Episode 093: Proving the Existence of God

[Music] welcome to godsplaining contemplative preachers contemporary age each week join the dominican friars as they consider all things catholic hello friends and welcome back to god's planning my name is father patrick mary briscoe and i am joined today by the great dominican scholastic and thinker father gregory maria pine i don't know why i use the word scholastic then that could make people think that maybe you're a jesuit in formation or something it was feeling sort of scholarly we're gonna talk about some scholastic things today scholastic scholasticism yes those are all true things when i hear scholasticism i think of like time periods oh sorry yeah i should have waited for the for the direct question so that way i could have respond to it like a normal human being instead i'll just run roughshod as is so tell us what you think about scholasticism what do you think of do you think of school school book fairs scholastic oh that's a great point yeah elementary school book fairs yeah and also i associate in some way with those um those little like certificates that you would get at school and then if you read x number of books they'd like put a little stamp on it and then you could take it to pizza hut and get a free personal pan pizza i think that was also associated with the scholastic book fair um all of which is good news because reading should taste like 800 calories per slice um yeah no i think about time periods specifically like 12th and 13th century and then 16th century and so when i hear the word attributed to me i think of myself as like wearing a funny hat um and speaking latin conversationally neither of which are true although i could invest in funny hats but yeah those are my associations all of which are happy all of which are good but yeah there you go well we really ought to give you the proper scholastic haircut i mean you you know you wear you wear your hair you know pretty short and i you know i don't mean to mock this with my own locks here but you know we could you could go the full thomas aquinas you know and get the get the get the traditional uh corona i could um i could do that by by way of choice or i could just do it by way of patience because i think um as is the case with with many men it comes for us all just a matter of time so i'm starting to thin and once it goes i won't have to do much in the way of maintenance so i think i'll just bide my time and then i'll have that catch me in a couple years okay well stay tuned for uh the announcement of the patreon fundraiser to see how much how much money we need to raise to get father gregory to shave his head down to the saint thomas aquinas's corona that that'll be exciting but uh let's let's jump in here to the meat of the episode you know we boldly titled this episode proving the existence of god which is to say that everyone in the world who does not believe in god will be able to listen to this episode and by the time they're done with it they will believe in god after that's it right so that's the project the demonstrations that we are going to put forward will leave no one in doubt as to the existence of god and after having been utterly convinced by the by the conclusion of the episode they will then present themselves for rcia so any pastors listening or parochial vicars uh be prepared um because the uh the people will start coming they'll start knocking at your door in short order father gregory let's start off with kind of a basic question here why do you think that the existence of god is not self-evident if this is the kind of thing that we can demonstrate you know like why does why does god even make us bother with the demonstration why isn't it just apparent always and everywhere if our god was a god of love uh why wouldn't it just be clear that he loved us and it'd be easy easy enough for us to ascend to his love and to know him yeah wow i have many thoughts um when you said our god is a god of love i was like our god is also an awesome god who rolls up his sleeves and is not just putting on the ritz but that's besides the points from heaven bingo yeah i mean i mean we joked a little bit about this being a knock down drag out is that the words that i'm looking for airtight um watertight what never mind uh that this being uh an episode about proving the existence of god that it'll leave no one in doubt as to god's existence and people recognize that as a joke although they recognize it in a kind of sobering way it's like oh you know like it's said that one would joke about such a thing because wood that it were more uh evident or were that it would were that more people would track with the with the argumentation and ascent to god's existence and uh one of our classmates father raymond snyder when describing the these you know proofs of the existence of god he uses a helpful analogy drawn from monty python that source of great wisdom and um there's a sketch there's a sketch about like the funniest joke in the world where a guy is writing jokes at his desk and he he ends up writing the funniest joke in the world and he's so consumed with laughter that he actually dies and then you know you see subsequent evolutions where his wife comes in she sees his dead body like mourns his loss and then picks up the joke she reads it she dies and then you have like the police inspectors and eventually it's translated into german and used in the uh trenches during world war one but no one person can read the joke because it would kill him too and you know it's like this very hilarious and involved thing um but i think a lot of people think about you know a proof as obtaining in a similar way it should be like you know you hear the proof and then you assent and then you go about your business um but it's just not that way and i