Aquinas and Geocentrism

Two Minor Disagreements with Ken Ham · Aquinas and Geocentrism

What's Wrong With St. Thomas' First Proof for the Existence of God? (Aquinas 101)
The Thomistic Institute, 7 March 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS-V90xxYLI

3:35 Too bad.

Hot dogs are classified as sandwiches in Paris, as are Hamburgers. AND there is an ice cream in Sweden called "sandwich" which is vanilla ice cream between two soft chocolate cookies.

4:13 Infinity is not a number.

In arithmetic, number grows into a potential infinity, but is always actually only finite, since number is 1 added to 1.

Another way to look at it is, the things that are both moved and movers can be regarded as a "road" or a stretch and "infinita non est pertransire" ... (Greek use of infinitive instead of gerund is a mark of Medieval Latin). Any line is the distance between two points, but by that fact, these points become ends of the line and the line is always finite.

Infinity is also not a size ... too bad for Cantor.

4:24 There are not in actual existence an infinite number of even integers. Integers only exist in so far as things exist to be numbered. We have no manner to tell what the highest actual integer is, but this doesn't mean there isn't one. Beyond that, we have potential integers, if God choses to create another item not yet counted.

And 1/3 only has "an infinite number of decimals" because of the convention of expressing ratios in decimals, which are incommensurable with thirds.

And pi only has "an infinite number of decimals" because it is not a number at all, but a geometric size to size ratio. 3 is too low, 4 too high. 3.1 is too low, 3.2 is too high. 3.14 is too low, 3.15 is too high. 3.141 is too low, 3.142 is too high. 3.1415 is too low, 3.1416 is (just barely) too high. 3.14159 is too low, 3.14160 is too high ... sizes are divisible infinitely. This means that size ratios are not always numeric ratios.

4:38 And Leo XIII was unwilling to condemn Scotus and Suarez.

Scotus famously disagreed with St. Thomas on this one, because time is like arithmetic. It grows in one direction.

Now, St. Thomas would have classified stars as "fire, specifically light" and have considered that one constant way in which matter can be.

Since then, fusion means that what's emitting light in stars is a process, that goes one way:

H > D, D > He.

This by itself means, the universe as we know it has to have a beginning.

Credits to Dom Stanley Jaki and to Rev. Bryan Houghton for the observation, btw.

6:30 If you look up in Contra Gentes, I think chapter 13, possibly book II, St. Thomas explains day and night this way.

God moves the sphere of the fix stars, which is the primum mobile, which moves spheres inside it, down to the sphere of the Moon (and including somewhere on the way the sphere of the Sun), which under itself moves air and even waters into what are known as winds of passage and equatorial oceanic currents.

Given that earth does not rotate, which we observe it doesn't, this movement coming in from the outside has to have an ultimate source. Which we call God.

Tycho Brahe had a comet "shatter the crystalline spheres" but if instead of that we imagine this as involving interatomic matter, a k a aether, the model is still viable.

Heliocentrism can only be proven by assuming there is no God or are no angels.

8:13 It can be added that atheism can intelligently be stated as involving no denial of the first three ways. One just has to identify 1st way "god" as "forces" and 3rd way "god" as "particles" and 2nd way "god" as both of these.

Two ways to break this objection down.

1) Q 11 shows the unity of God from the unity of the universe that's moving around earth. Yes, 1st way may be stated in a more general way, but one really can formulate it as "patet sensibus res moveri, utputa sol" ... Geocentrism is only possible with a God outside the moving parts of the Universe moving these parts. Not that God were relegated to the parts outside, but that He's also there;
2) By reference to ways 4 and 5. The one involves man being nobler than beasts which are nobler than plants which are nobler than stones. Hence, the argument from "reason is not a projected aspect of matter" - and the other involves God as the one ordering the universe, so it keeps together.

Now, St. Thomas' example would be, once again, Geocentrism. One can switch this argument for "fine tuning of constants" if one believes Heliocentrism (for whatever reason, when being Christian one doesn't need to), or for "irreducible complexity" .... which is exactly what Creationism does.

Ergo - Creationism and Aquinas "même combat" as they say here in Paris.

Belated happy feast day, by the way!