Did Aquinas Prove That God Exists?

[Polymath257]

Yeah, as long as you don't believe physics is everything or believe everything else can be reduced down to being physics.

Image the following. You do it. You make a physical/scientific theory of everything and people keep on believing differently than you. Have you then made of a theory of everything? No, not really. That is the limit of science in practice.

I'm not sure why you say 'not really'. If the theory covers everything in a testable way, the fact that people disagree isn't relevant unless they can present a testable alternative.

You do everything as a scientist and I will do everything as a human and include science, where it is useful. But the usefulness of science is limited.

Sure. It has nothing to say about ethics or aesthetics, for example (although it can inform both).

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'm not sure why you say 'not really'. If the theory covers everything in a testable way, the fact that people disagree isn't relevant unless they can present a testable alternative.

Because if it covers everything in a testable way, BUT if it can still be observed (a field test) that people can still disagree, THEN it doesn't cover everything in toto.

Your idea of a theory of everything rests on the hidden assumption everything subjective can be turn into an objective scientific test and turned into science. It can't and that hidden assumption is testable.

Sure. It has nothing to say about ethics or aesthetics, for example (although it can inform both).

See, you gave the result of the test yourself. There is no scientific theory of ethics. Thus no theory of everything, because science can't reduce ethics down to physics. How is that? Because the one as a human behavior is subjective and the other objective.

 

[Left Coast]

Yes, which is the way of science. The question of why something is the way it is is not falsifiable, because is is a subjective philosophical and theological question.

I don't know that it's subjective, but it is a question that seems to lie beyond science's purview.

No, their descriptions of Quantum Mechanics are the behavior of matter and energy on the micro scale of Quanta.

Yes, and matter and energy are part of....spacetime.

The macro world which arises from the Quantum World in space/time is described differently in physics. In the maro world we have different physical laws, the world of chemistry, gravity, and in the micro world we have the smallest particles of matter and Quantum Gravity.

Yes, that I understand. None of that indicates that quantum phenomena are "timeless" or "boundless." That appears to be your spin.

 

[Left Coast]

Thanks to @Polymath257 for taking over while I was away.

It's not only that empiricism fails, logic also shares that fate at the singularity. Now, I can't really blame that on Aquinas since he didn't have the idea of time having a beginning or the universe being in a singular point. Nor had his contemporaries so it was never discussed with him. The only source that could have nudged him into that direction that I know of would have been Zeno's paradoxa. He was really into temporal phenomena but also didn't address the beginning of time. (And Aquinas did study Zeno.)
Our level of argumentation really is only possible with Relativity and the Big Bang in mind even though my arguments don't rest on the physical.

It's helpful that you mentioned that Aquinas' arguments weren't really about the beginning of the universe per se. As I've brushed up on this stuff, I'm realizing we've sort of gotten sidetracked (myself included) by the question of how the universe started. If we admit that Zeno was wrong that change is an illusion, and that Heraclitus was wrong that the world is nothing but change (both of which involve self-contradictions, so can't be true), that leads to Aristotle's conclusion that there is a middle ground of being he called potentiality. And that change is the actualization of a potential. And if you admit all that, we're off the the races and we end up needing pure actuality (the "Unmoved Mover) to be our first cause. Not a first cause in time, but a first cause in the sense that it makes all other derivative effects and causes possible, at any given moment.

 

[halbhh]

Well, causality requires time, so it simply isn't possible to have a cause for time. And, in particular, if time is part of the universe, it isn't possible to have a cause for the universe.

I think most physicists would agree in limited way with the first part: "...causality requires time, so it simply isn't possible to have a cause for time. "

And many physicists would agree with one (not all!) aspect of: "...if time is part of the universe, it isn't possible to have a cause for the universe."
(For instance, I've often said a transform of this, such as: "There is no such thing as 'before the Universe' in the sense of real time, the ordinary time we are accustomed to think of first.")

But generally cosmologists/physicists expect to discover or characterize a cause of this Universe -- we now have a lot of competing theories about what that cause might be.

It's the way physics rolls. Plenty of speculation about the cause of this universe. Elaborate and interesting ideas.

Many or perhaps even most physicists would even be willing to say what theory they personally think is the most likely to explain the origin of this Universe. Currently the multiverse ideas are quite popular, but there are still plenty trying to find a 'naturalism' (not the same as in philosophy) here with just this Universe (sans multiverse), despite the surprising/distressing results of the LHC (large hadron collider).
What No New Particles Means for Physics | Quanta Magazine

 

[Thief]

time is a measurement
of movement

no movement
no time

 

[Polymath257]

I think most physicists would agree in limited way with the first part: "...causality requires time, so it simply isn't possible to have a cause for time. "

And many physicists would agree with one (not all!) aspect of: "...if time is part of the universe, it isn't possible to have a cause for the universe."
(For instance, I've often said a transform of this, such as: "There is no such thing as 'before the Universe' in the sense of real time, the ordinary time we are accustomed to think of first.")

