Aquinas' Proofs of God

I a simple man. I see Centre Place video, I click.

People always talk about infinity like it is something incomprehensible. In both mathematics and physics the concept of infinity simple indicates that if you have one or more objects and add no objects to the objects you have, then you still have the same of objects no matter times you add no objects. Even a child could understand this. You can express this concept as 1/0 and get all metaphysical about it. But it is just the same concept expressed in a different manner.

We studied this Ontological Argument in one of my philosophy classes, rather in-depth. While that was close to 3 decades ago, I do remember there being a rather witty reply from a MONK (Gaunilo of Marmoutiers) who made a "Perfect Island" analogy/parody. I'd recommend people look it up, especially if they're the least bit persuaded by this bit of sophistry from Anselm:

"Parodies of the Ontological Argument
One problem with this argument is that it invites parody. Parallel arguments purporting to prove the existence of any perfect thing at all can be constructed.

This objection was first raised by one of Anselm’s contemporaries, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who constructed an ontological argument for the existence of the perfect island in his On Behalf of the Fool.

The perfect island, this argument goes, is the island than which no greater can be conceived. Any island that does not exist, though, cannot be the island than which no greater can be conceived, for it could be conceived to exist which would be greater. Anyone who thinks that the perfect does not exist, then, is confused; the concept of the perfect island entails that there is such a thing.

Similar arguments for the existence of the perfect baseball pitcher, or the perfect husband—for the existence of any perfect thing at all—can be constructed. If any of these arguments is sound, it seems, then they must all be sound.

Clearly, though, these arguments are not all sound; the perfect baseball pitcher does not exist, and neither does the perfect husband. There is something wrong with the logic of these arguments. Each of these ontological arguments, though, uses the same logic. They must therefore all be unsound.

The fact that there is no perfect island, and no perfect baseball pitcher, then, shows that the logic of the ontological argument for God’s existence is flawed."

Man, I wish there was a meet up like this around me!

John Hamer, thank you for you lectures.

You are so kind. So different to someone like E Michael Jones who is so angry all the time.

I did not understand the proof

God is good a d perfect, nor ca he create anything that is not good or perfect so how can God know evil, only by creating good and then allowing good independence from himself, so we are outcasts from God in order that God can know evil, we can defy God and continue being good ,but it is God's will that we are evil ,freewill therefore because God cannot create evil then ultimately evil is good making good and evil one and the same

The only entity that cannot then exist is yourself, therefore I AM God

Then those who attempt to prove the existence of God, dont exhibit a self evident proof , nevertheless all peoples on earth in pre history lived their lives believing inn the existence of God , and when theologians contemplate the existence of God the created the opposite of belief Doubt , so the church led the worldfrom beliefs to doubt ,and is not God.

This was a pretty good overview. I enjoyed it.

I never understood the 'common era' crap. It's still based on all modern calendars and improvements since Caesar. Just say what it is - After Death (AD; of Christ). Just makes people sound ridiculous trying to hide Christ in a system completely built around him.

this series of lectures is an absolute god send. trying to get into philosophy as a hobby, you quickly find out there's a nebulous amount of works and knowledge that you have to not just read study dilligently. and so getting even a basic background is hard. which is all the worse when i'd prefer speeding through the ancient, medieval and what not period so i can get to the existentialists haha. but it feels like i'm travelling light years in a blink through what was supposed to be a bog (of course, i'm not expecting this to be a replacement for the study and effort but it does speed it up tremendously).

absolutely invaluable. you guys might want to consider setting up a patreon too or something similar. just a suggestion. but keep up the great work.

We are from Catania en Riposte and Letojenni

HHa my Nonnie is from Sicilia!!!

Aristotle's causation is not really about temporality. An eternal universe doesn't have an infinite regress of causes. It has one cause: the Prime Mover. Meanwhile, the Prime Mover has only one cause, which is itself.

If the Prime Mover is eternal and unchanging, it wouldn't make sense for it to spontaneously cause the cosmos on a particular date at a particular time. The cosmos can go through many drastic changes, but the process by which it is changed stems from an eternal cause.

Personally, I find a finite date of creation much stronger evidence for infinite regress than an eternal universe, as it simply raises the question: "what caused the Prime Mover to change its behavior from 'not creating' to 'creating'?"

Jesus alone came to his own to prove his relationship with their living God. But he was rejected, just like the rejection of him in Moses time.

Thank you so so much !!

Perhaps God is time, existence is when time formed sound, brought us shape.

The more you try to proof God, the more it shows you hv no faith.

How do you spell name of the philosopher John mentioned as the opponent of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle? Want to research him?

Abrahamic evolved theism is almost founded on misusing terms like, "proof,' starting from long ago. It works in their circle.

The Antykythera device predicts the GALACTIC Milankovitch Cataclysmic & trend climate cycles.

