What is God, Exactly?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this video I connect the idea of "God" to Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, and make an invitation.
Got questions? I can be reached at thomascahillquestions@gmail.com.
My video editing is now done by Mauricio Chuman. If you want to learn more about the work he does, he can be reached at chuman.mauricio.editing@gmail.com.
Hey, the question answers itself. What is, is god. this is what the ultimate truth of Hinduism is.
What is god, exactly? It's a word. It's just a word. Aristotle taught about the geocentric universe - he was startlingly wrong about that, wasn't he?
Of course Aristotle was wrong about stuff - there's never been a philosopher who wasn't wrong about stuff. My point isn't "Aristotle said it, so it must be true." My point is that it's a remarkable coincidence that Aristotle arrived from reason alone at a being which looks identical metaphysically to the God of, say, Christianity or Judaism.
@@Thomas-Cahill It isn't remarkable at all. He proposed a list of qualities, that are not mentioned in the bible, and a few dishonest Christian apologists have claimed those qualities for their god; because the words in the bible aren't sufficient enough. Those qualities aren't mentioned in the bible, because the sand people couldn't comprehend those qualities. In fact, I would assert that something, whose footsteps could be heard in the garden (Genesis 3:8), couldn't be timeless or immaterial - unless you're appealing to magic, which you are, obviously.
@@ShallowsPaul what r u on abt?
@@EitherSpark can't you read?
@@ShallowsPaul chill m8, can you make sense?
Why exactly is god wearing a pink dress??????
@Thomas-Cahill that seems like speculation. There is no reason or evidence that there is only one un-moved mover (aka god). There could be 1, 2, or more gods. Thinking about what seems right doesn't prove anything.
But send me that link and I will watch it
th-cam.com/video/qJTd_ERTq6Q/w-d-xo.html
@@Thomas-Cahill More childish bullshit.
Pondering on this question recently, I've come to think that the conclusion that there must be an unmoved mover rests upon the assumption that stillness is the default state of reality somehow. We could easily assume that the default state is movement, analogous to how newton's first law is that a body that is still, or moving will continue to do so forever if not disturbed. Morover, I think there's good reason to assume that movement is the default state of reality.
In order for a region of reality to be not moving, it would need to be completely immaterial, so it could avoid being disturbed by anything. Lack of movement, lack of change, in this view, are literally not real i any meaningfull sense, in relation to the rest of reality.
If we insist on the necessity of an unmoved mover, we could view the totality of reality itself as fitting perfectly this role:
With past, present, and future being equally real, the whole of reality experiences no change, it simply has different regions.
With past and future being equally real, there is no time from the perspective of the whole.
No reason to imagine that the whole of reality is limited in any way as well.
On it being immaterial, I don't know what it would mean for the totality of reality to be immaterial, but then this makes me question the meaning of something being immaterial.
Since when did things start moving? If the movements have no beginning, it will create an infinite regression⁰
@@abrarahmad-mw4dk my point is: why do we assume that movement is something that begins? What reason do we have to imagine that before movement there must be non movement?
@@doctorinternet8695 Because we know there were no space and time before the big bang
And if movements had no beginning, and stretched infinitely back into the past, it will cause an infinite regression.
Let's say you are running an infinite marathon. What is half of infinity? Infinity. What is a quarter of infinity? Infinity. What is 000.1% of infinity? Again infinity. So you won't reach anywhere in an infinite marathon. Because there will always be infinite distance left.
Let's imagine a leaky tower of infinite height. Water is leaking down from floor level infinity. When will it reach the ground floor? Never! Because there will always be infinite levels left to reach the ground floor
Let's take AD 2024 as ground floor. How did we reach 2024 if there is infinite time left for 2024?
Similarly, people seem to make the assumption that the default state of reality is nothing and since there is something then it must have been created. It seems equally as likely to me that the default state is that there is something. And actually that seems more likely since, you know, we exist and stuff.
@@mrbabyplan I totally agree!
The idea that there can only be ONE unmoved mover is totally without any rational backing. Even if there has to be such a thing you can't defend the GUESS that there is 1, 10, or a million un moved movers. Maybe there is one god per galaxy or one god per solar system? Whatever you think is nothing more than a guess.
Well, the reason why Aristotelians like Thomas Aquinas argue that there can only be one Unmoved Mover is that, if the Unmoved Mover is Purely Actual (and Aristotle says it is by definition), then it must not lack anything. But the way we differentiate two things is by pointing to some trait that one has that another doesn't have. That means that there's no way to differentiate Unmoved Mover 1 from Unmoved Mover 2. See my video on Aristotle's Argument for God for more on that.
