For the reader:

Aquinas makes a distinction between an

1) accidental infinite series

and an

2) essential infinite series

God makes an accidental series essential in Aquinas's mind. An accidental series without God is a false essential series for him

However, Einstein and the majority of great physicists since Newton have not believed a non-physical explanation is needed to make sense of an eternal past, so once we understand Aquinas's errors in physics we can know how his three cosmological arguments are wrong

Things exist in between Aristotelian actuality and potentiality, and move by virtue of their material constitutions. Physics easily says of this is done. I dont know what you thought phenomenology meant, but it is inherently anti-Thomistic and is in it's origins is about giving a different explanation of the world than Aristotle

"Unless, therefore, we are to move constantly in a circle, the word appearance must be recognized as already indicating a relation to something, the immediate representation of which is, indeed, sensible, but which, even apart from the constitution of our sensibility (upon which the form of our intuition is grounded), must be something in itself, that is, an object independent of sensibility. There thus
results the concept of a noumenon. It is not of anything, but signifies only the thought of something in general, in which I abstract from everything that belongs to the form of sensible intuition." Kant

That is a great quote. I like this thread. Kant is dear to me

For the reader:

Aristotle and Aquinas assumed an infinite power was needed to cause motion throughout eternity. Physicists now know this is wrong and consequently reject this notion of Aristotle's physics. Aquinas dovetailed faulty physics with endless musings about forms and matter, essence and existence, and potency and actuality. Phenomenology offers a legitimate alternative to Thomistic speculations, and if you accept modern physics, you are in a position to put Aquinas's arguments into the dustpan of history

Each of Hegel's books is like a concept album. So you don't get the full affect until you finish the last page

The point of Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre is that objects exist a priori. I guess you don't understand them. And yes, Greeks hated the number zero and thought the idea of nothingness a dangerous idea. That's where Aquinas got his phobia of nothingness from!

Holy sites throughout the middle ages each had its own legend of how it had the foreskin (and sometimes umbilical cord) of Jesus and why it had been preserved by Mary, given to an apostle, and past down. Protestants want to accept Gospel miracles but none of the Marian miracles by the way. Why not reject of the above!

Also, Hypatia is an interesting case of a figure who's story was latter changed into a story about Christian martyr with an almost identical story line. Legends change

Lastly, here are many examples like the following (I come across these all the time now that my radar for them is up): doctors practice their skills at medicine to get a profession, but only then are they said to have a practice. Isn't that strange language? If I see a barber shop that says "Kelly's shop", we here in American society know there likely is no "Kelly" but instead it's just a title for the place. But if an archaeologist in the future saw this, he would assume the closest Kelly who lived in the vicinity owned that barber shop. So that's just more reasoning on how interpreting ancient texts is very uncertain.

you seem to do is make oddball off the wall, or incoherent, — Metaphysician Undercover

You don't say how though

If you can show me a way to understand the concepts of potential and actual which you think is better than the one I've derived from the Aristotelian tradition, — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know if you will find it better, but there are alternatives. Every object has potential to be painted, burned, thrown in the air, and lots of other things. But it is actual. All objects are like this and have always been this way. The universe has always been free falling through space so to speak and gravity, friction, and other factors have kept all the energy moving. There is no need for something BEHIND because physics is always ALONG SIDE.

Your idea of seinsfrage ("what is being") in terms of potency and actuality, to use the terminology of Heidegger, leads to a very strange notion of zeitlichkeit (the here and now as "this very presence"). "The sense of the world must lie outside the world" says Wittgenstein. If you don't want to read a Hegel book from to cover and really try to understand it (which is the best way to get past Thomism), then maybe try Being and Nothingness by Sartre, who tries in a very subtle way to cure Aristotle's horror of nothing