With the Eccentricity 235,000 year rotation of the galactic bulge being the outside external force that causes us to trend from ice age at Aphelion to tropical age at Perihelion every 60,000 years, obliquity.

And the 26,000 year Great Year, Precession cycle causing cataclysmic END TIMES climate change every 12,000 years when our solar system eclipses our galaxies double torus electromagnetic gravitational plane for a millennia, NOW.

Jesus warned us about the causes and effects of the END TIMES with the 7 north stars of the precession cycle he held in his hand as well as the causes of eclipsing the galactic plane with the book of REVELATIONS. "1 year is as 1,000).

Covid like co2 is a comfortable LIE built upon yet another inconvenient truth.

The Great Year Precession cycle is causing cataclysmic END TIMES climate change not CO2.

Temp is rising first and co2 follows. Cause and Effect.

Covid is the Baby Boomers who were born enmass 76 years ago are starting to die en mass from the usual suspects of seasonal FLU which leads to Pneumonia and old age plus a whole lot of Goebbels Tel-A-Vision WUHAN BATS narrative.

These proofs of good are baffling to me most of the time. I don't think I've heard a better explanation of this era's proofs. They seem overly complicated yet oddly lacking in details.

The quest of what exist and what is true came up. It is interesting that in scoence we do not often use the word truth, though science is tgat which brings forth knowledge. Let me address the truth issue first. Lets say you are hunting for something in the dark, that is some unknown truth, you have three men, but each man has only one eye, and they have no idea how big or small the thing is. A light flashes, each man turns his one eye to the thing, and each man calls to the next man. Realizing tgat he has only conveyed the thing exist. So then each man rethinks the problem and calls out the angle between the next man on each side and the thing. Through a series of light flashes they manage to describe the profile of the think from each man's point of view. Person one says it round, person two says ots skinny, person three says its ovoid. Person #1 says is white, person two says its grey, person three says they can barely see it. Truth does not exist as an entity, instead its a collection of descriptions, from the trivial to the relevant.

For example
what if ask is it true that the surface of the earth is flat?
Depending on where you are standing and how closely you inspect the earth it can be true.
what if I ask is the moon silhouette a circle.
what if I ask is the earth round?
Have you not heard that the Earth is gravitationally rounded?
The earth is an oblate spheroid, you hear this one alot. But is i a mathematically definable oblate spheroid? It very much depends on the number of digits you want to use.
As we can see there are no perfect truths about the earth, and so we have to accept an imperfect definition of the earth. Eventually you come up with an elevation map, a cartesian map, a gravitational map, a magnetic field map, ect.

When all is said and done we cannot see the truth of the earth but for all the minute demonstrations of what the earth is. (We cant see the forest for the trees). These are the nature of scientific truth.

What exists, does god exists, can god be defined.
So here in lies the problem. I like to phrase it this way, I believe in all gods and none.
I believe in a god so that I might better understand the god, but i disbelieve in that god so that I can understand the next god. In comparing all gods there are no uniformities except one, they are all entities that are/were believed, but do not exhibit a natural existence. I can create a place holder god and then define this god as P1 I can then convince 100 people to believe in my god rewarding them each time I got a certain nonverbal response, but I dont ask people what they belive for 200 generations. When I come back to ask they tell me it god P1.1 to P1.50, P2 and subvariants, P3 and its subvariants.
in fact, if we had gone from household to household during the first Babylonian empire we might have found 3000 gods from an initial 4 to 6 gods.

So lets say I propose a god PXL, theos maximus, the biggest badist god that can exist. Im going to call this god Aquinus1. A greek scholar 1000 years earlier proposes the same god, but of indoeuropen origin and calls it Jupiter the Great. Then a chinese scholar does the same. The Indians have tgere god which is infinitely old, wise and poperful. So lets just state up front there is a great achetect of the universe (borrowing from the scottish rite). Which of the descriptions of the greatest god is correct.

Lets say Aquinus is correct, then why is this creator god not the Indian god, the Indian god better reflects the state of the universe. Why is his god the omnipotent one?
Second question. Lets say Yahweh, via the word of christ, is the true creator. At what point did Yahweh reveal his divine abilities. Did he reveal them truthfully in Uruk or Eridu, did he teveal his truths to the Canaanites, who followed both gods El and Ea. Did he first reveal the majesty to moses, did he revesl his majestic creation to Jesus, to Paul.
When did Yahweh reveal that he himself created a universe beyond all imagination, that the earth was just a speck in a speck in a speck called a galaxy in the nearly infinite cismos?

So if the Yahweh-Jesus transubstantiation is the creator, when did he reveal this. Jesus is not memtioned in Genesis, even if he was genesis is not truthful. He dies not reveal his creation in the best attested sayings of Jesus. Nor dies it appear whether Jesus is at all interested in the creation question.

