The Christian Vanguard

My philosophy of religion professor posed this challenge to me. Professor says the arguments for God's existence don't prove uniqueness (that is, these arguments do not prove one single God is responsible), including Aquinas. I said, appealing to Aquinas First Way, that there can't be more than one thing that is Pure Act because if there were, there would be some potential to distinguish between them. Professor replied that assumes the indiscernibility of identicals, which is by no means obvious. Consider a sphere with equidistant points on the surface. They have no distinguishing features to differentiate between one and the other, yet they are not all the same.  The tempting answer is to appeal to space and relation, but it seems every space point has the same relation. My friend Christopher shared with me his thoughts and I thought they were worth sharing here so that I can reference it in the future.  You don't have to argue from the identity of indiscernib...

Today was my debate with Professor Garcia at LBCC. It went really well. I went in a bit worried, which is not normal for me when I do debates. Why was I worried? I was worried because Garcia had requested that I specifically do a medieval argument, and then he later requested I do only Aquinas. I've not defended Aquinas or scholastic metaphysics in any depth as I have done with arguments like the Kalam or Liebnizian Cosmological arguments, so, not only did I have to defend it, but I had to defend it from someone who has at least a Masters in Philosophy (I'm unsure if he has a PhD). It would be a challenge, but I suppose philosophy isn't worth doing if it's not challenging.  I had tried to email him so we could collaborate on some slides, but it just didn't happen for a number of reasons. There was some comfort that I took in thinking that I would be able to see his presentation so I could prepare some remarks, but that didn't happen and I had to think on my...