think it's you know as your as your question suggests god's god's existence isn't self-evident or it's not uh immediately demonstrable and the way that one might uh white think or associate with like mathematics right so god is god's existence is self-evident but it's self-evident to himself so god is most knowable but we aren't necessarily capable of knowing what is most knowable we're capable of of knowing god to a certain extent but we're like bats before the radiance of his intelligibility right so we have like these very limited uh abilities to take in what is true and sometimes it just overalls us or it overpowers us and so we're not able to to know god as god knows himself we're not into not able to take in god in one glance as he is able to take himself in as it were and so for that reason we have to proceed by more humble steps i love it yeah so a client you know aquinas for his part right he just uses the language that in this side of heaven we're wayfairs we talk about this constantly on the show um on the podcast and we're wayfairs and it's just not possible for us to perceive the essence of god directly and there's a huge theme and a point of a frequent discussion in uh the works of thomas aquinas and so so here at the very beginning by the way for our listeners we're talking about questions that are at the very beginning of aquinas's summit theologia aquinas says you know as father gregory has been saying that it's because it is not possible for us to perceive the essence of the thing directly that's why the proposition isn't self-evident for us so father gregory was talking about about being bats that rely on one uh one sense rather than another and so so for us then it means that we need to be trained to perceive more clearly um the effects right this this would be a way of us recognizing god's presence uh god's existence god's work in our midst um to be to be trained to focus in on on the effects to be demonstrated uh god can be known to us by things that are that are more clearly demonstrated to us right so we can reason from the principles that are more obvious to uh or towards god what do you think about that yeah saint thomas draws this distinction between uh proving that a thing is um and proving i don't know kind of hard whatever uh but like proving on account of which a thing is um and that may sound unhelpful at first blush but basically he thinks that in the case of god we can't know god in his essence in such a way that we can prove on the basis that god is this that he is dot dot dot okay um so certain things we know we know well uh we know intimately or we know them comprehensively uh well we know them really well and as a result of which we can say like all right because i know this thing really well i can go on to prove other things about you know what it does and how it's going to end up or things like that but in the case of god because we don't have knowledge of him in that same way right saint thomas says we cannot so much say what god is as how god is not that so in the case of in the case of god we're we're in the position of kind of reasoning back to god from the things that we observe in the world and that's not just like wow that's a beautiful sunset god must exist although i'm not discounting the logic of that argumentation but the way that st thomas does it it's like all right we perceive different things about reality and on the basis of these different things that we that we kind of take in um we're going to have to account for them in some causal way right so so this doesn't hold together unless dot dot dot and you follow out the reasoning and you end up with some you know some description of god that's a basic idea so it's very humble um it's very modest uh and it's just like it's the type of thing that takes time or takes effort and takes the leisure to think it through so yeah as a result of which it's it's going to be a little bit difficult and it's not going to like i said be like the funniest joke in the world where it just um you know captures our sense in one in one fell swoop now as father gregory's been talking about um talking about what god is not is often called the via negative or negative theology and so you clear out and begin to make a definition of what a thing is by saying what it is not right and this can be very helpful when you're discussing something with someone because it allows them to see more clearly your position so if you're coming to this episode saying okay i want i want to become better about talking about why i think god exists in the most general ways well a good way a good way to start that conversation right is to say well i don't think god is this okay so so what are helpful things for christians to say well one is to say that um i don't think god changes or i don't think god is complex okay so these principles get us right to the beginning of um some very important ideas about what god is as greater than something that is created okay so there's another one god is uncreated um god is god is the one who was not made um so so these kinds of carvings out allow us to get at um ideas about what god is because the word itself uh is important and the signification of the the one being named um has to be sorted out and so father gregory can you comment a little bit about about doing that well about um you know making uh making it possible for people to understand what is signified by the word god so that maybe they come to something like uh anselm's god is that which is greater than can't be thought yeah i think yeah that's what you describe about kind of ruling things out this is a this is a really practical point apologetically because sometimes you'll be engaged in conversation with people who reject christianity or reject the lord jesus christ and you come to discover that their