Pints With Aquinas - 68: Responding to Hank Green's objections to Aquinas' 5 ways

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, episode 68. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with St. Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we'll ask St. Thomas the question, Hey, Thomas, this guy called Hank Green, he makes all of these philosophy YouTube videos, and in one he recently posted, which was called Aquinas and the Cosmological Arguments, Crash Course Philosophy number 10. He brings up some arguments that sound pretty convincing against your five ways. And I'm just wondering if you could tell me how to respond to him. And then I'll just leave a comment in the YouTube box, because we all know that'll settle it. Okay, before we get into today's show,

Starting point is 00:00:56 I just wanted to say I love you. Not in a weird way, but not in a completely normal way either. I also wanted to say that if you go to pintswithaquinas.com, you can enter our mailing list. And if you do that, you'll be the first to receive comics, these podcasts, and all other sorts of fun stuff. So pintswithaquinas.com. We also have a tab called drinking sessions. Yes, drink moderately. But in that, you can find all of the related podcasts that are sort of clustered together. We also have all of our comic strips there and a whole lot of other stuff. I think it looks pretty cool. So go check it out, pineswithaquinas.com.

Starting point is 00:01:31 God bless you. All right, here's the show. G'day, guys. Hope you're doing very well. I'm sitting here at night having a beautiful bourbon thinking of you all. Oh my gosh, it's so good. I don't know what is so good. Why Texas bourbon is so good. I want to make sure I get the name of this. So I'm just looking it up right now,

Starting point is 00:01:52 which is terrible for podcasting, but whatever. Okay. It's called Yellow Rose Outlaw Texas Bourbon. If you're a bourbon drinker, go and get that. It's unbelievable. Anyway, I'm sitting here, I'm drinking bourbon, and someone sends me a tweet of a video that responds to Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of God, or in particular, Aquinas' cosmological arguments for the existence of God. All right, so he actually deals with the first four arguments for the existence of God. All right, so he actually deals with the first four arguments for the existence of God. It's produced really well, I have to say this. By the way, the video is called Aquinas and the Cosmological Arguments, Crash Course Philosophy number 10. This YouTube channel has 6.2 million subscribers, so a lot of people are going to see this. So, I just thought what I would do in this video is respond to the objections he raises against Aquinas' four arguments, his cosmological arguments.

Starting point is 00:02:52 So what I'll do is I'll play his short objections, right? He has about four or so of them, and then I will respond to them. Alrighty? Hope it's a help. Here we go. So what do we make of them? As philosophers, if you think an argument is flawed, it's your job to try and figure out why. And by and large, philosophers, theists and atheists alike, have been relatively unimpressed by these four, having found many problems in them. For one thing, these arguments don't seem to establish the existence of any particular

Starting point is 00:03:18 god. Even if the arguments are correct, it doesn't look like Aquinas gets us to the personal loving god that many people pray to. Instead, we're left with unmoved movers and uncaused causers who seem to have little in common with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who feels emotions and cares about his creation and answers prayers. Basically, this objection says that Aquinas' God is so far removed from the God that theists actually believe in that it doesn't help anything. Okay, let's have you respond to this. First of all, we have to say that to read St. Thomas Aquinas without taking into consideration his work as a whole is to really do him an injustice. The five ways that Aquinas lays out in the first part of

Starting point is 00:03:59 the Summa Theologiae are summaries of arguments that he expands upon elsewhere. That's the first thing to say. Second thing I'd like to say is that the Summa Theologiae is like a skyscraper. And right here in, let's see, on the existence of God, this is question two of the entire work, okay? Aquinas is laying the foundation. Before we can decide what attributes God might have, we need to first decide whether or not God exists. All right, or to put it another way, the question of essence only comes after the question of existence has been settled. Looking at these five ways and complaining that Aquinas hasn't proved the God of Christian theism is like going up to a group of men who are laying the foundation for a house and

Starting point is 00:04:54 saying, this isn't a house. Yeah, give it time. In fact, in the first part of the Summa Theologiae, question three, right, the very next question after these five proofs, Aquinas does then begin to ask questions like, article one, is God a body? Article two, is he composed of matter and form? And so on and so forth. Now, what about this idea that he's nothing like what we find in the Bible? Well, I think it's important to recognize that the Bible uses anthropomorphic language when talking about God, and that this isn't something that Aquinas is unfamiliar with or something we need to be worried about. Just to give one example, in Article 2, Aquinas addresses the question whether God is composed of matter and form. By the way,

