Friday, September 23, 2011

Modern biology and original sin, Part II

In part I of this series (and in a response to critics of part I) I addressed the question of whether monogenism of the sort entailed by the doctrine of original sin is compatible with modern biology.  I have argued that it is.  In this post I want to address the question of whether modern biology is consistent with the claim that the ancestors of all human beings transmitted the stain of original sin to their descendents via propagation rather than mere imitation.  The correct answer to this question, I maintain, is also in the affirmative.  Critics of the doctrine of original sin often suppose that it claims that there is something like an “original sin gene” passed down from parents to offspring.  And this, of course, seems highly dubious from a biological point of view.  They also suppose that to say that Adam’s descendents inherited from him the stain of original sin is like saying that Al Capone’s descendents somehow inherited from him his guilt for the crimes he committed, and deserve to be punished for those crimes.  And this too seems absurd and unjust.  But both of these objections rest on egregious misunderstandings of the doctrine.

Faith and reason

Before explaining how, I want briefly to say something about the rational foundations of the doctrine.  Some skeptical readers were critical of my appeal in my earlier post to Pope Pius XII’s Humani Generis, and mocked my statement that “there is no evidence against” the supposition that God may have infused human souls into creatures descended from sub-intellectual hominids.  They seem to think that what I was saying is that because a certain religious authority has said something, that by itself suffices to show that it is true, or that the mere fact that there is no evidence against a proposition licenses us in believing it if we are so inclined.  But this is a complete travesty both of my views and of Catholic theology.  

To be sure, while it has sometimes been suggested that the doctrine of original sin can be defended on purely philosophical grounds, probably the more common view is that it is a matter of faith.  But what is faith?  It is not what most people think it is; in particular, it is not a matter of believing something without any grounds for believing it, or believing it simply because you’ve taken a fancy to it, or because through sheer will you’ve worked yourself into a state of belief in defiance of all the evidence.  In short, faith, rightly understood, is in no way at odds with reason.  On the contrary, faith is, in a sense, grounded in reason.  

Suppose you know nothing about quantum mechanics but you do know a physicist who is both highly competent and scrupulously honest, and he tries to explain the subject to you.  Suppose further that you only understand part of what he says, and even that part you understand only imperfectly.  Still, you have no doubt that what he is saying is true.  You trust him, because he knows what he is talking about and wouldn’t lie to you.  You have faith in him, and your faith is perfectly rational.  Indeed, it is grounded in reason in the sense that it is reason that tells you that he is a reliable source of information, and thus can be believed even when what he is saying is something you could not have discovered for yourself and cannot even fully understand.

Faith in the religious context -- or at least in the Catholic theological context -- is like that.  To cite a representative definition, “faith is adhesion of the intellect, under the influence of grace, to a truth revealed by God, not on account of its intrinsic evidence but on account of the authority of Him who has revealed it” (Parente, Piolanti, and Garofalo, Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, p. 101).  That is to say, faith involves believing some proposition we could not have discovered on our own and perhaps cannot even fully understand, but which we know must be true because God, who is omniscient and cannot lie, has revealed it.  But this faith is grounded in reason insofar as the claim that the proposition in question has in fact been revealed by God is something that can and should be independently rationally justified.  In short, reason tells us that there is a God and that he has revealed such-and-such a truth; faith is then a matter of believing what reason has shown God to have revealed.  In that sense faith is not only not at odds with reason but is grounded in reason.

Of course, how we know through reason that God exists and that He has revealed some truth is a large and complex matter.  I have defended several of the traditional arguments for God’s existence in several places (here, here, and here).  The way to get from God’s existence to the justification of the claim that some particular Christian theological doctrine (such as the doctrine of original sin) really has been divinely revealed would have to involve a number of further steps.  In particular, it would have to involve a defense of the claim that Jesus Christ claimed divine authority for His teaching, that He was resurrected from the dead, that only God could have effected this resurrection and that it therefore constitutes a divine seal of approval of Christ’s teaching, that Christ founded a Church with authority to pass on and interpret His teaching, and so on.  In other words, the rational defense of any particular purportedly divinely revealed Christian doctrine presupposes an independent rational defense of the truth of theism, of the veracity of Christ, and also (I would say) of the specifically Catholic understanding of revelation and authority.

Obviously I can hardly accomplish all of that here, in a single blog post, though of course many theologians have defended all of these points in detail over the centuries.  The point for now is just to emphasize that believing the doctrine of original sin is not a matter merely of appealing to authority, as if the reliability of the authority did not itself need to be rationally established (of course it does).  And I am not, in any event, pretending in this series of posts to establish the doctrine of original sin to the satisfaction of someone who is not already familiar with and convinced by the arguments for theism and Catholicism.  My aim is rather only to answer certain specific criticisms of the doctrine.  Hence when I said that “there is no evidence against” the novel monogenesis scenario sketched in my previous posts, I was not saying “There is no evidence against it, and that suffices to justify us in believing it.”  I was saying “This scenario is compatible with the genetic evidence, so the claim that the genetic evidence has refuted the doctrine of original sin fails.”  Naturally, a positive case for the doctrine would have to say a lot more than that.

Now some Catholic readers might wonder if I am presenting too rationalist an account of faith (as some readers of my book The Last Superstition seem to think I did there).  In particular, they might think that I have ignored the role grace plays in faith (a role referred to in the definition I cited above).  As the Catholic Encyclopedia says in its article on faith:

[I]n the minds of many faith is regarded as a more or less necessary consequence of a careful study of the motives of credibility, a view which the Vatican Council condemns expressly: "If anyone says that the assent of Christian faith is not free, but that it necessarily follows from the arguments which human reason can furnish in its favour; or if anyone says that God's grace is only necessary for that living faith which worketh through charity, let him be anathema."

But what I am saying is in no way in conflict with Catholic teaching, and is in fact just standard Scholastic theology.  As the very same article immediately goes on to say:

On the other hand, we must not minimize the real probative force of the motives of credibility within their true sphere—"Reason declares that from the very outset the Gospel teaching was rendered conspicuous by signs and wonders which gave, as it were, definite proof of a definite truth" (Leo XIII, Æterni Patris).

And as the same encyclopedia puts it in its article on fideism:

As against [fideistic] views, it must be noted that authority, even the authority of God, cannot be the supreme criterion of certitude, and an act of faith cannot be the primary form of human knowledge.  This authority, indeed, in order to be a motive of assent, must be previously acknowledged as being certainly valid; before we believe in a proposition as revealed by God, we must first know with certitude that God exists, that He reveals such and such a proposition, and that His teaching is worthy of assent, all of which questions can and must be ultimately decided only by an act of intellectual assent based on objective evidence.  Thus, fideism not only denies intellectual knowledge, but logically ruins faith itself.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Church has condemned such doctrines…  On 8 September, 1840, Bautain was required to subscribe to several propositions directly opposed to Fideism, the first and the fifth of which read as follows: "Human reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God; faith, a heavenly gift, is posterior to revelation, and therefore cannot be properly used against the atheist to prove the existence of God"; and "The use of reason precedes faith and, with the help of revelation and grace, leads to it." … [T]he [first] Vatican Council teaches as a dogma of Catholic faith that "one true God and Lord can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made"…

As to the opinion of those who maintain that our supernatural assent is prepared for by motives of credibility merely probable, it is evident that it logically destroys the certitude of such an assent. This opinion was condemned by Innocent XI in the decree of 2 March, 1679… and by Pius X in the decree "Lamentabili sane"…  Revelation, indeed, is the supreme motive of faith in supernatural truths, yet, the existence of this motive and its validity has to be established by reason.

In short, the teaching that grace guides us to faith does not entail that at some point we just have to close our eyes real tight and will ourselves into believing some proposition for which there are insufficient rational grounds.  That is William James style fideism, not Catholicism.  When someone says “There but for the grace of God go I,” he does not mean that he did not freely choose to avoid a life of sin and that God somehow programmed him to avoid it, as He might program a robot.  Similarly, when we say that we are led to faith by God’s grace, this does not mean that we are not at the same time led to it by reason.

Let’s move on now to the doctrine of original sin itself.

What original sin isn’t

Many people seem to think that the doctrine of original sin says something like this: Adam and Eve were originally made for the eternal bliss of Heaven, but because they ate a piece of fruit they were told not to, they came to merit instead eternal torture at the hands of demons sticking pitchforks into them as they roast over hellfire.  Though Adam and Eve’s descendents had no part in their fruit-stealing, they are going to be held accountable for it anyway, and merit the same eternal torture (demons, pitchforks, hellfire and all).  For they have inherited a kind of guilt-carrying gene, which will automatically transfer them into the custody of the pitchfork-carrying demons straightaway upon death unless God somehow supernaturally removes it.  For some reason, though, this gene doesn’t show up in biological research, and its existence must be taken on faith.

Naturally, atheists and other non-Christians reject this scenario as too ludicrous for words.  And it is too ludicrous for words.  But it also has nothing to do with what the traditional doctrine of original sin actually says.  Indeed, it barely rises to the level of caricature; certainly it bears no resemblance to the traditional Catholic understanding of original sin.  Here as elsewhere, too many critics haven’t troubled themselves to find out what the main Christian thinkers have actually written, but rely on vulgar stereotypes.  And on the rare occasions when such critics do at least skim some serious theological work (so as to forestall the accusation that they haven’t done their homework) they are likely to read into it the ludicrous scenario just described. 

Properly to understand the doctrine of original sin requires understanding what traditional theology says about what human beings were originally made for, what the offense of our first parents consisted in, what the punishment for that offense was, and the sense in which we have inherited that punishment.  Let’s look at each issue in turn.  We will see that what traditional theology says is radically different from what many people think it says.  Nothing that I will be saying here is original.  You can find it in old works of Scholastic theology, and online in relevant articles from the Catholic Encyclopedia.  (See, for example, the articles on original sin, supernatural order, sanctifying grace, and concupiscence.  You might also look at a book like Matthias Scheeben’s recently reprinted The Mysteries of Christianity.  The best discussion of the doctrine I’ve read is in Thomas Harper’s long out-of-print little book The Immaculate Conception, but that is hard to track down.  You can read about Harper here and Scheeben here.)

Natural and supernatural

For Scholastic theology, human beings have, like everything else, a nature or essence, and what is good for them – what they need in order to flourish as the kinds of creatures they are – is determined by that essence.  Hence, for example, because we are by nature rational animals our flourishing requires both bodily goods (food, shelter, and the like) and intellectual goods (such as the acquisition of knowledge).  The point of Scholastic natural law theory is to provide an account of the various human goods and their moral implications.  (I provide a brief sketch of how this goes in the first half of this article, and also in chapter 5 of Aquinas.)

