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Channel: Philosophy – William M. Briggs
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Summary Against Modern Thought: Become More Godlike

Previous post. Review! We skipped a week because of Easter, and memories are short. That things naturally tend to become like God inasmuch as He is a cause 1 As a result, it is evident that things also...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: How Things Are Ordered To Their Ends

Summary Against Modern Thought: How Things Imitate Divine Goodness Previous post. Question: What is the final cause? Answer: Yes. How Things Are Ordered To Their Ends In Their Various Ways 1 It can be...

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A Society Run By Atheist Scientists Would Be Horrible

Skeptic Michael Shermer is pleased the number of folks with no religious affiliation is growing, and will likely continue to grow. One estimate is that “there are more than 64 million American...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: The Motion Of The Heavens

Previous post. This looks like a lot, but it is not that difficult. Our saint moves us swiftly through each argument. There is much to learn from this, even though, as the man said, times change. That...

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What Is It You Truly Desire — Guest Post by Ianto Watt

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel this? Does anyone else perceive that there has been an upsurge in the discussion on the probability of Heaven/Hell No, not just an uptick. Rather, its several...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: All Beings Seek The Good

Previous post. Be sure and review and understand what our saint meant by “the good”. Even beings devoid of knowledge seek the good 1 Now, if a celestial body is moved by intellectual substance, as we...

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Inference To The Best Explanation: Shapiro’s The Miracle Myth Reviewed — Part II

Read Part I. A researcher puts you into a room. On the table is a blue ball. Somebody put it there. It could have been Alice, Bob, or Charlie. Given only that information—and no more—who put it there?...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: To Understand God Is Our Natural End

Previous post. Dear reader, you are an intellectual substance. that to understand God is the end of every intellectual substance 1 Since all creatures, even those devoid of understanding, are ordered...

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Inference To An Explanation: Shapiro’s The Miracle Myth Reviewed — Part III

Read Part I, II. Did Jesus walk on water? Eyewitnesses reported he did. The event was so well remarked that people wrote of it at a time when most events went unrecorded. Here’s a different question:...

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The Why & Frequency Of Miracles: Shapiro’s The Miracle Myth Reviewed — Part IV

Read Part I, II, III. MOTIVE That miracles have supernatural origins is true by definition (see below, in PROBABILITY). Miracles, like all events, must have causes, and cause has motive as part of its...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: Happy Comes In Thinking

Previous post. Intellect trumps will, but willpower is good. Whether felicity consists in a will act 1 Now, since an intellectual substance, through its own operation, attains to God, not only by...

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Atheists Will Have No Excuse

There is a class of the argument of God’s existence that depend entirely on your thoughts. The one that interests us is Joseph de Maistre’s “no excuse” argument. It is less well known than Saint...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: Human Happiness Does Not Come In Pleasures Of...

Previous post. This is the . real summary against modern thought. That Human Felicity Does Not Come In Pleasures Of The Flesh 1 Now, it is clear from what we have said that it is impossible for human...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: Human Happiness Does Not Come In Honor Or Glory

Previous post. Strange are the things men seek out. That Human Felicity Does Not Consist In Honor 1 It is also clear from the foregoing that the highest good for man, that is felicity, does not lie in...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: Human Happiness Does Not Come in Riches or...

Previous post. Strange (again) are the things men seek out. That Human Felicity Does Not Consist In Riches 1 From this, moreover, it is also clear that riches are not the highest good for man. 2...

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If The Founding Principles Were So Great, How’d We Get To Where We Are? Part I

First, the founding principles of America were whatever they were; that is, there were principles stated and then there were principles actually adhered to (and these might be the same): the principles...

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Anthony Bourdain In Hell?

Hell exists. The unrepentant go there. By all accounts, and from the man’s own pen, Anthony Bourdain was unrepentant. Therefore, Anthony Bourdain is in Hell. Or perhaps purgatory. Or maybe even Heaven...

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If The Founding Principles Were So Great, How’d We Get To Where We Are? Part II

Read Part I (first!). Munoz is right to show there was not unanimity among the Founders. Most adopted the language of rights, but some tempered this with doses of natural-law reality. For instance,...

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Summary Against Modern Thought: Human Happiness Does Not Come In Health

Previous post. Strange (again again) are the things men seek out. That Human Felicity Does Not Consist In Goods of the Body 1 Moreover, that man’s highest good does not lie in goods of the body, such...

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Chapter 1 Excerpt from Uncertainty: The Soul of Probability, Modeling &...

Buy the book! Necessary & Conditional Truth Given “x,y,z are natural numbers and x>y and y>z” the proposition “x>z” is true (I am assuming logical knowledge here, which I don’t discuss...

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