The Proof from Contingency/Necessity: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.

[Xavier2024]

Many do not know the Third Way of St. Thomas Aquinas - when updated in modern language - is and remains a convincing evidence/solid proof for the existence of a Necessarily Existent Being which caused all contingently existing beings/things to exist. Let us formulate the argument in a few simple steps:

1.   Every contingently existing being depends on a prior being for its existence (by definition).

Examples of contingent beings include you and I, planets, stars, monkeys, elephants, trees etc. Each one of these contingently existing beings depends on earlier beings in order to exist. They are thus not the Ultimate Cause of Objective Reality but are part of Creation or contingent existence.

2.   It is therefore impossible for the chain of contingently existing beings to go on forever.

That this is so should be clear from the foregoing. If the chain of contingently existing beings went on forever, then we would never have arrived at the present moment, or the present series of contingent beings, in other words, you and I would never have existed. Therefore, the chain of contingent beings does not go on forever. But what is the alternative?

3.   The chain of contingently existing beings therefore ends at a Necessarily Existent Being.

As in the well known science of modal logic, philosophers study the Possible and the Necessary, i.e. contingent Truths and necessary Truths, it is necessary now to distinguish between beings whose existence is a contingent Truth, and that One and Only Supreme Being Whose existence is the Necessary Truth that explains Ultimate Reality. God is truly the long sought after "Theory of Everything", that makes sense of absolutely everything, as to why Reality exists in the first place.

Granted, therefore, that a chain of contingently existing beings cannot go on forever, as we logically proved in the last point, it stands to reason that this terminates at a Non-Contingently Existing Being, i.e. Necessarily Existent Being instead.

4.   And this Necessarily Existent Being is Eternal, i.e. Creator God. Therefore, God exists.
[A Necessarily Existent Being differs from contingently existing creatures. Its existence is Eternal/Permanent. It neither goes out of or comes into existence. This is precisely the Creator God.]

[Xavier2024]

Saint Thomas' own formulation of the argument for those interested:

"The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing.

Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence — which is absurd...

Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary ... Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God."

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You have any original thoughts at all or are you just a Jesuit quote server.

[aitm]

You have spent a great deal of your life, apparently, searching for ways to find reasonable excuses, arguments, hope, that your god of choice actually exists and intervenes into your, our lives. Yet, over 3 thousand years ago, people supposedly inspired by the god wrote the Talmud as the formation of the very religion you so desire to be true.

And the ignorance of their time is glaringly easy to see, and yet you ignore the obviousness of the absurdity. Genesis. Get a piece of paper and a pencil and draw, line by line what the first chapter describes as the creation of earth. It says, very directly that the earth is formed under the firmament, amidst that waters the surround the firmament, which is the visible sky and clouds, the "dome" that we see from horizon to horizon.

 Inside that dome is the clouds, the heavens, the sun, moon and all the tiny little stars which reside inside this firmament which in turn is surrounded, completely encapsulated by water.

Rain falls from above the heavens because the sky above the firmament is actually water. Says so in Genesis. The Bible backs up that idea that all the stars are within reach and are very tiny when followed up by the New Testament which goes on to claim that a dragon living underground can fly into the heavens and "fling" a third of the stars to the earth.

Absurdity after absurdity after absurdity, leaves you with no choice but to spend your few years of life desperately searching for ways to justify your absurdity and then desperately reaching out to others hopefully for some kind of support, approval and validation of said absurdity.

 You have pretzelized your mind to bend in incredible absurdities of thought to accomplish what can only be described as desperation. Truly, you should spend your time with like minded delusional people, you will find more comfort there.

[the_antithesis]

Cease this childishness.

[Mr.Obvious]

You know, Xavier,...

I can´t exactly fault you for coming to an atheist forum and making threads about your perceived evidence for god´s existence.

Though, if i´m not mistaken, you are in violqtion with forum-policy, requesting you only post an introductary thread and not create new threads up untill you post ten posts at least...

But hey, whatever. I´m not a mod.

But I am going to ask you one question... because you seem to want to just create threads with well known apologist arguments... with arguments that have been made for ages before you were even a twinkle in your parents´ eyes...

My question:
Do you think we´ve not heard all of this before?

I mean; fine if you were here for understanding our counter-reasoning and try to persuade us off of that. But your previous thread, if I may, makes it seem like you are not genuinely interested in why we think your reasoning is flawed.

And if you are here out of a sense of duty to your lord, to spread his word and message.  Then fine... but then what is the point in regurgitating things we have already heard and found unconvincing? Who does that help?

So really... do you think so little of us? That we just never thought about any of this stuff? That we are just waiting for some religious meme to hit us at just the right time and place and that we will then magically go ´oh, hey, wait, that makes sense´.

Cause, you know... that... that ain´t going to happen.

Hey, I mean this: I would love another active member on this forum. (Non-existo knows we can use the traffic.) I have met a few theists on here whom I like and who I am glad to have met.
But... take a moment to think about what person you want to be on here.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Imagine I came to your church and started teaching evolutionary theory. The pissing and moaning would be monumental and, based on past experience, my life would be in danger. That's the difference. We don't kill people who disagree with us.

[Sargon The Grape]

I'm seeing a lot of claims with no evidence. I'm not going to bother with a rebuttal since you didn't respond to the one I made in your last thread. Instead I shall invoke Hitchens' Razor:

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

[Xavier2024]

Mr. Obvious: "introduct

• ry thread".

Ok, will do that right now. God Bless.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Cthulhu thanks you. Baal, not so much. Quetzalcoatl is non-committal. Michael Valentine Smith knows you.