Yeah, I think we're on, let's see. Okay. We're in chapter five, and we're looking at all of the arguments against the contingency argument. And we are now looking at the argument that this is, that what we have failed to do is we failed to recognize the fact that matter is necessary. And so last week, I basically played the game with George Smith, and I said, well, okay, George Smith says that there's a substance of matter that is eternal and necessary, but its individual forms are contingent. And I pointed out that you still can't escape a theistic conclusion, even if I bought into that assumption. So I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go further, and I'm gonna ask the question, what is the substance of matter, or what does the substance of matter, or why does the substance of matter cause its forms? And I point out that the principle of determinism states that when two occurrences are equally possible, and one obtains rather than the other, the reason one obtains rather than the other is due to the actions of a personal free agent rather than an impersonal mechanical agent. But the possibility that material substance will cause its forms is equal to the possibility that it will not cause its forms. So why are the forms caused? The best explanation seems to be that the substance of matter is a personal agent who chooses to sustain material form and being. Hence, there exists one personal, invisible, formless, and uncaused matter that is necessary, omnipresent, and immutable. And of course, we're right now back to reaffirming God's existence. And this reminded me, as I said last time, of Calvin's statement in the Institutes where he said that non-theists set God aside all the while using nature, which for them is the artificer of all things, as a cloak. So you've not really escaped the argument by conjuring up this idea that matter is necessary but its forms are contingent. You just reorient the argument in another way and God emerges anyway when you think through it. So that's really my first response and then I go on to give possible responses he could give to that. And I then go on on page 208 to say this, a final response Smith could give is to simply assist that contingency is just an illusion of the mind. And that was the last thing we looked at last week where I pointed out, well, if you're going to do that, you're really right back to affirming pantheism. So atheists have always wanted to posture themselves as rejecting all metaphysics, rejecting all worldviews that would suggest anything other than just pure concrete matter exists, all is contingent and everything. But when you scratch them, they're going to itch like a pantheist. Because what they end up having to do is to save the phenomena, they got to run to necessity. Well, if you make a distinction between what is necessary and what is contingent in the real world, you are for all practical purposes, a theist. So now what are you gonna have to do? We're gonna have to say that all of matter or all of contingency, all of that is just an illusion. Well, that's back to Hinduism saying that all is Maya. So you're not really doing yourself any favors by playing this game this way. JL Mackey, one of the great defenders of atheism, of course, asked the following question. He said, why might there not be a permanent stock of matter whose essence did not involve existence but which did not derive its existence from anything else? So what is Mackey asking there? He's saying, why can't you just have something that is contingent but is not caused? Why can't you have that? And that takes us all the way back to premise two of the argument. The reason you can't have that is because if you really are contingent, as Immanuel Kant says, it's analytically true to say that you need a cause. Why? Because potentialities cannot actualize themselves. The fact that a bucket exists does not explain the fact that it's full of water. It has the potential to be filled with water, but it doesn't explain why it is filled with water. And the very fact that I exist but have the potential for non-existence doesn't explain why I currently exist or why I would go out of existence. There has to be a cause for the coming into existence and or the continued existence of any contingent thing. Now, a more direct response we could give to George Smith is this. We could say that we could just insist that matter is contingent. We could just give evidence for matters contingency. The most common definition philosophers have given to matter is that which is extended in space. But as the atheist philosopher Anthony Flew writes, he says, over a long period of its history, by the way, Flew wrote this when he was an atheist. He converted to theism later in his life. But he says this. He says, over a long period of its history, a basic distinction between matter in the Newtonian sense, distinguished by mass as well as extension and energy, each with its own principle of conservation, served the purpose of science admirably. In the present century, however, this distinction has been challenged by Einstein's famous demonstration that for some purposes, the two conservation principles have to be combined, that in some circumstances, matter and energy are mutually transformable. The development of atomic and subatomic physics has largely dissolved traditional ideas of the ultimate constituents of the material world as discrete parcels of inert and impenetrable stuff. No longer are they seen as wholly distinct from the forces acting on them, but instead consisting, at least in an essential part, of patterns of interaction with their environment. Flew's statement implies that matter is a part of an interconnected system in which it both acts and is acted upon. Matter then is mutually dependent upon other factors within the space-time continuum. Matter is limited and changing. It is an extension in space and hence is limited by the space it occupies. It is changing that it can be transformed into energy. On a macro level then, we know that matter is interchangeable with energy. Hence, the substance of matter changes. This matter is limited, changing, and mutually dependent upon other factors. But that which is limited, changing, and dependent is, by definition, that which is contingent. Thus, material substance is contingent upon the causal activity of another. Matter can not be. Now, do you see what I've done here? I first said, let's take on Smith's propositions at face value and just run with the logical implications of them. And I showed that you have an escape theism anyway. And now I'm showing that matter has to be contingent for these reasons. Matter's contingency can also be observed, at least partially, on a micro level. As Paul Davies, a physicist, says, in the everyday world, energy is always unalterably fixed. The law of energy conservation, like the first law of thermodynamics, is a cornerstone of classical physics. But in the quantum micro world, energy can appear and disappear out of nowhere in a spontaneous and unpredictable fashion. Davey's statement is significant for if the fundamental particles of the universe are as unfixed or unstable as modern quantum mechanics indicates, then it would appear that matter or energy is contingent. It borders on absolute nothingness. Therefore, it is radically contingent and hence is caused to exist by something other than itself. Do you all have any questions about that? Yeah. So there's the video that's out there on Facebook about the book of DNA and the organization of that book. And that was one of the things that was coming to my mind. I guess a book could be matter, right? But an organization of that book of DNA that explains life for trees, for animals, for plants. It didn't just happen. There was an organization of that. And that's moving into the design argument, and that's fine. But yeah, I would agree with those design arguments who say there's more going on in matter than just its contingency. There's a code of written instructions that actually dictate how matter should operate. And so that suggests purpose and therefore design. And that's another problem for the atheists. Is that on the rise, too, in scientific communities? Yeah, because the parallels between computer programming and the study of the DNA double helix are too parallel. I mean, all of the metaphors that we use in the macro world of machines and business and computer coding and all that, we actually just very naturally apply those same, that same language to what's going on in the cell. And the very fact that we're doing that is a suggestion that we live in a world that is designed. So it doesn't, it doesn't stop with the contingency argument. It just keeps getting worse for the atheists. Would that lead them to the, I know that's a little bit off topic, but that would, would that lead them to say that there is some. replicate what's going on in the cells and the DNA some way in computer programming, is it possible for somebody to come out and say, that's right, there is a creator, but it's not a god, it's just somebody doing some really advanced matrix computation. This is the weakness of the design argument. The design argument gets you an intelligent designer, but doesn't give you the transcendent attributes of that designer. And we'll look at some design arguments that actually try to give you transcendence, but you're absolutely right. It is still left for the the atheistic community say, well, we were seeded here by extraterrestrials or something like that. Now, that does raise the question, of course, where did those guys come from? But that aside. Yeah, see then you see if you ask the metaphysical question. Well are those? extraterrestrials contingent or necessary if contingent then then they too must have a cause and And so the teleological argument I gladly admit with the manual Kant does rest upon the cosmological argument But the teleological argument does is it actually gives you? Better reason to think that God is providentially active in the world Because there's no good reason actually to believe that extraterrestrials exist. We're studying angels now and we're going to get into whether there's life on other planets in our Sunday school class eventually. If not this week, next week or so. Tomorrow we're talking about the fall of Lucifer. Was Isaiah really describing the fall of Lucifer in Isaiah 14? That's the question I'm raising. In this study, we're actually giving the foundational argument for all other natural theological arguments, because if this one succeeds, you already have the framework in place to where you can go evaluate the other arguments. This is the first argument where you actually do connect what's going on in this world with God. Namely, God is causally related to the world. obviously having proven God's existence, we're actually just going through these objections that people raise and I'm just not impressed as you can tell with the atheistic response. Now some people do raise the question about the first law of thermodynamics, matter