Now among the things that are naturally good for us is a certain kind of knowledge of God and a certain kind of religious devotion.  For as rational animals, we are capable of knowing the ultimate causes of things and of freely pursuing the good; and God is the ultimate cause of things and the highest good.  The paradigm of this natural knowledge of God is the sort of thing we know from natural theology – for example, the kind of arguments concerning God’s nature and essence one finds in Aristotelian or Neo-Platonic philosophy.  

As with other creatures, nature provides human beings with what they need in order to realize these goods, at least in a general way.  For example, we need food, and nature is set up in such a way that we can acquire it – by hunting and gathering, through basic farming, and also by the more sophisticated agricultural methods and economic institutions familiar from modern life, which our natural rational capacities have made possible.  We need knowledge of God, and philosophical investigation gives us such knowledge.  But as with other creatures, while nature provides the means to our ends, she doesn’t guarantee that every one of us will in fact realize those ends.  Due to misfortune, some of us sometimes go hungry.  Due to intellectual error and the complexity of the philosophical issues, some of us sometimes fail properly to understand the main arguments for God’s existence, or mix all sorts of errors into whatever knowledge of God we do have.  Due to the weaknesses of our wills, we also fall into moral error.  And when moral and intellectual errors multiply throughout a culture, the resulting general social environment may make it difficult for a given individual living within it to avoid more numerous and more serious moral and intellectual errors than he otherwise would have been prone to.  (Modern Western society provides a good example, insofar as the secularist portion of it is much farther from understanding the basic truths of natural theology and natural law than perhaps any other culture ever has been.  I have explored the contingent historical and philosophical reasons for this elsewhere.)

So, human beings in their natural state have only a limited capacity to realize the ends their nature requires them to pursue in order that they might flourish.  They have the raw materials needed for this pursuit, but the finitude of their intellectual, moral, and material endowments entails that there is no guarantee that each and every individual human being will in fact realize the ends in question, or realize them perfectly when they do realize them at all.  Nature has granted us what it “owes” us given what we need in order to flourish as the kind of creatures we are, but no more than that.  This is the situation Adam, Eve, and their descendants would have been in had God left the human race in its purely natural state.

But according to Christian theology, God offered to our first parents more than what was “owed” to us given our nature.  He offered us a supernatural gift.  Here it is crucial to understand what “supernatural” means in this context.  It has nothing to do with ghosts, goblins, and the like.  What is meant is rather that God offered us a good that went above or beyond what our nature required us to have.  In particular, he offered Adam and Eve the beatific vision – a direct, “face to face” knowledge of the divine essence which far transcends the very limited knowledge of God we can have through natural reason, and which would entail unsurpassable bliss of a kind we could never attain given our natural powers.  He also offered special helps that would deliver us from the limitations of our natures – that would free us from the ignorance and error our intellectual limitations open the door to, the moral errors our weak wills lead us into, the sicknesses and injuries our bodily limitations make possible, and so forth.

By definition, none of this was “owed” to us, precisely because it is supernatural.  Hence while God cannot fail to will for us what is good for us given our nature, He would have done us no wrong in refraining from offering these supernatural gifts to us, precisely because they go beyond what our nature requires for our fulfillment.  Still, He offered them to us anyway.  But this offer was conditional. 

The fall of man

The condition was the obedience of our first parents.  Yet they did not obey.  And of course, that is the point of the account of their eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  It wasn’t fruit per se that was important, but rather the will to rebel against the Creator.  (Recall Augustine’s youthful theft of the pears, where what was attractive about the theft was the fact that it was forbidden, not the fact that he got some pears out of it.)  The penalty was the loss of the supernatural gifts they had been given and that their descendants would have been given, and a fall back into their merely natural state, with all its limitations.  In particular, it was a loss of all the helps that would effectively have removed those limitations -- and worst of all, loss of the beatific vision.

In short, the penalty of original sin was a privation, not a positive harm inflicted on human beings but rather the absence of a benefit they never had a right to or strict need for in the first place but would have received anyway had they not disobeyed.  And it wasn’t the prospect of pitchforks and hellfire that Adam’s descendents had to look forward to because of what Adam did, but rather the privation of this supernatural gift.  What is essential to Hell is the loss of the beatific vision, and while Hell can certainly also involve more than that (including the pains of sense) the standard view is that it does so only for those guilty of actual sin, and not those (such as infants who die without baptism) who merely suffer the penalty of original sin, without ever having committed actual sin.  (For this reason the Scholastic tradition came to settle around the view that infants who die without baptism, and thus without removal of the penalty of original sin, probably enjoy perpetual natural happiness -- the highest state we could have attained without being raised to the supernatural gift of the beatific vision.)

You might compare the situation to that of a landowner who has sold an unimproved parcel of land to a certain family – which, just to be cute, we’ll call the Adams family.  In allowing the Adamses to take possession of the parcel, he’s given them everything he owed them.  But suppose he offers to throw in, for free, something extra – to plant on the land a vineyard using the finest quality vines, whose fruit will make possible the best wine.  This is something that all the descendents of the original Adamses who bought the land will profit from.  But the landowner makes the offer only conditionally.  He wants to see how Mr. and Mrs. Adams are going to handle things before turning the vineyard over to the Adams family as a whole, including the many descendents who are not likely to do any better with the vines than their ancestors are.  So if Mr. and Mrs. Adams do well with the first vines planted, they and their descendents will get to keep them and reap the benefits.  If not, the landowner will tear them out and leave the Adamses and their descendents with only the original unimproved parcel, which is all they were owed in the first place. 

Now suppose that Mr. and Mrs. Adams botch things up, and the landowner removes the vineyard.  The fault is entirely theirs, but all their descendents necessarily suffer the penalty just as much as they do, just by virtue of being Adamses.  Yet it is not a positive harm that is inflicted on them, but rather the loss of a benefit they were not entitled to but nevertheless would have received if not for the actions of their ancestors.  

The hereditary stain

Notice that there is nothing the least bit unjust about the landowner’s actions, since he never owed the vineyard to any of the Adamses in the first place.  He would have done Mr. and Mrs. Adams no wrong if he had refrained from offering the vineyard, and he does none of their descendants wrong in denying it to them.  Notice also that there is nothing remotely mysterious about how our fictional Adamses inherit the penalty of Mr. and Mrs. Adams’ error, and do so genetically.  For they do so, not because they’ve got some strange “vineyard-losing gene” but rather simply because they are the biological descendents of Mr. and Mrs. Adams, and the deal that would have gained or lost them the vineyard was a deal made with Mr. and Mrs. Adams on their behalf.

Similarly, we inherit the penalty of original sin, not in the sense that we’ve got some “original sin gene” alongside genes for eye color and tooth enamel, but rather in the sense that the offer of the supernatural gifts was made to the human race as a whole through their first parent acting as their representative.  Inheriting this penalty from Adam is more like inheriting your father’s name or bank account than it is like inheriting his looks or his temperament.  And there is no more injustice in this inheritance than there is in the landowner’s not planting a vineyard for Mr. and Mrs. Adams’ descendents.  

That, anyway, is how the doctrine of original sin came to be understood in the Scholastic tradition.  Obviously the account depends crucially on the distinction between the natural and supernatural orders -- a distinction that was blurred in Protestantism and has also been blurred by some modern Catholic theologians (a tendency criticized by Pope Pius XII at paragraph 26 of Humani Generis).  Part of the danger of blurring it is that doing so threatens to make a hash of the doctrine of original sin.  If Adam and Eve lost for us something we are in some sense owed by nature, or if the penalty of original sin did involve some positive damage to that nature rather than merely the privation of a supernatural gift, then it does come to seem unjust that we have inherited that penalty, and the door is opened at least a crack to the caricatures of the doctrine’s critics. 

286 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Tony said...
    Ok, one comment I read on another site indicates that biologists took that known mutation rate, projected it backward to the Cambrian period, and found that it CANNOT explain the genetic variation and explosion of species that we have evidence for.

    There are a paucity of known speacies pre-Cambrian, in part because such creatures would have been soft-bodied (hard body parts are much more likely to fossilize), while in the Cambrian we begin to see hard body parts.

    However, I find it difficult to see how, based on that lack of information, any person could determine just how much genetic diversity there was in the pre-Cambrian period. Life seems to have started some 3 billion-plus years ago, the Cambrian was less than a billion years ago. That's well over two billion years of time to increase genetic diversity. I don't see why there would be a problem with having sufficient diversity for the Cambrian period.

    In other words, that measured mutation rate has problems of its own.

    No measured rate can ever be perfectly known, but the Cambrian period poses no problme for the range of rates we can extrapolate from known mutation rates.

    It may be possible that the mutation rate varies with sunspots (or, insert your preferred alternate).

    What would be the mechanism for this assumption? What about sunspots would increase/decrease the rate of copy errors in DNA, epigentic alterations, or other types of mutations?

    In which case, you could have a very noticeable swing in mutation rates during different periods. If it also changes due to 2 or 3 other conditions, you could easily have unusual, infrequent periods where all of these periodic causes coincide with truly staggering mutation rates.

    Anything is possible. Maybe mutations were guided from delta rays being shot at us from underground Martians. If you don't have a mechanism for explaining the changes, it's not a very useful idea.

    What OTHER assumptions are being made in the theory, that we are ignoring or assuming are very, very probable but are really only the best guess we have right now?

    Well, science has many assumptions generally, such as isotropy and homogeneity. Also, any time you take a series of observations and say it is a general occurance, you are making an intuitive leap. For example, it's an assumption that my eldest son was created by the union of sperm and egg, becasue we know that's how many animals create offspring, and we have no toher mechanism for explaining it. But that's an assumption, nonetheless.

    Anyone want to predict which part of the theory is analogous to Newton's "space" that was written out of physics 100 years ago?

    People use Newton's space every day. it's used by carpenters, missle technicians, automotive crash tests, athletic trainers, and in any other profession where the difference in predictions between Newton's formulas and relativistic formlas is less the the size of measurement error.

    Our approximations will improve, but that won't change evolution nor our evolutionary history, and more than aples stopped falling from trees while general relativity was being formulated and tested.

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  4. Only a miniscule part of evolutionary theory is subject to direct experimental verification.

    Also true for a miniscule part of physics and chemistry, not to mention and even smaller part of cosmology. Will you start pulling geo-centric language out becasue of that?

    Indirect verification of its very nature rests on assumptions that THIS situation is "just like" THAT situation, which scientists tell us over and over again is how you end up with mistakes.

    If you give up on homogeneity, you open yourself to Last Tuesdayism. You won't find many to take that journey with you on this blog.

    I would like to see scientists actually observe some macro-evolution, preferably several instances of it, and even some experimental work in bringing it about, before they act so all-fired sure of their conclusions.


