The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism

by Edward Feser

here and now,

God were here and now, and at every moment, sustaining it in being, change, and goal-directedness.

cannot reasonably be denied, and it is implausible to regard them either as material things or as dependent on the human mind for their existence.

it follows that they must exist in an eternal and infinite mind.

endorse the idea that universals and the like exist as “thoughts” in the divine intellect,

Scholastic realism.

prefer arguments for God’s existence that begin from premises more obviously known through sensory experience.

no potential can make itself actual, but must be actualized by something outside it.

crucial distinction Aquinas and other medieval philosophers made between two kinds of series of causes and effects, namely “accidentally ordered” and “essentially ordered” series

the cause in this case is (unlike the girlfriend’s request) simultaneous with the effect.

These sorts of series paradigmatically trace, not backwards in time, but rather “downward” in the present moment,

since they are series in which each member depends simultaneously on other members which simultaneously depend in turn on yet others, on so on.

The series can only stop, that is to say, with a being that is pure actuality (or “Pure Act,” to use the Scholastic phrase), with no admixture of potentiality whatsoever.

“Pure Actuality,”

being of Pure Actuality would have to be like, and it turns out that such a being would have to be like the God of traditional Western religious belief.

First, there cannot possibly be more than one being who is Pure Actuality;

hence the argument from motion leads inevitably to monotheism.

he would have to be eternal or outside of time and space altogether, since to be within time and space also entails changeability.

analogical sense.

Hence He not only has knowledge, but knowledge without limit, being all-knowing.

For every such feature is what the Scholastics called a “privation,”

single being who is the cause of all change, Himself unchangeable, immaterial, eternal, personal (having intelligence and will), all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. It is, in short, to show that there is a God.

he argues that even if the universe had no beginning in time, there would still have to be an Unmoved Mover keeping it going here and now, and at any other moment that it exists, past or future.

doesn’t know the difference between probabilistic empirical theorizing and strict metaphysical demonstration,

but if you’re going to show that he is, you first need to understand what kind of argument he is giving, and thus what kind of mistake he’d be making if he’s made one at all.

But there is nothing in the argument itself that requires the truth of Aristotle’s scientific theories, only of his metaphysical ones.

The question isn’t about what got things started or how long they’ve been going, but rather what keeps them going.

which shows by itself that there’s nothing about their nature that entails that they must exist.

between what a thing is and that it is

So, though “actual” relative to matter, a form or essence is only “potential” relative to existence or being.

Existence or being is what “actualizes” a form or essence.

So, nothing can cause itself;

whatever must have existence added to its essence in order for it to be real, must be caused by another.

“principle of ca...

what does not have existence on its own must have a cause.

what caused it, not whether it was caused.

with no cause, as opposed to coming into existence with an unknown or unusual cause.

Thus, the only way we can ultimately make sense of something coming into being is by reference to a cause.

likely impossible to conceive.

Not that it was ever much in serious doubt even among atheists themselves, who implicitly take it for granted whenever they trumpet this or that finding of science.

more precisely, a being to whom the essence/existence distinction doesn’t apply at all, who is pure existence, pure being, full stop: not a being, strictly speaking, but Being Itself.

the First Cause could not possibly have failed to exist.

God would have to be an absolutely simple being.

What I mean is simple as opposed to composite, or being composed of parts.

There are no parts or components in Him, not even metaphysical ones.

He is, again, pure Existence or Being Itself, rather than a compound of existence and essence.

Our minds can only have a clear grasp of intellect, power, goodness, etc., as distinct attributes, since they exist distinct from one another in the things of our experience.

But in God they exist as one:

reflections

reduced to a pathetic “God of the gaps” strategy.