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To: cornelis
Aristotle dismissed "man is the measure" thingy although some think his practical reason is just that. It isn't. He thinks it is ludicrous to think the human person is the supreme being in the universe and explicitly says so.

Your post is quite interesting. I would not agree with your assessment of Aristotle however. Since Aristotle was a pagan, he could not hold to true philosophy - that must be revealed from heaven. If Aristotle truly believed in a Supreme being, he had no idea who that being was. As Schaeffer pointed, out the Greek gods were small gods with limited powers.

771 posted on 05/09/2003 6:56:50 AM PDT by exmarine
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To: exmarine
Aristotle and Plato were polytheists. At some points Plato comes much closer to monotheism, but having one god bigger than the others is polytheism all the same.

If Aristotle truly believed in a Supreme being, he had no idea who that being was.

That is a curious statement, especially because it sounds most like Socrates. Socrates had no idea who that being was, but sought to find that being because he thought his life depended on it. He blames his contemporaries for thinking they are sufficient without it.

As for Aristotle, we can dispense with my assessment or Schaeffer's or anyone else's and take it from the philosopher himself:

If then God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and god's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belongs to God; for this is God. --Metaphysics

And having given the attributes, the next question he asks is how many there are:

It is clear, then, why these things are as they are. But we must not ignore the question whether we have to suppose one such substance ore more than one, and if the latter, how many.
True, he was a pagan, but that can also be a good thing.
772 posted on 05/09/2003 7:25:38 AM PDT by cornelis
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