    If "macro-evolution" means "evolution above the level of species" (which is the usual definition), this has been obwerved in the laboratory and in the field. Feel free to check out the speciation FAQ at talk.origins. If you have some other meaning, you'll need to define it precisely.

    I refuse to turn this thread into a prolonged exercise rebutting well-worn, often-rebutted creationist talking points. If you continue in this vein, I will respond in some post on my blog, and link to it. I don't mind such prolonged distractions in my own house, but here I am a guest.

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  5. Kjetil Kringlebotten said...

    "It is a sin in the normal sense of the word. The normal sense of sin (from the german word Sünde) means (in our language) both a state (a chasm between us and God) *and a sinful act.*"

    In the aesteriks, I take it you mean that it was Adam’s sinful act, am I correct? It is still sort of misleading, it can seem to imply that we're actively sinning or that we've sinned "in adam" as Augustine put it. I hope I am not being unreasonable in saying it so. Perhaps a term like “first sin” or the “loss of original justice” would be a better term… most likely the catholic church has a good reason for sticking to the expression “original sin” to begin with.

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  6. Daniel A. Duran,

    Thank you for your reply. I see no point in pursuing the matter further.

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  7. Onebrow, said.

    “ When I mock silly ideas, I take no pleasure in people being embarrassed by them. You acknowledged you do. My point is that I suspect this is behavior you actually find inappropriate. ”

    I already explained why I like to embarrass *some* people like trolls or people that hold absurd or morally repulsive ideas. A: It can stop them from spreading errors. B: it can help people from taking them seriously. If you find it inappropriate, then we’ll have to have to agree to disagree on that and move on.

    “your behavior stands in stark constrast to your complaint about djindra's behavior. Note the things being contrasted are "your behavior" and "your complaint".”

    Sorry, I don’t understand your point. I don’t see what complaint of mine is being contrasted with what in djindra’s behavior. And how that ,somehow, contrasts my “behavior” and “complaint”. You will have to clarify that one for me.

    “You said, "But I like to embarrass them in public.", where them referred to people. You later changed it to "... mocking silly ideas in public", the change is, as you say, plain and clear.”

    To quote you (“Is "them" the people you acknowledge you enjoy embarrassing?”)
    ‘The people that make ridiculous statements, like holocaust deniers or nambla proponents? Sure.’
    So which part of the above was too subtle to understand? How did that change my position?

    “So, it's OK to make fun of people of a particular type? “

    Yes, trolls, people holding morally repulsive ide…I am starting to sound like a broken record. Please, don’t make me repeat myself.

    “Is djindra the equivalent of a holocaust denier or a NAMBLA proponent,”

    I would like to believe that for all of Djindra’s faults he falls very short of having the same degree or sharing the errors or perversions as holocaust deniers and NAMBLA proponents. Hopefully, I have nothing in common with them, so what’s your point?

    “What indicates suprise, to you?”

    ‘The Christianity of this board shines through!’ If that doesn’t convey surprise, then it's not wroking well to give the opposite impression.

    “That aside, attacks on my nickname are not a defense to your desire to hide your true nature.”

    And I never did say that they’re a defense “to hide my true nature,” whatever that means. The reason why I did not answer your question is simple: I do not understand it. Just like your vague questions like ‘aren’t we all sinners?’
    What “real nature” am I hiding? I think I have been frank with you down to why I like to embarrass trolls, immoral people, etc.. Maybe if you try to avoid vague, nebulous accusations I can supply an answer.

    “Yes. Why not just say, "I laugh at *people*, even though I know it is wrong."?”

    Why not say it? Because that’s no what I said. Contrary to what you wrote I do not laugh at people in general and without qualification. Not even most people. I already told you whom I mock and why. I will not bother with the ‘you know its wrong’ bit since that has been addressed.

    “If you like, add a few remarks about how your tryihg to change.”

    I appreciate you take time to, I presume, raise my moral awareness.But it is not needed, really. thanks, anyway. ;-)

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  8. Ok, one comment I read on another site indicates that biologists took that known mutation rate, projected it backward to the Cambrian period, and found that it CANNOT explain the genetic variation and explosion of species that we have evidence for.

    Can you provide a bit more detail? "Random post on the internet" doesn't amount to much these days (if it ever did).

    After all I can find comments on the internet indicating that the President of the US, the Queen of England, and the Pope are all really blood drinking reptilian aliens who have enslaved us all as food-stock.

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  9. @One Brow,

    So is it "impossible" in the sense of flipping a million coins and having them all come up heads on the first toss or is it more like 2+2=5 impossible?

    I don't require a precise answer an approximation or an "I don't really know" would be sufficient.

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  10. Additional: In terms of a natural explanation vs a supernatural intervention I would settle in the middle for a natural explanation that is highly improbable(i.e. million coin flipping)but can be attributed to Divine Providence.

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  11. James,

    "There are atheist trolls here — I see no other label proper for (say) djindra — but the other side is both far too quick to apply such labels and itself too immediately abrasive."

    This site claims to be interested in ideas -- assuming philosophy is a pursuit generally interested in ideas. In my posts I stick to ideas. I try very hard to stay away from ad hominems. I don't invent personalities for others although I have occasionally claimed this is a site for Gnu Agers. Nevertheless, I try to support my ideas through reasoned arguments and through discovery of flaws in first positions. For all of this I'm cast as a "troll." If the tag is supposed to bother me it doesn't. I see it for what it is -- ineptness of the opponent's position. My "behavior" consists of doing things right.

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  12. Daniel A. Duran,

    "I already explained why I like to embarrass *some* people like trolls or people that hold absurd or morally repulsive ideas."

    You're dreaming if you think you've embarrassed anyone but yourself.

    I do wonder what you mean by a morally repulsive idea if you intended that at me.

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  13. BenYachov,

    "It's the secret lost chapter of Leviticus we keep in a shoebox under the Superior General of the Jesuits along with the Keys to the Roswell UFO."

    As I thought. It's a symbolic, "lost" commandment. It appears nowhere in laws Christians actually live by.

    Let's say you go to confession and admit to the sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Maybe you'll get a chuckle, or maybe you'll get a scolding for being so impertinent.

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  14. BenYachov said...
    So is it "impossible" in the sense of flipping a million coins and having them all come up heads on the first toss or is it more like 2+2=5 impossible?

    Scinece is empirical. Flipping coins is empirical. Mathematics is not empirical, it is formal. So, it is obviously more like flipping coins than a math equation in that sense. If you want to base your view of our history on a notion that things behaved much differently for an extended period of time out of no other reason than chance, I don't think that evidence can be found for or against such a positon.

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  15. The problem with a two person bottleneck is the low genetic diversity. Instances of inbreeding observed throughout history show that genetic defects tend to accumulate quickly among humans (European royalty is an example of a moderately inbreed gene-pool, Ashkenazi Jews and Tay-Sachs, or the increased incidence of genetic disorders in the Palestinian population).

    Let's take that genetic defect issue then. If the theory of preternatural grace is valid, then Adam and Eve were whole and perfect, their bodies in perfect integrity. Whatever genetic defects their physical forbears might have had, THEY were free of. One presumes that this would have taken intervention by God, but that's precisely what is proposed anyway: God intervened to fuse a rational soul and matter.

    I can't say I am confident of the all of the genetic ramifications, but clearly the issue of genetic defects would be unraveled by this hypothesis. There simply would cease to be an issue.

    See, that's what I mean about assumptions built in to the science. The comment assumed that Adam and Eve would exhibit the same genetic problems as their physical ancestors. What OTHER assumptions are there?

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  16. If you want to base your view of our history on a notion that things behaved much differently for an extended period of time out of no other reason than chance, I don't think that evidence can be found for or against such a positon.

    But what about basing our view of SCIENCE - about a rate of change as measured - in reflecting that our measurements are an incredibly small sample, and a more comprehensive set of facts might show us different rates of change during different periods? Do you represent that science has established, proven, that the mutation rate is a fixed constant, applicable for all of the past billion years of life on the planet?

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  17. ME: Only a miniscule part of evolutionary theory is subject to direct experimental verification.

    One Brow: Also true for a miniscule part of physics and chemistry, not to mention and even smaller part of cosmology. Will you start pulling geo-centric language out becasue of that?

    Can you clarify what you mean by that? I was under the impression that chemistry presents itself as being able to reproduce in the laboratory virtually any firm claim it makes about chemistry. If all you mean is that we cannot reproduce in the laboratory the exact, specific, numerically unique interaction of salt dissolving and reformulating as some other chemicals that occurred on my tongue this morning, that's trivially true. That's not what I mean by not "proving" macro-evolution empirically.

    Let me step back a moment and say that I believe that the old method of identifying species works in one direction, but not automatically in the other: if 2 animals reproduce offspring that is fertile, they are of the same species. However, it may be that 2 animals are of the same species who cannot reproduce together, because of sub-species differences. If "species" is understood with A-T concepts, it might be the case that a whole group of so-called "species" as understood by biologists are not separate species considered with Aristotelian usage. Thus, for example, it is possible that moose, elk, caribou, and mule deer are all one species, even if they CAN'T reproduce together.

    What I meant, then, is that I would like to see biologists actually observe, and perhaps experimentally produce, such widely diverent speciation that would be comparable to getting felines and canines separately out of something that is clearly neither: a change at the family level would be nice. I don't insist on something as widely divergent as mammals from bacteria.

    Please don't get me wrong: I am not suggesting that there is no EVIDENCE for macroevolution. What I am saying is that I would like scientists to observe it.

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  18. Tony:
    "The comment assumed that Adam and Eve would exhibit the same genetic problems as their physical ancestors. What OTHER assumptions are there?"

    First of all, Tony, Adam and Eve didn’t have ancestors.

    However, you have touched on an important problem. What assumptions are these biologists making in order to come to the conclusion that they do? I know that they tend to present their thesis with such great confidence that one might be led to believe that when they look in their microscopes they can actually see (at least) ten thousand of our hominid ancestors roaming the savannah. But, of course, it’s not as clear as all that. And in fact it’s quite opaque; for they simply have no idea . . none, nil, zip, nada. . . what the genetic make-up of our early ancestors were, beyond that it must have been such to produce the what they are able to observe, i.e., the genetic make-up of modern humans. Therefore, in order to come up with any coherent thesis whatsoever they must assume something about our early ancestors. And what is their assumption? It’s that the genetic potency of our early ancestors is pretty much the same as ours. Given that assumption, the 10,000 hominids naturally follow. Of course, in order for their thesis to be worth anything more than a bucket of warm spit, our esteemed biologists will have to come up with evidence for their uniformitarian assumptions, but don’t hold your breath. First of all, no such evidence is available. Second of all, what do they really care about evidence anyway, or science for that matter? All they care about is taking another opportunity to promote their ape-man rubbish, and persuade a besotted public that science has once again shown the Bible to be a load of crap.