is neither created nor destroyed. And in a footnote, I write this, I say the conservation principles that Flew was talking about in the earlier quote, or the laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics states that currently matter is being neither created nor destroyed, or the amount of energy in any thermodynamic system equals the heat transferred minus the work done. The second law of thermodynamics states that all energy in a thermodynamic system is running out. That is, no cyclic process can convert used up energy into more usable energy. In short, once the energy in any thermodynamic system in the cosmos runs out, the system itself cannot replace the lost energy. The third law of thermodynamics states that it is impossible to reduce the temperature of a system to absolute zero with finite equations. Now those are the laws of thermodynamics. When you say matter is neither created nor destroyed, you're giving a current observation that has been empirically verified to the nth degree. We've, I mean, you know, if I destroy this building, I have not destroyed the matter making up this building. And so some people try to take that and extrapolate that back to say, well, that means the matter is eternal and uncaused. Well that's not, that's a false inference from an empirical observation that we all grant. You can't destroy matter just by destroying this building. And we've actually taken matter and put it in particle accelerators and we've broken it down to very, very small bits and we still haven't been able to destroy the very small bits that it's made up of. And so we grant all of that. That just means that humans don't have the power of creation. But the very fact that we're able to take matter and do all this stuff with it should be an indication, again, of matter's contingency. So you can't extrapolate from the first law of thermodynamics any kind of major conclusions about its eternity until you link it with the second law and the third law. You have to link all these laws together and interpret all of them consistently. And as I will point out in the Kalam argument, the second law is really what gives us reason to think that the universe had a beginning. So if someone looks at you and says, well, matter is neither created nor destroyed, you can say, but that doesn't destroy the fact that it's contingent. And then if they insist that it must be eternal and uncaused, You can say, well, I can grant for the sake of argument that it's eternal, but I'm not going to grant that it's uncaused, given all of its contingent properties that we just talked about. And if they keep pushing that point, you can say, well, you got to at least admit that it's awash when we connect it with the second law of thermodynamics. Because if all the energy in the universe is running out, then how could it be eternal? Right? Because if it had an eternity to run out of energy, so why are we still here? And that is a big problem for modern persons who would try to say that the universe is eternal. But again, I'm not trying to prove that the universe is eternal here. I'm showing that even if the universe is eternal, it's still caused by God. Yeah. In fact, I'll give you quotations of physicists who say in no uncertain way, yeah, this is a problem for those who would say the universe is eternal. But ex nihilo nihilo fit. Once you say that there was once nothing, now you're in big trouble unless you posit a cause of the universe. Ex nihilo nihilo fit. Out of nothing, nothing comes. But again, this argument we're looking at here presupposes the eternality of matter. It does not presuppose that it's uncaused. Like as matter has contingency written all over it. How we doing? A third objection on page 211, the necessary contingent or act potency models for describing reality are arbitrary. We do not really know that things are contingent or necessary. These are little more than concepts we impose on experience. We do not derive them from experience. Now, are you all seeing a pattern here in these objections? The pattern is we've got to get rid of premise one of the argument. If we get rid of premise one of the argument, the argument falls to the ground. And so Smith says this, he says, the major flaw in the contingency argument lies in this artificial dichotomy between necessary and contingent existence. To say that something exists contingently makes sense only within the sphere of volitional action. So, for example, we might say that a building exists contingently, meaning that if certain men had decided to act differently, the building would never have been constructed. With this exception, however, the idea of contingent existence has no application. Everything exists necessarily. So, remember, again, scratch an atheist, he's going to itch like a pantheist. He just says everything exists necessarily. Okay, well, you're a pantheist now. You're not an atheist because an atheist has to say that everything that exists is contingent. And you're saying that contingency doesn't even make any sense except within the sphere of volitional action. But my response is that rather Here's my first response. I say, first, Smith needs to retract his earlier distinction between contingent forms of matter and necessary substance of matter. Remember, he's the one that made this distinction between matter as contingent in its form and necessary in its substance. And I say, until he does this, as we have seen, he cannot avoid the theistic conclusion. And until he retracts such a distinction, his statement that everything exists necessarily will always be qualified to indicate everything is material substance, as opposed to everything is material form. Second, Smith must demonstrate for us why contingency only makes sense in the sphere of volitional actions. Until he does so, it is not the defender of the contingency argument, but Smith, who has made an arbitrary assertion. Indeed, it's not the statement, I am contingent upon the causal activity of oxygen, a meaningful one. I mean, isn't that meaningful for me to go, if oxygen were not in the room, I wouldn't be here. Is it not true? We are not, of course, suggesting that there are no contingent factors that are caused by volitional agents. Indeed, we believe that the cause of the whole cosmos is a volitional agent. In fact, Smith's example of the contingent building serves as a helpful illustration of the contingency argument. Just as a builder's acting differently could keep a building from existing, so also if the uncaused cause had acted differently, then the cosmos would not exist. Hence, contingency makes sense within the sphere of both personal and impersonal factors. Oxygen is an impersonal and non-volitional cause of my existence, while God is the personal and volitional cause of the cosmos' existence. But how do we know that we are not simply imposing concepts such as contingency and necessity upon our experience? The answer is threefold. One, my contingent existence is known through my undeniable experience. I know that I am limited and changing, not because I want to impose a concept on my experience, but because I want to understand my experience. Of course, a word like contingent cannot capture everything that I am, but it does describe a little of what I am, dependent, as well as what I am not. I'm not necessary. Two, regardless of where I derive my concept of contingency, it fits my experience. If, for only the sake of argument, we may grant that contingency is merely an idea that was developed totally in my mind, I can nevertheless say that the concept fits the world of experience. The contingency necessity model for describing reality is comprehensive, consistent, empirically adequate, and existentially relevant, say Geisler and Corjuan. As Geiser and Kordjewan go on to say, they say, finally, unless one denies the reality of change, the dependency model is necessitated by an analysis of the very nature of changing things. In brief, the contingency model is no more arbitrary than the laws of thought, which must also apply to reality as was argued earlier. For what I experience is either contingent or else it is necessary. If it is necessary, then we have already arrived at the necessary being. If it is contingent, then it must be grounded in a necessary being. In either case, we have the conclusion of the cosmological argument from or for contingent being. Now, why do I emphasize the word for here? Because notice, the argument stands or falls on the first premise. If the first premise is not true, then pantheism is true. So what does Geiser, what he used to say to his students way back in the day, I think he's right. It's easier to prove that God exists than you exist. Because if something exists, something has to exist necessarily. Y'all need to think about that. I mean, we... We're spending all this time trying to prove that God exists, but once you grant that something exists, you must conclude that God exists. Because God is the necessary being. And therefore, if contingency is just an illusion, that means that, not that God does not exist, it just means that you're God. That we're all one with God. Okay, questions about that? Yes, can you kind of go through that one more time? If something exists... No, just pause it. If something exists, don't say by chance or anything like that. By the way, when you say by chance, you've proved that something you're talking about is contingent. Well, contingent means limited, changing, dependent upon others. And if you say by chance, the only reason I hesitate to use that word by chance is you're trying to locate the cause, the specific cause of a contingent thing. It may be by pure chance that we're sitting in here. But chance isn't really a thing if you think about it. Chance is just really a probability quotient we give to ignorance. We don't really know what the chance is. the cause is, and so we say, well, luck got us here or something. In any case, saying we're here by chance is a proof of our contingency. But in any case, if I say, if something exists, then something exists necessarily. Why? Because everything that exists is either gonna be contingent or necessary. Right? There are three modalities. Impossibilities, they can't exist. Contingencies, they may or may not exist. I exist, I am contingent. Unicorns exist too, and unicorns are contingent. They contingently fail to exist, I contingently happen to exist. Right? So we have impossibilities, can't be's. Contingencies, may or may not be's. and we have necessities, must-bes. Those are the three modalities of existence. Therefore, if something exists, then something exists necessarily, because anything that you're talking about is either gonna be contingent, in which case it needs a cause, in which case you can't have an infinite regress of those causes, and therefore it's grounded in a necessary being, right? Or it's necessary. But if it's necessary, it's God. Right? So if something exists, then God exists. Right? But something does exist. It doesn't matter at that point whether you're going to