21stCenturion, you cite Anselm of Cantebury and Thomas Aquinas — both saints and doctors of the Roman Catholic Church — of providing prime examples of the fallacy of Begging the Question/Circular Reasoning. I have some doubt, however, that you understand what these two world-class thinkers were saying.
Moreoever, there is a fallacy that you may not have heard of — the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, so ably described by the great mathematician and philosopher A. N. Whitehead — but it seems to me that you have committed it; and that it may be "corrupting" your thinking.
The tip-off comes in your remark, "GOD must exist somewhere within such an infinity of Universes." No He mustn't — no more than Michelangelo "must exist" in the Sistine Chapel, or in his magnificent sculpture, David.
The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness which embroils you is your supposition that God "exists" as yet another existing entity within the universe we humans live in or within some other multiverse.
Yet when Anselm calls Him "Perfect," this must mean that God does not "exist!" Rather, it is an acknowledgement that He is pure, absolute, eternally self-subsistent Being and, that being the case, He is utterly perfect (in that He needs nothing from outside of Himself to Be what He IS).
God is not "IN" anything He made in the Beginning — including Space and Time (they are His creations too).
All existing things are finite and contingent. Man is finite; his life contingent on what happens around him and to him. The Fallacy you commit is to reduce God to what He is not — i.e., to just another existing thing within the Creation. A sort of superhuman after Feuerbach's "projection psychology," wherein the deity is thought to be nothing more than the fanciful projection of the highest desires and aspirations of mankind — nothing "real" in Himself, just an elaborate fiction designed to ease human existential anxieties.
Yet even the great classical philosophers (around 500–400 B.C.), pre-Christian though they may have been, drew the distinction between being and existence. They believed that all existent things were so because they were participations in divine Being. Because God IS, we are. Plato's God was a God utterly "Beyond" the Cosmos. As pure eternal Being, the source and sustainer of life, He could not be yet another denizen of the world of His making, the place designated for finite, mortal, contingent creatures to come into existence, and then to pass out of it in due course.
Moreover, the Greek word Kosmos refers to a single integrated, ordered system — and the order is there because of the divine Intelligence and Will that causes the world to be as it is, and not some other way; and to be something in the first place, and not nothing at all.... (Which answers Leibniz's two crucial questions.)
Materialism/scientism absolutely rejects a creator God in principle, preferring to believe the unbelievable — to wit, that the random motions of matter somehow have a "principle" conducive to the elaboration of ordered systems in Nature, including the principal ordered system of which they are parts and participants — the universe/multiverse itself.
It doesn't matter to me all that much whether there is one universe, of whether there may be many (multiverses). If they began in time, something had to kick-start their ordered processes.
And if they didn't have a beginning in time, then their existence is inexplicable.
This was the point Aquinas was making: you wrote —
In the Universe, all things that exist are the product of other things that already existed. This progression cannot continue infinitely as there must be SOMETHING that existed as the first producer of whatever came next. This first producer ( ‘first cause’ ) we have all agreed to call ‘God’. Do you see the fallacy operating here ?No, I don't see the fallacy; I see logic at work. This is straight out of Aristotle, who reasoned that if there were not a "first cause," a/k/a an "unmoved mover," then the universe would have had to arise by virtue of an infinite regression of causes. But if that were so, then no particular thing could come into existence for lack of an organizing principle, a Limit (peras) — which is just another way of saying that purely random processes in nature are productive of nothing in particular, nor can they be.
Plus you can yell about random processes till kingdom come, and still not explain where the matter subject to such randomness came from....
And so if people have "agreed" to call this first principle God, I do not see how circular reasoning is at all involved. You could call this first principle "dandelion" if you wanted to — "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." The logic of First Cause would not be disturbed at all, whatever you choose to name it.
Of course, we Christians are very glad to call it: God.
In closing, here's what Anselm wrote in Monologion 1:
If anyone does not know, either because he has not heard or because he does not believe, that there is one nature, supreme among all existing things, who alone is self-sufficient in his eternal happiness, who through his omnipotent goodness grants and brings it about that all other things exist or have any sort of well-being, and a great many other things that we must believe about God or his creation, I think he could at least convince himself of most of these things by reason alone, if he is even moderately intelligent.Notice that Anselm nowhere in this passage says that God "exists." Rather he is saying that God is the very cause and ground of everything that does exist. Anselm does not conflate being and existence; he does not reduce perfect being to finite contingent existence — and thus he, unlike you, does not commit the Fallacy of Misplaced concreteness!