@@Thomas-Cahill Your claim that "the way we differentiate two things is by pointing to some trait that one has that another doesn't have." is utter nonsense. We differentiate identical objects by their location in spacetime. That is the most elementary of descriptors.
These comments are agonizing lol
3:27 what's the point? you said it yourself, people significantly more intelligent that you or i still ponder this question. can our observations and reasoning really give us information about the existence of non-existence of any sort of god? philosophy has soooo much disagreement in it, and i believe a lot of argument for and against god require preexisting intuitions for the person considering the god debate. all of our different experiences give us radically different starting points with how we thing and with our intuitions, so even if you find an answer for yourself, can you really say this answer is correct even if the answer is reasoned to?
It's true that all of our answers to the God question are in some respects pre-conditioned by our personalities and experiences, but that's just as about our answers to any questions. We all bring different perspectives when we approach the world, the goal is to try to arrive at the truth whatever our biases might be.
Well said!
@@Thomas-Cahill but can we really? even if we can, would this truth even be accepted or would it not be widely rejected by all peoples with differing initial intuitions and biases?
This poor man with his big words, has told us exactly who God is. Wow he must be smarter and more wise than everyone!
I wish I was. I'm just stealing from all the people way smarter than me who figured this out a long time ago.
The answer to your question is simple, really: god is what adults call their imaginary friend(s). If you look at it that way, every god makes perfect logical sense and you can get on to living your real life in the real world.
God exists
@@Testimony_Of_JTF The utter lack of evidence for any god indicates otherwise.
Ah yes, Aristotle. The guy who was wrong about biology and physics and thought that the sun revolved around the earth is surely going to be right about things more complex and challenging as the very origin of the universe. Aristotle's philosophy assumed a common-sense teleological view of the universe, which has been thoroughly overturned by natural science and the empirical method, the real engines of discovery about the world, instead of arm chair "logical" thinking. Anyway, Aristotle has been interpreted and reinterpreted by medieval Christian thinkers ad nauseum, and there's no clear implication that he was thinking of a single "God." He was still a pious believer of the Athenian gods, I must have missed his conversion to monotheism or espousal of anything like it. It seems this "prime mover" argument has simply been co-opted by Christian thinkers eager to use Greek philosophy and knowledge to support their own ideas.
One thing you said really caught my attention. How has Aristotle's "common sense teleological view of the universe" been "thoroughly overturned by natural science and the empirical method?"
@@Thomas-Cahill I'm glad you asked. Teleology involves interpreting phenomena as a function of their supposed end, purpose, or goal. So for example in physics Aristotle thought that the natural state of an object is to remain at rest because that would be the objects "natural state" or its goal. Of course this was overturned by Galileo and Newton, and Galileo did so only through careful experiments involving rolling objects on inclined planes, and adjusting the incline and accounting for things like friction and other factors. Unlike Aristotle, Galileo didn't start with any assumption about what "should" happen, or what would make sense to happen. Galileo made similar discoveries just by dropping heavy and light objects and seeing what would happen. It's curious that centuries of thought supposed that the heavier object must fall faster, yet nobody tested this out. Even if they did test it out they could probably rationalize the results away, and stick to their presumptions about what "must" be true. From Galileo's observations, Newton was able to infer his law of inertia, where there is the counterintuitive principle that objects remain in motion (forever) unless acted on by an outside force. Of course many would presume you would need a force (maybe God) or something to keep things moving, but it's simply not the case. The reason you think that is because of what you're used to on earth, but the laws of physics function totally differently. And Newton's laws too weren't because of some philosophical assumption about nature having a predetermined goal or end, but rather heavily indebted to humble experimentation and observations. Another example would be Aristotle's teleological views about biological development, as he presumed organisms had goals of being in a "perfect" state, which would dictate their growth and development. But of course this was overturned by Darwin, again only because of exhaustive observations. And much of biology today, if you follow the complex and multifaceted work of biologists, continues to shed light on how relatively blind nature is and in no way capable of having some "ultimate goal" or anything of that sort.