So the conclusion when scrolling through possible creation gods Yahweh ranks fairly low on the list.

I have many comments unfortunately limited reply space. If god exists as an All Everything deity, then god is capable of revealing his nature without aide of 'props'. Lets look at the earthly origin as proof that god exists. We are going to eliminate cosmology as an explanation. The western idea of go is not the same as the idea of the rising Yahweh in the near eastern context. Yahweh was a god among gods, Yahweh evolved from other notions of god, but the nature of Yahweh can be understood in the near Eastern context. At the dawn of "time" there were city states each with its own devotional temple, with a cental organization principle Anu/Ilu/El Elyon. Once poweful when Uruk rose to power, as other city states grew up around uruk, his powers waned once the god of the sky and the four winds. Anu had consorts, the fertility gidesses go back in time 200,000 years, and there appear before Anu elemental gods of earthen things and watery things that created Anu. Other god becomes the storm god, there is a god of the sun, Shamash-Utu, a moon god Nammu sin, Enlil and Enki the two prinicple sons.
The gods of Sumeria reflect the political organization of Sumeria, and so we have a reflection of the way men think about politics as a backdrop, a prop, to their divine thoughts. As the rise of the tryant Lugal Zargasi shows people wanted a strong man to defeat the tyrant and go about the business of Sumeria, dominating neighbors and extending trade routes, bringing wealth into Sumeria. This coincided to the promotion of Ishtar, not a benevolent god, but a god of seduction and war. This can be seen in its two gender daemons the extension of the female(manipulatuon) and male(force). As the dynastic empires grew in their ability to project, Ishtar is replaced by Marduk, who can vanquish the Tiamat and her visier with just words, thus follower by Asshur, who simply shows up and the enemies are defeated and creation occurs. The old creation myths lose revelance in light of the new myths, which surround powerful leader gods, patterned off the desire for more powerful dynastic leaders.
This is how the god assume power, by changing the definition of god by envoking more power onto a single deity. The god Marduk assumes 50 god names upon himself and the 50 names of gods similar to Ea (though at the time there were several hundred gods). King Yosiah wanted Yahweh to be more powerful, obviously his god did not save him from an early death, but he did manage to suppress the worship of the Israelite pantheon. Again why Yahweh and not El. Theophoric names indicate that polytheism was healthy in Israel until the rise of the kingdoms, and Yahweh was a minor god, in the same way Babylon and Marduk were minor until the rise of the amorite kings. Yahweh appears to role out of the place of the davidic kingdom. Elism falls with the conquest of Northern Kingdom, and the Yahweh god is left. These are political props for gods power.
What we can see, fir example here in the west we use the word Lord God, we don't say El Elyon, El Shaddai, or Yahweh. But the people who defined those names originally gave different meaning. These god heads were not All powerful or All knowing. Consequently the argument is rather circular, we define god, we then imbue god with powers according to what we think god powers should be, then those god powers are used to do something to explain the earth, and the earth and its power gods create us and so on. If we create god, then how can god be the creator things that created earth. Therefore the source of the definition of God is logically inconsistent. This type of god cannot exist as we have defined it except as cognative dissonnance in our minds.
So lets argue that there is a very 'divine' thinker, not particularly tied to a religious argument such as the Kalam cosmological argument. And that thinking imagines there is a creator god, an omnipotent god that created everything. Lets add a context, there is a universe > 92 BLY across, and we are one miniscule world of many that can see the origins of the cosmos. We project our thoughts on hiw it began. We imagine a being powerful to create it, its created and preceeds as observed.
1. That process contradicts early creation stories
2. That process will contradict future creation stories tgat try to harmonize future discoveries.
3. Stories are superfluous for understanding the extrinsic nature of the divine. Though they may some other meaning.
Thus we cannot reliably project what we know as a logical basis to decide how events that transpired in telative time, long before the time we can observe.

And if we cannot do this we cannot assume any material power on god, unless we presuppose that god can be a created being, a being that manifests in the universe but not outside of the unuverse.

If we cannot assume any extrinsic manifestations of the divine we are left with two choices.
1. "Divine" beings can manifest themselves in our beliefs by some sort of far reaching telekinetic power.
2. Divinity is originally a projection of the mind.
3. Our definity of divinity is far too entangled in agency and ownership.

And so if we ask the question which god that humans have projected is the one true god, the one that has the divine power. Maybe there is a god that projects power into us.
1. Cant be the sumerian gods, they are all gone, maybe Yah is the remnant.
2. Cant be the roman or greek gods, for they are gone.
3. Can it be Yahweh or Jesus. Why would a far reaching telekinetic being of all the sentients in the unuverse morph himself from a god of cow herders in Anatolia, to a god of white temple in Uruk, to a tabernacle god in Canaan, to a Temple god in Jerusalem, to a God in exile in Babylon, to a resident of a Temple built by a despotic King once again in Jerusalem, to a god in Exile, then a god that needs anointing, by crucifixion, the the fabrication of mystic tradition enveloped by an idolistic ecclesia. Its an interesting story, but not the basis for a being with astounding telekinetic power.