Phlegon’s second century Book of Marvels is interesting. It reveals a lot about the mentality of ancient times. Miracles have been claimed in every religion, society, and region. Writing about miracles was a form of story telling in that age and religion has primarily that function in society. Oddly, even the Illiad speaks of actions of "the gods". And Asclepius was the Greek God known for resurrecting the dead. Putting monotheism as a pedestal doesn't really change the fact that Christian literature is the same in genre as other writings on ancient history. You go through the Gospels, saying yes to every story while saying no to every miracle. Christians read it like it's a divine novel and that's the reason that method of reading doesn't make sense to them. They want it to be true. Maybe the world needed a crazy "story of mercy" 2000 years ago, as Jordan Peterson sorta argues. That's why it was successful. Not because it was true

Ye they are nerdy werdo's with a homo fetish for Jim Caviezel

We've talked before about whether a stop sign is one form or many. I pointed out that we sense it as one thing but the screw in it seems to indicate more than one thing. You responded, as Thomists do, that the mind is fallible. I say to you "so is your reasoning for God"

We've talked before about Zeno's paradox. Aristotle essentially answers this by saying that a whole has parts only potentially, and yet I say "cannot God divide it infinitely"? When I press Thomists on this, they say, "the mind is fallible". I respond: "so are your arguments for God".

You've criticized Hegel in the past in your arguments with Jerseyflight. But I ask you, how many of Hegel's books have you read? I've read and processed the first Book of the Summa Gentiles and much of Aquinas's other writings, so I am familiar with them. I ask you, have you read a whole book by Hegel? Are you capable of processing a whole book of his? How do you know your reasoning on matters of "potentiality and actuality" is infallible?

In Luke 9:60 Jesus said "Let the dead bury their own", apparently saying we should disrespect the dead. In Luke 14:26 he tells his disciples to "hate" their family members and in Matthew 10:34-42 he said he came to bring violence. — Gregory

I should add that he also said God had abandoned him

For the reader:

Thomists like to run amuck with ideas of "potentiality" and "actuality". I find that defining God as pure actuality is very ackward and unnecessary. The whole endeavour of trying to prove transcendental powers beyond the world requires a desire for the arguments to work before you encounter them and generally taking the ideas farther than is wise to take them. Aquinas said an object is mathematically divisible to infinity but even God can't divide it to infinity. Thomist hate getting into that quagmire and most people don't like their "potentiality -actuality" tar baby either. However, since they so wanted the proof of God to work as they studied it, now that it's gelled their brains, they have become convinced of their own infallibility, although they will admit at other times that problems presented to them cannot be solved. So be cautious with Thomists. Their method of writing sounds erudite, but it may be because they built their lives on a desire for perfection

You're say in response to the question "how many parts does a tree have": "our minds are fallible"

You're response to the question of whether a lamp or a street sign have one form or many: "our minds are fallible"

Yet you think you have fully figured out that there is deity based on two petty ideas?

Thomas Aquinas was a Catholic priest who got addicted to pagan philosophy when he should have been reading the Jewish-Catholic Bible. He caused endless headaches for the Church through his addiction.

Aristotle did not know that:

1) nothingness is a reality

2) that matter is fully actual

3) that nothingness and matter stand in a relationship we cannot connect together with our minds

4) that the reality of the soul in relationship to matter is better left not meditated on

5) that the relationship between the simple soul and matter can never be fully grasped by the mind

6) that the composite cannot be proven inferior to the simple by logical analysis

Thomist often say "I find your assumptions repugnant to intellect", to which we respond

1) truth doesn't care about your feelings

2) why are you assuming you considered every angle of the question at hand?

Everything has potential and actuality, simplicity and matter. Its one reality that goes back to infinity and to nowhere

Yes, the different degrees of insanity and "evil" and combinations of the two are not considered by Lewis. He makes it far too black and white. How can we even properly imagine a "perfect person", let alone believe such existed in history

Of course they do

Man must be social to grow. A mother chooses childbearing by having sex. Children are f@#k trophies, but if this world is just and right it doesn't matter if you didn't choose existence, your parents, or being born. "It is not for us to choose our trials, but for us to make something of ourselves"

There is some validity to being cautious about judging other cultures medicines (acupuncture has been mentioned). If you prove in a double blind study that a certain medicine is effectual over placebo in the setting of a study, it's not entirely clear how this applies to people acting in everyday life and in other cultures. There is something to be said for those who say science can't figure out everything.