Notice he also says that man's knowledge of God comes via reason, intelligence. It must be that way, since God Himself is not a direct observable — the sort of thing required by the scientific method.
God is seen, not directly via sense perception, but in His effects.
I'll leave you with that clue, 21stCenturion.
Thank you so much for writing!
Betty, you had so much fun picking my comments apart, I almost hate to rain on your parade. But ...
In both instances where you ‘quoted’ ME, as though the ideas expressed were my own thoughts or beliefs, you were dead wrong.
The tip-off comes in your remark, “GOD must exist somewhere within such an infinity of Universes.” No He mustn’t — no more than Michelangelo “must exist” in the Sistine Chapel, or in his magnificent sculpture, David.
This was the point Aquinas was making: you wrote —
In the Universe, all things that exist are the product of other things that already existed. This progression cannot continue infinitely as there must be SOMETHING that existed as the first producer of whatever came next. This first producer ( ‘first cause’ ) we have all agreed to call ‘God’. Do you see the fallacy operating here ?
No, I don’t see the fallacy; I see logic at work.
In both instances, I was clearly paraphrasing or summarizing someone else’s ideas or arguments. In effect, you are arguing with the other guy( s) and leaving me out entirely.
In general, your entire response was an exercise in either willful or inadvertent misdirection. You were responding to what someone ELSE thought, which I quoted for reference, NOT to what I thought and clearly presented as my own thoughts, separately.
If you’re going to conduct a reasoned argument to somehow counter mine, please try to do a better job of construction and attribution. I don’t believe you actually addressed what I said and thus I don’t have any basis to respond other than as I just did.
Care to try again ? I AM still listening ...
21stCenturion
freejohn, you have kicked off a wonderful discussion. Anytime this group of participants engage it is beneficial to us all.
I see this particular argument as a contradiction in terms. What does Uni-verse mean? It means one. Therefore, if we are to consider the whole, then multiple “universes” must themselves exist within an even larger Universe. Once there, to the larger whole, don’t think you have arrived at the end of your journey. God does not exist within that Universe. It exists within God, for God IS existence. Of everything! And more!
It is natural to try to make our beliefs consistent with our knowledge of the external for the key to belief is understanding. When we try to understand God we are going beyond that, going beyond our understanding of “the world.” The door to that understanding is Faith. It is normal to try to make things coherent within what we already know but when it comes to God, forget that. It is a whole new world that you can only understand through experience, but once you experience it the Bible unfolds its mysteries to you.
Once you believe and study God’s message in the Bible, you will see lessons about life you didn’t know were there. You will see the answers to questions which have sold millions of self-help books and made hundreds of authors wealthy simply by explaining what is already explained. They are just explaining them to non Bible readers.
21st Centurion does a wonderful job of explaining the common fault of Begging the Question. That and Hasty Generalization are the two most common errors in thinking. Yet, in this case it is just of ancillary interest. To prove God destroys that which you just proved, so why bother if that is your purpose. To understand God you MUST beg the question, but don’t let that bother you. Logic is of the natural, physical world, man’s world, but God is of the Spiritual world, within which the natural world exists. God is More.
My learned friends have given you much to contemplate. They have explained the natural, scientific reasoning of why God exists. Yet, that is simply explaining God’s existence, not who God is. What does it matter that God exists if we are not going to embrace Him and learn His message? Learning that He exists is just academic. To make it meaningful you need the experience of which I spoke. Can you experience beauty and not feel God? Can you love and not feel God? What about poetry, even sensual pleasure? A delightful aroma? Can science explain that? Sure, scientists can talk about the senses and what senses the sensation, but can they explain the delight, the awe, the reverence, the sadness, the pity, the kindness, etc., which result from those sensations. For that you need something more. I am not saying that you cannot experience those emotions in a secular manner but for a believer they come naturally. For a believer they also evoke a desire to say “Thank you, Lord.” in recognition of the Source. I doubt a secularist feels a need to say, “Thank you, body.” To make God meaningful you must experience Him and His Love and that will lead you to the Truth and Life.
As I said, belief opens up a whole new world. What is the purpose of a static belief that God exists? It is more important that you know God. To know God you must experience God. Faith is the door to that experience and Faith is gained through Grace. Grace is granted following Bible study and prayer. Do it! Nothing else matters. Then, you don’t need these discussions, although they are still fun and helpful. Then, when you encounter evolutionists and non-believers who mock your belief you can just smile, secure in your belief. If you choose to engage them, fine for with the help of these Freepers you will be well armed, but you need not engage them if you don’t want. You will have the Truth. They won’t.
Game, set, and match, to betty boop!
Cheers!