tell me it's necessary or contention because either way, God must exist. If it's necessary, great, you found God. And if it's contingent, then it's ultimately dependent upon God. And so this is why I say again, and I will say forever, it's easier to prove God's existence than your existence. It's your existence that's the problem. And this is why the hiss of the serpent, is constantly telling us, you are gods. And that's why we buy into it, because it's very easy to rationalize all this away. It's contingency allows you to do this. You can rationalize all of it away as an illusion and just say, well, I'm one with the divine. I'm God. And now you're in the wonderful world of pantheism. I mean, notice the first group of arguments we're looking at by the atheists, the arguments where they're really trying to go after this argument, they are denying the very first premise. And yet, historically, atheism has always said everything is contingent. And yet when I hit them with the implications of that, where do they go? Okay, nothing is contingent, it's all necessary. It was easier for them to wipe away the contingency of things than the necessity of things. Does that make sense? So in other words, they are living proof that it's easier to prove God's existence than your own existence. Go ahead. So, in other words, that everything is an illusion. You say you encounter somebody that does believe that. Would the necessary being then be Brahman? Yeah, Brahman is the necessary being, yeah. And so all this illusion is just a contingent or a potentiality existing somewhere in the mind of Brahman. Yes, exactly. that the necessary being has to be brought upon. The beef we have with the Pantheists is not a lot of what he says about God. Where we're going to have beef with the Pantheists is, when it comes to their conception of God, is we want to say that God is personal. They want to say that God is a force, God is impersonal. But in terms... Everything is God, and because everything is God, God must be impersonal at that point. Because to say that God is personal already sets up a distinction between who and what God is and everything else. And so for God to exist in the pantheistic system, God must ultimately be impersonal. And so distinctions between things are illusory. And so the Thomas starts his reasoning with a real distinction between essence and existence in all of contingent reality. That's how he starts. And then what happens is what? What happens is you have people coming along saying, I don't know if I want to buy into that real distinction. And once they say, I don't want to know, you can see where they're going to go. They're either going to delimit God and God is going to be somehow involved in this universe. And so we now have the rise of theistic mutualism, and James Dolesall does such a great job exposing theistic mutualism in his new book, All That Is In God. I've told y'all about this book before, but this is a great book because You really don't have any choice but to follow the classical tradition and be a consistent theist where God is absolute and totally distinct from all of contingent reality. Or once you start saying, well, God has contingent properties himself and you suck him into this world, you raise all kinds of questions. But at the end of the day, there must be something beyond God to explain this universe, therefore, because God himself is part of the world. Does that make sense to y'all? And this is what we talked about when we looked at polytheism. And this is why I pointed out that if Thor were to land outside and walk in here with his hammer, and I know that y'all, you that have seen Ragnarok and are following the Marvel movies, you know that he doesn't have his hammer anymore. And that's actually, it was kind of cool to see what he did without the hammer, but I wanted him to get the hammer back. especially for the next movie. I love that hammer. But if he were to walk in here, I wouldn't say polytheism is true, oh, I worship the Othor. I would say, oh, this universe is weirder than I thought. I guess one aspect of polytheistic philosophy is true. But you see, Thor is himself a contingent being. So Ed Fazer says this, he says, he points out that classically speaking, theologians often said that if you deny the simplicity of God, that God is not a being who's composed of parts or passions. If you deny that simplicity of God, you are by definition an atheist. Why do they say that? Because they realize that once you start saying God is a composed being, then now there are parts of him that must be contingent. And it's kind of like these metaphysical properties eat each other away. If God is partially contingent, he actually has to be totally contingent. If he's absolutely totally necessary, then there can be no contingent parts to him at all, and therefore he must be absolutely one OK, how are you doing? This next argument is one of the most important arguments against the contingency argument. And it takes you, you're going to have to really think through this one. OK? And I don't know if I'm, huh? Now you really have to start thinking. Yeah, you really have to start thinking. It's so detailed that I hesitate talking about it, and I'm thinking of summarizing it. But one of the reasons why I deal with it is that William Lane Craig, one of my heroes, the reason he can't go with the Thomistic argument, and the reason he's apologetic, I think, and suffers for it, is he will not accept the real distinction between essence and existence, and contingent things. And in a way, this argument that we just looked at, this objection we just looked at, sort of sets up the real argument. In other words, George Smith is scratching at the surface, and it's actually other theists that give a better objection to the domestic argument than atheists do. And this is actually a common thing that I found. I found that, in a lot of ways, the theists are far more penetrating in their analysis of these arguments than atheists are. Why do you think that is? I think it's because they're, and Fazer does a great job in his newest book on God that kind of gives the history of this, but I think that atheists look for the very fast and quick refutation, And it's kind of like that's so stupid. Let me show you why this is wrong. You know. I kind of batted out. But. Craig, for example, to his credit, will say, my belief in God is not dependent upon an argument for God. My belief in God is dependent upon the witness of the Spirit telling them that God exists. And therefore, I'm free to accept and reject any argument that comes my way. And this is where this comes out. So Craig will sit there and go, well, huh. In other words, he's free to accept or reject the argument. The atheist must reject these arguments. And so the irony is that Craig is getting land blasted for his belief that God is a properly basic belief. Because the idea is that, well, you're not being intellectually honest when you look at these arguments. You're just going to believe for whatever reason. And actually, I think the opposite is the case. It actually creates a more intellectually honest atmosphere because theists can agree and disagree on these arguments. And we don't have to worry about our worldview falling apart if the arguments don't work. Now, I obviously think that this argument does work. I think it works in the sense that it is an absolute proof that God exists. And so, of course, I have to answer Craig's objection. I just am obligated to do that. So let me delve into this, and y'all might want to read this along with me, because again, I hesitate to do this on recording, but now that I've mentioned this, people listening to the recording are going to go, no, no, no, I want to hear this objection. This, to me, is the objection. All other objections before and after this are really of no effect. The only other objection that's going to be of any effect will be, let's see, It will be the charge that the contingency argument commits the fallacy of composition. And that's actually the most popular one among scholars. But before we get to that one, let's look at this objection here. There's no real distinction between essence and existence. We're on page 213. Followers of Thomas Aquinas believe that there is a real distinction between a contingent thing's essence and existence. Essence refers to a being's whatness. Existence refers to a being's thatness. In the contingent reality, what it is, is really and or actually distinct from the fact that it is. Since a contingent being is a real composition of essence and existence, we can say that it need not be. And since it can not be, it must be dependent upon a necessary being, that is, one whose essence is indistinct from his existence. Wiemelin-Craig has argued that all attempts to establish the real distinction between essence and existence within contingent things have failed. For example, some Thomists have insisted that since we can conceive of something's essence without conceiving of it as existing, the real essence-existence distinction is established. But this only proves a conceptual distinction between a thing's essence and existence. And even if Thomas, and even Thomas, excuse me, who rejected the ontological argument would agree that in God there is, at least for us, a conceptual distinction between his essence and existence. Why does Thomas believe that? He believes that because for us, we cannot know what God is. We can only know what God is like. Why can't we know what God is? Because everything we know, we know from experience. We know from empirical observation. But our empirical observations can only give us composed things. So that's why when we think of God, we often wrongly think of God as a collection of attributes. And yet we must affirm that there's something even beyond that, this true of God that we can't quite glimpse. So we must affirm his simplicity, even though in our mind's eye, we can't mentally conceive of that. Or at least we cannot mentally picture that. And it's very easy for us to confuse conceptions with imaginations. Does that make sense to you all? All right. And if our analysis of contingent reality cashes out to merely a conceptual distinction between essence and existence, then there is little difference, if any, between necessary and contingent reality. Some have also insisted that unless essence and existence are really distinct, then they would be identical and contingent beings. However, as Craig has noted, this argument is untenable. He says, for a denial of the real distinction does not imply that essence and existence are identical. These are conceptual abstractions only, and they are conceptually distinct. In reality, there are no metaphysical components, essence, and the act of existing to be identical. There is only the thing itself, which may be analyzed so as to formulate a mental distinction between its essence and its existence. Nor do change and dependence show beings to be really composed of essence and existence. For these properties of finite beings show