But generally cosmologists/physicists expect to discover or characterize a cause of this Universe -- we now have a lot of competing theories about what that cause might be.

It's the way physics rolls. Plenty of speculation about the cause of this universe. Elaborate and interesting ideas.

Yes, but in those cases, there is usually an assumption of some sort of multiverse, and we just move consideration from the universe to the multiverse.

One other option is to have 'nothing', but a 'nothing' that is a quantum state (and hence non-zero) with no objects. The usual formulation is that this state is a *high* energy state that decays into a lower energy state that actually has particles in it.

This, in turn, leads to a question concerning what is meant by the term 'nothing'. Can it mean a quantum state that represents a system with no particles, and no 'metric' (and hence no spacetime) that can 'decay' into a spacetime with particles?

 

[Thief]

if it is true...God is everywhere
then the CONCEPT of time does not apply

 

[halbhh]

St. Thomas Aquinas was a 13th century Italian priest and theologian. He was the first Christian to write a formal, comprehensive systematic theology and he synthesized Aristotle and Christianity (which was quite controversial since Christianity up to that point had been philosophically neo-Platonist). His work has been highly influential throughout Western Christianity on both theological and moral thought. Basically, he was a big deal.

One of the other reasons he was a big deal is because he developed 5 "ways," or arguments, for God's existence. I thought we would walk through them here. Starting with the First Way:



What do you think? Does this prove God exists? Are there any flaws in this argument?

About the first mover or first cause or other similar arguments, they aren't to many people conclusive to prove something.

Many are content, for example, to simply imagine a something like an always-was.

Always was, or always is.

And in cosmology this can be theorized on, for instance:
Big Bounce Models Reignite Big Bang Debate | Quanta Magazine

Where it's not only a philosophical idea, but can be a physics theory (one of many competing ideas about the cause of this Universe being how it is now).

Others (@Polymath257 might consider it interesting) might have a boundary-less kind of cosmology/philosophy.
For instance:
Stephen Hawking's lecture/essay on his site: The Beginning of Time
(and responses-) Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning | Quanta Magazine)
Where you just posit (or theorize) simply there is just how-it-is, and can make physics to fit a no-beginning (and perhaps preserve what physicists call 'naturalness') Certainly fun to think on for a few minutes.

But those don't really address the basic question of God existing, but simply address cosmologies people have -- not the same thing!

 

[halbhh]

Yes, but in those cases, there is usually an assumption of some sort of multiverse, and we just move consideration from the universe to the multiverse.

One other option is to have 'nothing', but a 'nothing' that is a quantum state (and hence non-zero) with no objects. The usual formulation is that this state is a *high* energy state that decays into a lower energy state that actually has particles in it.

This, in turn, leads to a question concerning what is meant by the term 'nothing'. Can it mean a quantum state that represents a system with no particles, and no 'metric' (and hence no spacetime) that can 'decay' into a spacetime with particles?

Yes. But, you've here even in your idea of 'nothing' as a high energy state already a physics. Sure, we all agree that a physics must exist. This is kinda the way it has to be, now, since indeed something exists. As to whether a physics even has to exist, whether there could be a true nothingness, the mind might recoil from that....

 

[shunyadragon]

Let us turn the Holy Grail of philosophy into a testable question.
Find for all of reality with prior evidence or proof all local examples of it within reality (as it comes to humans). Now use logic and reduction to math and science and keep the strong AND from logic and only get positive results.
The last one is the joker:
Your overall theory of everything can't yield relativism.
Here is how:
You: Here is the ToE, follow it, because you can't do it differently. (That is the testable part)
Me: No!

The test is as always that there is no relativism at all.

You can't reduce all human behavior down to the same with the logical AND.
So here it is from within philosophy as with logic and ontology combined:
"It is impossible that the same thing belong and not belong to the same thing at the same time and in the same respect." Aristotle

Now you can't reduce differences in human behavior away if they disagree and you can't use logic on two humans, if they disagree. How? Because they are not the same thing!!!
It is that simple!
That is it. We can go on with logic as much as you like and if I can do my life differently that you can do yours, I will do so, when it comes to this.
The actual everyday life falsification of your idea, is that humans will continue to disagree with you.

I am a general skeptic and I know how to falsify the ToE for all human behavior. I just disagree.
Agrippa the Skeptic - Wikipedia

The first mode of falsification as per Agrippa the Skeptic of a ToE is simple:
The uncertainty demonstrated by the differences of opinions among philosophers and people in general.