I say all of this because we tend to think that pure logic is the key to understanding the universe but it seems to only expose our own assumptions about how we think the universe should operate, for lack of our own understanding and imagination. The law of inertia, among many scientific laws (don't even get me started on quantum mechanics) are totally counterintuitive and there's a reason it took centuries if not millennia for people to accept them and finally take them for granted. Many sound principles of causality itself have to be rethought because of quantum mechanics. And none of this was because we were able to discover these things through pure logic. It was a combination of experimentation and logic (mathematics), but observation often (but not always) being several leagues ahead because there are just too many possibilities out there and logic and pure rationality alone, even of an extremely high magnitude like a super-computer, can't make sense of everything. Not until it's put to the test through experiments. It's a metaphysical dream to have one thing, like logic, be the key to everything, but there's a reason we have many distinct methodologies and branches of learning. This preference for logic is a serious blind spot of many philosophers. And I suspect that philosophical ponderings about the "ultimate" origins and cause of the universe, and the supposed need of a "prime mover" are similarly baseless common sense empty speculations, with the underlying reality far deeper than we can simply understand at the moment. It's hard to understand many already established branches of science, as they take years if not decades of meticulous work to understand, so why do we presume we can know the ultimate origin of the universe?
Anyway, since you seem to prefer philosophy over science, I recommend you read David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. It is very insightful about this distinction between rationalism and empiricism, and it will give you a lot more respect for the empirical method over the strictly logical one.
@@AB-et6nj Thanks for your well-thought out response. I'll check out the Hume book you mentioned at the end. I do wonder, though, if your characterization of empirical science as more reliable than logic opens itself up to an obvious criticism - namely, that the reliability of the empirical sciences to tell us conclusions about the world is itself based on logical argumentation.
@@Thomas-Cahill Hume addresses that. I don't want to imply they're mutually exclusive, or one is better than the other, but I tend to emphasize empiricism a bit more when I engage with those who think formal logic is paramaount and underlies everything
Aristotle was smarter than you (a lot smarter in fact). Most of his errors around physics and biology are just fruits of his lackluster tools and the lack of scientific development from his time.
Aristotle also thought that women and men had a different number of teeth, and didn't bother to look inside anyone's mouth to find out. This idea that we can use arm chair logic and just assign properties to some entity outside of the universe where we have zero intuitions, is ludicrous. If this unmoved mover needs to be unchanging, timeless, and immaterial, how does it move anything if it can't change? How can it move anything if it doesn't exist in time? How can it affect material objects if it's immaterial? All of these questions get swept under the rug and are considered non issues, because we're not dealing with the physical world, and in the land of make believe, you get to make up the rules as you go along. The physical world is used to come up with these intuitions in the first place, and then they are discarded the moment an explanation is rightfully demanded. This is how you have your cake and eat it too.
yes but i believe aristotle used observation of the world to realise that change requires changers, this is empirical and not just 'arm chair logic'
maybe the unmoved mover enacts movement in things without itself changing
why would it have to exist in time to move things?
why would it have to be material to affect immaterial things?
Why can't an immaterial entity have contact with matter? Where is the logical incoherence in this?
God is the one who gives existence to matter itself, and to time and space, therefore he himself cannot be material, temporal or spatial. It's simple logical reasoning.
If matter is highly mutable, the creator of matter cannot be mutable himself because this way can't explain the existence of the cause-effect process and the matter itself. This process has to start somewhere, it is not possible for there to be an infinite regress in time nor in the cause-effect process.
@@EitherSpark But change does not require changers, as quantum mechanics has shown. So the basis of the argument is not true, even within this universe. And it certainly has no evidence in support outside (whatever that could mean) of this universe.
@@hugofernandes8545 When you claim that every effect has a cause, every cause that you claim is material. So, why would you claim that there is, unseen and unknown, some other immaterial cause? Since we know that every cause that we see having a material effect is itself material, by your own logic, an immaterial cause for a material event is logical incoherent.
Of course, all of this presupposes that your claim of some god is true, a claim for which no good evidence has ever been found.
@@petercollins7730 how has quantum mechanics shown this?
Please don't say nonsense by making opinion about the God of Judaism and Islam , if you an atheist your thinking must be from atheistic frame . But, from Judaism & Islamic monotheistic theology, knowledge about God "STRICTLY" originated from the Holy book; torah & quran. Then to rational and easy to teach and understanding the we go to comment from scholars.. if there's a literature Muslim read Ibn Sina.
I'm not an atheist. Are you suggesting that Jewish and Muslim theology argues that the existence of God can only be known through Revelation?
I'm a Catholic myself, so I'm honestly wondering; I'm not familiar with the intricacies of Muslin or Jewish theology.