Pretty basic. I thought it would be hysterical to draw a cute little heart on my shirt. Also they're easy to draw. I'm not so good but it was fun to tamper with the shading. Yay.
Speaking of fun times -- this week was madness. I put off these two essays for far too long and ended up writing for 12 hours straight yesterday to get it done. Now I know most of you have pulled off crazy things like this in your college days, but I can't remember working ever working this hard at UCSB. Maybe that's why I failed out of college then? Shh, don't say it.
I have completely disrupted my routine in the last three days. This is the longest I've gone without working out in two months. Methinks I'll just have to work twice as hard tomorrow to make up for it.
Now at this point you're probably thinking, "Why the hell won't he shut up and talk about something important?" I guess I'll change gears, here.
Some interesting developments in Philosophy class. I briefly want to express my thoughts on this. Let's start with a Aquinas' deductive argument:
1. All things have causes.
2. No things can cause itself.
3. Causes cannot regress infinitely.
4. In a chain of causes the first causes the intermediate and the intermediate causes the effect.
5. If we remove the cause we likewise remove the effect.
6. If we could conceive of the causal chain running to infinity then there would not be an initial cause. If that is the case then there could be no intermediate cause and no final effect.
--Therefore there must be a first cause and this we call god.
Well that's quite a fucking proof. I can't really argue any of those premises. Can you? Seriously give me some help. My first thought is to attack his argument that there is a god. However, he is careful to qualify that the first cause is only *called* god which allows for human error. Okay well this isn't really going to help us. Maybe let's talk about some qualities of the god device.
God is:
Eternal - It has always been in existence
Omniscient - It can perceive all things
Omnipresent - Not necessarily. Is God considered to be IN all things?
Singular - There is only one
Omnibenevolent - It is always good to all things.
Self-Sufficient
Immaterial
Okay a few red flags went up as I was thinking about these:
1. If god is self-sufficient - it caused itself. God can't be its own cause, that violates premise #1.
2. An immaterial being cannot exert a force on anything material. If there was a cause of a chain of events in the physical realm, its cause would have to be physical. God would have to be material.
I can think of a few other things wrong with those additional premises, but they don't necessarily negate Aquinas' proof. The only thing it suggests is that our perceptions of god don't align with the idea of a first cause.
So if all the proof is right there - there must be a first mover - but I can't bring myself to believe it. It seems that there are missing pieces to the puzzle and it's too soon to draw conclusions. But really, what is there left to say if these things will never be observable? Even if I do believe in a "first mover" that doesn't mean it's going to change my life in any profound way. Believing in something does not necessitate worship or devotion. We expect a deep understanding of our origin to have some heavy meaning, but humans created all meaning. Is it possible that we were caused for no reason? Could consciousness just be an accident? Is there really intention behind our existence?
Really I don't see any successful way of wrapping up this argument. I think I have a case of Platonitis. At this point, thinking is only debilitating. I'm going to side with McGinn for now - I give up!
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