You have nothing but an opinion and I have a different one. Nice, ain't it.
You really need to study the basics and apply them to all human behavior as observed by field observation. You know, look at humans in the will. Like as an Internet forum and observe that they can actually disagree and both can get away with it.

Relativism in humans are a result of the effect of the replication of the fittest gene with a social species like humans. We do the 4Fs in biology within the species and we compete for resources, power and prestige.

Now if humans cease to be humans, then yes, there might be a possible ToE. But as long as our biology stays fundamentally the same, humans will continue to answer "No!" to your idea.
Subjectivism and relativism in humans are a result of biology. Good luck trying to change that.

Sorry, I know, it is a bummer. But if you had checked the knowledge already out there, you wouldn't claim, what you claim.

Very very confusing and incoherent, Not science.

 

[shunyadragon]

I'll go a bit further. When asking the question 'why', we usually want to get a description of the phenomenon from more basic physical laws. So, we can ask why planets form the way they do and use the theory of gravity along with aspects of accretive systems to do this. [/quote[

I disagree this represents truely why? question. What you describe descriptive evidence to falsify the basic laws of physics. This is the falsification of basic laws of physics and why the laws of physics are what they are.

But this means that the *most* fundamental questions *cannot* have an answer to the question of 'why'. To give an answer would be to go to a more fundamental level and that is impossible at the most fundamental level.

True

[quote[ Now, as far as we know, quantum mechanics is fundamental. We don't even have a hint at a more fundamental level. And, given what we have seen in QM, we fully expect any more fundamental level to agree concerning the issues of causality and the probabilistic aspects of the universe.

Bold? Needs clarification then the Quantum level of our physical existence. I do not expect a more fundamental level.

Not completely true. Quantum particles do interact with gravity: a proton will fall under the gravity of the Earth. What we do NOT have is a good quantum description of the gravitational interactions between fundamental particles.

I do not believe the most basic particles interact with gravity.

Also, the macro world is built up from the quantum world. The regularities we see at the macro level are the result, usually, of averaging of the probabilities at the quantum level. But we *do* know of 'macro' devices that act quantum mechanically. Josephsen junctions are a long-known example.

I may refer to more references, but the reflection of Quantum behavior in the Macro world is not truly Quantum behavior in the macro world.
The image in the mirror is not the object. The Quantum World uderlies the physical world therefore it is 'reflected in the Macro World.

The primary difference between the quantum level and the macroscopic level is that Planck's constant is small. This means that the wavelengths relevant for macro objects are incredibly small, so interference, superposition, and entanglement happen at such a level that they are impossible to detect with ur t technology.

As an example, the wavelength of *anything* goes down as the momentum goes up. The momentum is a product of the mass and the velocity. Hence, if the mass or the velocity goes up, the wavelength goes down. The actual size is determined by Planck's constant divided by the momentum.

For electrons going at typical electron speeds, this is a measurable wavelength and corresponds roughly to the size of an atom (it is, in fact, why atoms have the size they do). Protons are about 2000 times the size of electrons, so their wavelengths are correspondingly smaller. Atoms have masses ranging from that of a proton (hydrogen) to a couple of hundred times the mass of a proton (uranium, for example). So the wavelengths of atoms tend to be very small.

Nonetheless, we have been able to detect quantum interference in smaller atoms. But anything macroscopic is made of quadrillions of atoms. So the relevant wavelengths are so small that we have no hope of detecting them. Yet it is precisely this wavelength that determines the size of the quantum effects.

And *that* is why we don't usually detect quantum indeterminacy in macroscopic objects.

electrons and protons are on the edge between the basic particles at the Quantum level and the macro level, and the indeterminacy has recently found to be not so indeterminant,

 

[Polymath257]

Bold? Needs clarification then the Quantum level of our physical existence. I do not expect a more fundamental level.

I do not believe the most basic particles interact with gravity.

The evidence we have suggests otherwise. Massive particle react to gravity more directly, but all particles move in geodesics.

I may refer to more references, but the reflection of Quantum behavior in the Macro world is not truly Quantum behavior in the macro world.

No, I mean we have actual macroscopic objects that show 'quantum behaviors' like interference, superposition, and entanglement.

The image in the mirror is not the object. The Quantum World uderlies the physical world therefore it is 'reflected in the Macro World.

electrons and protons are on the edge between the basic particles at the Quantum level and the macro level, and the indeterminacy has recently found to be not so indeterminant,

Um, electrons and protons are almost the definition of the quantum level. For that matter atoms are quantum level: that's why we see orbitals (and not orbits) in chemistry.