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  19. Tony said...
    But what about basing our view of SCIENCE - about a rate of change as measured - in reflecting that our measurements are an incredibly small sample, and a more comprehensive set of facts might show us different rates of change during different periods?

    What about it? Do you have a mechanism for this happening? Was it magic? It this pointless spitballing?

    Do you represent that science has established, proven, that the mutation rate is a fixed constant, applicable for all of the past billion years of life on the planet?

    Established, yes. Proof is for alcohol and mathematicians. I've already talked about the role of homogeneity. If wyou want to discard homogeneity, fine, but last Tuesdayism becomes viable. If not, you need to provide a reason the mutation rate could have been different.

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  20. Tony said...
    That's not what I mean by not "proving" macro-evolution empirically.

    I have asked you what a precise definition would be, if you meant more than "change above the species level".

    ... if 2 animals reproduce offspring that is fertile, they are of the same species.

    Generally, although there is some grey area (what if the offspring is fertile 10%/50%/90% of the time, ring species, etc.).

    Thus, for example, it is possible that moose, elk, caribou, and mule deer are all one species, even if they CAN'T reproduce together.

    Under what definition of species?

    What I meant, then, is that I would like to see biologists actually observe, and perhaps experimentally produce, such widely diverent speciation that would be comparable to getting felines and canines separately out of something that is clearly neither: a change at the family level would be nice.

    Humans have experimentally produced bacteria that thrive in citrate from bacteria that die of starvation in a citrate medium. That's a fundamental change.

    For species like mammals, the families go back close to one hundred million years. You want to see that in a laboratory experiement?

    Please don't get me wrong: I am not suggesting that there is no EVIDENCE for macroevolution. What I am saying is that I would like scientists to observe it.

    I'd like to see a high-jumper clear a mile-high bar. But I don't set the bar that high.

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  21. The comment assumed that Adam and Eve would exhibit the same genetic problems as their physical ancestors. What OTHER assumptions are there?

    Well that the first humans didn't spawn from plants, or have wings... really there are a vast number of highly improbably, but still possible, states that are not considered.

    Those base assumptions are used as long as the evidence supports them. Since we find evidence of detrimental mutations in every living thing that we examine, as well as indications of such mutations in the fossil record the assumption that detrimental mutations occur in every living thing is a reasonable one.

    For the "two individuals with no detrimental mutations" to move beyond conjecture you'd first have to show evidence for their existence.

    But what about basing our view of SCIENCE - about a rate of change as measured - in reflecting that our measurements are an incredibly small sample, and a more comprehensive set of facts might show us different rates of change during different periods?

    Sure... so show evidence of that change in the rate of mutation.

    Which is how science works... we use the evidence that we have to form theories. When new evidence comes along it either confirms those theories (strengthening them) or contradicts those theories (weakening them).

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  22. First of all, no such evidence is available.

    um yes it is. DNA has been recovered from incredibly ancient sources (500k years or more).

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  23. @Stone Tops

    George R is a Young Earth Creationist & a Geocentracist. He also denies Pope Benedict XVI is the real Pope.

    He is more on your unsophisticated level of Atheist polemics.

    Have fun.

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  24. @George R

    Since you are a fellow Christian even thought you only count as a Separated Brethren(i.e. Schismatic and Heretic) I will point out Stone Tops doesn't know Thomism or the First Cause from the Kalam Cosmological Argument from a hole in the head.

    Hit em there. It's likely he has an answer to every one of your recycled ANSWERS IN GENESIS responses.

    Hit em where he is weak.

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  25. Now dance monkeys for my entertainment!

    I don't care who wins.

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  26. One Brow:

    "Humans have experimentally produced bacteria that thrive in citrate from bacteria that die of starvation in a citrate medium. That's a fundamental change."

    That's not entirely true. Humans haven't produced anything like that. Wild type E coli or at least the type I often found in my microbiology reports are capable of metabolising citrate.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC291204/pdf/aem00244-0013.pdf

    It's similar to antibiotic resistance, we've recently discovered ancient bacteria carrying the same genes which code for antibiotic resistance as antibiotics are natural products produced by fungi and Actinomyces spp.

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  27. um yes it is. DNA has been recovered from incredibly ancient sources (500k years or more).

    A passage from the following article on DNA found in Egyptian mummies:

    http://www.pbs.org/wnet/pharaohs/secrets3.html

    The DNA of any organism will quickly begin to degrade after death. Exposure to environmental conditions like moisture, sunlight, and air, will speed the process. The Egyptian mummies were uniquely preserved, and protected from much of that assault, which increases the likelihood of recovering DNA from their tissue. But at best, the fragments are small, and don't hold enough information to describe a single gene.

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  28. One Brow: I think it would be proper to characterize them by the difficulty they present for being appropriately accounted for in the Thomistic metaphysics. My intention was to say that the problems which, under such a characterization could be calssified as easily resolved, are the problems about which Dr. Feser has habitually written.

    Perhaps it's just his clarity of explanation that makes the issues he addresses seem easily resolved…?! At any rate, "easily resolved" does not mean easily explained, and it's hardly surprising if Feser doesn't choose to spend his free time hashing out the toughest issues for an audience that would mostly be incapable of following. Indeed, someone who is enough of an expert in Thomism to be able to understand the hard stuff will have a different notion of what exactly constitutes a difficult issue in the first place. Now certainly, that doesn't mean that it would be intellectually dishonest not to run out and become a Thomist; it just means that you can't discount it until you are expert enough to judge the advanced topics.



    Thanks for the link to Vallicella's piece. I think it's a good example of that last point — I don't see a problem there at all, let alone a serious one. My first thought when I reached the word "overlap" was, "This isn't referring to spatial overlap, is it?" If you apply notions of physical space to an immaterial item, what kind of result do you expect? If two items completely overlap physically, then the most we can conclude is that their physical part(s) are the same. But of course the scenario we're supposed to be considering is the Thomistic view that no object can be only material. It's worth noting that Vallicella himself doesn't call this a problem for Thomism. His conclusion is basically that it seems kinda weird, which it no doubt does to someone not used to thinking in terms of traditional philosophy; much as Japanese poetry would seem strange to someone who isn't familiar with Japanese (or poetry). Even if it really is just a bad poem, you won't know until you've studied enough to be familiar.

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  29. One Brow: I know no traditional/acceptable terminology to refer to the two models separately. If you have none, we might call them the "extensive" and the "limited" versions of per se causation.

    I don't understand exactly what the difference is supposed to be either — it sounds more to me like the poster might have been getting confused with causation per accidens. And I hope someone will correct me if I go wrong, but I would say that causation per se does not require literal temporal simultaneity (albeit a natural if naive way to imagine it), and I don't know of anywhere that Aquinas explicitly claims it does. (Logical togetherness is required in the sense that if a cause and its effect didn't go together they wouldn't be cause and effect, but that doesn't mean they must be temporally or spatially "touching".)

    As for infinity, I suspect it might be possible to have such an infinite series if the First Cause generated one. (Though perhaps that would collapse to an accidental series, I'm not sure.) But if the First Cause is one of our premises to get that series, then it's no use when we're trying to establish whether there is a First Cause. The problem Thomas raises is traversing an actual infinity: an instrumental cause is only a cause insofar as some prior cause activates it, and an infinite series has no first cause, so none of its other "causes" can actually be causes either (they are only potential causes). So maybe a First Cause + infinity more causes can work, but infinite causes on their own never get off the ground, and that's the impossibility the argument rejects.

    there is a similar notion that would make the hand-stone-stick accidental: God can create a compression wave in the stick, and then the hand need never have existed at all.

    Right, but that's only useful it we are considering a scenario which has no hand (at least not as cause). If the hand really is the cause of the stick's motion,
    then we have to account for that somehow. I guess we could propose explaining all changes that way, i.e. deny that the hand is the cause of the stick's motion after all; in fact we could suppose that any time you move your hand it has no real effect, it just appears to because God miraculously causes suitable compression waves/etc. We can posit that God is behind all effects anywhere… but of course then God would still the First Cause (in fact, the only cause).

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  30. I take back what I said.

    My money is on George R....for now.

    I reserve the right to change my bet.

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  31. One Brow: This is not to say physics can disprove metaphysics, but rather that metaphysics based on poor physical models will have unreliable results.

    Maybe. Metaphysics "limits" physics in the same way that logic does, i.e. it's supposed to describe what is possible. Obviously, if your metaphysical system says something is impossible and that something actually happens, then the metaphysics is wrong. However, metaphysics has to allow for things that could be physically possible, that is, even though something actually is physically impossible, it might have been possible, say, if the laws of physics were different. So even if your physics is wrong, as long as your metaphysics is broad enough, it could still allow for what turns out to be real physics. So I agree that in a practical sense, bad physics could certainly lead one astray, but on the other hand if you're good enough at metaphysics, your system will be good enough to accommodate new discoveries in physics. Which is how Thomism managed to be compatible with things like evolution and QM centuries before science figured them out.

    In particular, the notion that every change must have a cause seems to be an inaccurate notion of physics.

    That every change must have a billiard-ball cause, yes. But Thomism already accommodates anything we know about modern physics, so at best we might have an alternative to Scholastic metaphysics that also is capable of providing a suitable foundation. But modern billiard-ballism is more or less a refined version of ancient atomism, and suffers from many of the same objections that led to the widespread acceptance of Platonic/Aristotelian-based philosophies. Uncaused causes are precarious: give them an inch and they're liable to take your whole ability to reason about the universe. We perhaps could view Aristotelian metaphysics as an attempt to explicate the only workable theory of Uncaused Causes.

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  32. A passage from the following article on DNA found in Egyptian mummies:

    How about something a bit crunchier?

    Like, say, the DNA analysis of Neanderthals?


    "Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was retrieved for the first time from a Neandertal from the Iberian Peninsula, excavated from the El Sidrón Cave (Asturias, North of Spain), and dated to ca. 43,000 years ago."
    http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/4/1077.abstract

    or

    "A complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequence
    was reconstructed from a 38,000 year-old Neandertal individual with 8341 mtDNA sequences identified
    among 4.8 Gb of DNA generated from 0.3 g of
    bone."
    http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/pdf/Green_Complete_Cell_2008.pdf

    Sure the conditions needed for DNA to be preserved for long periods are rare, but it is not impossible.

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  33. I will point out Stone Tops doesn't know Thomism or the First Cause from the Kalam Cosmological Argument from a hole in the head.

    The problem there is that I do know about the so called "First Cause" and the KCA, I just find them to be built on illogical foundations.