reasons for doing so are actually reasons that you share you know like you know god is just poised up in his heaven waiting for you to commit some moral fault so that way he can smite you with you know an especial attention it's like yeah that that is creepy i too reject that understanding of god and that's not to say that like god is the great sugar daddy in the sky whose mercy is effectively equivalent to permitting you to do whatever the heck you darn well please and then scooping you up at the end but it is to say that you know we need to be we need to be receptive to how god reveals himself in the scriptures how saints in the life of the church have thought about god and we need to be you know kind of disciplined in our own thinking so that way we don't just bring into our description of god what we hope to be in god or what we have heard maybe popular preaching say about god which may or may not be true so i think there's a kind of discipline in our thinking about god which we can introduce not not to say that it has to be like a very rigorous or academic enterprise but we just want to be sure that we're not bringing things in which actually make it harder to speak truly about god to give others a reason for our hope so you mentioned you like complexity or you mentioned change if you have a changing god you know like you're in you're in trouble because is he getting better is he getting worse is he saving you or is he in need of salvation you know it's just like wow um so yeah i think that for those reasons those are really important considerations okay so finally by by our last way as uh listeners know that we love throat clearing you know we love to just kind of dig through and get get all kinds of issues out there on the table make a whole mess before we actually get to uh what it is that we're going to discuss um but but by way of our last word of preambula um what can you say about about the nature of demonstration you know we can um just before we present some of aquinas's uh ideas about uh about whether or not god exists um and why uh why is it that that we can make a good argument and someone can hear and follow it logically and yet continue to resist belief yeah yeah so i think here it's helpful to helpful to start with how aristotle and st thomas describe the different ways in which our mind can assent or not to uh to truth claims or to propositions so there are some things that it's just really hard to know because those things are changing realities or they're contingent realities or their kind of material realities which will depend on time place and circumstance so can i have you know searching knowledge of the habits of dog walkers in rittenhouse square in philadelphia it's like ah kind of i mean but like it changes there's just so many factors it depends on it depends on the weather it depends on you know like whether or not there's precipitation it depends on whether they have a day off or whether it's a work day it just depends on all these factors and i can try to narrow in but then maybe i maybe i show up at writtenhouse square on march 14 2020 just to pick a random date and uh there's no one there i'm like wow i thought i thought i could predict everyone's behavior and i've been living under a rock up until that point and then somebody says what are you doing out in the street and i say i was i was about to walk my imaginary dog so i could further observe the dog walking habits of others here and he says don't you know there's a global pandemic and i was like wow first i've heard of it crazy right so like i'm not gonna have perfect knowledge or demonstrative knowledge about dog walking habits in philadelphia because there's just a lot of moving pieces and those pieces are like they get they get colds and they um wake up late and they push snooze and you know you get it but there are other things that we can know more thoroughly that we can know more searchingly and which don't change which are just necessary and the types of things that we're reasoning about when we reason towards god are these types of things so i think because because we're so often engaged with these changing contingent material realities we just think like you know the best that i can have is like a good prediction the best that i can have is a working hypothesis but i can never really know no and i think to that we would say no you can actually you can actually know no and uh this is especially important when it comes to other types of truth claims like belief claims for instance if i can't know know that jesus christ is lord then then we're in trouble or if i can't know know that jesus christ is present in the most blessed sacrament then when i go to adoration what's the sense in facing forward why not like face backwards or stand on my head um so so if we can't know things excellently if we can't know them well if we can't know them uh to the mirror of our bones then we've got some problems so i think that we want to draw a distinction there between you know the types of knowledge that we have that's like kind of doubtful or opinion based or kind of like practical working knowledge and then the demonstrative knowledge that we're talking about when we talk about the existence of god and then belief faith knowledge which is a knowledge based on testimony and effectively there we're saying like i can't observe everything that needs to be observed but i believe the one who is telling me and in the case of god that one who is telling me is most trustworthy so that gives you an even deeper kind of certainty well with that let's pause for a short break and when we get back we'll dive into actually some of aquinas's proofs for god [Music] you are listening to godsplaining visit us at godsplaining.org to listen to our episodes shop our store and donate to our podcast