Thomistic guys would say you can't have pure potentiality coming into actuality without a law that was actual guiding it. Hence their response to Plotinus. Yet, I don't like their whole potential/actual game they play. It's just a mental game. We can say the world comes from the One of Parmedines. All we experience eternally flows from it. It is not changed by us nor acts as a person. In fact there is no need to posit other persons out there besides the ones on this planet. We have plenty of people, and animals, and even plants, to love without believing we need something else higher than all this to love. I think Einstein would agree with that.

You might feel you need something higher, but that doesn't prove there is something higher. Desire is not an argument for existence. I think this is essentially where Schopenhauer parts with Aquinas

If an object is actual and material, it is infinitely divisible. The smallest unit of matter either has parts or it is nothing. If it has parts its divisible. So it is demonstrated that the process goes on eternally and everything has infinite parts. Nothing is actual

Maybe evil makes us weak. That doesn't make evil weak, or it's effects. I'm just saying, who knows? I am not espousing evil, just the Christian viewpoint.

If God really abducted a human and walked this earth, we all should crucify him. Christians don't want to
die. That is why they have always said "I know Jesus is coming very soon". They want someone to come out of the sky and bring them somewhere else. The only father I have is my dad. Christians complain about homosexuality, and yet commit lust with their spouses. Giving in to sexual pleasure is always sinful, it is always literally a gay act, no matter what. But who hasn't made an excuse to do it in some form? They should at least admit they are no different from other people and stop casting stones and pretending they have an all powerful dude backing them up

By granular, you mean discrete? The discrete is like a unicorn. It doesn't exist. Does it have size or not? Is it something or nothing? Those questions refute the opponents of Zeno and Parmenides

Objects are infinitely divisible, so they have infinite parts. Hence Zenos paradox. Belief in God is about desire, not knowledge. People want more. They are not satisfied with annihilation. But what does it even feel to speak of an "order beyond the material"? The idea of prophecy is justified with molinism or compatabilism. The former makes no sense, because it makes people having made choices without existentially existing. The latter makes God a monster.

Viruses kill people, so maybe evil can kill God. But he is all knowing? Who says he even exists. Do you hear yourself? There is a meta-dude out there with a son? And the love between is another dude? Lol

I think Christianity is the antithesis of love. In that system God created people knowing they will end up in hell. I would never do that with my own family

If I approach an object, first i have to go half the distance. Otherwise I am there. And half that, otherwise i am there. Laws of identity say this goes on forever. So objects are infinite. Yet they are finite to us. The division of a whole into parts gives us exactly that sum when combined. We can say things are merely potentially infinite like Aristotle's said. But nothing could then be truly actual, because it would only potentially have parts, which is absurd. Heraclitian fire is the solution

Does the genitals or the rest of the the body define one's sex? There are lots of hermaphrodites born in India and the orient. A number get into porn because there is a big market for them

It sounds like you're Spinozian, with a twist from Plotinus. Plotinus thought the ultimate reality was potentiality. Aquinas said actuality was prior to potentiality because otherwise potentiality could not get started. I think this is wrong, and it is part of the flaw in the botched arguments of deists like Devans99 in trying to prove there is a transcendent God. Potentiality being prior to actuality is in a lot of philosophies and theologies. Just think of the traditional idea of Heaven in China! The world flows from potentiality. There doesn't have to be an eternal being of Act. Potentiality doesn't have to "choose" in order for something to come from it

Let me put it this way: Aquinas says all sin is infinite. So maybe all the sins of the devils and humans create a meta-infinity that cancels the initial infinity of God

Evil is not mere absence, but absence as it distorts the good, says Aquinas. So why couldn't evil totally deform the good?

In the Catholic Church there is much debate about morality right now. Before it was said that someone can do something objectively wrong while not being fully culpable subjectively. Now some are saying that acts which the Church considers evil (like lesbianism) can sometimes be subjectively virtuous, although always objectively evil. Old Ockham said that God could have commanded us to hate instead of love, and that hate would then be good. Many progressives in the Catholic Church say this truly happens in our reality. This debate affects us all

You've said positive AND negative thing about Duns Scotus on this forum. I find it confusing because you do not make clear what you like about him and what you don't. You seem to have so many ideas in your head that you made broad statements, without any clarification. Descartes denied that there were spiritual natures uniting with "prime matter" to make things. So basically he was a nominalist. I don't see why this is a big deal or what is has to do with Peirce. It's just a technical questions about how close in similarity a willow tree is to a palm tree. What has this to do with objective idealism? Thanks!

Maybe so many people do evil that their dark force takes God and His and puts them in hell, with the evil victorious. I don't see Aquinas countering this with logic

That's a dilemma, mathematicalphysicist. Sometimes it seems to take courage to do "evil" while it's pleasant and "selfish" to do the "good". I'm thinking of Ockham now

You seem to hold to Plotinus's idea of good, God, and evil. But you didn't provide proof that good is more powerful. Aquinas took it as an axiom. Did Schopenhauer explicitly say evil ruled this world? I've gotten more joy in life out of evil than good (except for a few years of "good behavior" in my early teens, which grew stale). Being good simply doesn't seem to make you feel better. John Stuart Mill said that he would rather be moral and unhappy than immoral and happy. It's an interesting question.