only that these beings are contingent upon other beings within the natural order for their existence, but they do not reveal these beings to be metaphysically contingent upon a supernatural ground of being. A being that is changing, caused, and possible must depend upon other things for its existence, and it cannot, therefore, be a necessary being. But this does not mean that it is, in essence, really distinct from its existence. It only proves that its essence and existence are conceptually distinct. The idea that natural contingency implies metaphysical contingency is an erroneous assumption arising from confusing the Aristotelian act-potency distinction with the Thomist act-potency distinction. Properties like change imply that a being composed of actuality and potentiality in the natural Aristotelian sense It proves that, but they do not imply such a composition in the more metaphysical Thomist sense of essence and existence. It is certainly consistent to hold that finite beings are composed of actuality and potentiality in a natural Aristotelian sense but deny that they are so composed in a metaphysical Thomistic sense, this latter being a conceptual distinction only. pointing to natural contingency will not avail to prove the real distinction between essence and existence. Craig's point seems to be a more careful way of wording the previous two points made by Smith. It is not so much that matter is necessary or that the act-potency model for describing reality is arbitrary, but that the defenders of the contingency argument can only prove a conceptual distinction between the thing's essence and existence. And the philosophical move from a natural contingency in things, as in Aristotle, to a metaphysical contingency in things, as in Thomas, is quite a leap. I might be contingent, but that does not mean that the underlying elements that make me me are contingent. All right, do I have any questions about this objection first before we look at the answer? How do I answer this? By the way, this is the one that threw me for a loop. This is the one reason I ever doubted the contingency argument. After having accepted it, Craig almost made me go back and reject it. By the way, and this is interesting, This is why you guys gotta be very careful when you read something that seems such a powerful argument against your viewpoint. Don't fold just because a very smart person wrote an essay refuting you. Okay? Don't do that because other people are out there having this discussion, and I would wait a while. I would go, okay, this is interesting, and you're in seminary now. you read some theologian that says X and it contradicts what you think is true, go to your professor and say, I was reading this and it really threw me for a loop. What do you think of this argument? And he may give you some literature that you can go where you, there's a conversation going on here. So a lot of people would read a quote like that and go, done, I'm done. The contingency argument is silly. I explained Immanuel Kant to a group of students one time, and one student was so excited. He couldn't wait to go tell his Christian friends how stupid they were for believing the Bible. And of course, by the end of the lecture, he was very downcast because I refuted Kant. You know, it's just, so because, you know, you hear something like you're like sold, done, it's confirmation bias. And that's another reason why people are so quick to gravitate to the easier refutations. And I say, I simply disagree with Craig here. This is my response. Not only can we prove a real distinction between essence and existence, but an a posteriori proof of the real distinction was provided by Thomas himself well over 700 years ago. Now, Thomas wrote a little book called On Being and Essence. And this little book proves to be this wonderful proof of the real distinction. So like, this is Thomistic talk, right? Someone comes up to you and says, do you believe in the real distinction? If you say yes, you are showing you're a Thomist, you're talking with a fellow Thomist. So if someone comes up to you and says, in a philosophical context, do you believe in the real distinction? You can complete the sentence for them. You mean between essence and existence and all contingent reality? Yes, of course. Very good, my son. Do you believe it? Of course I do. Well, you're proving you're autonomous. Y'all are looking at me like I'm a strange person. And I am. Here's our version of Thomas's argument. If there is more than one thing, then at least one thing is really composed of essence and existence. But there is more than one thing, therefore, at least one thing is really composed of essence and existence. And I point out that since the argument in the footnote, I point out that since the argument here is making a statement about reality itself, is it one or many, the proof is metaphysical, not merely natural. How we doing? I'm confused as to why it's important that there is more than one thing. All right, let's go through the proof. There is more than one thing. So I think we're all going to grant this, but let me go ahead and... Yeah, there's more than one thing. And by one thing, you could just say. You should go back to the pantheism that everything is one. Right, right. And I'm going to show right here that there is more than one thing. So this seems like an appropriate place to start the proof. So we're going to start with the second premise, as I often do. This is the appropriate place to start the proof. Since everyone except some pantheists will accept it. And since I've shown that pantheism is self-defeating, I'm not really worried about the pantheists. Our senses tell us that there are many different things in the world. Surely the diversity we see suggests that there are at least two different things in the cosmos. And if this is true, then our premise is sound. There is more than one thing. Okay. Now, if there is more than one thing, then at least one thing is really composed of essence and existence. Imagine for a moment that there are only two things in our world. If such is the case, then we can know that at least one of them is a real composition of essence and existence. How does the existence of two different things entail the real distinction between essence and existence? The answer is that there is only one possible thing in which there is no essence-existence distinction. Anything else that exists must be composed of essence and existence. To be sure, a being who is not composed of essence and existence may very well not exist. The point is that if two or more things exist, there can be only one whose essence is to exist. This takes us back to our argument that there can be only one God. There can be only one uncaused cause. So once you grant that there's something else, that thing cannot be necessary. That thing cannot be a thing whose essence is to exist. That thing cannot be pure actuality. How do we know that there can be only one thing, or one being, whose essence is to exist, and that all other things must exist in such a way that their essence is really distinct from their existence? How do we know this? A thorough answer has been provided by Whipple, John Whipple. He says, in order to show that there can at most be one being in which essence and existence are identical, Thomas now suggests that there are three different ways in which something can be multiplied. First, you can multiply something by addition of some difference, as a generic nature is multiplied in species. Second of all, or by reason of the fact that the same kind of form is received in different instances of matter, as when a specific nature is multiplied in different individuals. So, how can we have multiplication? And the second point that he's making is that the three of us would be the same form in different pieces of matter, right? The form of humanness is received in three different matters. And what distinguishes me from you is that I occupy this matter, and you occupy that matter. Now, modern Thomas would see DNA studies as confirmation of Thomas's point, because each of us carries around a different DNA code. human, our DNA code is different. Yeah, so the form humanness resides in each of us, and the matter we occupy is what distinguishes us. So matter is the principle of individuation, says Thomas, meaning that individuals are distinguished by their matter. Now that raises the question, in a domestic universe, how do you distinguish spirits if you have many pure spirits? I'll let you chew on that one. We're studying We're not just composed of matter. Right, but your spirit is formed in conjunction with your material self. And you also have to remember that for the Christian, humans live forever in their bodies. So forever we will be distinguished from each other by our matter. So the real question is how do angels get distinguished? From a Christian standpoint, we are separated from our bodies and our spirit exists. From a Christian standpoint, that's a great question to ask. And my answer to that is that we will not be able to understand or see each other in the afterlife until after the resurrection. Yeah, we will behold Christ consciously, but we will not interact interpersonally until after the resurrection. Precisely because we We can't really tell each other apart. But also in that sense, this is again taking us on a side track. I apologize. But time will not exist in that sphere. So. Actually, I don't believe that. I believe that once temporal, always temporal. So the verse in Revelation, when time will be no more, I think that's an indication that the judgment has come. You have no more time. Here's judgment. But God exists outside of time. God exists outside of time, and it's Christ and His human nature that we're beholding. in this afterlife. Now I do believe that God will let us see his essence and we will receive the beatific vision, but that's still a condescending down, not a raising us up beyond time. We're temporal creatures and therefore we will constantly always experience succession of moments. Temporal creatures but also eternal? There's a difference between everlasting life, life that goes on forever, and eternal life, life that never had a beginning or an end. And God is purely eternal, we are temporal, but everlasting. It's the difference between a ray and a line. You know, the ray has a point of origin, the line doesn't. And it's a bigger difference than that because I don't think God is on an eternal line experiencing moments himself. He exists in an eternal now. And so if God is the eternal now, all of our nows must be successive. And so it would be impossible for us, it would be impossible for me to become eternal because I could actually locate a point in which I became eternal, which is a contradiction. This is why, this is also why, When the Mormons were sitting in my home and I said, we talked about, I said, well, do you believe Joe Smith's statement that God was once a man like us who now sits in yonder heavens? I said, well, once you have this finite deity, he