Starting point is 00:05:45 Article 2, Question 3. And he's dealing with the objection, look, we see that in Scripture, God is angry and joyful and passionate, right? So, therefore, he must have these certain characteristics. And Aquinas says in his reply, quote, anger and the like, okay, joy, passion, etc., are attributed to God on account of a similitude of effect. Thus, because to punish is properly the act of an angry man. God's punishment is metaphorically spoken of as his anger. If somebody wants to say these five ways don't prove, you know, the God of Christianity, right, agreed. But we could say this, here's what they do claim to prove. And what I might add that the commentator of this YouTube video hasn't shown that they

Starting point is 00:06:36 don't prove is that taken together, right, this cause is perfect, unchanging, uncaused, intelligent, a metaphysically necessary being, and a cause which is the cause of the existence of all things other than himself. So, yep, it doesn't prove, it proves only a thin slice of God, we could put it that way. But the slice that it proves is enough to refute atheism. Let's see what else this bloke has to say. Maybe you're happy just believing someone's out there, that's fine. But then how about multiple someones? Because guess what? Aquinas' arguments don't rule out polytheism.

Starting point is 00:07:19 There's nothing in any of his arguments to prove that God isn't actually like a committee. Right, so again, it's not enough to hyper-focus on these five ways and exclude the rest of, you know, Thomas's works. Thomas does go on to explain why there can only be one God. Let me give you a quotation from the Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, Chapter 42, Paragraph 8. Aquinas says the following, If there are two beings, of which both are necessary beings, they must agree in the notion of the necessity of being. Hence, they must be distinguished by something added either to one of them only or to both. This means that one or both of them must be composite.

Starting point is 00:08:11 Now, as we've shown, no composite being is, through itself, a necessary being. It is impossible, therefore, that there be many beings of which each is a necessary being, hence neither can there be many gods. All right, what does that mean? Again, please keep in mind this is a short response to a short objection, so this might go by you rather quickly. You might have to pause and play it again, but essentially, Aquinas is saying that every composite being is dependent on its parts for its existence. For example, think of a painting, right? A painting is composed of a canvas and paint, at least. And this means that every composite, right, such as paintings and people and dogs and carpet and whatever else, is caused by something else.

Starting point is 00:09:05 This is what Aquinas argues, because something must cause these different parts to unite. If you want to learn more about what he says there, go to the first part of the Summa Theologiae, question three, article seven. So, we can't have more than one being that is necessary through itself, because in order for there to be two such beings, one of them must have a property that the other doesn't have. Otherwise, they wouldn't be two different beings, right? But they would be one and the same being. But if one has a property the other doesn't have, then it is actually a composite being. But every composite being needs a cause, and so a composite being cannot be a being that is necessary through itself. Now, that's complicated stuff, and even if that doesn't convince you right away, the point I'd

Starting point is 00:10:00 like to make right here and now is Aquinas is very well aware of this, and he argues for why there has to be one god, right? Essentially because the cause that he's arguing for in these five ways is pure existence or being itself. Okay, what else does he have to say? But there are two objections that are thought by some to be real nails in its coffin. The first is simply that Aquinas was wrong in his insistence that there can't be an infinite regress of anything. Aquinas takes it as a given that there had to be a starting point for everything, whether it's the movement of objects, or causes and effects, or contingent beings being created.

Starting point is 00:10:38 But it's unclear that this is true, or why it has to be true. If infinite regress can be possible, then Aquinas' first two arguments fall apart. How many times do we have to respond to this one? We need to understand the distinction between an accidentally ordered series of causes and essentially ordered series of causes. This commentator thinks Aquinas is talking about an accidentally ordered series of causation,

Starting point is 00:11:04 and we know that he thinks that because earlier in this little YouTube video, commentator thinks Aquinas is talking about an accidentally ordered series of causation, and we know that he thinks that because earlier in this little YouTube video, he uses the demonstration of dominoes. So, bear with me here, okay? This might get a little thick very quickly. Thomas isn't trying to prove that the world had a beginning, okay? Thomas doesn't think you can do that philosophically. He accepts that the universe began to exist because of the book of Genesis, but he doesn't think you can prove that philosophically. Unlike Bonaventure, Bonaventure thought you could. Aquinas and Bonaventure lived at the same time, right? Aquinas disagreed with Bonaventure, okay? Aquinas thinks that his arguments would still work if the past was infinite. Okay. So, let's discuss the difference between an essentially ordered series and an

Starting point is 00:11:55 accidentally ordered series. In an accidentally ordered series of causes, a member of the series is only dependent on the cause previous to it, not on all of the previous causes in the chain. So, for example, dear listener, if your mother or father, God forbid, should die right now, you could still have a child. And God forbid you died early after your son or daughter was born, your son could still grow up and one day have a child. Aquinas thinks that God could create a world where an infinite number of accidentally ordered causes exist, even though you think he's denying that, or I should say, even though this bloke in the YouTube video thinks he's denying that.

