Back to theodicy: reasons for God from Feser: (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Sunday, February 18, 2024, 20:31 (69 days ago) @ David Turell

A study of Avicenna, Aquinas, & Leibniz:

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2024/02/avicenna-aquinas-and-leibniz-on.html#more

"Avicenna, Aquinas, and Leibniz all present versions of what would today be called the argument from contingency for the existence of a divine necessary being.

"Avicenna
At least one thing exists. It has to be either necessary or contingent. If it’s necessary, then there’s a necessary being, and our conclusion is established. But suppose it is contingent. Then it requires a cause. Suppose that cause is a further contingent thing, and that that further contingent thing has yet another contingent thing as its own cause, and so on to infinity. Then we have a collection of contingent things. That collection will itself be either necessary or contingent. But it can’t be necessary, since its existence is contingent on the existence of its members. So, the collection must be contingent, and in that case it too must have a cause. That cause is either itself a part of the collection, or it is outside it. But it can’t be part of the collection, because if it were, then as cause of the whole collection, it would be the cause of itself. And nothing can cause itself. So, the cause of the collection of contingent things must be outside the collection. But if it is outside that collection, it must be necessary. So, there is a necessary being.

"Aquinas
Some things are contingent in nature, as is evident from the fact that they come into existence and go out of existence...So, if everything was contingent, then at some point nothing would have existed. But if there was ever a time when nothing existed, then nothing would exist now, since there would in that case be nothing around to cause new things to come into existence. But things do exist now. So, not everything can be contingent, and there must be a necessary being. Now, such a thing might derive its necessity from another thing, or it might have its necessity of its own nature. But there couldn’t be a regress of things deriving their necessity from something else unless it terminates in something having its necessity of its own nature. So, there must be something which has its necessity of its own nature.

"Leibniz
For anything that exists, there must be a sufficient reason for its existence. In the case of the contingent things that make up the universe, this cannot be found by appealing merely to other contingent things, even if the series of contingent things being caused by other contingent things extended backward into the past without beginning. For in that case, we would still need a sufficient reason why the series as a whole exists... So, the explanation cannot lie in the series itself. A complete explanation or sufficient reason can be found only if there is a necessary being that is the source of the world of contingent things. So, there must be such a necessary being.

"Each of these thinkers goes on to argue that it can be shown that the necessary being must have the key divine attributes, and therefore is God.

***

"What do the arguments have in common? First, they all rest, of course, on the distinction between contingent beings and necessary beings, and argue that it cannot be that everything falls into the former class. Second, they all reason causally to the necessary being as the source of everything other than itself. Third, for that reason, they all have at least a minimal empirical component insofar as they appeal to the contingent things we know through experience and argue from their existence to that of a necessary being.

***

"A...similarity is that each of the arguments moves from a claim about contingent things considered individually to a claim about contingent things considered collectively, albeit in different ways. For Avicenna, just as an individual contingent thing requires a cause, so too does the totality of contingent things require a cause. For Aquinas, just as individual contingent things must fail to exist at some point, so too must the collection of contingent things fail to exist at some point, at least if there were no necessary being. For Leibniz, just as individual contingent things require an explanation outside them, so too does the collection of contingent things require an explanation outside it.

***

"Avicenna’s and Aquinas’s arguments essentially consider reality under the guise of the transcendental attribute of being. The being of contingent things, they argue, must derive causally from the being of something that exists in an absolutely necessary way. Leibniz’s argument, by contrast, essentially considers reality under the transcendental attribute of truth. The intelligibility of contingent things, he argues, presupposes a necessary being which is intelligible in itself rather than by reference to something else.

***

"Any...differences between the three arguments seem to me to reflect these three fundamental differences. And the differences are important, both because they capture different aspects of reality, and because they entail that some objections that might seem to have force against one version of the argument from contingency will not necessarily apply to other versions."

Comment: It is all still cause and effect. To explain why we are here, there must be a first cause, and per ID it is way too complex for chance. The "attributes of God" are all the same untold version in this article.