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  34. Mr. Green,

    We perhaps could view Aristotelian metaphysics as an attempt to explicate the only workable theory of Uncaused Causes."

    Aristotelian metaphysics does not explicate a workable theory of Uncaused Causes. It posits an uncaused cause that it does not bother to explain. Its logic is inherently contradictory (all causes must have a cause -- except one). It's no more than a shell game.

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  35. >The problem there is that I do know about the so called "First Cause" and the KCA, I just find them to be built on illogical foundations.

    Stop lying Tops you think Aquinas' First Cause argument and Kalam are the same thing.

    After dozens and dozens and dozens of posts you really can't fake it.

    Heck I've seen you deny universal common ancestors and recent common ancestors because it sounds like it agrees with Genesis. Even thought it's a concept that every Atheist Geneticist Evolutionary biologist is familiar with.

    Stop screwing around. You don't know Jack Chick!

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  36. Sorry I forgot I'm feeding a troll aren't I?

    I'm out of here.

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  37. Stop lying Tops you think Aquinas' First Cause argument and Kalam are the same thing.

    Nope... I just don't find either of them to be reasonable, just like how the Twilight books and Dan Brown novels are not the same... but still bad literature.

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  38. Anonymous said...
    That's not entirely true. Humans haven't produced anything like that. Wild type E coli or at least the type I often found in my microbiology reports are capable of metabolising citrate.

    That's probably how Lenski got the inspiration for the experiement. To the extant that I gave the impression that Lenksi had gotten bacteria to do something no bacteria has done, I was wrong. However, he did get populations of bacteria that were not able to digest citrate and alter it to a citrate-eating population, which was a major change. Would you agree that qualifies as a macro-evolutionary change?

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  39. Mr. Green said...
    Perhaps it's just his clarity of explanation that makes the issues he addresses seem easily resolved…?!

    Perhaps, although better than half the time I find his objections to be sensible even before the detail. The notion that a populaiton bottleneck minimum disproves the ensoulment of a single pair, from whom all current humans descend, has problems, but they are not with biology.

    ... it's hardly surprising if Feser doesn't choose to spend his free time hashing out the toughest issues for an audience that would mostly be incapable of following.

    It would be nice to at least have such questions acknowledged.

    It's worth noting that Vallicella himself doesn't call this a problem for Thomism. His conclusion is basically that it seems kinda weird, ...

    There's a big difference between "problem" and "difficulty" in this regard?

    I don't understand exactly what the difference is supposed to be either —

    The difference is between using the notion of per se causation for a Kalaam-type argument, and using the notion of per se causation for the First Way (as Feser explains it, perhaps you understand the First Way differently). In a Kalaam-style argument, chains of per se causation can go on indefinitely. For the First Way (which pictures God as continually causing the universe), the chains need to be finite and simultaneous.

    As for infinity, I suspect it might be possible to have such an infinite series if the First Cause generated one. (Though perhaps that would collapse to an accidental series, I'm not sure.)

    This is the first time someone has mentioned the notion that a per se chain can "collapse" into a per accidens chain. My impression has been that you identify the chain by the nature of the indivdual links, and if every link is per se, so is the chain. Could you elaborate on that?

    So maybe a First Cause + infinity more causes can work, but infinite causes on their own never get off the ground, and that's the impossibility the argument rejects.

    That's a fairly naive notion of infinity. If the chain has always been in motion, it never needs to get off the ground.

    Of course, there also the issue of whether this is a good model for our current understanding of physics, but that's separate from the notions of the model itself.

    If the hand really is the cause of the stick's motion, then we have to account for that somehow. I guess we could propose explaining all changes that way, i.e. deny that the hand is the cause of the stick's motion after all;

    That's a fairly naive notion of infinity. If the chain has always been in motion, it never needs to get off the ground.

    I talking about going the other way, where the hand itself is merely part of an infinite per se chain.

    ... but on the other hand if you're good enough at metaphysics, your system will be good enough to accommodate new discoveries in physics. Which is how Thomism managed to be compatible with things like evolution and QM centuries before science figured them out.

    There seem to be issues in the act-potency assignment to subatomic effects.

    One Brow: In particular, the notion that every change must have a cause seems to be an inaccurate notion of physics.

    That every change must have a billiard-ball cause, yes. But Thomism already accommodates anything we know about modern physics, so at best we might have an alternative to Scholastic metaphysics that also is capable of providing a suitable foundation.


    To my understanding, modern physics recognizes fundamentally random effects, potentials for which no act is directive.

    Uncaused causes are precarious: give them an inch and they're liable to take your whole ability to reason about the universe.

    Unless you change your reasoning to accomodate them.

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  40. @Daniel,

    “In the aesteriks, I take it you mean that it was Adam’s sinful act, am I correct?”

    Not only that. Any sinful act.

    “It is still sort of misleading, it can seem to imply that we're actively sinning or that we've sinned "in adam" as Augustine put it.”

    Of course it can be if one doesn’t want to pursue the question. But it doesn’t take much searching to find the answer. It’s not hard if one doesn’t want it to be.

    “I hope I am not being unreasonable in saying it so. Perhaps a term like “first sin” or the “loss of original justice” would be a better term… most likely the catholic church has a good reason for sticking to the expression “original sin” to begin with.”

    Yes, because ‘sin’ doesn’t just mean ‘sinful act,’ it also means ‘sinful state.’ The etymology even suggests the latter. ‘Sin’ comes from ‘Sünde,’ which literally means a chasm. It can mean a water separating two pieces of land. In Norway, where I’m from, such a water is called a ‘Sund.’

    So the word ‘sin’ more properly refers to a state than an act.

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  41. One Brow: There's a big difference between "problem" and "difficulty" in this regard?

    There's a difference between what a philosophical system has difficulty explaining and what a given person has difficulty understanding.



    In a Kalaam-style argument, chains of per se causation can go on indefinitely. For the First Way (which pictures God as continually causing the universe), the chains need to be finite and simultaneous.

    They need to be "together" in the sense that each link is essential, but not temporally simultaneous. And again, it's not that the First Way prohibits infinite causal chains; but it rules out chains where every subsequent act must depend on the "first" but there is no first. If you have a finite sequence with first and last, that's fine, and if you can figure out how to traverse an infinite sequence with first and "last", then that would be fine too. 



    This is the first time someone has mentioned the notion that a per se chain can "collapse" into a per accidens chain. My impression has been that you identify the chain by the nature of the indivdual links, and if every link is per se, so is the chain.

    Oh, I didn't mean that the causes would somehow change their kind, just that in reframing the scenario I might be actually be changing it to a subtly different scenario that was accidental instead. However, the same cause can be accidental in one respect and essential in another; that is, it might be accidental to effect X and also per se to effect Y.

    That's a fairly naive notion of infinity.

    Not at all. (Though we do need to take care to distinguish logical priority from temporal priority.) The problem is not that the infinite chain couldn't have been always in motion. But it needs to get "off the ground" logically, in terms of potency and act, even if that potency is effectively activated at all points in time. Maybe look at it from the perspective of possible worlds: in one possible world, we've got the infinite chain, always in motion. But if each link in the chain is potential (has the potential to be 'off' instead of active), then there's some other possible world in which the whole chain is off, and nothing happens. There has to be some reason why the former world is the actual one instead of the latter. That each link in the chain has the potential to be on— even that all of them do — is not by itself sufficient to explain why we would get an "all on" series.



    To my understanding, modern physics recognizes fundamentally random effects, potentials for which no act is directive.

    Yes, but of course physics can only talk about "physically random", i.e. uncorrelated with any other physical quantity. It's impossible to conclude from that that there could not be any act at all behind it; however it is consistent with every potency being activated by something that is already actual.

    [Uncaused causes are precarious: ]

    Unless you change your reasoning to accomodate them.


    Sure, just not abandon it. If your explanation for X is "no cause; it just happened", then you can say that for any other Y, which effectively explains nothing. And if X can be uncaused but Y can't, then there must be some reason why X is different from Y in that respect; but that just means that there is a cause behind it after all.

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  42. Mr. Green said...
    There's a difference between what a philosophical system has difficulty explaining and what a given person has difficulty understanding.



    Are you saying that you, specifically, understand the details of the non-mereological union of form and matter, or that you are confidant someone else does, but Vallicella doesn't have access to this informaiton, or doesn't understand it? If not, what did you mean?

    They need to be "together" in the sense that each link is essential, but not temporally simultaneous. And again, it's not that the First Way prohibits infinite causal chains; but it rules out chains where every subsequent act must depend on the "first" but there is no first.

    FRom what I can tell, you present these chains differently than Feser or a couple of the commenters here. Based on your depiction of such chains, do you agree that they do not support the notion of God continually suppling act into the universe, but rather can only be used to support a God setting things off at the beginning?

    If you have a finite sequence with first and last,

    This is possible in formal systems such as metaphysics, but not in physical systems, from what I can tell.

    However, the same cause can be accidental in one respect and essential in another; that is, it might be accidental to effect X and also per se to effect Y.

    If W is a per se cause of X, X is a per se cause of Y, and Y is a per se cause of Z, we would have both a per se chain and possibly X as a per accidens cause of Z?

    But it needs to get "off the ground" logically, in terms of potency and act, even if that potency is effectively activated at all points in time.

    Unless change is a necessarey aspect of existence, in which case the mere existence explains the change.

    , then there's some other possible world in which the whole chain is off, and nothing happens.

    How do you know such a world is possible? That we can conceive it does not make it possible.

    Yes, but of course physics can only talk about "physically random", i.e. uncorrelated with any other physical quantity. It's impossible to conclude from that that there could not be any act at all behind it; however it is consistent with every potency being activated by something that is already actual.

    So, you think such things are correlated with non-physical activations? God makes atoms decay?

    Sure, just not abandon it. If your explanation for X is "no cause; it just happened", then you can say that for any other Y, which effectively explains nothing.

    Why is it impossible for X to be uncaused because that is the nature of X, while Y is caused because that is the nature of Y? All-or-nothing seems extreme for no good reason.

    And if X can be uncaused but Y can't, then there must be some reason why X is different from Y in that respect; but that just means that there is a cause behind it after all.

    This doesn't explain why X occurs at time t2 as opposed to earlier time t1. Object x, upon whom X occurs, has the same nature at t1 as at t2. So, you can't just say that the nature of x itself is the cause, because that is not sufficient.

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  43. One Brow: Are you saying that you, specifically, understand the details of the non-mereological union of form and matter, or that you are confidant someone else does, but Vallicella doesn't have access to this informaiton, or doesn't understand it?

    I don't claim to be an expert, but I know why form and matter "are not parts in any ordinary mereological sense" when the so-called "ordinary" sense is defined in terms of matter only. Vallicella has as access to as much information about Thomism as anyone else, so I don't really know why he finds it "troubling", but obviously that's a subjective feeling since many other people do not find it troubling at all.

