you?
Yes, indeed scripture uses the word “god” (lowercase “g” in English translations) to describe a number of things; here it is used to describe Satan. In the Old Testament it was used to describe the idols pagans worshiped, hence the first commandment “I am the LORD your God, you shall not put other gods before me.” Also, Psalm 83:6-7 reads “I said ‘you are “gods” you are all sons of the Most High, But you will die like mere men, you will fall like every other ruler.” NIV scholars indicated that the word “god” used here can be understood to mean judges or rulers of God’s people. Lowercase g “god” in our English is derived from the Hebrew “elohim” in the Old Testament, which is not synonymous with the Hebrew Yaweh, or “LORD” in the English version. I am not familiar with the New Testament Greek words, but the fact that there is a distinction in the English of lower and uppercase “G’s” indicates that the words are not the same in the Greek either. I am unable to give an entire defense for the teachings in the Bible, but it should be clear for anyone who studies scripture that Yaweh is the same as the First Mover Aquinas proves exists (see above reference for the entire argument). We need not, however, rely on any scripture to be able to accept Aquinas’ arguments that 1) God (the First Mover) exists 2) He is his own nature and 3) He is one. These are philosophical, not theological proofs. He does not appeal to any scripture in his actual arguments, only in the objections he anticipates (which would most likely have come from other Christians or Heretics at the time).
Furthermore we learn that we are to be one with Jesus as He is one with the Father: "And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:" (John 17:22)
The verse you quote here is more appropriately understood to mean that the believers are to be one with all other believers, not one with Jesus as the first part of your sentence claims. The oneness Jesus shares with the Father is the comparison Jesus illustrates to show what kind of oneness he prays for the believers to have with each other. Thus, given this verse, it would have no impact on God’s oneness that Aquinas proves. Also, this prayer could be understood to mean a mystical oneness, as in being one in mission, rather than a substantial oneness, as in one being, the later sense of oneness is what Aquinas’ argument deals with, while the former is one way this scripture can be interpreted.
"Mr. President" (the president of the United States of America) is a particular man (George W. Bush) and the only president of the US with whom we have to do. However, there have been many Mr. Presidents (of the USA) in the past and there will almost certainly be more in the future.
This is the only part of your response that addresses the first part of Aquinas’ argument for God’s oneness. You neglected to see that Aquinas explicitly dealt with this (in his Socrates example); indicating that unlike Socrates (or any other person) God is his own nature. Thus if GWB was his own presidential nature, He would not only be GWB, he would be presidency itself, and clearly (in such a bizarre example) no one else could be president, as GWB and presidency would be the same substance. God is unique from creation in that He is His own nature. Lucky for you (lol) Aquinas also has a proof for God (The First Mover) being his own nature (see Summa, Prima Pars, Question 3 Article 3, here is the link for the internet: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1003.htm).
Aquinas wrote:Secondly, this is proved from the infinity of His perfection. For it was shown above (4, 2) that God comprehends in Himself the whole perfection of being. If then many gods existed, they would necessarily differ from each other. Something therefore would belong to one which did not belong to another. And if this were a privation, one of them would not be absolutely perfect; but if a perfection, one of them would be without it. So it is impossible for many gods to exist. Hence also the ancient philosophers, constrained as it were by truth, when they asserted an infinite principle, asserted likewise that there was only one such principle.
What if they differ from each other only in location or their favorite color or some other trival matter? Do the differences have to be in perfection or privation? One can be distinguished by trivial differences (in my opinion that trivial difference would be location). Look, when we look at the atomic world, each electron is more or less indistinguishable from another other than properties such as present energy and spin. Yet each of those electrons are perfectly capable of changing their energy, spin or other properties. As far as being an electron goes, they do not lack any perfection of another. They are, in an important sense, equal.