can't give you an authoritative revelation. And the Mormons said, well, he was once finite, but he became infinite. See, there's a contradiction there because you can't have a point where you become infinite, right? Because if you were ever finite, you will always be finite. At what point do you become, at what point do you jump over that chasm, that metaphysical chasm from the finite to the infinite? And so the Mormon God, if that God does exist, must be dependent upon he who is pure act. He cannot exist in and of himself. No, it does tell us in scriptures that he knew us before the foundation of the earth. So in other words, some conception of who or what we would be, or our essence, you could say, was known to God even before the foundation of the world. So would you say that some idea of us, though not material, some idea of us existed in the mind of God eternally? Sure. And this is why when we studied the divine decree, you know, we looked at the three, the two moments in the life of God, God had an infinite number of possible worlds that he could have made. And then he, he thought of this one and said, be, and he knew it exhaustively. He knew it better than the creatures in that world would ever know themselves. And then he said, B. And that possible world became actual. So that doesn't mean that we even immaterially exist eternally. No. There's a movie that came out in the 90s. I don't know if they were being true to Jewish tradition or not. But the movie had Demi Moore, and it was about the end of the world, the seventh sign. Have you ever seen that movie? Do you remember that movie, Lance? Well, the movie portrayed the Jewish community as believing in this thing called the guff, and this is kind of a collection of souls. And the reason the world is about to end is because all the souls have run out. There are no more souls in heaven for God to implant in humans. And I'm what you call a tradutionist. I'm not a creationist on the issue of the human soul. I'm a tradutionist, so I believe that we receive our souls from our parents. We receive physical life and bodily life from our parents. And so there's this soul-body union that is so intertwined from birth that the tragedy of death is precisely that the soul has been ripped from the body. And so that's a... That's what makes abortion so awful. Yeah. Now, Aquinas was a creationist. He actually believed that God infused the soul into the body. But he... There are two different types of creationists. There are those creationists who believe that God does it at some point, either at or some point after conception, while the baby's still in the womb. And then there's some people who believe that God infuses the soul after birth. So when the baby is born and they breathe the breath of life for the first time, that's when they receive soul life. Now, the only kind of creationist that would be cool on abortion would be that latter type. So Thomas would not be that latter type. He would believe in the infusion. And we're going to talk about this in anthropology for our systematic theology course in Sunday school. I would want to be careful in saying that our parents are not, in other words, the creators or the originators of the soul. They are no more the originators of the soul. They are no more the originators of the soul than they are the originators of the bodies. So to the degree that they originate our bodies, they originate our souls. And that's what a Traducianist believes. To the degree that the parents originate the body, they originate the soul. Now, do I believe that the parents are the sole cause of the body's development? Of course not, because Psalm 139 tells me that I was carefully knit in my mother's womb, and that was the Lord working. Well, in the same way, my soul was carefully knit in the womb, but it was from my parents that I received my soul. just like it's from my parents that I received my body. I no more take away from God's presence when I say my parents produced my body. You know, I'm not taking anything away from God when I say that. When I say my parents originated my soul in that sense, I'm not taking anything away from God's causal activity in the knitting of my soul. I mean, right now as we speak, remember the contingency argument is constantly saying, right now as we speak, God is holding you together. That's what's so great about this argument. It's showing that God is the current sustaining cause of all contingent reality. All right, now here's, no, that's fine. The tangent's good. So we have two ways in which a thing can be multiplied. A third way is this. You could say that one thing exists in separation, but another instance of the same is received in something else. If, for example, there were a separated heat, it would thereby be distinguished from a non-separate or received instance of heat. I don't understand that. One thing is separated. Yeah, so you could say the things can be multiplied in the sense that one thing exists in separation, but another instance of the same is received in something else. So imagine the heat moving from the sun to this earth. The heat that is sort of in the atmosphere That's the separated heat. But then I look at, say, the animal being warmed by the sun rays, that's a received instance of heat. So that's another way that something can be multiplied. But if it be maintained that there is a thing which is pure existence alone, so that existence itself is subsistent, continues Thomas. then no difference can be added to it. For then it would no longer be existence alone, but existence plus some form that would differentiate one subsisting existence from another. Much less, continues Thomas, will it do for one to have recourse to the second alternative, that is to multiply subsisting existences by suggesting that different instances of the same are received in different parts of matter, humanists and you and me. And that eventuality counters Thomas. One's hypothetical subsisting existences would not be existence alone, but material existence. Presumably, the second alternative is rejected because it would imply that the allegedly pure and subsistent existences would not be pure existence, but instead existence plus individuating instances of matter. Again, Thomas finds the proposal self-refuting. So what is he saying here? In Thomas's day, there was a, there was a view out there which basically said that it was the one man theory which basically said that there was one man existing in abstracta and all of us are just shadows of this one man. It was a as an idea, as a pure abstraction, and that all of us were just manifestations of this. Now, this is a kind of Platonism run amok, so Plato believed this sort of thing, and this one-man theory basically entailed that all of these people were pantheists, okay? And this is... We're all an emanation of the one thing. So yeah, that's still, in other words, that one thing then would be the, that would be your God figure, in other words. Right, exactly. So this is called Averroism. Okay, the Averroists were Muslim philosophers. And this is an important point. All non-Trinitarian monotheisms, when they go philosophical, will always end up being pantheistic. And so Thomas, now Thomas' metaphysic is also another way to avoid pantheism. But so Thomas is sitting here thinking, okay, if your pure essence, if you're a pure existence, and your essence is to exist, and you're multiplied in the sense that you exist in different pieces of matter, then what is that other than creating a kind of illusion between the differences between these two things? So that's why he says, the second alternative is to reject, is to be rejected because it would imply that the allegedly pure and subsistent existence would not be pure existence, but instead existence plus individuating instances of matter. In other words, if pure existence just is two or more different pieces of matter interacting with each other, then that's not pure existence. Unless you're a pantheist and you want to say that those instances of matter are illusory, in which we're back to the same thing, there can only be one thing that is pure existence. The third alternative really concedes the point. Then there would be only one separate and subsisting existence. In all others, existence would be received. So, you have a separate instance of heat and that's received in the animal. Now, this is a really great analogy, and it is only an analogy, but say you have a separate heat and an animal receives it. Does the animal have the heat in the same way the heat exists independent of the... Of course, it's a received heat. Now, I have existence and God is existence. Notice my verbs. God is existence. I received existence. And therefore, my reception of existence can't be the same as God's. It's a received existence, just like the animal is a received heat. And therefore, even though I have existence, I cannot say I am existence, and therefore, if I do exist as a being who has existence, then there must be a real distinction between what I am and the fact that I am. So again, the third alternative concedes the point. Then there would be one separate and subsisting existence. In all others, existence would be received by something else. But this is to acknowledge that any such being would consist of a real distinction between existence and that which receives it. We can also establish our point in terms of actuality and potentiality. There can only be one being who is pure actuality. So if there is more than one being, then all other such beings must be composed of actuality and potentiality. And I say, recall the insights of Geisler and Kordewin. Only what has some potentiality can be differentiated from another by virtue of the fact that they have differing potentialities or essences. But pure actuality has no potentialities whatsoever. Therefore, what is pure actuality, the uncaused cause, must be one, since there is no way to make it many without adding to it what it by nature cannot have, namely some potentiality. Things, if they differ at all, must differ in their potential. Thus, if there really are two different things, then at least one has some potential that is not possessed by another. Also, if something is really composed of actuality and potentiality, then it has the potential for non-being. But anything that can not be does not have existence as a part of its essence. Hence, it is really, fundamentally, essentially, and hence metaphysically, not just conceptually composed of essence and existence, actuality and potentiality. Our last point suggests that in fact, those like Craig who insist upon a distinction between natural and metaphysical contingency are the ones engaging in abstraction. To secure this point, we quote Winfried Corduan at length, and this is what Corduan says. He says, another term that we can use for a finite thing is that it is a contingent thing. It is a contingent being simply because it could not exist without all the other factors that bring about its existence, sustain its existence, and shape its