all gifts go to improving the podcast and bringing the gospel to more listeners thanks for your support well friends welcome back um thanks for listening to the first part of the episode you should get an award uh because if you're if you're still listening you know that means that you you really do want to know or want to examine some of these proofs for the existence of god so here in the third article the second question of the first part of aquinas assuming like all of that get the little landscape there so here in the third article the second question of the first part of aquinas is zuma aquinas gives his um well enough known five proofs for the existence of a god we're not going to get to all five but we will dive into them uh dive into a few of them here with some some depth i think you know i don't want to don't want to over promise and then under deliver right yeah so so with that with that let's look at the aquinas's first proof as it is for the existence of god his first idea um for aquinas the first and most manifest way to demonstrate god's existence he says is the argument for motion okay now what is the argument for motion essentially this is an adaptation of aristotle's argument about the first mover or the prime mover which is that there was something in the beginning of things that moved pausing for dramatic effect now maybe you didn't think that was as awesome as it is but but essentially the argument goes that if there were not a first thing that moved there would be a kind of infinite regress of moving things and that cannot be there must be at the beginning of things something which first causes motion um and for aristotle and aquinas this this first motion is itself uncaused and is god uh so father gregory what do you think about the first thing that moved the first mover the unmoved mover the prime mover um i think many things i think that he is worthy of worship but but in order to get there well aristotle didn't know that no that's true um i think that it's helpful i'm a big fan of just kind of doing some vocab work because once when sometimes when people hear these proofs they're like what are you talking about motion what and then you get from motion to god wait what um so when when st thomas is talking about motion he's basically just talking about change so he's inheriting this understanding from aristotle aristotle's like okay things can change in quality you know like they can go from being not red to red like when i get embarrassed and i blush like one time i was giving a little lecture in columbia you know when we had we've we both had summer assignments in foreign countries you went to our missions in kenya i went to a dominican province in colombia and i was supposed to learn spanish and at the end i was trying to explain that uh there's this natural analogy between human love and divine love and i learned from my parents that i was good but i used the the wrong form of the word to be instead of using ser i used a star and apparently when you do that it changes the nature of an adjective and instead of saying that i was good i think i described to like a department a humanities department of like 65 people that i learned from my parents that i was very very attractive you know and then they were like wow you're an idiot and i was like that's [Laughter] and then i turned red so that's a change you know like you can change in quality or you can change in quantity like one can gain weight or one can grow in size if i were to grow in size i would be even gawking than i presently am which would be terrible um or you can change in place so there's there's different kinds of changes and all of them basically are are envisioned by by saint thomas in this and he's saying that like when you change you realize some aspect of your being that to that point hasn't yet been realized so like you go from being not red to red so it's like dude you just you just got some redness going on and the question is basically how does that happen right how do you go from being not red to red are you able to kind of like pull yourself up by your unread bootstraps and then make them red and i think that that's that's basically what he has going on in the background here and he's saying like okay all right like let's maybe say that we can identify some some cause you know in the background that's that's making you go from not this to this he's like okay well what gave that thing the capacity to cause you to be not this to this and then if you if you see how it all kind of hangs together you have to have some ground you have to have some causal explanation which itself is not in need of being pulled up you know by its by its bootstraps or by the roots of its hair something that just gives others to be so it's like yeah it's the argumentation is obviously more involved and uses technical language but that's basically what we're saying like things can't go from not being to being unless they get some help and eventually you're just gonna need a big big totally causally competent helper i keep thinking of whenever whenever i read this argument i actually think of john melanie's new in town and i think of john mullaney in a stand-up comic saying and i'll push him [Laughter] because the argument for me i take the physicality of the argument of motion i really love it um you know that that there's a kind of chain set off here um that that that in the in the beginning um that that which was not um was was brought to be and that you know something moved that there was something like that so uh we could think of it like a two like kicking off a line of dominoes you know there's there's something that flicks them right we don't want to take that too literally because we then we end up with all kinds of watchmaker versions of god which are not things that we