Yes, indeed things (like electrons) can differ from each other in “trivial” matters, such as location. Aristotle would call these “accidental” differences. However, God’s infinite perfections, which are what Thomas Aquinas is addressing, are not aksidental (sorry for the funky spelling, wouldn't let me post the real spelling for some reason) but rather substantial differences because they are infinite perfections.
An aksidental characteristic of mine is that I have brown hair. If I had another hair color, my essence wouldn’t change at all, because hair color has nothing to do with who or what I am. A substantial characteristic, however, is like the three sided-ness of a triangle. A triangle cannot be thought of in any other terms than a shape that has three sides, if it had four sides it would no longer be a triangle. Such is God. His perfections are infinite, thus his power (one of the many perfections of his) is infinite, and being infinite means there can only be one, making this characteristic also substantial, as it is only appropriately attributed to God.
Take two kings for example, one rules over a kingdom called “Mars” the other rules over a kingdom called “Earth.” Each king governs his own kingdom and has power over all things in his own kingdom, but would necessarily lack the power over the other kingdom. If one of the kings did have power over the other kingdom, there would only be, properly speaking, one king, as he would have power over both kingdoms. If however, you say both kings have equally infinite power over both kingdoms, they just choose to cooperated together, this is an impossibility, as neither king would have power over the other king, thus limiting both of their power. Now power is only one infinite characteristic of the First Mover, so this is also true of all other infinite characteristics of the First Mover, like knowledge, goodness, beauty, etc.This from a world-renowned philosopher/theologian?
This is just an ignorant statement for two reasons, first you have not seen all the previous arguments he made up to this point, and do not understand that anything you could possibly think of as an objection, he probably already has. I had a philosophy instructor who had a class on Aquinas at Boston College and the only assignment for the entire semester was to create an objection to one of Aquinas’ arguments that was better than an objection Aquinas already pointed out himself. No one in the class was successful.
The second is that Aquinas’ writings have been around for centuries and his five proofs for the existence of God are still studied in most, if not all, philosophy programs. Do you think anything you have written or will ever write will be around even 10 years after you die? Spare us of your ignorance by not insulting great thinkers like Aquinas. Your arguments are decent, but not in the same league as his (neither are mine by the way, not even close. I too am an amateur, but I admit it).Aquinas wrote:Thirdly, this is shown from the unity of the world. For all things that exist are seen to be ordered to each other since some serve others. But things that are diverse do not harmonize in the same order, unless they are ordered thereto by one. For many are reduced into one order by one better than by many: because one is the "per se" cause of one, and many are only the al cause of one, inasmuch as they are in some way one. Since therefore what is first is most perfect, and is so "per se" and not ally, it must be that the first which reduces all into one order should be only one. And this one is God.
First off, not everything needs to be ordered by something greater. I have a dual-core (multiprocessor) computer at home. Both cores are equal to each other--neither one orders the other around. Instead they communicate and cooridinate actions with each other through use of shared memory and concepts such as spinlocks, semaphores, mutexes, and the like. Now you may counter that they are following human instructions to coordinate their behavior and it is true. However, the humans that designed them also largely operate separately and equally, but coordinate their efforts through email, meetings, testing, and so on. But then perhaps you'll claim that there is a boss who has the final word. I disagree. The market has the final word. There is more than one OS maker and more than one CPU maker. The market choses who made the best decision by purchasing their products. The free market itself is an inherently distrubited decission making agent guided by nothing more than the "invisible hand".