    FRom what I can tell, you present these chains differently than Feser or a couple of the commenters here.

    Some commenters here understand Thomism better than I do, and some don't. I'm pretty confident in what I've said here, though, so it's compatible with my understanding of what Ed has said elsewhere. If not, I hope someone more knowledgeable will step in….

    Based on your depiction of such chains, do you agree that they do not support the notion of God continually suppling act into the universe, but rather can only be used to support a God setting things off at the beginning?

    I wouldn't say that. The Second Way also makes use of per se causality, and leads to the conclusion that a First Cause keeps everything in existence at every moment. But it seems to me even the First Way gets that far because any instant at which potential is being actualized needs an act at that moment.

    > "If you have a finite sequence with first and last,"
    This is possible in formal systems such as metaphysics, but not in physical systems, from what I can tell.


    I don't follow that.

    If W is a per se cause of X, X is a per se cause of Y, and Y is a per se cause of Z, we would have both a per se chain and possibly X as a per accidens cause of Z?

    I would say X is an indirect per se cause of Z, though it might by coincidence also be an accidental cause in some different respect. But then again it might not, so I don't mean that any essential cause will also be an accidental cause in some related way. (E.g. Abraham is an accidental cause of Isaac's being able to sit on someone's shoulders, but if Isaac happens to be sitting on Abraham's shoulders, then Abe is an essential cause of that. But that's only because we contrived the example such that Abraham happens to be one person filling two causal roles at once.)

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  44. One Brow: Unless change is a necessarey aspect of existence, in which case the mere existence explains the change.

    I don't know how to interpret "necessary" other than meaning by its nature, in which case yes, the nature is a cause; though of course for it to exist also requires an (efficient) cause.

    How do you know such a world is possible? That we can conceive it does not make it possible.

    That it's possible makes it that we can conceive it. Of course, I might be mistaken and think I can conceive it when really I can't. (If I thought I could conceive of a right-angled triangle where the square of the hypotenuse didn't equal the sum of the squares of the other two sides, then you could demonstrate that I was mistaken; but then I wouldn't really have been conceiving of it after all.) But at the very least, when talking about the physical universe it's possible for none of it to exist, so that sets a lower limit on what needs actualizing.

    So, you think such things are correlated with non-physical activations? God makes atoms decay?

    Well, God makes everything happen in some sense, so sure. But there could be other causes. (If the angels aren't needed to keep the planets spinning, maybe they look after particle spin instead!) More than that, the pattern behind particle decay might be an accidental feature of the nature of the universe itself. That is, this particular universe can happen to unfold in this particular way, but if parts of that pattern are not correlated to the repeating empirical subsets of physical reality that physicists can study, then science won't be able to predict that pattern. And in fact we can predict it, just not completely (quantum phenomena aren't just "random", but stochastic).

    Why is it impossible for X to be uncaused because that is the nature of X, while Y is caused because that is the nature of Y? All-or-nothing seems extreme for no good reason.

    But natures are causes (formal causes).

    Object x, upon whom X occurs, has the same nature at t1 as at t2. So, you can't just say that the nature of x itself is the cause, because that is not sufficient.

    Exactly. There must be other causes at work if a change X occurs: something about object x was potential at time t1 and became actual at time t2, therefore something else (actual) must have actualized it at that point.

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  45. Exactly. There must be other causes at work if a change X occurs: something about object x was potential at time t1 and became actual at time t2, therefore something else (actual) must have actualized it at that point.

    You are aware that any object has at any time a mindbogglingly vast array of "potential" states? The phone in my pocket has the potential to move out the door (should I stand up and walk out the door), fall onto the floor, fall onto the floor and break, melt as a meteor falls through the roof and reduces my home to a burning ruin, be blasted into constituent atoms as burst of gamma rays from a nearby star going supernova reduces the earth to a charred cinder, or move from my pocket to my hands as I read then answer a text from my wife.

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  46. Kjetil Kringlebotten

    “Yes, because ‘sin’ doesn’t just mean ‘sinful act,’ it also means ‘sinful state.’ The etymology even suggests the latter. ‘Sin’ comes from ‘Sünde,’ which literally means a chasm. It can mean a water separating two pieces of land. In Norway, where I’m from, such a water is called a ‘Sund.’

    So the word ‘sin’ more properly refers to a state than an act.”

    Gotcha, thanks for the excellent and succinct clarification.

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  47. Mr. Green said...
    I don't claim to be an expert, but I know why form and matter "are not parts in any ordinary mereological sense" when the so-called "ordinary" sense is defined in terms of matter only.

    I don’t see where Vallicella, in his article, was defining the mereological union of form and matter in terms of matter only. Could you be more specific on why you think that criticism might apply?

    Vallicella has as access to as much information about Thomism as anyone else, so I don't really know why he finds it "troubling", but obviously that's a subjective feeling since many other people do not find it troubling at all.

    I’m sure you’ll understand if I say both are subjective feelings.

    Some commenters here understand Thomism better than I do, and some don't. I'm pretty confident in what I've said here, though, so it's compatible with my understanding of what Ed has said elsewhere. If not, I hope someone more knowledgeable will step in….

    I was hoping for that, as well. Since it did not happen, I will point out some comments in this thread made by Josh (I have read similar comments regularly, to my recollection). In particular, on September 22, 2011 11:40 AM Josh compares a series like a Newton's cradle to a horizontal series, and says only a vertical series is important. On September 22, 2011 4:53 PM he says that non-simultaneous instrumentality is not coherent for this argument. On September 22, 2011 7:09 PM, using the example of a hole in time, he says that it is logically coherent to have a non-simultaneous instrumentality in that situation, but not ontologically.

    I wouldn't say that. The Second Way also makes use of per se causality, and leads to the conclusion that a First Cause keeps everything in existence at every moment.

    Even if I were to accept that forms need to be joined to matter by an exterior process, as opposed to arising from the processes the matter is undergoing without external influence, once the universe has been created, the universe is adds and removes forms by the processes already under way. The Second Way seems just as removed from the present as the First Way.

    But it seems to me even the First Way gets that far because any instant at which potential is being actualized needs an act at that moment.

    However, if that act is part of an infinite chain of acts, then it is not an initial act in that chain. Are you saying that God needs to be the connection between every act and potency in a per se chain?

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  48. Mr. Green said...
    Mr. Green: "If you have a finite sequence with first and last,"
    One Brow: This is possible in formal systems such as metaphysics, but not in physical systems, from what I can tell.
    Mr. Green: I don't follow that.


    In reality, there are no finite sequences, just sequences where we choose beginning and ending places for our viewing.

    I would say X is an indirect per se cause of Z, …

    I can use that terminology.

    One Brow: Unless change is a necessarey aspect of existence, in which case the mere existence explains the change.

    I don't know how to interpret "necessary" other than meaning by its nature, in which case yes, the nature is a cause; though of course for it to exist also requires an (efficient) cause.


    I’m not sure what you were referring to with "it", the change, the nature, or the existence.

    That it's possible makes it that we can conceive it.

    I agree with that implication, but was asking you to justify the converse. You conceived of a world without the infinite chain, but how do you know it is possible?

    One Brow: So, you think such things are correlated with non-physical activations? God makes atoms decay?
    Mr. Green: Well, God makes everything happen in some sense, so sure.


    I meant as a direct per se cause.

    And in fact we can predict it, just not completely (quantum phenomena aren't just "random", but stochastic).

    We can predict the aggregate, but that does not explain the causation of the individual.

    One Brow: Object x, upon whom X occurs, has the same nature at t1 as at t2. So, you can't just say that the nature of x itself is the cause, because that is not sufficient.
    Mr. Green: Exactly. There must be other causes at work if a change X occurs: something about object x was potential at time t1 and became actual at time t2, therefore something else (actual) must have actualized it at that point.


    That would be a conclusion of the metaphysical model. How do you know the metaphysical model is a valid description of the physical occurrence, in this case?

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  49. Is this old thing still going on?

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  50. I don't consider myself a knowledgeable Thomist or anything, but I will throw my hat in the ring with Mr. Green and support what he's said here. I don't think it goes against anything I or Dr. Feser has said.

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  51. Josh said...
    Is this old thing still going on?

    I am still seeking answers. There are always people who try to answer questions.

    I don't consider myself a knowledgeable Thomist or anything, but I will throw my hat in the ring with Mr. Green and support what he's said here. I don't think it goes against anything I or Dr. Feser has said.

    Then, you agree that per se causal chains can be temporally infinte?

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  52. One Brow,

    Then, you agree that per se causal chains can be temporally infinte?

    I suppose viewed from Man's perspective, the causal series would be temporally infinite, because God is required to sustain being at each moment of existence. But this also emphasizes again that temporality is not really the important factor.

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  53. Josh said...
    I suppose viewed from Man's perspective, the causal series would be temporally infinite, because God is required to sustain being at each moment of existence.

    I'm unsure why you draw this connection. Are you sayhing the temporal infiniteness is somehow dependent on the sustainment? That if you do not agree that the sustainment is supported, somehow these sequences suddenly become finite?

    But this also emphasizes again that temporality is not really the important factor.

    In the other thread, you mentioned considerations of verticality and horizontalness, but there was not much detail. Is this notiuon why temporality is not a factor? Do you have an onlione resource for these concepts?

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  54. One Brow,

    I don't follow your questions. In plain and simple terms, all I would say is that, given that God must sustain the existence of being as the principal cause in a per se series, then this cause considered from our perspective (in time) will appear both simultaneous and infinite (because "before time/matter exists," the cause is not operating).

    In the other thread, you mentioned considerations of verticality and horizontalness, but there was not much detail.

    Temporality of the per se cause under consideration in the Cos. Arg. just seems to be the subjective appearance of the cause's effect; it appears simultaneous because of the instrumental nature of the intermediate causes. But simultaneity is not what per se causes derive their power from, so to the argument, it really doesn't matter.

    On the vertical/horizontal distinction: one book I have draws some pretty little pictures (which I have taken the liberty to scan):

    http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o283/h0fner/firstcause.jpg

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  55. Josh,

    From your diagrams, I inferred that per se causal chains consisted of both horizontal (strings of efficient causation) and vertical (will that initiates the effects) components. Is that your understanding?

    Does that mean that, when the effects pass out of the intention of the will, the chain ceases to be per se? So, you can evalutate whether an individual link is per se or not based nly on that link, you have to know the intention of the will initiating it?

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  56. One Brow,

    I inferred that per se causal chains consisted of both horizontal (strings of efficient causation) and vertical (will that initiates the effects) components. Is that your understanding?