 

[paarsurrey]

St. Thomas Aquinas was a 13th century Italian priest and theologian. He was the first Christian to write a formal, comprehensive systematic theology and he synthesized Aristotle and Christianity (which was quite controversial since Christianity up to that point had been philosophically neo-Platonist). His work has been highly influential throughout Western Christianity on both theological and moral thought. Basically, he was a big deal.

One of the other reasons he was a big deal is because he developed 5 "ways," or arguments, for God's existence. I thought we would walk through them here. Starting with the First Way:



What do you think? Does this prove God exists? Are there any flaws in this argument?

Was one convinced with this argument/reasoning, please?
Regards

 

[shunyadragon]

The evidence we have suggests otherwise. Massive particle react to gravity more directly, but all particles move in geodesics.

Massive particles are not Quantum scale particles

No, I mean we have actual macroscopic objects that show 'quantum behaviors' like interference, superposition, and entanglement.

Disagree.

Um, electrons and protons are almost the definition of the quantum level. For that matter atoms are quantum level: that's why we see orbitals (and not orbits) in chemistry.

Almost doe not work except hand grenades, atom bombs, and rhubarb sword fights.

 

[Polymath257]

Massive particles are not Quantum scale particles

I don't know where you get that idea, but quantum mechanics courses say otherwise.

Disagree.

And how many courses in QM have you had? Do you know what a Josephson junction is?

Almost doe not work except hand grenades, atom bombs, and rhubarb sword fights.

I'll just suggest you are talking from a lack of knowledge of the material.

If you go to *any* quantum mechanics, one of the primary topics is the behavior of electrons. If they are not quantum particles, nothing is. The same goes for protons.

 

[shunyadragon]

I don't know where you get that idea, but quantum mechanics courses say otherwise.



And how many courses in QM have you had? Do you know what a Josephson junction is?



I'll just suggest you are talking from a lack of knowledge of the material.

If you go to *any* quantum mechanics, one of the primary topics is the behavior of electrons. If they are not quantum particles, nothing is. The same goes for protons.

No electrons are not Quantum particles, but they are Quantum objects more than Quantum particles.

What is the shape of an electron?

Rather, electrons are quantum objects. Along with all other quantum objects, an electron is partly a wave and partly a particle. To be more accurate, an electron is neither literally a traditional wave nor a traditional particle, but is instead a quantized fluctuating probability wavefunction.

Note that an electron is a fundamental particle; it is not made out of anything else (according to our current experiments and theories). All fundamental particles interact as shapeless points when acting like particles. But not all quantum objects are fundamental, and therefore not all quantum objects are point particles. The proton, for instance, is not fundamental, but is instead composed of three quarks. The existence of particles inside a proton means that a proton must spread out to fill a certain space and have a certain shape. A proton is not a point particle, but is in fact a sphere with a radius of 8.8 × 10-16 meters. (Note that as a quantum object, a proton is not a solid sphere with a hard surface, but is really a quantized wave function that interacts in particle-like collisions as if it were a cloud-like sphere.) If the electron was composed of other particles, it could indeed have a shape when interacting like a particle. But it doesn't. The electron is a point particle.

When an electron is behaving more like a wave, it can have all sorts of shapes, as long as its shape obeys the electron wave equation. An electron's wave equation, and therefore its shape, is a function of its energy and the shape of the potential well trapping it. For instance, when an electron is bound in a simple hydrogen atom, an electron can take on the familiar orbitals taught in elementary physics and chemistry classes, such as the shape shown on the right. In fact, the word "orbital" in this context really just means "the shape of an electron when acting as a wave bound in an atom". Each atomic orbital is not some mathematical average of where the electron has been, or some average forecast of where the electron may be. Each orbital is the electron, spread out in the quantum wavefunction state.

 

[Left Coast]

I don't know where you get that idea, but quantum mechanics courses say otherwise.



And how many courses in QM have you had? Do you know what a Josephson junction is?



I'll just suggest you are talking from a lack of knowledge of the material.

If you go to *any* quantum mechanics, one of the primary topics is the behavior of electrons. If they are not quantum particles, nothing is. The same goes for protons.

There was an intro undergrad MIT course on QM that was posted for free on YouTube a while back; I watched the first couple classes but didnt have the time and mental energy to finish. Now that this thread has re-sparked my interest in the topic, I may go back and try to find it again!

 

[Left Coast]

Was one convinced with this argument/reasoning, please?
Regards

If by "one" you mean me, I'm not entirely convinced, no. Intrigued and wanting to study more, yes.

 

[paarsurrey]

If by "one" you mean me, I'm not entirely convinced, no. Intrigued and wanting to study more, yes.

It is good that one understands from the reasonable argument/s that "G-d should exist". And that is a step in right direction, but reason alone cannot lead to certainty, it has never done so.Right, please?

Regards