What type of Christianity to adopt is a question that has naturally caused Christians to accuse each other of having a false form of "the faith". What is agreed upon however is regular Christian " logic" such as "pre-Christians didn't know that God was humble, but because he is humble he can become man". I'm sorry (not really) but that is flawed on every level. The best way to understand the Gospels is that Jesus was a man like the rest of us. God does not become man, have testicles, piss in a toilet, and act as an animal as all humans must. God is an abstraction in the intellect. It's "reality" is not a very meaningful question. Take the number zero. It is very useful in calculations, but when focused on it loses its meaning. The concept of God is useful when doing "philosophical algebra" (as I call philosophising) but obsession with it in the sense of wondering if it has reality (like a rock or tree does) indicates you are on the wrong path. The way Christians act indicate they are on the wrong path. They literally think Jesus is going to come out of the sky on a white horse

Tolkein called Lewis a shallow Christian for not becoming Catholic. What form of Christianity is righteous is not agreed on

Could not God have arranged that people are like Mary and obtain heaven sinless and perfect on their merits? The Bible says "nothing unclean shall enter heaven" but Christians adopt the shameless position of having pity on God (never a good idea) in order to enter heaven, although unworthy, by someone's else's merits. Do you accept this dogma? In this thread I've offered alternative ways of seeing the opacity of ancient text in light of common sense and true philosophy. We can't know anything with certainty about Jesus, but looking at the Gospels with a desire to be saved without considering philosophy and how those matters work is going to end in believing something as silly as Family Guy. I don't take Christian philosophy seriously

I pity Jesus's death because he was a man like me. If he were God I would have no reaction to his suffering because the whole situation would just be absurd.

Nop taking on God's merits to become God by God becoming man is absurd. If that's not absurd nothing is.

Christian theology is expressed by Pope John Paul II as "justice serving mercy". The concept of God dying is that God would give his merits in his blood into other people souls, who would partake of the divine nature by being a new creation with someone else's merits as their own. That's a very quirky, lopsided theology, don't you agree?

Scholars who interpret ancient text assume some probability as to what are best interpretations, but basing your life on these interpretations is basing your life on something very shallow. When someone understands that Christian philosophy is unsound, other interpretations of history start making sense

I just read your entire OP. It is interesting that you cite a lot of secondary sources. Feser assumes something "simple" can be out there in a transcendent way. If gravity is the prime mover, we can imagine an infinite slide with water running down, posit that the slide had always existed, and say the water has to move the way it does because of gravity. That's one way to visualize it. Spacetime is elastic because the speed of light is constant. Everything moves in our universe through the four dimensional spacetime continuum at the speed of light. Change in motion always remains absolutely zero. Thomists don't understand these things because no Thomist has ever been a good physicists. Yet ironically, their arguments for their very specific Christian God depend on physics, one of the subjects they understand the least. Just take a look at "Aristotle's Revenge" by Feser. Seldom is seen such a waste of paper by someone so famous

My primary point is: Christians say their interpretation is the best with regard to Jesus, but if anyone finds Christian theology itself to be ludicrous, this claim goes right out the window.

Some feel a strong connection to ancient times, and become Jews, Muslims, Mormons, or Christians. They all have their spiritual claims, and in "my book" Christianity alone stands out as absurd

Part of the problem with CS Lewis is he only gave us three options. A fourth one would be that Jesus was a character in some apocalyptical religious traditions. We know there were many gospels and only 4 were chosen during a charged political process. We do not know who wrote the gospels and we know they were written many years after the events they supposedly describe. Mark being the oldest at around 65CE. The gospels are claims made - fan fiction if you like. We can't make any conclusions about an actual person. — Tom Storm

Pre-Christian Zoroastrian scriptures have their highest God telling their prophet: "Verily, when I created Mithra, the Lord of Wide Pastures, I created him as worthy of sacrifice, as worthy as prayer, as my self- Ahura Mazda." Very Christian phraseology. Mythra was adopted as the god of the Roman soldiers, and this Roman religion held Sundays to be sacred, held virgin birth as sacred, and had a religious sacred meal. Early Christian writers such as Augustine, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Julius Firmicus Maternus were worried that people would say Christianity took ideas from the Romans and therefore contended that the devil knew Christianity was coming and mocked it with imitations before it arrived. Any religion that makes arguments like that is flawed .

