“The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. (1) We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, (2) act for an end, and (3) this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. (4) Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. (5) Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; (5) as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. (6) Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.”
Now this isn’t your usual Paley’s watch argument from design. Rev. Paley, and most subsequent arguments from design concentrate on living organisms, and compares them to what he thinks is the comparatively undesigned non-living world. (Recall that the watch you find is a thing that has internal movement, and is contrasted with pieces on a beach.) However, my surprise was that Aquinas does NOT argue so. Instead he takes the tack that the NONliving things are good evidence - basically, the fact that that there’s physical laws is the evidence!
I’m not sure what to make of this argument, though i find it interesting as a philosopher. Especially interesting is the suggestion that living things won’t do for his argument (as Paley uses them), since living things can be said to have an internal source of movement to their ends - they have desires - and so they might well be self-designed (or molded by evolutionary forces) and so aren’t good evidence for an external Designer.
I didn’t see this argument refuted in Dawkins, either. Yet it’s right there in the *Prima Pars, Quaestio 2, Art. 3*. I suppose Paley’s arg. has so eclipsed discussion that most of us (me included) have assumed that’s the force of the fifth proof in Aquinas.
Any comments? I find it rather breathtaking that he finds it obvious that non-living things can’t do anything without some externally-imposed nature or laws. That’s just the opposite of modern assumptions, but for the life of me I can’t see exactly why the modern view is somehow more right than Aquinas’ claim. Note that it utterly avoids evolutionary stuff entirely, since it’s about physics, not biology. So, a puzzle for me and my students this summer.
kirk
]]>It is in this vein that I writeof the great Mater (=matter=matriarch=mother). I call everything that exists matter, and include it all under the Motherverse. As I say:
Forever Matter: now dancing, now flowing, now throwing her universe wide, now entroping into fragments, now introping into unity, ever creating and recreating, ever figuring and configuring, ever turning and returning: grand land, ocean, and planet bearer, author of Earth the sun, sun the system, Systems the Galaxy, and Galaxies the grand spiralling flower of infinity the Universe herself, the everything of everything, the all of existence—how high-sun our lives sing your every-name!
Gift and giver, grand All, matter, the matrix of every world; you pulled your infinite dimensions into one exact loop, crouched and ready to explode your joy into this universe our universe, this multibillion year history, a blinking of your terrible eye. Within five of our seconds: a stage! A thousand spinnings as your billion arms curled into spiral galaxies, as your trillion fingers curled into fisted solar systems.
Even now, your elliptical paths expand with your pride, as your hydrogen breath sinks into suns, as your words spring into planets. Your trillion thoughts are each an atomic loop of localized force, humming with a personality of gravity, charge, spin. Your drape of space-time, sewn with the atoms of placement—how it glitters with the spilled milky stars of a wide night sky!
And again:
Nirvana is hell is Chaos is beginning is her womb,
Heaven is metaphor is unconsciousnes is her breast,
Yin and yang are the colors of her eye,
Brahma is the blackness of her eye,
like a black hole which is really no hole but whole.
Maya is the white of her eye
Karma is her right pinky,
Law is her forefinger,
Allah is the nail-crescent of her middle finger.
Holy Spirit is her breath.
The cross is a mar in one of her teeth.
The holy Om is her humming as she weaves,
needles threading her long hair,
or her fingers through her lips.
The eightspoke wheel of history is her right earing.
Tao is the rivers of her blood.
Vishnu is eternity is her memory.
Idol is icon is incarnation is her freckles.
Behind her broad temple live her Children,
including Mother Earth, Zeus, Yahweh, Lucia, Sophia.
Logos is syllogistic definition is the triangle of her thumb.
Mythos is the hair on her belly.
Will to power is God is her upper lip.
Beauty is desire is maid Satan is love is her lower lip.
Need is creativity is force is her lungs
Poetry is the saliva of her mouth.
Art is gleam in her eye.
Being is her bones, becoming is her muscles.
Nothingness is her shadow.
Difference is her fingerprint,
Play is her laugh.
History is the blinking of her eye.
Matter is her body.
Energy is her warmth.
Science is the law of her flesh.
The stars are her pores.
Our sun is her forehead.
The moon is her neck,
The void is blackness is space is her jet hair
Evolution is her dance.
The big bang is a tap of her fingers.
Natural law is science is te is causality
Is Fate is her whim,
Is Society is her network of nerves.
Nature is life is nerves of her hands.
Man is her fingertips,
whom she kisses with the praise of a mother.
Eros is her inhale, thanatos her exhale.
Dialectic is the exchange of her hands.
Agape is her mother’s love.
Li is Chi is eternal Form is matter form is the curve of her waist.
She is beyond being beyond.
Nothing can transcend her.
Nothing can fathom her.
Nothing can equal her.
Nothing can change her.
Nothing can touch her.
She is the great Mom, Matriall,
Motherverse, AtMat,
whole and fulness.
What do you think?
Daniel
]]>This is not the typical view of religion. Pride is evil because is is love of self. Guilt is good because it is awareness of our perpetual sin. Why this schema?
Guilt is a means to ownership. One owes his life to the guilt because he is indebted for his sins. The word originally meant the lender owned your body for your guilt. As the paritioners say to their God (but really the church) by Onus you own us. Religions own their members by implicating them in the system. Morality is the golden ring in the bull’s nose—by which you bring him to his knees. Religion, therefore, uses conscience and duty and morality not for the sake of life, but for the sake of power. Insofar as religion can escape morality, it does, and despises it. The Christians call it works and say it is of this world. For a good Buddhist or a good Hindu is prettier to look at then the Christian, but the Christian only does good deeds to win converts, and beyond this, hates virtue.
Remember the pretty bait put on the fishing hook called Crucifix: the simultaneous lure of pity/guilt called Jesus. By this hook did he make his disciples fishers of men.
And what is their greatest tool for guilt? It is to damn the whole of mankind as naturally deserving eternal torture. Only by an UNDESERVED gift, so that nobody could brag, can we ever enter heaven. We must believe the unbelievable with a faith which does not doubt, because we are all sinners. Thus the guilt system is based on eternal torture, by a greatly exagerrated threat. As the cowards wager has it: it is wiser to pretend there is a hell just in case there is.
Daniel June
]]>On the other side Hinduism never spread really outside India despite the fact that it is the oldest religion on earth.
Judaism too doesn’t proselitize much, despite the fact that Jews endured centuries of harsh persecutions without converting to other religions.
Why Pagan religions in North and Eastern Europe didn’t
stand a chance against Christianity (not talking about the native religions in
the Americas)?
AFAIK to explain the success of a religion can be included at least 4 variabiles:
1-Universalistic religion vs Ethnic religion
2-Promise of pleasant afterlife or reincarnation (which is IMO a great inducement for new converts)
3-Oppression of unbelievers/heretics by the governement in charge.
4-Religion that can include other religions (Y/n)
Does anybody knows more/better about the subject or other variabiles
that could be included in the model?
Are there books about how good comparatively every religion marketed to the potential “consumer” and how they competed (or coopted) each other in the past.
Are there avaiable really detailed timeline about birth , geographical expansion and death of each religion (even minor ones) ?.
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