1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.”
1739 Freedom and sin. Man’s freedom is limited and fallible. In fact, man failed. He freely sinned. By refusing God’s plan of love, he deceived himself and became a slave to sin. This first alienation engendered a multitude of others. From its outset, human history attests the wretchedness and oppression born of the human heart in consequence of the abuse of freedom.
If instead you were looking for philosophical evidence for God’s existance, I recommend reading Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways.
So your original comment asked what are apologists, then you go into typical apologetics arguments? Quite funny really.
Everything before your last sentence presupposes your personal interpretation of your god.
I’m not looking for philosophical evidence. I’m looking for objective evidence. And Aquinas is catastrophically out of his depth with his “5 Ways”. Pretty much every line has some error. Further, even if it were true, to take the end result of each of those individually and then say “Clearly this is the Christian god of the Bible and definitely not any other god humans have believed in or a coincidence or have any rational explanation.” is the height of arrogance.
The primary issue with Aquinas is that he’s essentially pairing a “god of the gaps” fallacy with philosophical ideas that predate the scientific method we would need in order to functionally claim most of what he’s talking about.
For example, he declares with confidence in his fourth way that because somethings are hotter, colder, etc. that there must also be an ultimate good just like there is ultimate heat. He begins the claim with scientific observation and then immediately rolls it into the field of philosophy and ethics. Now someone from the year 500AD might not consider that an issue since the scientific method didn’t even exist at the time and all natural philosophy was on the same playing field, but modern people wouldn’t consider those two fields to just be overlapping and logically interchangeable in that manner.
In the fifth way he claims that because certain beings have agency (or sapience, like us) and certain objects do not, that all non sapient objects must operate according to a being with said agency. This is patently untrue with modern scientific understanding as well, water flows because of friction and gravity, not because it was caused to do so by a god of some variety. Rocks fall, seasons change, etc. all due to natural processes. Not because there NEEDS to be a being with knowledge that guides it.
It’s interesting because this claim is foundless as he hasn’t proven that all objects operate based on a “plan” of some variety, he merely makes the claim that a plan from a sapient being is required for anything to happen and then begins to assess conclusions based on said claim. Moreso than that, it occurs in contradiction with his attempted understanding at potential and kinetic energy from the first way. He seems to have an idea about potential energy but then throws it out to just claim that objects or animals without knowledge operate on something else’s will.
Thus beginning a long standing religious tradition of using scientific rhetoric where its helpful and attempting to shoehorn philosophy in where it contradicts or fails to uphold.
I literally quoted a source. Want more? This is the Cathechism of the Catholic Church on the topic of free will:
1730
1739
If instead you were looking for philosophical evidence for God’s existance, I recommend reading Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways.
So your original comment asked what are apologists, then you go into typical apologetics arguments? Quite funny really.
Everything before your last sentence presupposes your personal interpretation of your god.
I’m not looking for philosophical evidence. I’m looking for objective evidence. And Aquinas is catastrophically out of his depth with his “5 Ways”. Pretty much every line has some error. Further, even if it were true, to take the end result of each of those individually and then say “Clearly this is the Christian god of the Bible and definitely not any other god humans have believed in or a coincidence or have any rational explanation.” is the height of arrogance.
The primary issue with Aquinas is that he’s essentially pairing a “god of the gaps” fallacy with philosophical ideas that predate the scientific method we would need in order to functionally claim most of what he’s talking about.
For example, he declares with confidence in his fourth way that because somethings are hotter, colder, etc. that there must also be an ultimate good just like there is ultimate heat. He begins the claim with scientific observation and then immediately rolls it into the field of philosophy and ethics. Now someone from the year 500AD might not consider that an issue since the scientific method didn’t even exist at the time and all natural philosophy was on the same playing field, but modern people wouldn’t consider those two fields to just be overlapping and logically interchangeable in that manner.
In the fifth way he claims that because certain beings have agency (or sapience, like us) and certain objects do not, that all non sapient objects must operate according to a being with said agency. This is patently untrue with modern scientific understanding as well, water flows because of friction and gravity, not because it was caused to do so by a god of some variety. Rocks fall, seasons change, etc. all due to natural processes. Not because there NEEDS to be a being with knowledge that guides it.
It’s interesting because this claim is foundless as he hasn’t proven that all objects operate based on a “plan” of some variety, he merely makes the claim that a plan from a sapient being is required for anything to happen and then begins to assess conclusions based on said claim. Moreso than that, it occurs in contradiction with his attempted understanding at potential and kinetic energy from the first way. He seems to have an idea about potential energy but then throws it out to just claim that objects or animals without knowledge operate on something else’s will.
Thus beginning a long standing religious tradition of using scientific rhetoric where its helpful and attempting to shoehorn philosophy in where it contradicts or fails to uphold.