Starting point is 00:12:47 But what Thomas is really denying is an infinite regress of hierarchically, or what the term I used before, essentially ordered efficient causes. So, let's give an example to to show show that how that's the case think of several gears all moving at once because a handle is being turned in that case if you stop moving the handle all the gears cease moving simultaneously because each gear in the series is receiving its causal power from each and every other gear prior to it, all the way up to the first cause. All right. And so, the main point is that the first cause must have causal power in itself. This is what Aquinas is arguing, right? It doesn't receive

Starting point is 00:13:46 it from another, otherwise none of the gears would have any causal power. So, to sum up Aquinas' point, and yes, of course, whole books have been written on this. It's very difficult to understand. In fact, I've just written a book on this with Robert Delfino, which will be coming out soon, which hopefully will clear some of this up. But just to sum up Aquinas' thought, he's saying, if infinite regression, that is, no first cause of an essentially ordered series of causes, then intermediate or instrumental causes wouldn't have any causal power. Think of the gears analogy I used. But Aquinas is arguing intermediate and instrumental causes do have causal power because we see they are producing an effect. Therefore, there must exist a first cause that is uncaused. I want to share with you

Starting point is 00:14:42 an analogy that my co-author Robert Delfino shared with me, which I thought was super really cool, just to drive home this point again. All right, think of a chunk of gold. Okay. The piece of gold is what? You'd say, well, it's gold. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's gold. It's a substance that's made up of gold atoms. It's a substance that's made up of gold atoms. Okay, good. Is that it? Well, no. The gold atoms are being efficiently caused, that is, right, at the same time, by particles.

Starting point is 00:15:15 Electrons, neutrons, and protons. All right, is that it? Well, we might say no. The protons are being efficiently caused by what's called quarks, three to each proton. And if there's something beneath quarks that's officially causing them, then fine. But you can't have an infinite regress of an essentially ordered series of causes because then you have nothing. All right. So that's what Aquinas is saying. He's not talking about an accidentally ordered series of causes, because then you have nothing. All right, so that's what Aquinas is saying.

Starting point is 00:15:45 He's not talking about an accidentally ordered series of causes. But perhaps the most significant charge made against Aquinas' arguments is that they're self-defeating. That is, they actually prove themselves wrong. For example, if Aquinas is right that everything must have been put into motion by something else,

Starting point is 00:15:59 and everything must have a cause other than itself, then it seems that God should be subject to those same stipulations. And if God is somehow exempt from those rules, then why couldn't other things be exempt from them too? Yeah, I'm sure you could answer this one. Aquinas isn't saying that everything needs a cause, right? He's saying that things that begin to exist need a cause, or things that don't contain within themselves the reason for their existence, right? Contingent things need a necessary thing to explain them, all right? So, I think that this is probably the weakest of the objections that's being put forth here.

Starting point is 00:16:40 I've used this analogy elsewhere. You know, This is getting dangerously close to the atheist retort in the playground. Who created God? But of course, to understand what we mean by God is to see why that question doesn't work. necessary being whose non-existence is impossible, then asking who created God essentially amounts to asking who created the uncreated creator. So, that's not at all what Aquinas is saying. So, I don't see how this is a nail in the coffin. All right. Well, I hope that's a bit of a help to you all. Again, I tell you, one of the frustrating things about being an author with a Catholic publisher is that you just know that your book isn't going to go as far as you wish it would. Okay, let's just be honest. So we're writing this book called Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas.

Starting point is 00:17:38 And it should be out either by the end of this year or the start of next year. It's a little publishing house. I don't expect that it's going to reach a heck of a lot of people, but I think it should. It's a really good book. So do me a favor and buy it when it comes out, which I think is really good, obviously. Anyway, I hope that's a help.

Starting point is 00:17:55 Let me know if you have any questions. Love you all. God bless. Bye. A battle with my selfish flesh. Whose wolves am I feeding myself to? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive?

Pints With Aquinas - 68: Responding to Hank Green's objections to Aquinas' 5 ways

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