    Those diagrams would also apply to the Second Way, which is efficient causation, and vertical in nature...

    Does that mean that, when the effects pass out of the intention of the will, the chain ceases to be per se?

    As far as the relation of God's will to the cause itself, I wouldn't be qualified to expound on that. Suffice to say, unless God is causing/sustaining being as the First Cause as shown in that diagram (however this occurs), then the effect of existence would cease.

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  57. Josh said...
    Those diagrams would also apply to the Second Way, which is efficient causation, and vertical in nature...

    So, both horizontal and vertical causaiton is efficient in nature? Or just vertical?

    As far as the relation of God's will to the cause itself, I wouldn't be qualified to expound on that. Suffice to say, unless God is causing/sustaining being as the First Cause as shown in that diagram (however this occurs), then the effect of existence would cease.

    I am having trouble integrating this picture of vertical causaton (continuous sustainment by God) with our prior conversation, where hand-stick-stone was vertical and Newton's cradle was horizontal. According to what you seem to be saying now, hand-stick-stone is both horizontal and vertical, and Newton's cradle is both horizontal and vertical, as far as I can tell. Is that what you mean? Every per se cause has a vertical component of sustainment as well as possibly a horizontal component?

    October 12, 2011 8:42 AM

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  58. One Brow,

    So, both horizontal and vertical causaiton is efficient in nature? Or just vertical?

    Efficient causes can be both per se and per accidens, or vertical and horizontal.

    I am having trouble integrating this picture of vertical causaton (continuous sustainment by God) with our prior conversation, where hand-stick-stone was vertical and Newton's cradle was horizontal.

    The vertical/horizontal distinction is really just a way of showing how it is not succession in time but dependence in nature that is important. What is the principal cause in the Newton's cradle movement?

    Every per se cause has a vertical component of sustainment as well as possibly a horizontal component?

    The point of the Cos. Arg. is that anything that exists is sustained in being by the first cause, and I suppose per se causes can also be considered sometimes as being sustained in time, like a book on a table, or a chandelier being held from the ceiling.

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  59. What is the principal cause in the Newton's cradle movement?

    The hand that raises the first ball... or the momentum in the system caused by the movement of the first ball.

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  60. The hand that raises the first ball... or the momentum in the system caused by the movement of the first ball.

    Bingo, and from the former perspective, when the hand is no longer acting, the movement still continues, therefore it is a per accidens series.

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  61. Josh,

    First, I want to thank you (and Mr. Green) for being willing to engage in these discussions. I know it must seem like it takes much time for little reward.

    Josh said...
    Efficient causes can be both per se and per accidens, or vertical and horizontal.

    Your wording suggested that per se and vertical are besically the same, as are per accidens and horizontal. Did you intend that?

    The vertical/horizontal distinction is really just a way of showing how it is not succession in time but dependence in nature that is important. What is the principal cause in the Newton's cradle movement?

    Principal, as in original? It goes at least as far back as the cosmic singularity that created th Big Bang.

    The point of the Cos. Arg. is that anything that exists is sustained in being by the first cause, ...

    OK. Are you assuming that such a sustainer exists, or proving from the existence of the causes? If the latter, than we need to be able to distinguish these sorts of causes in a way that does not invoke what we are assuming.

    Bingo, and from the former perspective, when the hand is no longer acting, the movement still continues, therefore it is a per accidens series.

    I hope you will indulge me by looking at a diffenrent take on hand-stick-stone. Let's say the stick is 1 meter long. For our purposes, light travels at 300,000m/s (it's just mariginally slower). I believe we agree that if the hand pushes the stick for one second, this is a per se chain.

    However, what if the hand pushes the stick for one millionth of a second? That means the hand stops moving for a seven hundred-thousandth of a second before the impulse from the hand move the stone. Except for time scale, the interactions of hand-stick and stick-stone are identical. Is this still a per se chain?

    If you want to keep the hand moving for a second, what if the stick is ten light-seconds long? Is that still a per se chain?

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  62. One Brow,

    Your wording suggested that per se and vertical are besically the same, as are per accidens and horizontal. Did you intend that?

    No, I just find the metaphors useful to remind myself that I'm thinking in hierarchies instead of moments in time.

    Principal, as in original? It goes at least as far back as the cosmic singularity that created th Big Bang.

    "Principal Cause:a cause that works by the power of its own form and makes the effect in some way like itself." --Wuellner

    "A principal cause is one that does have its causal power inherently" --E. Feser

    So, you think that the principal cause of the universe is--the universe. Obviously I disagree because of the act/potency distinction as well as the myriad other arguments presented ad infinitum on this site.

    OK. Are you assuming that such a sustainer exists, or proving from the existence of the causes?

    Obviously Aquinas' arguments don't just beg the question. P. Kreeft notes that the Five Ways contain three premises in each: an implicit logical principle (tautology), an explicit empirical datum (motion, causality, etc.), and a metaphysical principle (nothing can cause itself to be, etc.)

    If you want to keep the hand moving for a second, what if the stick is ten light-seconds long? Is that still a per se chain?

    I'm sorry you wrote all that text, because it really seems as simple as saying the hand either pushes the stick or not. If so, then per se, etc. Feser's quotes on the Humean tendency to separate cause and effect into two separate "events" seem to be relevant here.

    Once more, as A.D. Sertillanges reminds us, "it is not succession in time but dependence in nature that is important."

    First, I want to thank you (and Mr. Green) for being willing to engage in these discussions.

    I'm just sittin' here watching the wheels go round and round...no problem

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  63. Josh,

    I'm sorry you wrote all that text, because it really seems as simple as saying the hand either pushes the stick or not.

    I just want to be really clear on this. The hand stops moving before the stone starts moving. However, this is still a per se chain. Is that what you meant? If yes, that the distinction between the per se series of hand-stick-stone and the per acciedens series of hand dropping ball into Newton's cradle is the energy for the ball coming from gravity, instead of the hand? That doesn't seem right.

    Since we are not assuming the that the higher levels of vertical connections exist, what evidence do we have that vertical connections themselves exist, and horizontal connections are insufficient?

    The principal cause of the universe may or may not be the universe. I have no firm beiefs on that, but I see no reason to assume it is not the universe. I don't find the arguments presented on this site persuasive, as of yet. However, that's a discussion for another thread.

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  64. One Brow,

    The hand stops moving before the stone starts moving.

    Hmm, no, I would think that the kind of cause I'm talking about would mean that the stone only moves as the hand moves with it. The cause and effect would be simultaneous, yes?

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  65. Josh said...
    Hmm, no, I would think that the kind of cause I'm talking about would mean that the stone only moves as the hand moves with it. The cause and effect would be simultaneous, yes?

    I aqssume you want to avoid the relativity of simultaneity for now. The short answer is no. If the stick is 10 light-seconds long, and the had pushed the stick for any amount of time less than ten seconds, the hand will stop before the stone moves.

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  66. One Brow,

    What in the wide world of sports are you talking about?

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  67. Josh,

    This is basic physics. It's because of physical phenomena like this that I am so interested in precisely how to parse AT metaphysics onto modern physics, before we can use it in the Five Ways.

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  68. One Brow,

    I must be a poor physics student then. If the stick is touching the stone, why should it matter how long it is or how long I push it?

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  69. Josh,

    Energy does not transfer faster than the speed of light. Regardless of what materials the stick is made of, the energy passes from the hand, along the stick, to the stone. If the stick is one meter long, this takes a little longer than 3 microseonds. If the stick is ten light-seconds (ls) long, it takes ten seconds.

    As to why it matters, I am trying to understand what sorts of chains are per se chains. When the hand is pushing the stick for one second, is hand-meter stick-stone per se, but hand-10 ls stick-stone per accidens? If the hand pushes for only one microsecond, does that render hand-meter stick-stone per accidens?

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  70. One Brow,

    Your objections only matter if per se ordered causation is wholly predicated on simultaneity and not a metaphysical order. You can't seem to get over this, even though it has been expressed many, many times. The argument doesn't stand or fall on motion through time, but rather the existence of motion itself, conceptually.

    The hand-stick-stone example is an approximation. Obviously in applying it you are meant to consider the elements in terms of instrumentality.

    Energy does not transfer faster than the speed of light.

    OT, but I got excited over the implications of the neutrinos supposedly breaking this rule a few weeks ago. Turns out someone forgot to carry the 1:

    http://www.livescience.com/16621-faster-light-neutrino-relativity-gps-clocks.html

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  71. Josh said...
    Your objections only matter if per se ordered causation is wholly predicated on simultaneity and not a metaphysical order.

    So, I can't get my questions answered because they don't matter?

    The argument doesn't stand or fall on motion through time, but rather the existence of motion itself, conceptually.

    The argument does not stand at all if the concept is left fuzzy. In particular, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a true per se series, or a true distinction between per se and per accidens series. I'm aware of how they are defined, but I don't see that the different definitions are definitely describing inherently different types of events.

    The hand-stick-stone example is an approximation. Obviously in applying it you are meant to consider the elements in terms of instrumentality.

    Yet, there is instrumentaltiy in a per accidens series, just not immediate motive force.

    OT, but I got excited over the implications of the neutrinos supposedly breaking this rule a few weeks ago. Turns out someone forgot to carry the 1:

    http://www.livescience.com/16621-faster-light-neutrino-relativity-gps-clocks.html


    I've seen a couple of other explanations for this, as well.

    http://www.xkcd.com/955/

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  72. The argument doesn't stand or fall on motion through time, but rather the existence of motion itself, conceptually.

    It seems to stand quite firmly on motion through time (as it is rather difficult to discuss motion without talking about time).

    No matter how you try to cut it the answer will remain "the motion of the rock/stick does not stop when the hand stops pushing it." It's the old "objects in motion stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force"

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  73. Guys,

    I read and re-read this post all the time:

    http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/08/edwards-on-infinite-causal-series.html

    It answers your objections better than I can. Also, Joyce's book is available on archive.org:

    http://www.archive.org/details/principlesofnatu00joycuoft

    The chapter on the cosmological argument contains an extensive discussion of causes in fieri and in esse that are at stake.

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  74. Josh,

    I've read that post before, and it did not answer much. However, your link looks interesting. I'll read it when I have a chance, as I don't want to just skim it and then respond.

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  75. One Brow,

    Hmm, well I'm sorry to hear that; I thought it explained quite well why temporality is irrelevant to the argument...it probably won't be worth your time to muddle through the Joyce then

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  76. One Brow: First, I want to thank you (and Mr. Green) for being willing to engage in these discussions. I know it must seem like it takes much time for little reward.

    Heh, I know the feeling from the other side when I'm the one asking questions! I just wish I had more time (both to ask and to [attempt to] answer.)

    I’m sure you’ll understand if I say both are subjective feelings.

