It's all you morlocks in the west who have longer periods between lives. All other cultures mention specifics in having past lives. Lol Duh. I'm not that white and I specifically remember times, places, wars, names, people, details like the front and back of my hand, totally matching up with historical documentation. You have a slot of time when you're around 6 to remember it all, then you just forget about it and live your life.

If life doesnt keep going then there would be no life. We wouldnt be able to let breathe the plants that keep reliving bc we wouldnt be reliving with them. We'd be marking death and killing ourselves.

Woo hoo. Ello? Anyone home? Wake the he77 up already. Jesus Christ. Woo. Clueless. Western Civilisation is known for this. Baby of all the generations.

Do you really think we work all day to thud at walls? What a way to make cancer.

God talked to me. Je sent butterflies to fly and land on me. Flying in a circle around me several times, landing on my foot, taking away my stress and hurt.

You don't seem to know the difference between the methodology of natural science and that of metaphysics.

No, we don't use science when it helps prove our case and ignore it when it seems to go against it. That would entail intellectual dishonesty.

I was merely pointing to the limits of natural science and showing why it cannot be used to prove God's existence.

That does not mean we ignore God's works and actions. Rather, we examine phenomena, such as the reality of motion itself, as a starting point for a proof that does not use the methodology of natural science.

I'll give you a straight question then: do you get to have it both ways?

Some apologists cite supposed evidences of gods work, actions, interactions with our reality. Are you opposed to those? Or would you point to phenomena when it supposedly works in your favor and say it's a reason I should believe in your god?

Let me respond to your last paragraph first. What you describe there seems to be the analogy of attribution, as when we predicate healthy to a man and then healthy to a drink because it is a cause of health. Thus, because God is being and he causes creatures, creatures are beings.

Yes, this is what Aristotle calls "pros hen" predication. Aquinas gives a full discussion about being’s being said in many ways and pros hen predication, for which Aquinas uses the term ‘ad unum’, is in In XI Meta l. 3 2196-2197. He explains Ari’s examples of medical and healthy. in 2197 he says things spoken in this way are between univocal and equivocal. But I think he is unclear about what sort of analogy this is, for he says “Et propter hoc huiusmodi dicuntur analoga, quia proportinantur ad unum.” But this isn’t a proportion; for that you need A is to B as C is to D.

There is dispute over whether Aristotle had a pros hen predication different from proportional analogy. People who say "yes" often adopt Gwil Owen's moniker, "focal meaning," for pros hen predication. Others e.g. Pierre Aubenque and Pierre Pellegrin said that Ari has only one kind of analogy, proportional, and that he did not have a doctrine of “analogia ad unum.” Owen was correct to say that Aristotle talks about pros hen predication (e.g. in his Ethics), but the Pierres are probably right that the term "analogy" in Aristotle denotes proportional.view is correct

Aquinas gives the "healthy animal/urine/drink" example right where he discusses analogical predication of names of God, sc. ST 1a 3.5. Therefore, as I said above, I am not sure how clearly Aquinas distinguished between "ad unum" and proportional analogy.

I leave aside the rest of yours, at least for now, because I think it goes largely over ground we have covered previously.

Let me respond to your last paragraph first. What you describe there seems to be the analogy of attribution, as when we predicate healthy to a man and then healthy to a drink because it is a cause of health. Thus, because God is being and he causes creatures, creatures are beings.

The above type of analogy obviously does NOT explain the analogy of being, which is why Thomists distinguish between the analogy of attribution and the analogy of being.

But in defense of the analogy of being itself, I would point out that in any experience of reality, I make a judgment that "something is" or "something is real." Confusedly contained in that judgment is both the notion of "being real" or "exists" and also of "something", which refers to the content or whatness of what is experienced. That is, in the very initial experience of any "something real," we get an awareness of both an existential and an essential component, which we see are not perfectly identical.

A primary fact of this experience is also that we call multiple things all "beings," because we know that they are all real. But we also know that they are also all able to be of radically different natures, which is why we immediately realize that being or reality is analogous, that is, that it applies to all things, even though they do not share any common essence or whatness as to their natures or kinds of things that they are.

I suspect that you admit things are different, but you seem to think of their existence as all being the same -- allowing only univocal usage of "existence." This sounds to me like the logical concept of being, which Maritain points out, exists only in the mind as something signified, but not as it is actually exercised in the reality outside the mind.

I understand that when we predicate "man" of all the individual men, each man is uniquely different from all others -- except that we all share in the qualities of "rational animal," which make predication of "man" of all of us to be univocal.

But the notion of being is predicated of all things, even though they have radically diverse natures -- so that what is common cannot be a given nature, but only the concept of being itself. Unless, "being" has a common nature, it seems it cannot be predicated univocally, and thus cannot be used logically in a demonstration.

