Last class we discussed Aquinas' ideas on God as the cause of existence. He compared God to a train that pulled the other train cars behind it, and no train car could go off the track, as he controlled all of them. But God's cause is different than parents causing a child, or builders causing a building.
We also learned to evaluate cosmological arguments, including asking questions like "Why should we accept that the universe had a beginning?" and "Can the universe just BE there?" (all questions i've thought of as well, considering that many people just assume that there has to be a meaning and a beginning to the universe)
There were the Aristotelian causes: Material (i.e. a cup), Efficient (i.e. parents of a cat), Formal (i.e. why a cat acts the way it acts), and Final (i.e. medicine)
My favorite analogy made in that class was that the universe was like a giant clock, with God being the clockmaker and all of his creations are mere cogs. There are somany cogs each turning, working together to form one giant clock. Einstein himself said that after WWII, he wished he had been trained a watchmaker.
We discussed the several problems with Design, including the argument that because human designers are finite, why then could the world's design be finite?
We briefly touched on Gaunilo, who stated that just because we have a notion of something doesn't show that there is anything in reality that corresponds, giving the example that we can picture the absolute perfect island, with white sand blue seas and endless amount of anything we want, but that does not mean that the island exists. I found this argument very well-put and it successfuly argued against the idea that because we know the meaning of God, then God must exist.
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