    Sure, since that was my point.

    I don’t see where Vallicella, in his article, was defining the mereological union of form and matter in terms of matter only.

    Vallicella's point (A) defines a so-called "improper part" as one that overlaps every part of the whole sphere. Then in (B) he uses a different definition of "improper part" which just means "the whole". OK, fine, we can define things that way, but since we're supposed to be considering the Thomistic view, I would expect his definition of "overlap" to apply to forms (e.g. so that we might say of two spherical objects that they both "overlap" in roundness, or something). But then in (C) he says that the matter "overlaps" the whole sphere — even though the matter does not "overlap", i.e. is distinct from, the form. Obviously this is true spatially, i.e. the sphere as a whole doesn't occupy any space that its matter does not occupy.

    However, if he had used a non-material definition of overlapping, then in (C) he would have concluded that the bronze matter was indeed a proper part (since there is a (non-spatial) part of the sphere it fails to overlap, namely its Sphericality), and there's no problem. Now, if he wants to consider that real objects consist of form and matter yet the form is not "part" of the object, well, OK, he's using a definition of "part" that certainly sounds odd (relative to the everyday meaning of "part") — if the conclusion then sounds "odd", what else can you expect?

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  77. One Brow: Even if I were to accept that forms need to be joined to matter by an exterior process, as opposed to arising from the processes the matter is undergoing without external influence, once the universe has been created, the universe is adds and removes forms by the processes already under way. The Second Way seems just as removed from the present as the First Way.

    The universe might proceed formally along its way — i.e. hypothetically — but to be real it needs existence joined to it at every moment. You can imagine this existence coming all at once, from the outside (since the First Cause is outside time anyway), but the effect as seen from the inside is that it doing its activating at every instant of time.

    In reality, there are no finite sequences, just sequences where we choose beginning and ending places for our viewing.

    Even if time is curved and "loops" around on itself, the whole sequence would be finite. But of course finite time is not required for the argument anyway.

    However, if that act is part of an infinite chain of acts, then it is not an initial act in that chain. Are you saying that God needs to be the connection between every act and potency in a per se chain?

    Well, the act is "initial" only insofar as it isn't being activated by something else, regardless of its "position" in the chain otherwise. I don't think that God is supposed to be the connection "between" every act and potency, but only at the head of the chain (or at some key point in the loop, if it's not a linear chain), insofar as the subordinate instrumental causes are concerned. (God will be acting at every point as the cause of sheer existence, but we can distinguish that from other causes at work.)

    >>>>One Brow: Unless change is a necessarey aspect of existence, in which case the mere existence explains the change.
    >>Green: I don't know how to interpret "necessary" other than meaning by its nature, in which case yes, the nature is a cause; though of course for it to exist also requires an (efficient) cause.

    I’m not sure what you were referring to with "it", the change, the nature, or the existence.


    The nature, i.e. for the nature to activate anything, it has to exist, to already be in act itself; and then we're back to: either it's "Pure Act" itself, or it got its act from something else.

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  78. One Brow: I agree with that implication, but was asking you to justify the converse. You conceived of a world without the infinite chain, but how do you know it is possible?

    Because that's what "possible world" means? We're just talking about what's logically possible, and there's no logical contradiction inherent, so it's possible. (That is, to go back to the original claim, if it's possible for something to actually exist, it's possible for it to potentially exist, and thus possible for it only to potentially exist, i.e. to never actually happen to come into existence in the first place. And either that's possible (in which case we need to explain why it in fact did come to exist actually and not merely potentially), or else it's impossible, i.e. we are talking about something that cannot be/have potential, something that does not need to be nor cannot be activated by something else, something that just is act — in which case we've got the being that the argument was trying to get to all along, and we're done!)

    >>>>One Brow: So, you think such things are correlated with non-physical activations? God makes atoms decay?
    >>Mr. Green: Well, God makes everything happen in some sense, so sure.

    I meant as a direct per se cause.


    Yes, God's conserving everything in existence is a direct per se cause. As mentioned above, that doesn't rule out other direct per se causes, of course, though they won't be the existential causes of whatever it is. Now the fact that we can predict quantum phenomena even in aggregate means that we know of physical causes for the individual acts making up the aggregate, but let's consider that those physical causes underdetermine the event, i.e. though they are causes, they don't explain all the details. For A-T, yes, there must be some other cause at work.

    It could be God alone, i.e. God is conserving the whole thing anyway, but most bits of the physical universe have secondary causes at work on top of that; maybe these bits of QM have God as primary cause alone in those certain respects. However, that need not be the case; there could be secondary causes at work, but ones that are not observable to physicists because they are not physical, such as angels (as I mentioned before). But there is yet another possibility: that physical secondary causes are at work: we are supposing that the known physical causes underdetermine the event, but there could be unknown physical causes at work — not hidden variables of the sort ruled out by Bell, but more like "hidden constants" (if I may call them that); what I mean is specific ad hoc causes that effect this particular decay or that, without forming any sort of general principle. This is of course useless to physicists, since if there is no general pattern at work, there's nothing to capture in an equation; but from a purely metaphysical point of view, it's entirely possible.

    >>>>One Brow: Object x, upon whom X occurs, has the same nature at t1 as at t2. So, you can't just say that the nature of x itself is the cause, because that is not sufficient.
    >>Mr. Green: Exactly. There must be other causes at work if a change X occurs: something about object x was potential at time t1 and became actual at time t2, therefore something else (actual) must have actualized it at that point.

    That would be a conclusion of the metaphysical model. How do you know the metaphysical model is a valid description of the physical occurrence, in this case?


    It fits, and it's not incoherent, so it's a valid model. We can wonder if there are other equally valid models, although since we're speaking pretty minimally here, it's hard to see how any "different" model wouldn't merely amount to the same thing in different words.

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  79. Josh said...
    Hmm, well I'm sorry to hear that; I thought it explained quite well why temporality is irrelevant to the argument...

    Feser's counterexample to temporality is a hole in time. You don't understand why I find that unresponsive to questions about, for example, a push of 1 microsecond on a meter-long stick?

    it probably won't be worth your time to muddle through the Joyce then

    The part I*'ve read so far hasn't been all that bad. Maybe it will clearly lay out why Newton's cradle is horizontal and hand-stick-stone is veritcal?

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  80. One Brow,

    The stick or intermediate cause can be infinitely long, if you like, as in the paintbrush with an infinitely long handle. It's still an intermediate cause, and unless there is a principal cause wielding it, nothing happens. Temporality/simultaneity is the circumstance of the cause viewed by us from inside time in the universe out, not the essential/substantial characteristic.

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  81. One Brow: The hand stops moving before the stone starts moving. However, this is still a per se chain. Is that what you meant? If yes, that the distinction between the per se series of hand-stick-stone and the per acciedens series of hand dropping ball into Newton's cradle is the energy for the ball coming from gravity, instead of the hand? That doesn't seem right.

    There is no relevant difference between the hand-stick-stone and the Newton's cradle. (And yes, I do think people may have been misled on this because of naive physics.) Frankly, as far as I understand, the real difference is largely a matter of context. "Per se" just means "by itself", and what "itself" means just depends on whatever it is we're talking about. If we're talking about the exact history of the entire universe, then the whole thing makes up a per se causal nexus tracing back to the Big Bang (or whatever). The issue is that while nobody cares if you pile accidental causes up to infinity (because they're just accidental, they're not what we're really interested in itself), you can't get away with that if we're interested in the whole shebang. And again, the point isn't that an infinite chain is ruled out, but that it's ruled out as a way to get around having a Prime Mover. (An infinite chain with Primer Mover is OK — well, it's still not obvious that such a thing could work, but if we simply suppose that it could, it doesn't affect the argument.) Otherwise you've got the infinite moons reflecting a sun that doesn't exist, or the infinite number of gears not driven by any spring.

    

 On September 22, 2011 7:09 PM, using the example of a hole in time, he says that it is logically coherent to have a non-simultaneous instrumentality in that situation, but not ontologically.



    It sounds like "vertical" is supposed to mean "per se" and "horizontal" means accidental, but from those posts it isn't completely clear to me either. It's not standard terminology anywhere that I've seen. "Ontologically simultaneous" presumably means that the causes are connected; that is, if X is caused by Y, and Y is being caused to do its thing as an instrument of Z, then the series Z→Y→X has to go together… it makes no sense to call Y an instrumental cause and try to ignore the Z because "instrumental" just means that it's a cause because of Z. However, I would not call that "simultaneous" because the togetherness does not have to be temporal. (Perhaps we have a translation issue here: the Latin "simul" often means "together at the same time", but it can mean "together" in other senses too; I wonder if people are too quick to jump on the word "simultaneous" because Aquinas is using "simul" somewhere?)


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  82. 'Vertical' is a way to emphasize hierarchy, first in principality; 'horizontal' is a way to emphasize temporal succession. Not something I came up with, sorry if it confused anyone. I dropped it quite a while back.

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  83. I'm still processing all this. Thank you for the help.

    One more quick question: are there ever more than two layers in the vertical heirarchy?

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  84. One Brow,

    I'd say you have the principal/first cause, and then the instrumental/subordinate/second causes...and I think that would pretty much cover it.

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  85. I have a question regarding the nature of original sin, not in regard to its consequences, but concerning the corresponding guilt thereof. Mr. Feser states the following:

    “In short, the penalty of original sin was a privation, not a positive harm inflicted on human beings but rather the absence of a benefit…”

    My question is whether instead original sin is both a privation and a positive harm inflicted. For instance, the Council of Trent, following the Synods of Carthage and Orange, asserts that the guilt of sin is transmitted to Adam’s descendants; that sin, which is the death of the soul, is inherited by all posterity by descent, and that small children are in truth baptized for the forgiveness of sins (in remissionem peccatorum). See Denzinger 789-791. Thus, what is not a personal sin-guilt, but a sin-guilt inherited would appear to constitute a “positive harm”.

    Furthermore, though original sin is not a personal crime for Adam’s descendants, St. Augustine describes it as a “paternal crime” (Op. imperf., I, cxlviii). Being a distinct person I am not strictly responsible for the crime of another; the act is not mine. Yet, as a member of the human family, I am supposed to have acted with its head who represented it with regard to the conservation or the loss of grace. I am, therefore, responsible for my privation of grace, taking responsibility in the largest sense of the word. This, however, is enough to make the state of privation of grace in a certain degree voluntary, and, therefore, "without absurdity it may be said to be voluntary" ("Retract.", I, xiii). (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)

    Any thoughts on this?

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  86. If Adam and Eve were given preternatural gifts including the prevention of "disordering of the will," yet they sinned anyway, is there some other terminology besides "disordering" that is used to describe the relationship of their wills to their sin?

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