Concepts of God: proof of God by St. Thomas' Fifth Way (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 13:13 (1619 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This has to be read in its entirety for full import. About five+ minutes:
https://dot.discovery.org/e/563722/-the-proof-from-specification-/592yh6/419767935?h=wo...

We have been over this umpteen times, though we have used the term “first cause” instead of “final cause”.

Quote: Final cause: the end or purpose for the cause. The final cause of a statue is the purpose in the mind of the sculptor — to use the statue to decorate a garden, for example.

An excellent explanation, which illustrates the major weakness in the whole argument: where did the sculptor come from? The theory that there is a conscious, all-powerful, immaterial mind which has simply existed for ever and ever is no more credible than the theory that materials have existed for ever and ever, and sooner or later they were bound to combine in a form that would create a rudimentary consciousness which, in turn, would evolve into ever greater complexity. With this scenario, there is no purpose until there are individual minds with purposes (e.g. cells whose purpose is to survive).

Quote: The foresight inherent in teleology is in God’s Mind, and it is via His manifest foresight in teleology that we see Him at work all around us.
This rules out the God of deism. The God of the Fifth Way is no watchmaker who winds up the world and walks away. He is at work ceaselessly and everywhere. The evidence for a Designer is as clear in the most simple inanimate process as it is in the most complex living organism. The elegant intricate complexity of cellular metabolism is certainly a manifestation of God’s glory — the beauty of biological processes is breath-taking. But the proof of His existence is in every movement in nature — in every detail of cellular metabolism, of course, but also in every raindrop and in every blown grain of dust.

This could be pure pantheism: God is Nature. But Nature does not have to be a single, thinking mind, and one can argue that materials and so-called natural laws are the first or final cause. You can follow a panpsychist route to atheism by arguing that if a raindrop or a grain of dust proves the existence of a single mind, you might just as well say that the raindrop and the grain of dust has a mind of its own. This also applies to the argument against deism. If God is “at work ceaselessly and everywhere”, he must be present in every movement. But why couldn’t he have invented all the mechanisms and then walked away? They would still provide evidence for design! Even you, David, say that he is hidden, and you don’t like to commit yourself to his having any personal interest in us.