nature. To say that a thing is contingent is to say that it is finite and dependent. There is no separate category of contingency. In other words, we should not think of a thing as being caused, sustained, shaped, influenced by other things, and also contingent. It is the first four attributes that make it contingent. Consequently, I am puzzled, he says, by the following statement by William Lane Craig. And this is what Craig says, he says, upon a myriad of factors including temperature, pressure, entropy level, and so forth. But this natural contingency does not suffice to establish a metaphysical contingency in the sense that being must continually be added to their natures or they will be spontaneously annihilated. And then he says, and then Cordewen responds to Craig by saying, of what special sense could Craig be thinking here? What would be metaphysical contingency in contrast to natural contingency? The contingency in which we are interested is precisely the natural contingency that Craig acknowledges. If it were not for the factors that Craig brings up, the thing would indeed not exist. The rest is just a matter of nomenclature to generalize this ordinary understanding of how things work. And needless to say, it makes no difference whether we are talking about a single finite thing, a number of finite things, or a cosmic collection of finite things. If their being is dependent on other things, then they are finite and contingent. This label applies just as much to something as ephemeral as a thought I might have had a few moments ago as to something as imposing as the entire universe. It is either finite or infinite. So what is he saying here? This distinction between a natural and metaphysical contingency is itself an abstraction that's unnecessary. If you say, by nature, I am contingent, then we're talking metaphysics here. Therefore, at least one thing is really composed of essence and existence. This follows logically from the two premises. If one can show that the existence of more than one thing entails the existence of at least one being really composed of essence and existence, and then show that there is more than one being, then it follows logically and inescapably that at least one thing exists that is a real composite of actuality and potentiality, essence and existence. As Craig himself has recently affirmed, existence is not part of the essence or whatness of ordinary entities. That is, for ordinary entities, there is a difference between essence and existence. Now, my qualification is that this may be from Moreland's pen rather than Craig's. I'm quoting from their book, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, which is, by the way, a book you must get. JP Moreland and William Lane Craig. And they, of course, wrote different chapters in the book. So this may be Moreland instead of Craig. I don't know if Moreland has worked out his metaphysics as consistently as Craig. And Craig still shows reservations about the, yeah, he shows reservations in philosophical foundations elsewhere of the Thomistic argument. I guess I'm confused as to how you separate the natural and metaphysical. That was my puzzle, too, and I was very happy to see Corduan going, this is just an abstraction. In my mind, I don't know how you would separate them. Right. I mean, you're talking to an atheist, and an atheist says, I don't want to do metaphysics. Part of the hallmark of atheism is the eschewal of metaphysics. Metaphysics is a waste of time. Well, the problem with that statement is that he engages in metaphysical statements all the time. Like, the only things that exist are physical entities that just collide together in the void. He's giving you his theory of reality. I'm giving you Epicurus. That's his theory of reality. But I mean, if you talk to your average village atheist, they're pretty much going to say that. It's just all a bunch of tricks and nonsense, as Han Solo says. So that's the atheist talking to the pantheist in Star Wars. When you reject a metaphysical theory, you're doing it on the basis of another metaphysical theory. So this idea that I don't have a metaphysic, you're the one that has it. No, you believe, you may not believe in a metaphysic, something that is beyond the natural, fine. But you do believe in a metaphysic or an ontology is the older term that philosophers use and it's probably a better term because the word ontology just means the study of being. You have an ontology, and your belief about ontology is that the bottom line is that all things are ultimately just material. That's your metaphysics. So your point would basically be, as I would think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but no human is without, you can't go, as a human, you cannot just have no metaphysical conversation or argument or thought. They're all interrelated. Absolutely. Everybody on this planet is a philosopher, and therefore everybody on this planet has an ontology. Yeah, they're either a good or bad one, but everybody on this planet has an ontology. They have a theory of reality, they have a theory of knowledge, and they have a theory of behavior. They have an ethic. Metaphysics is ontology and everyone has one. Epistemology is a theory of knowledge and everyone has one. Ethics is your theory of behavior and everyone has one. Most people don't have a well-worked out one. Most people have a contradictory one. They have not thought through a worldview on any intelligent level whatsoever, but they have one. And so when you, with a wave of a hand, say, look, all is matter, I can then say, okay, fine, all is matter. Well, I begin to give examples of the contingency of matter that we just looked at, how matter could be converted to energy. or I give examples of more refined examples of matter, like you and me, and I point to the contingency of matter. Am I not pointing to a metaphysical contingency? From the atheist point of view, if all that is is matter, if the real is material, and if I've shown that matter is a composition of essence and existence, haven't I shown a metaphysical as well as a natural contingency? And if I've done that, haven't I shown that the materialist is false, that all is not matter, that there's something that gives it its ground, a necessary being who is uncaused? So again, we're kind of beating a dead horse almost. But I think the reason I quote Craig at the end here is because it's kind of like having set up this big argument against Thomas. At the end of the day, he goes right back into talking like a Thomist. And it's kind of a natural way to talk once you understand the nomenclature. It's like, yeah, things have real distinctions in them. Now, Craig actually offers another critique of the argument. He doesn't think that things can be proven to have real existence, excuse me, have real essences. Excuse me, I confused essence and existence, which I shouldn't do in contingent things. He points out that in order to prove that things are really contingent, the defender of the contingency argument must prove two points. First, he must prove that things have essences in the first place. And second, he must prove that these essences are ontologically distinct from the act of existing. We have already discussed the second point. With regard to the first point, he needs to prove that talk about essences is meaningful at all, that things do have properties that are truly essential. So that's what you say are essences, things that are true. A property that is truly essential. Now, I think that this is nonsense. I don't know why Craig would think that this is a good objection. There's something about me that makes me me, that if you take it away, I'm not me. I do know that I have properties that are not essential for me. Two arms. You can take away my arms and I'll still be me. But if you take that thing, whatever that thing is, away from me and just destroy it, you destroyed me. We can debate. Well, I have two things to call it. If I'm a philosopher, I'm going to say my rationality. Now, you might say, well, what about an Alzheimer's patient? I mean, he's lost his rationality. No, he's not lost his rationality. He's lost the full functioning of his rationality. But all humans are rational on some level. So even a person who has an extremely... Does our rationality make us distinct then? I think our rationality... Aristotle says we're the rational animal. And I think that... Well, that distincts us from the rest of... between humans, because I'm rational. I understand, yeah, but we're not talking about whether there's a distinction between contingent things anymore, or a distinction, but we're talking about whether things have essences. And I'm saying that rationality is the essence of man. A rational animal is the essential definition of man, so if you take away my rationality, you've also at the same time taken away my humanness. And I don't think that examples like Alzheimer's disease or something like that is a disproof or a counterexample for what I'm saying because I would say, I'm not suggesting for a moment that all humans behave in the same, they manifest their rationality in the same way. I'm saying that all humans are rational. And so even a total moron, a real idiot, the village idiot is still a rational animal. And the person who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, as devastating as that is, where he loses his rational function in a very severe way, he's not lost his rational function totally. All Alzheimer's patients manifest a rationality. Now, let's just for the sake of clarity for me, can we define exactly what you mean by rationality because I'm thinking that there are still some similarities and I don't want to confuse rationality with decision making or something that simple. It's hard to give a textbook one-sentence definition of rationality, so I have to basically just give you other synonyms to kind of give you a feel for what I'm talking about, but it's the ability to think and reason about another thing. It's your ability to have a certain sense of self-awareness. and your ability to distinguish the thing that is you from the thing that is over there. Those are all manifestations of rationality. Aren't there people that exist that would say that certain animals have that capability as well? I mean, I would disagree that animals have the ability to reason, but there are people out there that would say that they do. No, I think that animals have an ability to reason, but they don't manifest all the functions of rationality that I just mentioned. Like, for example, you know what a red herring is in logic? You know what a red herring is? It's a fish, right? Well, what they would do when they were training dogs to chase foxes, the way red herring came up as a term in logic, a red herring is just a rabbit trail that you go down and that doesn't really have anything to do with the point at hand. So sometimes in debate, people will create a red herring to get off topic, because they're losing the debate. And so you have to stay on point. This has