(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42432803)

new low in xo discourse

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42614275)

http://militaryatheists.org/atheists-in-foxholes/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431398)

except me, and I have cryonics...that is my afterlife scenario..

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42433226)

in my experience young people fear death more than old people, who are like "fucking take me already! FTGE!!!"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42614278)

Thank me later.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431518)

But of course there is another obvious way to interpret the results in question – as clear evidence that those philosophers who have actually studied the arguments for theism in depth, and thus understand them the best – as philosophers of religion and medieval specialists naturally would – are far more likely to conclude that theism is true...”

The atheist perspective seems like the more reasonable interpretation. I assume most of those theistic philosophers of religion were already theists before they became philosophers — it’s not like they converted as a result of studying the arguments. In fact most of them were probably not merely theists to begin with, but rather, full-blown Christians... and the philosophical arguments generally deal only with plain theism, not Christianity, and it’s not like most Christians were converted via philosophical argumentation.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431100)

Philosophy generally seems to operate according to a science-aping specialization paradigm where people know about their little niche of study but not about anything else. That is the perfect environment for groupthink and ignorance to develop - just get a few people to declare that theism is over, and then it becomes received wisdom.

That's not to say that you can't investigate those arguments and come out an atheist. I just strongly doubt that most people in academic philosophy actually have. I mean, intro philosophy courses regularly just skip the medieval period altogether.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431124)

I can't speak in general to why philosophy of religion books tend not to get into this, but I don't know if it's because they think the medieval arguments are not good ones. For WLC in particular, he explained it as follows (link https://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer/P20/are-my-theistic-arguments-dependent-upon-a-metaphysical-system )

"It worried me that in order to accept Thomas’ main argument for God’s existence, one had to first embrace the Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysic underlying it, for example, the so-called real distinction between essence and existence. That seemed (and seems) to me to make the argument unusually vulnerable. Just reject the controversial metaphysic underlying the argument, and the argument becomes nugatory!"

"It was then that I determined to craft arguments for God’s existence that were not system-dependent upon a particular metaphysic but could be accepted by people of varying metaphysical outlooks. That broadens the appeal of the arguments and makes them more immune to refutation."

So we might say generally that the Thomistic arguments for God's existence depend crucially on a whole lot of other argumentation on highly disputed questions. So if you just want to get straight to philosophy of religion, there's some appeal to just focusing on that instead of having to build up a metaphysical system and working out your ideas of causation, universals, transcendentals, etc. where any one mistake could invalidate the whole enterprise.

That's all well and good, but Feser is interesting to me because he does all that work to build the system and then puts the arguments for God on top of it, and I tend to find that approach more fruitful than the "metaphysically-agnostic" (so to speak) versions of the arguments. Dependence on a fully worked-out metaphysical system makes your argument more vulnerable (just reject the system), but it also makes it more powerful because you have more resources to bear on the question.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431191)

"God" is the concept used to describe the entity whose nature is such that it can terminate that regress, i.e., that it itself is the explanation for its own being, because it is being itself.

So your question is analytically equivalent to asking "Why did being itself exist," which resolves itself.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431373)

"In God there exists the most perfect knowledge. To prove this, we must note that intelligent beings are distinguished from non-intelligent beings in that the latter possess only their own form; whereas the intelligent being is naturally adapted to have also the form of some other thing; for the idea of the thing known is in the knower. Hence it is manifest that the nature of a non-intelligent being is more contracted and limited; whereas the nature of intelligent beings has a greater amplitude and extension; therefore the Philosopher says (De Anima iii) that “the soul is in a sense all things.” Now the contraction of the form comes from the matter. Hence, as we have said above (Question 7, Article 1) forms according as they are the more immaterial, approach more nearly to a kind of infinity. Therefore it is clear that the immateriality of a thing is the reason why it is cognitive; and according to the mode of immateriality is the mode of knowledge. Hence it is said in De Anima ii that plants do not know, because they are wholly material. But sense is cognitive because it can receive images free from matter, and the intellect is still further cognitive, because it is more separated from matter and unmixed, as said in De Anima iii. Since therefore God is in the highest degree of immateriality as stated above (Question 7, Article 1), it follows that He occupies the highest place in knowledge." (Summa Theologiae I.14.1)

For Aquinas, then, what makes you intelligent and a stone non-intelligent is that you can have both your own form and the stone’s form -- as you do when you grasp what a stone is -- whereas the stone can have only its own form. You possess the form of a stone “intentionally” -- in the intellect -- rather than “entitatively” -- that is to say, without being a stone. In a looser sense, though, the soul “is” all things precisely insofar as it can have the forms of all things at least “intentionally” or in the intellect. This is one reason why intellect cannot be material. Material things can possess only one substantial form at a time. Hence for a parcel of matter to posses the substantial form of a tree (for example) is just for it to be a tree, and for that same parcel to come to possess the substantial form of ashes is just for it to lose the substantial form of a tree and become ashes. But the intellect can possess multiple substantial forms -- “intentionally” -- at the same time, and without ceasing to be an intellect. (This sense of “intentionally” is the source of the modern technical philosophical term “intentionality.”)

Indeed, as the passage quoted indicates, for Aquinas the further from matter a thing is the more intelligent it is, so that God -- as pure actuality and thus maximally devoid of the potentiality that is characteristic of matter -- is supreme in intellect. Consider also the Scholastic principle of proportionate causality (which I have discussed and defended in Aquinas), according to which whatever is in an effect must in some way be in its total cause (whether “formally,” “virtually,” or “eminently”). Now God is the sustaining cause of the world, that which keeps all things in existence from moment to moment. The forms of all things -- that which makes them what they are -- must therefore exist in Him, not in an “entitative” way (since He is not a material thing nor in any other way limited) but rather in something analogous to the way in which forms exist “intentionally” in our intellects. (Cf. ST I.15.1)

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-divine-intellect.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431426)

The ability to possess a form without becoming the thing is a property of immaterial things. (For a material thing, the only way to possess the form of a tree is by becoming a tree.)

God is immaterial.

So God is capable of possessing forms without becoming the thing whose form he possesses, i.e., is capable of intellection.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431479)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167219879122

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431076)

a social SCIENTIST, I presume?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431310)

lol no. being a “god of the gaps” nigger is the lowest-IQ position of all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431355)

and no, theism or deism or whatever you want to call it is not high iq, and is exactly what I'm calling out as low iq ITT

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4830415&forum_id=2#42431397)