Thomas Aquinas thought the world could be eternal. However he argued there are no actual infinities. But what if there were always humans then there would be an infinity of souls. It's accidental that animals or vegetables always existed rather than human. If there always were human souls then they would be counting marks for an actual infinity

I don't think one has to be an infinite being to simply understand the idea of "no end"

And aren't souls finite?

The brain is more than the sum of it's parts. It doesn't know infinity by counting but by a general, more philosophical method

Just as Egregore is about gods becoming actual from our thoughts, thoughts are like the gods of the body while the servant as well since they depend on the body. But my point is that consciousness can take numbers and say "they go on forever" without there being an actual infinity in thought

Why did 14% say there are no thoughts? Are they thinking what Dennett says about consciousness being an illusion?

Consciousness is a 0 that comes from a one. You've never read Sartre?

Consciousness can think of infinity

Descartes said that the idea of God requires a soul for it to be understood. You're saying even understanding infinity requires more than matter. If you think a finite thing cannot understand infinity I would still ask for more proof of this. Epiphenominalism says thoughts are like software. Few people are going to say that each thought is accompanied by a piece of matter. I certainly don't imagine it that way

The brain is like a muscle from which thoughts spring when it flexes, but these thoughts aren't entities in themselves. They are abstract beings and they spring from matter and are substanceless. Your argument is like Descartes's in the Replies. But I think it fails

Matter doesn't use atoms as numbers in its counting. In fact the brain thinks by abstracting when it comes to infinity

Last Thursdayism is not about time being different for different people. It's doubting that you past happened regardless of its rate. Descartes had this doubt of memory when doing math, which is why he wanted to see math in one equation and with one glance

You call other posters idiots but you've changed your own views from discussions here. You now say God can't both exist and not exist, contradicting previous idiotic statements by you in the past. Live and learn

Thursdayism says the world started last Thursday. It has nothing to do with time dilation

Why doubt everything instead of "learn everything". To deny you typed a message after you send it is irresponsibility, so responsibility proves Thursdayism wrong

I think aliens, actually, prove scientific materialism false. How can someone prove everyone else is not an alien without common sense. You can't get this knowledge from science. Everything has to be thought out by a materialism and no faith can save them unless a more mystical side of reality is considered (Spinoza, Hegel, ect)

It is not possible for a sound mind to doubt previous seconds exist. You couldn't understand time otherwise. We know we are in time and it has a past present and future. To deny the past is like denying the future and the truth is right there. It's to bad B. Russell fell for this

If you look at ivory and see matter while i see something mystical, we can both be called materialist while only one has the their eyes in focus. The link between the logical category of matter and your experience of it might not be what you think. Do you believe in free will? Matter can sense, reason, and choose so of course it's a mystical substance

I agree that the world is matter and this is all there is. But I believe the matter in the world is mystical. So we can speak of love and camaraderie in terms of scientific language but it doesn't make much sense. The hard part is seeing matter as matter while holding on to the mystical side of this world as we face things and situations a good God would not allow

Tradition lives in us in a way that defies science. These ideas we get from the past define what we think when we rationalize about the world and it's source. When we think of God, we turn towards that past and imagine one being as the first father. Ultimately though, we are alone in the world but good can win out

Unicorns don't exist, while Aquinas says God has all reality in Him. But it's in a unity, so it's not like unicorn nature in there and human nature is there (in the divine nature). The problem is you can prove the Thomisic God doesn't exist from your first statement. Ugliness is a part of the world yet God constantly regenerates the world. So he creates ugliness anew every moment. Would Aquinas call this "unfitting" for God? The world is suppose to reflect God who IS his happiness, yet we see ugliness, despair, and evils apart from moral evils. These fall on God, not man

Everything has actuality first and their potentiality comes from what substance they are. A rock not being able to move has nothing to do with potentiality but it's actuality. Potentiality is actuality. A rock can't move because it doesn't have a nervous system. And why did you open a two year old thread, gee

There is an article I read once on Thomistic Kabala, which reminds me of this. I think Aquinas is open to an Eastern interpretation, but not all Thomas's are. They want this perfectly defined point which they call God, while anything that is God would be too hard to ever pin down with our thoughts

I think you actually have to take courses in calculus to understand this. You failed, btw, to give an alternative picture except by saying every object is discrete (lol). That's all for me

How much mathematics so you know?

Lines in three dimensions make extension, which is the first attribute of matter. And you didn't explicate how something discrete can be partless and yet be spatial

Whether matter has two principle, form and prime matter, or one it still is spatial. You are saying it's made of discrete parts yet you say infinite points don't make a line. Contradiction?

So Aristotle was wrong to say that matter is infinitely divisible? If it's infinitely divisible the infinite infinitesimal are there. But how can matter find in itself something that is space but is indivisible? Space we know of always is divisible.

If I go half a distance, then I have to go half that otherwise there is no space let. And half that otherwise there is no space left. This goes to infinity, so nothing is discrete in the world. This is not a trick but instead logic

It seems easier to believe in God if it is female. The RCC says God is without gender although they portray it as male

I'd like to add that continous means infinitely divisible while discrete are the points themselves (indivisible). At least that is my definition. I think we should all agree on a definition. Atoms were once considered discrete. Now it seems discreteness is the limit of infinite extension of points

I agree free will is real yet I think time and space act together through motion. In the sense that God is said to know the future, time knows the future and that includes all our choices. You feel, or rather think, that a divine person must be behind the mechanics of the world, but most physicists believe time started at the big bang with motion and everything else.
If it makes sense with regard to physics to speak of causality inbedded in and coming from the singularity, it seems to me to be hand wavy to say divine causality is still needed in the background. The continuous part has to do with reality having a unity of causality and the singularity itself will have its own causality in it as it goes from pointsize to infinite points. The universe is one unified whole (Einstein's block universe)

Einstein did not believe in free will either so he was a super determinist

I visualize the y axis as time and the x as space. Motion is a bit of both and they all cover the same territory. The singularity is space, time, and motion as something discrete while it seems to me reality is continuous after the Big Bang

Would you say claiming that past and future do not exists is related to the parts of an object not existing on their own? I say that parts and past and future exist as one

If there was a necessary being then the world would be like a shadow to it and would not exist, a Plato admits. But the world exists, so it's necessary.

"All consciousness is propositional in that it transcends in order to reach an object, and it exhausts itself in this same positing."

According to Pascal *whenever* someone cries "danger" you have to run. That's a sickness

Pascal btw refused to see doctors throughout his life for his sickly constitution because he thought he was meant to suffer. Says something about his psychology..

If there is no proof of infinite pleasure or pain there is nothing to gamble on.

And since you can't prove there is a God, there is no infinite to contrast with the finite in the gamble