subscribe to um but but they're being they're being a first motion um uh the that they're being the one who can reduce um the change of um what is potentially so to what is actually so uh is very great okay so what do you want to go to next you know i brought up the argument of motion yeah let's um uh let's go to the fourth way because i think it'll appeal to people's appreciation for beauty so let's let's do that i think that's right so the fourth way is essentially um the gradation found in things so if you look around the natural world aquinas says more or less or at least aquinas says according to father patrick um if you look around the world you find some things that are are greater than others so within species you find things that more perfectly represent the idea of that species just thinking biologically right there's some there are some dogs that are that are more perfectly dogs than others some kinds of dogs that are defective you know a three-legged dog for example is a kind of like a gradation right in things or you have uh we could think of um even um kind of a smaller dog maybe would be a kind of literal less than dog right uh but but you have you have gradations in the natural world um and that they're that there's a sense um a kind of base uh based clarity that some things are more perfectly what they ought to be than others and that aquinas argues you can go from that sense of gradation that some things are are more perfectly what they ought to be than others you could go from that to that there must be a thing which is most perfectly itself period that that from the gradation of things uh if there is a hierarchy of things there is something that sits atop the hierarchy that is the most of all of the things how's that i can dig it um it's cool because you know in the in the 21st century and certainly downstream of the tremendous efforts of bishop baron we're very sensitive to the appeal or the evidential power of beauty and i think here in this in this argument we get closest to what saint thomas might have to say on the matter because when he lists uh different aspects of reality uh where we where we kind of witnessed this gradation he lists like goodness nobility truth as it were but like metaphysical truth i don't remember exactly the words that he uses but where to have it under my nose maybe i could say it with more accuracy but i know that he says goodness um and so he's talking about these these perfections so he's he's describing these aspects of the divine essence the divine nature which kind of spill into reality and make reality to be good make reality to be true make reality to be beautiful and there's a sense in which everything somehow gives gives witness to its origin it speaks of its source there's a beautiful poem by saint augustine in the confessions where he in kind of interrogates all these different aspects of creation and they all speak to him of their creator and i think that you know in a less dramatic and a less poetic way that's what saint thomas is describing here there's a gradation among things things are more and less so but he said i mean he's of the mind a kind of platonic mind in fact that if there is a gradation that there has to be some not only standard against which they are measured but a causal standard which is to say it's not like okay you've got things that are like 50 awesome and 75 awesome so there must be a hundred percent awesome because how do we know that they're 50 and 75 awesome but he also suggests like the 100 awesome thing is what makes the 50 and the 75 awesome thing to be what they are um and he says in this we call god so this should uh i mean on the one hand it's a proof of the existence of god so it should cause us to reason from reality to god but it should also cause us to wonder at the differentiation or gradation that we perceive in creation as having a source a causal source which makes them not only to be to but to be as they are um and yeah just to draw a kind of practical spiritual point like you are not just yeah some like failed attempt of gods to make himself right god has in mind that you be some particular thing that you occupy some rank in reality don't get too terribly caught up with like more or less but think about it as a particular a peculiar expression of god's truth goodness nobility etc god has a notion he weds his will to that notion and you are right so it's not like you're constantly struggling to realize in god's mind what you are meant to be he has you in mind presently it's good news the uh uh i i'm so drawn to this argument because i think that it captures um a lot of a lot of just that you know i could call a base instinct right or or fundamental fundamental thoughts that people have about god um so so often people talk about uh seeing god in in a remarkable landscape or a sunset or some kind of wonder of nature that that induces um that deduces the kind of marvel that father gregory is talking about and i i think i think that this argument captures something of that and it's a way of thinking about why that is the case because not every sunset or every sunrise is the same some of them are more grand and they they lead us to think of they lead us to think of grander things um and so understanding that the kind of differentiation and gradation that we see in the natural world could lead us to something more to to me has has something very clear and experiential about it that's imminently relatable um not that it's an imminent argument but that that i find it i find it that i that i find it connected very deeply to to my experience of the world and that it expresses that well we got through two proofs here two thoughts of aquinas's about the uh existence of god that's pretty good for us um the at the end of this article st thomas proposes um you know two