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

by dhw, Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 12:52 (1829 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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).

DAVID: Purposeful Activity is caused by a mind as you admit. There is no evidence that the first material (non-living) substances had any indication or ability of combining together to each other by their own selves.

But they did combine. There is no evidence that they did so “by their own selves”, and there is no evidence that an unknown mind converted its own pure energy into material cells and either supplied them with computer programmes for every subsequent combination for the rest of time, or kept on psychokinetically moving them around for the next 3.8 billion years. I don’t know why you can’t accept that nobody knows how life started or through what mechanisms the first cells acquired the ability to evolve. That is why there are different theories.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Last first, I don't know, cannot know, if God has an interest in any of us or all of us. Since he created us I think He is interested, degree unknown.

So you allow for deism, whereas for some reason St Thomas dismissed it.

DAVID: Psychism has one meaning that fits:
https://www.wordnik.com/words/psychism
"The character of being psychic or mental." This means it is a bastardized version of recognizing the presence of mind or consciousness within the universe, without recognizing the possible source in/from God.”

I don’t know why you’ve fastened on psychism, when we are discussing panpsychism, defined as: “The theory that all nature is psychical or has a psychical aspect; the theory that every particle of matter has a psychical character or aspect.” This can be interpreted both theistically and atheistically. What is your point?.