Evil isn't pure absence. It has deformity power. How do we know it doesn't have a meta-infinite power which can deform God? Needless to say, I've been reading about Buddhist logic again

Our views might always be limited, in the sense that the idea of an infinite God is limited by an even more infinite, hidden, meta-nothing. People are debating if in the new Star Wars good and evil are equal and cancel each other out

Your assertion is not at all obvious. Many say pleasure in life comes from doing wrong. Even if pleasure comes about by good, the evil in the world brings pain too. I see no argument so far that good wins over evil, or being's power wins over nothing (assuming nothingness is bad)

I believe Aquinas was a sophist. He found a Mozartian mode of writing that fools you into think he has proven things and that he knows best. Neither Aquinas nor Mozart have the best products

Who says the simple is not truly extremely complex? Thomist say God is most simple, but Dawkins thinks God must be extremely complex. Who is to say who is right?

I was reading Spinoza's Ethics recently (and stopped once he started talking about ethics lol), and it seemed like he said we effect God with our thoughts, instead just of God effecting us. This got me starting on thinking about the power of nothing and evil, and I can't find a single reason why being and goodness should win over evil.

You didn't provide an argument that good wins over evil

A lot of people use cognitive science in order to deny the reality of the brain. However, is this like finding the flaw in reality that shows reality is not real or like we think? The arguments used by cognitive science depends on the reality of the brain. If there is a contradiction between believing in the brain and believing in reality, then yes reality is different than we think. But if Hoffman thinks the world is a computer game, why does he necessarily believe in evoution at all. Anything, or nothing, could have happened in the past

We seem to know for sure that we really exist and feel things, but what does "real" mean? Time moves such that the minute you point out the now, it's no longer real. Everything seems to be groundless and spiraling.

"Is it true that it's spiraling?"

At the end (the very end), I think relativism "happens". Happens is the best word I can use. A Muslim scholar once called upon people to burn and stone people who deny ultimate truth, because he thought they couldn't deny they were being burned and stoned. In those situations I think one has an even less concept of "truth".

If I say there is no truth, you'd ask "is that true?" . But selfreference isn't allowed or it leads to Russell's paradox and the liars paradox, I retort. Am I still taking a position at that point?

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm

There is some homework for Devans (a small portion of what Aquinas wrote on the subject). I don't like having intellectual conversations with people who don't act like adults

I've stated my counter arguments but you insist on trying to see only deism. That's bias. You even choose not to read Aquinas's arguments on God's omniscience. I think this stubborn deist stance is some type of rebellion for you.

It is a counter argument. Your position is based on you thinking you understand time and matter, yet even you said on another thread that "The mind is fundamentally illogical". I've refuted your arguments over and over again on this thread from various angles. You'r either not smart enough to understand, too immature, or too obstinate. Probably all of the above

There is no reasoning with you, as a lot of us are finding out. You think you fully understand time. You think you fully understand matter. And you think you fully understand infinity. When will you grow up?

Maybe the world flows from an eternal spiritual form, not a person. The form doesn't choose or change, but the world flows from it, the temporal from the eternal. Then we can start asking questions about the difference between the spiritual and the material, widdle down the distinction, and come to the realization that we don't fully understand matter and the "brute fact" being looked for is simply the ordered universe instead of an ordered disembodied guy.

When Christians say "if you don't believe in God, why don't you kill people", all they are doing is admitting that THEY are going to be murderers once they stop believing in genies. It also goes to show their ignorance of other people

"what is the purpose of the humanistic will to wonder?"

Life

"And explain to me what the will is, and what wonder is... ?"

We both know what they are

"Are those features of consciousness important or unimportant, and do you yourself benefit from them?"

Important

"Bonus question : does the will and the sense of wonder confer any biological advantages in Darwinism?"

Probably.

Your arrogant because you think only theists have wonder. I was an atheist from age 3 to 8 and I had tons of wonder and joy. I stopped believing in God when I turned 19, and again, didn't lose wonder. You think everyone is like you.

Feel free to stay on this forum for years sharing Peirce's insights

Holding an unwavering position on those principles is unwise. There is much paradox in this world and you are not going to get far being narrow-minded like you are (on this subject and the God one too). You know what you want to believe and are using all your mental effort to defend. My mind is like water. I let it go wherever truth pulls it. I don't have any structure whatsoever behind it saying "this is what I want to believe".

Maybe the universe flows from the Tao and doesn't change it

you're not open minded

Did you check out the article above about the "inevitability of infinitesimals"? You should be on forums to learn, not preach

I'm warming up to you. I find that recovering Christians are just in rebellion to what their parents forced down their throats. I found that in my own life. There is no escaping childhood. I consider myself ultra Catholic because I reject Catholicism as too merciful. For example, priests taking away mortal sins and giving people indulgences. Your path seems really interesting to me now. I like to read Hegel. Maybe Peirce will be good too

What about non-standard analysis? Mathematics applies to the world, which is why engineering and physics work