two responses to objections he says that in the end there are really only two um or that there are there are two most significant reasons why people fail to believe in god one of them is probably uh very easily guessed by listeners and that is the existence of evil which is a which is a tremendous sorrow and the experience of of suffering leads many to question um god's goodness and and therefore his existence how could an all-powerful all-knowing all-loving god um allow such things and the second question uh or the second reason that people often um the second reason people often uh doubt in god according to aquinas is that that in the end um they believe that science will be able to explain all of these things that the the that every every wonder will eventually be pursued and that that human knowledge um the kind of mastery of of the the universe and will be able will be able to lead us to a total understanding of all things um what do you have to say about these two uh these two comments father gregory just by way of conclusion yeah i think with respect to the first namely evil there's a sense in which you know god could have made us to freely ascent well god could have made us such that we couldn't but affirm his existence or follow his will um he could have made us subrational creatures or he could have freely caused us to ascend to him uh in a kind of infallible way but he chose to make us this kind of creature and so we are we are made to give glory to him in this kind of way which admits of the possibility of evil and given what we know now you know entails it uh in our historical experience but what god is about is not a work of you know eliminating the possibility of evil because god could have chosen not to create so there's no evil like no evil um wow i'm killing myself over here um but uh yes so i think that that when saint thomas responds to this objection he says god chose uh his sovereignty or god shows his existence in a particular way by drawing forth from evil a kind of good uh and saint augustine will often repeat that god only permits evil to befall to bring about from it some greater good and we've recorded episodes in the past i think which have touched on this theme at greater length uh with greater sensitivity but then just to kind of pass on to the second um i think that sometimes christians make arguments which uh lead unbelievers to think that um we just use god to fill in the gaps of explanation so it's like well i haven't really figured out some of these fuzzy points of quantum physics so let's just say like god wave our hand and then you know pass on from it but that type of argumentation is irresponsible because when science advances in its explanatory power then it then it kind of squeezes god out of those gaps and then once you have a more comprehensive causal explanation there's really no room for god but i think that what we want to emphasize is that god isn't providing the type of explanation that science provides right science for instance relies on cause and effect but when we talk about the existence of god we're we're talking about things that are even more basic like why is it that cause and effect obtains you know like how is that so or where's the where's the explanation for that how is that intelligible and when we when we argue in the way that st thomas argues at the beginning of the summa theologiae he's appealing to those more more basic metaphysical is the word that one would use but you know he's he's kind of like referring us to think about being as being right so not just to think about it as mathematically manipulatable or as physical stuff but to talk about the more basic concepts of what is true and what is good and what is noble um so as to uh orient us kind of beyond the horizon of scientific explanation or um to orient us to what undergirds it or underwrites it um those are conflicting metaphors because i said it was at once beyond and under so you're just gonna have to forgive me for that and i'll just promise that i'll i'll do my best to keep those out of my explanations and subsequent episodes excellent well friends thank you for listening today uh for tuning into god's planning uh the podcast grows because you like and share it on social media or recommend it to your friends who were grateful for that we're grateful for those two who support us um financially on patreon thank you for allowing us to continue to refine and improve our production quality um we love hearing from you thank you for sending in your comments to us on the website we welcome suggestions for episodes and kinds of questions that you want that you want to address and we we do our best to be attentive to that account thank you for supporting us by buying merch we have things available you can find those on the website on cotsplaining.org and i think that's it for announcements father jacob bertrand would probably nod his head in approval you know saying father patrick you've done a great job with those today as always we want to assure our listeners of our prayers for you and we beg your prayers for us for our work uh and for our preaching god bless thanks for listening to god's planning a work of the dominican friars of the province of saint joseph follow us on facebook twitter and instagram leave a review on your podcast app and visit us at godsplaining.org you

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

Views: 1,300

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: catholic, dominican friars, theology, philosophy, religion, faith, order of preachers, godsplaining, seekers, Truth, preaching, questions, searching, prayer, meditation, gregorypine, fr Gregory pine, washingtonDC, opeast, god, existence of god

Id: j2jt3eJ1BFA

Length: 35min 17sec (2117 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021