Dawkins - Peerless Stinker

Dawkins

From time time to time this blog degenerates into a samey mix of horses, guns, space creatures and cheap jibes against the fast disappearing ACoC (Anglican Church of Canada) and its larger sister TEC (The Episcopal Church). To say nothing of the all too easy game of awarding "alien heads" to offending ecclesiastics.

So here's some philosophy to even things out; it's a reflection on Dawkins' take on Aquinas' 4th Way and you'll have to forgive the length but I like the argument.

First, the 4th Way itself, from the Summa:

Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But 'more' and 'less' are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being [i.e. maximally ontologically secure]; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in [Aristotle's] Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

Dawkins doesn't like this at all and decides to sneer:

"That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God."

But Aquinas is dealing with properties that have an intrinsic and logical, as opposed to de facto, maximum. Eric Mascall explains:

"Goodness, so the argument claims, demands as its cause a God who is good; while heat, though it necessarily demands a God whose knowledge of possible being includes an idea of heat, does not demand a God who is hot as its cause, but only a God who can create."

Peter Williams sums up:

"In modern philosophical terminology, Aquinas is arguing along the following lines:

1. Things exist in the world around us that exhibit finite degrees of great-making properties (e.g. being, goodness, truth, beauty)

2. The existence of something exhibiting a great-making property to a finite degree implies the existence of something that possesses the property in question to a maximal degree

3. Therefore, all great making properties possessed in finite degree by beings in the world around us, including being, are possessed to a maximal degree by something

4. An effect cannot exceed the greatness of its cause

5. Therefore, there exists a maximally ontologically secure being that possess every great-making property possessed by its effects to a maximal degree; and this we call God.

It should at least be clear that Aquinas' argument is logically valid and consequently that this line of thought cannot be dismissed with a jeering reference to smelly people, which is all Dawkins does."

Well said, Peter Williams.

This site supports Aquinas -- not that he needs it.

Cheers,

LSP

Hawking an Atheist!!

According to the Telegraph, Stephen Hawking still doesn't believe in God and states in his recent book The Grand Design, “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

I suppose I'm being ignorant, but it seems odd that nothing should create something. For that matter, how could a law like gravity exist when there isn't anything existent -- gravity included. Is Hawking saying that something very like nothing existed and out of that came everything else?

Perhaps; Hawking goes on to say, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.” Who did? The "laws of science", which we can call 'God' if we like, but beware, "it wouldn't be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions."

Fine, but by way of warning, surely it's the case that people come to resemble the various 'gods' they believe in. Given that, what would the impersonal law god of science look like?

Still grounded from gun & horse -- annoying.

LSP