Revisiting Aquinas's Argument from Perfection

The highest form of things. If there is love, there must exist a perfected form of it, for all other forms of love, to be judged from.Hence, Christ is the perfect love, Our Lord of Love, rather, Our Lord of Divine Mercy.We see evil perfected and suffering perfected, but our love was perfected in suffering, and out of perfect evil, abounded perfect goodness, Christ, the essence of perfect love. The quintessence of love.Atheism is a brain disease, it is inert matter, brain decay, brain damage, and dead brain tissue, it represents disease and filth and death, it is totally inert. It does not move nor have the form of movement, it is not stagnant, it is a rock that cannot teach itself to roll, it is human depravity. Atheism is a beleagured thought pattern that promotes illness and mental deformity. It values ugliness and does not understand love. Ugly is ugliness, the elephant man: to the atheist, a deformed hominid, to the Christian, beauty in quintessence, a soul of light, love, and beauty, and the leaves roll down the hill, the cock crows, the moon brightens the night, the deer run in front of cars, and Christ has been revealed, the extreme love to the extreme hate, the perfect love that illumines the world. The spiritual sun and omphalos of man's nature and nature's nature; we believe in created beings, not aimlessness, not order of chaos, not evilness, not something out of nothing, not erudition for the benefit of the blind, dumb, and deaf.Nicodemus enters the stage and he asks the Christman ecce homo,how can a man be born again, without reentering a womb,but this rebirth is total and complete and of the Spirit, the spirit is a denied reality here, but what permits the creator to keep his captive here, if this was merely a simulation, wouldn't we have made a purposeful GAME OVER?blue pill boomers echo the hallssophomoric gotcha artistscreation is the way

I notice that you changed your name again, Chris. A couple of questions before I promote this. Do you actually want the topic to focus on the writings of Thomas Aquinas or just the argument about perfection? Not too many here will engage with you but I will go into a Theological discussion with you. So a question. The views on atheism in your topic starter---were they Aquinas views or more your opinions?I would love to take the opportunity to study Aquinas more...I never really have read him.I remember you used to like Sren Kierkegaard. So you can go off in several directions. I will promote this if you want it to be a place where you can unwind your theological views in general, but would like to avoid politics or music in this thread. What do you think? Which Forum? Faith & Belief OK?

ill get back to u on this when i have a free moment

Thread copied here from the Revisiting Aquinas's Argument from Perfection thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Christopher Hitchens has an answer to the OP remark about love. See the fourth paragraph.

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Quote by Christopher Hitchens: Let's say that the consensus is that our specie... Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.

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Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.

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Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.

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It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.

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And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.

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AdminPhatYou allowed this crap and cheered it? Did you read passed the first couple of sentences? Why did you not ask him for the connection between this rabid, hate-filled rant and Aquinas? Have you finally lost it Phat?

Your premise is wrong.We do not require a perfected form of something to exist in order to judge other forms of that thing. Example: Length
-there is no such thing as "perfect length"
-you may have "perfect length for this application" or "perfect length for that application"... but there is no single "perfect length."
-in order to judge length, all you need is two different measurements
-could be 1" vs 2" or 10 furlongs vs 22 furlongs or 3 fingers vs 4 fingers
-as long as there are 2 lengths (neither of which need to be perfect) - you can judge length to see which is longer or shorter or better for your application Same with Love:
-there is no such thing as "perfect love"
-you may have "perfect love for this application" or "perfect love for that application"... but there is no single "perfect love."
-in order to judge love, all you need is two different situations where love is involved
-could be mother vs father or teammate vs opponent or stranger vs stranger
-as long as there are 2 situation where love is involved (neither of which need to be perfect) - you can judge love to see which is more or less lovely or better for your application.Since the entire argument is built from a wrong premise - the entire argument is therefore wrong.(Otherwise there would also be a perfect hatred and a perfect darkness and a perfect "rebuttal against any argument..." it's, really, just a silly and immature concept that because something exists a "perfect version" must also exist.)

It seems arbitrariness to compare a measurement to a quality

Tangle has a point in that you appear a bit sophomoric with your diatribe against atheism, but according to Catholic Author Mark Brumley who wrote Aquinas Proves Atheists Are Closer to God Than They Thinkhe mentions Aquinas understanding of a God Who exists as a Being Outside Of All Others.

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It may seem obvious to say that a Christian or even a generic theist is someone who says, God exists, and an atheist is someone who says, God does not exist. However, the traditional Christian (even the mere theist) wants to say more things about God, things that affect the use of the word exist as applied to God. Here is where Thomas comes in. When he says, God exists, he doesn’t mean by exist exactly the same thing that he means when he says, Rome exists or Jupiter exists or even, I exist.

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There are, says Thomas, things that receive their existence, that are dependent for their existence. I exist because my parents existed; I received my existence from them. That mountain exists because the earth exists and certain geological principles exist that go into the formation of mountains. And so on.

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Not everything, argues Thomas, can be a receiver of existence. Something (or Someone) must exist in its (his) own right, and not because of something else. Otherwise, there would be no existence to be passed on by the all various receivers of existence we encounter in the world around us. That something which (or Someone who) exists in its (his) own right and not as dependent on another is God. He, says Thomas, simply is, with the fullness of all that the word is can contain. This is why God is called the Supreme Being. Lesser beings are dependent for their existence on others. Not so God.

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It is an interesting expansion of a philosophical discussion. The problem that I see that many of us have is the accusation that we "make God up" in our minds....but this discussion sheds new light on that claim.

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If that is what you mean by God, argues Davies, then Thomas would agree that such a God does not exist. God, Davies quotes Thomas as saying, 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. In other words, there is no such being as the God who is thought to exist as just one more thing along side a can of beans or the planet Jupiter.

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I try and be somewhat diplomatic around here, but i get offended when self proclaimed believers think like atheists. I have no problem with atheists. For the most part they are intelligent contributors to society and cause far less problems than many of the nutters.

you've made probably one of the more profound points in the history of this site; if god did not exist, atheists would not have to declare he did not exist. by saying god does not exist, you are leaving a shadow for an entity you obviously acknowledge. so atheists are actually god believing deists. really fascinating.

By that logic, when you say the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist, you're acknowledging your belief in the Tooth Fairy.

if you want to disingenuously compare a tooth fairy to a deity, sure.

Truly, a miracle. Not even wrong. Sadly we have to go around saying that we have no belief in god - (few of us say that gods don't exist but occasionally we lapse into short hand in a futile attempt to be understood) - because loons like you keep banging on about your myths. If you kept your mouths shut you'd never hear a squeak from us and we'd never think of it again.I've never been tempted to declare a disbelief in anything that doesn't exist. I thought that might be obvious but seemingly not.

Exactly. This is how we know the entire Greek Pantheon of gods are all real... Zeus, Poseidon, Appollon, Artemis, etc. If you acknowledge their non-existence then you are in fact secretly acknowledging their existence. Brilliant argument, PRC. Couldn't agree more... All hail the gods!!! Pantheism is the way, the truth and the life!!!! Nobody comes to the Fathers/Mothers but through all of them! Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

Nothing disingenuous about it. It just is.Get over it.