become notorious in certain atheist-theist debates, because you and I might be talking about whether there is a God, and an atheist will stand up and raise the issue of hell. Well, whether hell exists has no bearing on whether there is a God. It may be a consequence of you rejecting God, but it has no bearing on whether God actually exists. That's a red herring. Well, the very fact that you can do that exercise with dogs, what they would do is they would have a red herring sort of laying in one path. And what a dog would do is he would be running after this fox or whatever he's chasing, and he would go down and he would smell the red herring. Well, a good trained dog would immediately leave and go after the fox. So that's a reasoning capacity on dogs and that proves that I think some animals have souls. But here's the question, does a dog have self-awareness? We have good reason to think a dog doesn't have full self-awareness. A dog is not self-conscious. And how do we know that? Because we know that when most animals experience pain, they experience the pain, but they're not aware that they are the ones that have it. So I don't know if you've ever seen a dog who's suffered from an injury, but, um, they don't really manifest a full awareness that they actually are suffering from the energy of the injury. So if they lose a leg and you say, come here, boy, he'll come to you all happy and all that stuff. And he doesn't try to evoke, invoke any sympathy or the fact that he has, uh, lost a leg. I had a friend, one of my closest friends, whose dog got hit by a car, and he lost the usage of his hips. And so his hind legs couldn't move. And so Drew created this sort of skateboard for him. And seriously, the dog would sit on the skateboard. And when he'd take him for a walk, the dog would just pull the skateboard. And in the house, I would be sitting there and say, come here, boy. And he'd cry, and I'd say, oh. And I felt so sorry for him. And I would say, God, poor thing. And he goes, why are you feeling sorry for him? He doesn't know. Look how happy he is. He manifests no self-awareness that he was hurt in any way, shape, or form. So this is an interesting thing about animal pain. And there's been a dissertation written on this. Animals experience pain, but they're not fully aware of the fact that they're experiencing pain. And that is just one manifestation. If you look at animals, they're all instinct. There's a reasoning capacity there on some level. They utilize the law of contradiction when hunting down a fox. OK, that's a red herring. I don't want to, I don't have to worry about that. I'm going to go after the fox. That's the law of non-contradiction imposing itself on an animal, see? Why? Because nature is fundamentally orderly, and it conforms to the law of contradiction. But they don't manifest all the, all of the, capacities that humans have when it comes to rationality, including full self-awareness. The distinguishing fact about that between a patient who has Alzheimer's is at one time they had full rational capabilities. We are saying of the animal that they never had full rational capabilities. The highest manifestation of rationality in any animal will not be anywhere close to us. Now I could go on and on, but here's my response. First, I'm not sure that I even needed to prove that things have essences in order for the argument to go through. I mean, if you're gonna make that point, and by the way, I was talking philosophically with you a minute ago. Theologically, I would simply say that rational animal translates into image of God. So all human beings, have a property called the image of God, which is an essential property. And therefore, if you lose that, you are no longer human. Okay, so that would be another. That would be another way to make the point. But here's my point to Craig. Because I know that I can't say, hey, we have essences. For example, humans have the image of God because Craig would play the devil's advocate. He would play the role of the atheist. So how do you know we're made in God's image? And that would put me in a trap, right? Because I could only appeal to revelation for something like that, which is not bad. It's not a bad thing to do, but again, we're trying to, excuse me, we're trying to prove God's existence here. As we saw in chapter four, excuse me, as we saw in chapter four, the contingency argument can be accommodated quite well to Buddhist presuppositions, which suggests that things do not really exist. All that really exists is a vast series of evanescent changes. But change cannot be understood without an unchanging standard to measure it. Therefore, there is a metaphysical distinction between that which flows and that which is stable, which is the essence of the Thomistic argument. Second, could we not simply argue that no contention thing has properties that are essential to its nature? And if we were to discover that a contingent thing has properties essential to its nature, its essence is distinct from its active existing. Hence, the issue of whether or not things have essences could be left for another day. Now, this certainly seems plausible. I, for example, am a contingent thing, a composition of actuality and potentiality. As such, I notice that every property I have is accidental and incidental to me. Maybe I come to that conclusion. I have two arms, but I can lose them and still be human. I have a nose, but I can lose it and still be human. I have knowledge of certain facts, but I could lose that and still be what I am. All the properties I have can be lost. It seems, therefore, that the only being that must have an essence is the one who is pure essence itself. Only God need be such that he is every one of his properties essentially. Finally, we contend that it is rather simple to prove that things do exist and that they possess properties which are essential for them, which is the fundamental objection to Buddhism in any case. We all intuitively realize, as Corduan points out, that it's impossible for something to be without being something. Therefore, the being of a thing and the nature of a thing are mutually intertwined. remove every one of my properties from me, and I am no longer me. Even if, and by the way, the very fact that I can talk about contingent properties that I have, and I'm a bundle of these contingent properties, that itself proves that I have an essence. Right? Well, I mean, at any given point, It proves two things. First of all, at any given point, I am defined by X, Y, and Z, and that just is my essence. The essence of the thing is the wetness of it. It's its definition. It's what it is. And if you say, well, none of those properties are essential to you, that proves that there's a distinction between what I am and that I am. Because tomorrow, I may lose one of those properties. And yet I continue to exist without that property. And so that proves the real distinction between essence and existence. So we're right back to square one. Here's another. I don't know. You know, I don't think he sees it. I think it's very simple. I think he refuses to see that. And again, I hold him in the highest respect as a philosopher. But I think he refuses to see it because he realizes that the minute you embrace the divine simplicity, you can no longer hold to the doctrine of middle knowledge. And the doctrine of middle knowledge is the linchpin and his entire framework for preserving libertarian human free will and divine sovereignty and the doctrine, the Arminian doctrine of conditional election. You cannot hold to those doctrines without middle knowledge. And you cannot hold to middle knowledge if you affirm simplicity. Now Molina affirmed simplicity and so did Arminius. But I think that they were being inconsistent at that point. And I think Craig is trying to be consistent. So we have to give him credit for that. You think he may even realize this? Surely he knows this. I have a feeling that he probably has read Corjuan's essay, because Corjuan's essay appears in a standard book on evangelical apologetics. So you think he knows it and just ignores it for the consistency of his views? Yeah I don't want to ever say that Craig ignores it because he's usually been he's usually very good at you know addressing his critics but the other the one thing that you have to also appreciate is the fact that Craig wrote an essay knocking down the Thomistic argument but the hallmark of his whole philosophy has not been knocking down arguments, but building up arguments. And so he would much rather devote his energies to answering an article written against the Kalam argument than tearing down an article trying to defend Thomas. And I think that it's a cultural thing, too. He'd much rather all of us be Thomas than all of us be atheists, right? So I don't think that he's interested in trying to make sure that Thomas is refuted. And he does enough of this in his published work to where he's just content with his argument. And you also have to understand and appreciate the fact that at some points, you get to sort of a standstill. And there's really nothing either side can say to each other. They're totally rational people, and they just disagree. And because I think that he's so wedded to his mental knowledge, I think if he could prove that, he's proved that God is not simple, and we're back to his metaphysics anyway, right? So anyway, I'll move on. The defense of the first premise of the contingency argument is a textbook example of circular reasoning. That's another objection. In our first premise, we insisted that something exists, and undeniably so. We maintain this thesis by two lines of evidence. First, sense perception is basically reliable. We know this because A, few of us ever question its reliability, since it's indispensable for day-to-day survival, and B, all objections to the basic reliability of sense perception actually presuppose its reliability. Again, if you say, sense perception's unreliable, I can simply say, I don't hear you. Second, the proposition I exist is undeniable for me for whenever I say the words I do not exist, I catch myself existing as I make the denial. But Richard Purdy argues that this is circular reasoning. When someone says I must exist in order to make the denial, nonexistence do not affirm or deny, they are not and they speak not. He is not affirming a necessary connection between speech and existence, since all that makes speech significant is the subject, I, which stands behind it. There is a connection here, that is identity, but it has nothing to do with the necessity of existence. As such, it is a fallacy. The underlying subject, I, occurs as both premise and conclusion. The same is true of Descartes' I think, therefore I am. That's why Descartes' I think, therefore I am is a textbook case of circular reasoning. These assertions reduce to, I exist, therefore I exist, or more simply, I, therefore I, and this is circular. To say, I exist on the basis of existential undeniability, therefore, is no more than to say, I exist on the basis of