You don't really know much about Christianity, do you?Skip wrote:This would be something written some 12 centuries after the stories of Christ were disseminated in Europe by agents whom the author had not met, about a seminal event the author had not witnessed, about gospels written in languages the author could not read, translated to Latin by long-dead scholars of whose character and competence the author could not learn, edited and transcribed in the interval a number of times and by hands and eyes of whose accuracy the author could not ascertain. Is this, then a primary source on Christianity?
Still, should a copy [English modern translation - twice more removed from primary source material] cross my path again, after all these decades of neglect, I may peruse it. I may even take a shot at refuting it.
Yeah, you haven't read Aquinas. Nice cherry-picking, tho. Having a basic understanding of the philosophical traditions that led up to ST (or actually reading ST) would help you with the parts you think have "no reason given."Skip wrote:starting with:1Some things are moving. We assume - for no reason given - that they were pushed by other objects.First, we observe that some things in the world are in motion. Whatever is in motion is put into motion by another object that is in motion1. This other object, in turn, was put into motion by still another object preceding it, and so forth. This series cannot go on backward to infinity,2 though, since there would otherwise be no first mover3 and thus no subsequent movement4. Therefore, we must conclude5 that there is a first unmoved mover6, which we understand to be God7.
2Even though we can't see the objects behind the objects behind the objects, we assume that they can't keep going back to infinity....
3.... because then there couldn't be a first object
4 and the absence of a first object would contradict the assumption we made - for no reason given - that all movement must be caused by objects pushing other objects, plus our further assumption - for no reason given - that this regression cannot be infinite, because that would contradict our assumption of a first mover, which would contradict our assumption of no infinite regression...
5 no questions, no observations, not even speculation, yet we're compelled to arrive at a conclusion
6that there is an object at the start of the process which doesn't move, despite our initial assumption that nothing can move without being pushed by another object
7and that presumed unseen, unknown, not-quite-infinitely distant unmoving object can be none other than the god of the Jews.