But, if you understand as "being" that which "stands outside of nothingness," then it applies to all things, including God. How can I do this? This comes back to the fact that the mind comports to being and can "see" that being is not non-being. So, while knowledge of limited natures applies only to those natures already known, "being" can apply both to creatures and God, since we understand that both "stand outside of nothingness." The only alternative is nothingness itself, which is also, as the mind "sees," not a problem, since nothingness does not exist.

The explanation of the analogy of simple proportion I gave elsewhere is useful to understand how the analogy of being is to be explained. But, perhaps, my above explanation serves to show why the analogy of simple proportion is licit to employ.

P.S. Should you find my own explanation of why being is analogous, please remember that there are other Thomists who can likely defend the analogy of being better than I can!

Thanks for this, Dennis. At first reading, I am tempted to think that what Brother Benignius says is literally nonsensical.

Being is common to everything, because it is embraced in every nature; but it is not a common part of every nature, because it embraces every nature.

Being is both embraced in every nature AND embraces every nature? Being and nature are interentailing? But what about the natures of the unicorn or phoenix, which in A-T, as I understand it, lack only an act of existence? I need more time to evaluate what Bro. Benignius wrote.

Remember that Aquinas' examples of analogical predication of names of God were primarily not proportional analogy but "pros hen" predication - "healthy" in healthy drink and healthy urine, as secondary analogates, are understood only when "healthy animal", the primary analogate, is understood. But with names of God, the primary analogate is not understood. If we don't know the animal, we will not know what "healthy" means in "healthy animal" if we are only working from what we know about drinks and urine. If we don't know God already, we won't know what "love" means in "God is Love", if we only work from predications of "love" in the case of creatures.

I told you that logic is not my finest point -- and age is not helping my memory any either.

But you prick my memory and now I recall a couple points I should have refined a bit. First, McInerny belongs to the Laval School of Thomism, and so, yes, many more "existential" Thomists disagree with him on some matters. But in defense of his work on the "logic of analogy," we must recall that he was restricting his explanation solely to the analogy of names.

You are correct in saying that the analogy of proper proportionality does not obtain between God and creatures, since there are only three real terms involved. That is, while the existence of creatures is to their essence as distinct principles of being, in God his existence is identical to his essence, which means that no distinction between his existence and essence is real.

Hence, the analogy of God and creatures is one of simple proportion. Brother Benignus Gerrity in his Nature, Knowledge, and God explains it this way:

"Being is an analogous concept. Being is common to everything, because it is embraced in every nature; but it is not a common part of every nature, because it embraces every nature. The being of anything is that by which it is, just as the half of anything is one of two equal parts into which it is divided .... so the being of God and the being of a creature, the being of substance and the being of accident, are radically different, yet each is that by which its subject is. St. Thomas' definition of being, "that whose act is to exist," is verified exactly in every being, yet is realized in different beings in natures which are simpliciter different. But while the object conceived as "being" is simpliciter different in different things, it is secundum quid the same, because each is a subject whose act it is to exist. This is precisely what is proper to a concept having analogical unity.

While this does not represent the analogy of proper proportionality, which you correctly describe as being A is to B as C is to D, it does represent an analogy of simple proportion, where A is to B as C is to C. Even though you doubtless would deny that God exists in order to have his existence be identical to his essence, nonetheless this analogical unity which Gerrity describes is the basis for defending the use of the analogy of being as a common term in proofs for God's existence.

You are raising objections based on logic as if all logicians are fully agreed on the metaphysical assumptions underlying the practical science of logic. As you know, modern material logic does not comport fully with its ancient and medieval counterparts on some assumptions.

Hello Dennis, the objections I bundled in my last few posts are partly taken from Aristotle as I've seen Aquinas agree in his commentaries, sc. limitations of induction and fallacies of undistributed middle that arise from non-univocal terms (see below). The so-called Existential Fallacy, which I think we discussed a couple years ago, postdates the Aristotelian syllogistic, but is not controversial, as far as I know, among most philosophers now. We talked about Aristotle's assumption that universal affirmative premises don't employ terms that designate empty classes, but for certitude, we need more than that assumption.

I have not read McInerny's The Logic of Analogy, but I have read his Aquinas and Analogy and his SEP article. In my notes I wrote this at the time:

Jim the Scott [shout out!] says that modern critics of Aquinas misunderstand the doctrine of analogy as about logical predication, when it is really ontological, an analogy of being: “Thomas Joseph White OP, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity … In a footnote on Page 89 of that book he also references Dewan's defense of the ontological basis analogy versus the logical predication view of McInerny.”

I have seen other Thomists criticize McInerny on analogy.

There is obviously much to add to what we've discussed over recent years. I paste in this from notes I took to myself:

analogical predication is about something in common, which has a proportion to many things, as though it is something common, something beyond the particular analogates, like universal quantity itself in common to and beyond line and number etc, In I AnPo l. 37 n. 6. But esse is not common between God and creatures; esse is common to all creatures as bestowed by God, but their esse is not identical to His. So there is no proportion between identity of essence and esse in God and non-identity of essence and esse in creatures, on which we can say we have predication about God by proportional analogy.