[lbo-talk] Post- philosophy philosophers

[Carl G. Estabrook]

McCabe writes in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas, who takes it for granted that - as he says in the prologue to the Summa theologiae - “We cannot know what God is but only what he is not.” God and the universe do not add up to two. (Two what?)

"[Aquinas] never thought of God as an entity seriously comparable to what we find in the Universe. He took God to be the cause of everything real and imaginable to us, the cause of all natural kinds and their members, the reason why there is something rather than nothing. Aquinas, of course, realized that when we talk of God we are forced to make use of words we have come up with to name and describe what we find in the world in which we live.

"...Aquinas was equally keen to emphasize that God is not a creature, not a member of the world, not a being among beings, not, in this sense, an existing thing. God, he says, 'is to be thought of as existing outside the realm of existents, as a cause from which pours forth everything that exists in all its variant forms'. For Aquinas, there is a serious sense in which it is true to assert that God does not exist. He would readily have agreed with Kierkegaard’s statement: 'God does not exist, he is eternal.'"

--<http://payingattentiontothesky.com/2011/02/14/aquinas-proves-atheists-are-closer-to-god-than-they-think/>

On Aug 5, 2012, at 5:42 PM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:


> 
> On Aug 5, 2012, at 5:44 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> As the rest of the article makes clear, the author is aware of the difficulties with both words: e.g.,...when we speak of God by using the word ‘God’, we do not understand what we mean...
> 
> Thus he admits that he does not understand what he means.  The words "God" and "exist" remain quite undefined (and also the word "cause" which is clearly important to him for some reason).
> 
>> 
>> On Aug 5, 2012, at 12:27 PM, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Gibberish.  Nobody denies his right to carry on any intellectual activity he wishes or to research on any topic he wants.  What does that have to do with the undefined and undefinable word "God" and the (in his sentence) undefined word "exists?"
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Shane Mage
>>> 
>>> 
>>> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
>>> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
>>> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>>> 
>>> Herakleitos of Ephesos
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
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