But above all of this, ancient history is quite the guessing game. We don't live in that era. Since language changes every generation, it is impossible to know if any of these documents have been properly translated. If you went back in time, you might not be able to even properly communicate with ancient people. Historians are always coming out with new interpretations, none of which can be confirmed by experiments (like in physics). Wikipedia mentions that "Two extant letters between Heraclitus and Darius I, which are quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, are later forgeries". Yet Diogenes Laërtius was very respected in the ancient world (so it appears) We have the word "hypocrite" which means the opposite of the how it is used in the phrase "Hippocratic oath", and Sophia supposedly meant wise (they say) but "sophist" were unwise, yet their title means literally "he who becomes wise". So no one can make perfect sense of that period of history. It was simply too long ago (WAY to long ago)

There are so many assumed axioms in both camps. — Sam Aldridge

Then maybe you should return the disfavor .. — baker

Whether I conceptualize God as a reality that my brain creates or someone out there, there really isn't any difference. It's two sides of the same idea. The claim that God became man and died for our sins is the most ridiculous theology that a human can conceptualize. Since it can't be proven otherwise, any interpretation of the Gospels is possible. The Christian interpretation is based on specific philosophical ideas, all of which are wrong

Well then I apologize to you. I have a lot of notes on the computer with various ideas on many topics and these ideas I had written down from a long time ago

Christianity denies the reality of the world:

1) by saying God can become man

2) by believing in the resurrection of all human bodies

Human bodies change every atom every 7 years so you don't have one body throughout your life. Nobody gets a body back. They go to heaven or hell based on their merits, not Jesus's merits. He was just a man and to say God can become man annihilates the world by taking away the infinite gap between the world and God.

C.S. Lewis was a boring writer and knew nothing of philosophy. He knew nothing about philosophy. He has nothing to offer anyone and should have known better

There is not much we can know for sure about ancient times.

You assume Christian theology is not convoluted against common sense

It's shameless to put your sins on God, who would never become man. Jesus was a normal man who did strange things. It was his disciples who put divinity in his mouth as he had put himself in their through communion

There are Buddhist and Hindu dharma teachers who looking at pictures like these would say that those ascetics are practicing "sense indulgence". There are cultural systems where "sense indulgence" can mean a great variety of things, from overeating, getting drunk, to never sitting down or holding up one's arms for years. — baker

Western oral tradition held for many centuries that there were four personality types (even some of the Church Fathers mention this): Melancholic, who were more earthly, obsessive, conscientiousness, and cautious. Phlegmatic (water dominated) who were steadfast and supportive, but had a temptation to become hermits. Then there are Sanguine (ruled by the Air element) who are socially useful and inspiring but who can tend to hysteria. Finally there is the Choleric who is ruled by "fire" and like dominance and ruling. They can easily be depressed.

Heraclitus said that fire in the soul was best. The dryer the better

Now I've compared the idea of the "basic elements" among cultures and found that exceedingly contradictory. What China might call wind India might call fire. So trying to learn from ancient civilizations on these matters is thorny. There perhaps is some wisdom in saying there are four fundamental personality types however. This has made some sense to me. But with morality, although it's hard not to generalize, saying anything is objectively wrong confuses people because conscience does not really bear this out. The intellect is weak and can't consistently grasp for sure what is right. Everyone's consciences, likewise, are saying different things. So for me when I see someone say "that is wrong" what they are doing is trying to change someone's behavior, and the Platonic status of the statement is irrelevant

Entropy was never zero at any time. The chaos that existed in the entropy before proper time was enough for some type of energy to start inflation. I don't know exactly what kind of energy was then required

Eugen is highly disturbed that everyone does not see the 'hard problem' the way he does so this Spinoza thing is a way of expressing that. The hp is what's really bothering him