Untitled.
2 February 1999
![[ ]](http://mbpix.mushroom.net/19990202y.png)
my philosophy of religion class really got my brain working this evening. i do notice that i run all the philosophical arguments against my own world-view. or rather try to interpret them in such a way as to produce a conclusion akin to my world-view and/or find sufficient grounds to refute them. so far my belief system has stacked up pretty well.
tonight was the first of two classes on arguments for the existence of god. we were discussing thomas aquinas's five ways. from the first two, i sorta came to the conclusion that while the predominant western concept of god is complete actuality with no potentiality, my concept (on this very fundamental level) is more of complete potentiality with no actuality. more straightforwardly: the western view is of that which causes all motion and change, but is eternal and doesn't itself change. my own concept of god (or the supreme "being" or divine reality) is of the change itself, the chaos at the base of everything, total flux, free of form.
thomas's third way kinda threw me though. it basically states that all things in the universe are contingent upon other things. they have the possibility of being and not being. therefore it is conceivable that there could be a state of the universe in which nothing was in the state of being. but that for anything to exist, there must have been one thing on which the first of other things was contingent. something that does not rely on any other thing for its existence. thomas (taking a cue from aristotle) says that this being is what we call god. it can be simpler to think that this "first" thing could simply be the universe itself.
why does this throw me? well, the universe, the divine nature, at it's basic level is nothing but chaos in a constant state of flux. it does not actually resolve itself into "things" which "exist" until it is observed. but what was the spark that lead to the possibility of observation?
that was my train of thought in class anyway. i'm starting to get a little too tired to really reason it through now. and i got a bit distracted by work stuff when i got home. which is unfortunate, 'cause i'd much rather philosophize than worry about business stuff.
tonight was the first of two classes on arguments for the existence of god. we were discussing thomas aquinas's five ways. from the first two, i sorta came to the conclusion that while the predominant western concept of god is complete actuality with no potentiality, my concept (on this very fundamental level) is more of complete potentiality with no actuality. more straightforwardly: the western view is of that which causes all motion and change, but is eternal and doesn't itself change. my own concept of god (or the supreme "being" or divine reality) is of the change itself, the chaos at the base of everything, total flux, free of form.
thomas's third way kinda threw me though. it basically states that all things in the universe are contingent upon other things. they have the possibility of being and not being. therefore it is conceivable that there could be a state of the universe in which nothing was in the state of being. but that for anything to exist, there must have been one thing on which the first of other things was contingent. something that does not rely on any other thing for its existence. thomas (taking a cue from aristotle) says that this being is what we call god. it can be simpler to think that this "first" thing could simply be the universe itself.
why does this throw me? well, the universe, the divine nature, at it's basic level is nothing but chaos in a constant state of flux. it does not actually resolve itself into "things" which "exist" until it is observed. but what was the spark that lead to the possibility of observation?
that was my train of thought in class anyway. i'm starting to get a little too tired to really reason it through now. and i got a bit distracted by work stuff when i got home. which is unfortunate, 'cause i'd much rather philosophize than worry about business stuff.