existence, or I exist because I exist. This fallacy is implicit in such concepts such as actual being, actual truth, and existential undeniability, all of which are tautologies. actual meaning existing, truth meaning existence, and existential meaning undeniable. Our first premise is circular, I say. I admit it. But our circle is not vicious, but transcendental. A viciously circular argument takes the form P is true because P is true. The Bible is the word of God because it says so, and we can trust what it says because it's the word of God. A transcendental argument takes on the form presupposed either P or not P, and P is the necessary precondition for either assumption. Example, let me assume that I do not exist, then my existence is a necessary precondition for my having this assumption. Let me assume that I do not exist, excuse me, let me assume that I do exist, then my existence is a necessary precondition for my having this assumption. Therefore, either way, I undeniably exist. Not in the sense that my existence is either logically or metaphysically necessary. See, and that's what Purdy does in this objection. He confuses necessity with undeniability, and that's not Geisler's point. It's undeniable that I exist, but it's also undeniable that I'm contingent. And so I'm not logically necessary, and I'm not even I'm experientially undeniable. I cannot even begin to go about my day without assuming that something exists which includes me. Either way, I undeniably exist, not in the sense that my existence is either logically or metaphysically necessary, but in the sense that my current existence cannot be doubted. Other transcendental arguments can be given to bolster the presuppositions we took to our contingency argument. For example, assume that the law of contradiction is false, such a denial presupposes the distinction between the false and the true, which in turn presupposes a standard of judgment for distinguishing them. The law of non-contradiction, that is the law of non-contradiction, assume that the law of non-contradiction is true, the one that's already presupposing the law of contradiction. Another example, assume the basic unreliability of sense perception in light of the fact that the senses sometimes deceive, then the senses are generally reliable since our knowing that we have made a mistake presupposes their basic reliability. In other words, you know the old stories like a stick and oar in the water and it looks bent. But how do I know that that was a mistaken perception? I know that because other perceptions told me so. So our argument is based on transcendentally circular reasoning, and that's what grounds the argument. So I gave a transcendental argument for myself, and then I showed that on the basis of my undeniable existence and its contingency, God must exist. Change is indefinable. Therefore, the contingency argument is invalid. This is the seventh objection we're going to look at. Purdy tells us that change in being is indefinable. The antithesis between being and nothing is absolute. Since change is indefinable, then the assertion that contingent beings exist, that is, things which change in their very being, is virtually meaningless. And since the key term in the Thomistic argument is virtually meaningless, then the proof cannot even get off the ground. And hence, this line of reasoning is invalid. It doesn't, yeah, in one way it doesn't even matter if it is undefinable because change is undeniable and that's the point. Even if I can't define change, I know what it is. I know what- We know that it happens. We know that it happens. Corrigan's response to Purdy is more than sufficient to refute this contention. Corrigan points out that in making his assertion, Purdy is essentially defined Excuse me, he says, in making this assertion, Purdy has essentially denied what we all take for granted. However, this assertion of Purdy's is easily refuted. As Cordewin explains, first of all, there's no question that there is a categorical difference between being and non-being. However, as long as we accept the realities of particularity, change, and motion, there must be a gradation of being that makes change possible. Since absolute non-being per se really does not exist, then given the reality of change, change cannot take place on the side of non-being, but has to occur somewhere within being. Right? It follows then that given the above two realities, change is real, and change occurs in the realm of being, there must be two kinds of being. Being that currently is, and being that will be when change occurs. We can call the latter category being in potentiality, which refers to something that can become actual being, but has not yet made its appearance. And the change takes place, it moves from being in potentiality to being in actuality. There are both being and becoming. Parmenides and Heraclitus were both right, and there is no contradiction between the two. Actual being does not arise from absolute non-being, but from potential being. Aristotle summarized act or potency and act divide common being. To put Cordroom's point another way, things differ in either their being, their non-being, or their potential. This takes us back to Parmenides. But things cannot differ in their being, for that is precisely what all things have in common. And no two things differ in what they have in common. And things cannot differ in their non-being, either, for non-being is literally nothing. And hence, it is a contradiction to suggest that things differ in nothing. For if they differ in nothing, then there's nothing that distinguishes them, which entails that there's no difference between them after all. Therefore, it follows that things differ in their potential, either realized or unrealized potential. An example of realized potential would be Michael Jordan's ability to play basketball. That is, he once had the potential to become a great basketball player and then realized the potential. Eddie Van Halen has the potential to become a great guitar player and then realized that potential. An example of unrealized potential would be my potential to be either a great basketball player or a great guitar player. I haven't realized either potential. I am distinguished from Van Halen and Jordan because they, unlike me, realize certain potentials. Also, things can differ insofar as one being may have certain unrealized potentials another simply does not possess. So, for example, I have the potential, albeit unrealized, to play basketball and the guitar quite well, but a squirrel lacks both of these potentials and possesses a set of potentials, realized and unrealized, that neither Van Halen nor Jordan or I possess. The squirrel has the potential to scurry up a tree and crack nuts very easily with its teeth. I can maybe do such a thing, but not easily. The philosophy of change and differentiation, which finds its roots in Aristotle's metaphysics and Aquinas' commentary on that metaphysical work. among other sources, allows us to make sense out of what we already know. Aristotle and Aquinas insisted that there are potentialities residing in each of us, distinguishing one from another. Motion or change occurs when a being in unrealized potentiality moves in such a way as to become a being in some realized potentiality. But assume we are missing the mark here. Assume that our analysis of change is totally wrong. Should that in any way force us to doubt the reality of change? is not the fact of change far more obvious than any analysis of it that we can offer. If the reader agrees with me that it is, then we must insist that it is virtually undeniable. The motion and or change is real after all, and hence, contingency is a fact of our experience. This, of course, entails that our first premise is undeniably true. Now, all of those objections, those seven objections, or at least six of those, are all about the first premise. I'm going to give one more argument, and then we'll shut down. No one can infer the existence of a cause from the mere observation of events in the world. This is an attack on premise two. And this is David Hume attacking the principle of causality. And there's a lot here, so you know what I'm going to do? We're gonna go ahead and stop, and I'll just give you a very quick response to Hume, and then we may or may not pick up him in detail. Hume gets really into whether we can infer causes from their effects. Okay, and so there's a classic example. The rooster goes out and crows. in the morning, and the sun comes up. Well, do we infer that he caused the sun to come up? And we all understand that there's what is called a post hoc fallacy, where we say, after this, because of this. Okay, if it comes after this, it's because this happened. And that's not always true. But the problem, the bottom line, the bottom line problem with Hume's analysis of causality is, first of all, he didn't deny causality. He even says in a letter to a friend, I never so absurd a proposition as that effects can exist without their causes. And so he says, I'm just saying that our basis for believing that comes from another source, and the other source is custom. We get our understanding of causality from custom. And I wanna say this. It may be the case that my contingent existence is caused, but I don't know what the cause is. So for example, I looked at you and I said, I'm a contingent thing and I'm caused by oxygen, right? Well, maybe I'm wrong about that. But here's what I do know. I am caused. I am an effect. And so even if I can't locate exactly what the effect is, excuse me, even if I can't locate exactly what the cause is, that doesn't deny the fact that I need a cause. And once I say that, the cause of me is either another contingent thing, And you can't string that out infinitely without an uncaused cause, or it is the uncaused cause. And so when we defended the fourth premise of the argument, we took Hume's potential objection into account. Remember I said, let's say we're wrong about this, and there is no series of contingent effects. And that there are an infinite number of contingent realities, totally separate and disparate from each other, and they're not causally connected in any way, shape, or form. Well, that's still game set match for the atheist because that means that the immediate cause of contingent thing, because contingent things have to have a cause, the immediate cause, since it's not contingent, must be a necessary being. And so we're right back to square one with the argument. So there's a lot of ink that's been spilled on Hume's notion of causality. And I want to say, I don't think that that is a very, it's not a good objection at all. You do know that there are things that cause other events. And if you know that, and you know that I'm something that needs a cause, that I'm dependent upon others for my existence, then you know that the argument still goes through, even if Hume's analysis of causality is true in many points. Okay, so I'm gonna stop right there, and we're gonna pick this up next week, hopefully.