Thread 24522798

How can we, through natural reason alone, truly grasp the essence of a God whose existence is known by effect, yet whose nature is utterly simple and beyond the categories of creation? Any Books about that?

>>24522798 (OP)
We know that God exists, and what God is not, through His effects. The Five Ways are prime examples of this. By observing motion, causality, contingency, degrees of perfection, and design in the world, we infer the existence of a First Mover, First Cause, Necessary Being, Supreme Good, and Intelligent Designer. These arguments tell us that God exists and what He must be like as the ultimate explanation for these observed effects.

>>24522798 (OP)
we speak of God analogically. This means the perfection exists in God in a supreme, perfect, and uncreated way, and in creatures in a derived, limited, and created way. For example, when we say "God is good," we mean God possesses goodness, but not in the way a human is good. God is goodness itself

>>24522798 (OP)
Through analogy, we gain some positive knowledge about God's perfections (He is good, wise, powerful), but we always acknowledge that these perfections exist in God in a manner infinitely superior and different from how they exist in creation. We grasp that God is good, but not how God is good in His infinite simplicity.

>>24522798 (OP)
>How can we, through natural reason alone, truly grasp the essence of a God whose existence is known by effect, yet whose nature is utterly simple and beyond the categories of creation? Any Books about that?

God’s Existence Known by Effects (Cosmological Argument):

We come to know of God through His effects in the created world, a central idea in Thomas Aquinas’s "Five Ways" (especially the First Cause argument). God’s existence is inferred from the fact that the universe exists and is contingent.

The cosmological argument argues that because there is a causal chain of events in the world, there must be a first cause (often identified as God). This first cause must itself be uncaused, necessary, and eternal.

Jeet slide thread

>>24522798 (OP)
we can't. I think Aquinas said as much. we can't know God-as-God in the same way we can't know what it's like to directly experience being inside the sun and feeling that amount of heat (because it's physically impossible to survive such an experience), but we can know by analogy how hot it is by how hot the sun's light makes the things we can directly perceive.

>>24524185
amazing

>>24522798 (OP)
don't pretty much all mystics and theologians agree that the best way to grasp the essence of god is through long periods of quiet contemplation?

>>24524717
yeah might be true

>>24524724
How about a big fat NO fucktard! At this point after watching a fucking month of this shit, you are literally just taking the image and name of uppercase God to the point of vanity. Slow your fucking roll, read a fucking book, play with your GPT toys. Fuck the fuck off!