This leaves 2 and 3. Either human facilitate their own projections of divinity, or humans are confused about the divine.

Laughable "proofs". Yes, religion all comes from the same source: trickery, false promises and delusion.

Stop the lie. There is no Medieval Philosophy, only Muddled Theology. If you speak about Medieval Philosophy (even of Islamic and Judaic types, you would likely be sent to the gallows, flames or torture chambers). Please do not degrade philosophy. The problem with the proofs of Aquinas is that it must be enforced by the horror of Inquisition to be valid. They are not proofs, but deadly proposals to be imposed by fires of war or punishment of death.

I read Summa Theologica once, of course, to understand you have to read twice or several times.
thanks for the refreshing lesson on Thomas Aquinas ' writings.

Thank You so much for your lectures or presentations. In this modern world, I almost look forward to your unbiased, without additives, just pure presentions of knowledge and truth. These moments in these "worlds away" heals what this modern world taints, being a part of daily, by persuasions to convince to sell or for usury. Again, TY. Sorry to be so brass, but this compliment and gratitude should have been expressed many lectures ago and many times over by me in every video watched and appreciated.

The problem of evil is indeed a very powerful debunking of any benevolent god... but ... the problem of imbecilic incompetent design is also a powerful rebuttal for any creator god who is not a bungler or a sadist.

Saying Dawkins does not understand medieval philosophy so he is not qualified to debunk the fallacious piffle of Aquinas... is like saying not understanding drilling skulls to relieve the demons or blood letting to cure disease ... does not qualify a modern day medical doctor to debunk drilling skulls and blood letting using leaches.

Prattling on and on in thousands of pages repeating fallacious piffle over and over ad nauseam... is not proof for any god.

Great Lecture!
Thank you very much for the great effort of demonstrating to us the "occult" knowledge into the religions of the world and philosophy (mostly).

Very central, when talking with vibrant atheists is the question ‘what does god mean’ that they don’t believe. Cos is it a choppy man in toga who rules everything, it is not really unalike to Christianity, to not believe said. God talk around this

I wish John was my neighbor, I wonder if he is MapleLeaves fan,????

Oh, these are great lectures. Erudite and enjoyable (if one likes culture).
A few points :-
Hugh Trevor-Roper : from the fall of Rome, Europe was re=seeded with civilization
from Constantinople, which never stopped trading with Europe through the boot of Italy.
Civilization spread along the trade routes - Rhine, Seine etc to the English Channel,
Canterbury, London.
That follows the line of Universities, the spread of Christianity, of literacy, etc
Another route was from the Eastern Mediterranean to Ireland : which then spread Christianity to Scotland and Northern England (Bede) ; they in turn sent missionaries to Northern Europe.
The two types of Christianity met at the Synod of Whitby to agree a date for Easter (664)

My testimony for the story of Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus destroyed my world. I've witnessed first hand what the bible did to my friends and family and nation. It turned good decent people into hate filled monsters. What has happened to my loved ones and the deadly divide in my nation could never have happened without the greatest lie ever told...the story of Jesus Christ.

God X is defined as the most purple being conceivable, and since it would be more purple for it to exist than not exist…

This “works” for almost any adjective.

I can see why nobody uses (Afaik) these to try to convince anyone of god’s existence.
And this greatest conceivable being is the guy that commits and demands genocide and promotes misogyny and slavery? Yahweh’s closer to worst conceivable than best conceivable

Godel's proof for the existence of God is an ontological argument stated in mathematical theorems. It was like saying that goodness exists, but God is good, thus God exists.

Great lecture!🙏🏽

Excellent as always

Anyone still arguing about the existence of God is a fool that should not pretend to understand logic.

Aristotle proved it, and his work is solid and final. It is not opinion.

He called it the unmoved mover and it logically must exist.

It is a no brainer.

What is shocking, and it shows how insane even the so called normal population is, is that almost no one sees that the unmoved mover is Logic itself.

Logic=God and good luck disproving it or proving some other God

You need logic to have proof and the universe and reality are and must be proven in order to be real and existing

What are you gonna do have mythological proof of a mythological god that is myth itself? Good luck with that…

The real God is logic and there is no other logical option.

I am that I am clearly displays redundancy (tautology) and is saying logic is tautological.

Logic is indeed tautological and itself a completely true circular argument, like the circle itself in geometry, one of logics many forms that comes from a consistent and incorporeal construct/substance.

The philosopher knows this as certain and proven after reproving it for himself.

Reason it for yourself, but be reasonable and use formal logic. If you do you will see there is not other option.