You’ve just demonstrated by starting with the dual-core processor, that it can be traced back to be caused by something greater, which would be human instructions, which consists of a team of particular humans, of which there is a boss, and the boss is ultimately ordered by the market. You need not stop there though, for greater things still exist. The market consists of humans as well who, ultimately, are given motion (because all people have bodies) by the First Mover, which is one of Aquinas’ proofs for the existence of God, and of which there can only be one (as he is proving here). Thus, your first sentence “not everything needs to be ordered by something greater” you have already demonstrated half of the argument against that claim, I just finished it up for you. The “invisible hand” could be thought of as God, the cause of the desires within humanity that drive the market.But, you will claim, everything that exists has a cause. Well, welcome to the 21st century. Have you ever heard of quantum mechanics? It appearst that many events do not really have a cause. They just happen. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation
I went to the URL you cited, and I’ll be honest, I am neither a mathematician nor a physicist and I am not sure I understood all of it. From what I gathered, there seems to exist very brief (less than a second) fluctuations in energy that seem to violate the conservation of energy law in physics. Also, from what I gathered, conservation of energy means that energy remains constant, although the form may change (like from friction to kinetic; the example they gave). My guess is this is what you mean when you say many events do not really have a cause.
One explanation for such phenomena, which is at least in the realm of possibility, is that science is unable to determine a cause, at this time, for such occurrences. To argue inductively, since many other events can be shown to have a cause (the earth’s rotation is caused by the gravitational pull of the sun, a pool ball moves, the cause is the pool stick striking the ball, I cause light to enter a room by turning on a light switch, etc, etc, etc) it is highly likely that quantum fluctuation also has a cause. Likewise, many events (like the sun’s rising in the morning) were at one time in human history thought to have a cause different from the actual cause, only to be understood at a later time in history. In the sun example, the rising was attributed to a pagan god flying through the sky. Later, the cause was proven to be something else entirely, the earth rotating on its axis. Thus, it is likely, given the skepticism of modern science, that if an event did not seem to have a scientific causal explanation, no cause would be attributed to the event at all.
Secondly, modern thinking leads us to believe that only one (or at most two) causes exist for each event. Aristotle (who happened to be probably the most influential philosopher for Aquinas) and Aquinas had a much richer understanding of cause. There are four categories of causes that can be attributed to each event; material, efficient, essential and final. Very briefly, a material cause is used to explain an event’s matter, thus the cause of my body would be growth from a fetus to a body. An efficient cause would be the chain of events that caused me to be; thus all my ancestors who procreated throughout millions of years lead to the point of my conception. An essential cause explains what I am; I am human, I come from the form “humanness,” thus humanness explains my essence. Final cause (the most magnificent of all in my opinion) would explain my purpose, thus my purpose as a human being is to accept God and live the life he planned for me and also to use reason to understand the natural world, as humans are rational animals. In our modern world we have reduced causality only to the material and efficient cause of things, which is clear if you reflect on the way modern philosophers and scientist think and argue. This all may seem off the point, but I want to stress the importance of understanding that “causality” was much more richly understood by the ancient philosophers, and it is hard to make comparisons of causality to what modern science tells us, because they have reduced causality to only two of its four elements. This is not to say modern science is worthless and cannot demonstrate truth, in fact science has done just the opposite, but to think scientifically, we need not to reduce the meaning of causality, the way modern thinking tends to do. It is a fallacy to think that just because something is newer (modern thinking) it is more accurate or more truthful.Finally there need not be a first God. Tell me what the smallest positive rational number is. By the way, I'm not saying that I know for certain that there was a God before our Heavenly Father. I'm just criticising your proof of one God.
Of course, there is no smallest rational number, nor a largest. But when Aquinas argues that God is infinite, he is not talking about numerically infinite, nor even quantatively infinite (as is obvious, since he is arguing that God (the first mover) is one). He is talking about infinite in power, goodness, beauty, etc, etc. “Infinite” is thus used in an entirely different sense than the example you gave. The meaning of infinite, in the sense Aquinas is arguing, is something that in no way is finite; and to be finite means to be limited. Thus, when we say God is infinite, it means he is not limited in any way (I used this definition from a former philosophy instructor of mine, who shall remain anonymous for privacy reasons).
Again, good post Asbestosman, I hope you give my responses due consideration. I can see you are indeed a lover of logic, and logic is a vehicle to truth and truth comes only from God.