ABOUT TOM WOODS
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the
New York Times
bestselling author of 12 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
and Meltdown
(on the financial crisis). A senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, FOX News, FOX Business, C-SPAN, Bloomberg Television, and hundreds of radio programs... (Read More)
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Thomas E. Woods Jr.62,623 people like
Thomas E. Woods Jr.
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Thanks to @JudgeNap for discussing his new book, on the Bush/Obama assault on American liberty, on my show! http://tomwoods.com/blog/judge-napolitanos-new-book-his-most-important-yet/#.VGuBPrNxkQc.twitter … #tlot
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The New http://Mises.org is here! http://mises.org/ @ThomasEWoods @BobMurphyEcon @WenzelEconomics @ChrisRossini @ThorstenPolleit
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My latest: The Pentagon’s Fake Austerity http://tomwoods.com/blog/the-pentagons-fake-austerity/#.VGqLU-U5vWY.twitter … #tlot
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http://LibertyClassroom.com members, join us at 9pm ET for a live Q&A! http://www.libertyclassroom.com/get-your-western-civ-questions-answered-tonight/#.VGqKQhqd8G8.twitter … #tlot
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I found this interview between @ThomasEWoods and @BerinSzoka to be a nice overview of the Net Neutrality situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-cURjSAxd0 …
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Busy day for @AACONS radio: I'm recording segments with guests @thomasewoods & @JaySekulow #tcot #acon
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Who Creates Jobs? And Yes, Hillary Clinton Is Wrong (Of Course) -- My Chat with the great @GGReisman http://tomwoods.com/blog/who-creates-jobs-and-yes-hillary-clinton-is-wrong-of-course/#.VGoqXDdNj2A.twitter … #tlot #tcot
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@_AdamMaas @lakersman2006 @mcuban The banking sector is a cartel system under the Fed. The opposite of the free market.
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@_AdamMaas @lakersman2006 @mcuban the insane leverage is based on cheap credit. Now where do you suppose that came from?
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@_AdamMaas @lakersman2006 @mcuban thanks to the Fed's inflation, there would still have been a housing bust.
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@_AdamMaas @lakersman2006 @mcuban Leverage ratios per se wouldn't have been a problem had the assets themselves not been inflated by the Fed
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@_AdamMaas @lakersman2006 @mcuban That has nothing to do with why the mortgages themselves went bad. Why do you let the Fed off the hook?
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@lakersman2006 @mcuban Deregulation is a total red herring. What specific act of deregulation caused the crisis? The Fed was the culprit.
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@AJDelgado13 The principle of comparative advantage that holds between countries would also hold between robots and human beings.
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@joaquinpila @Julie_PardoZ A leftist Jesuit who winks at the crazies and persecutes the normal people is part of the problem.
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@joaquinpila @Julie_PardoZ He is obviously part of the problem!
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@roeeorland @Wildharv @MattyBriggs96 A very conventional and understandable view, but how much reading have you done on alternatives?
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People defending Jonathan Gruber's "freedom to speak his mind" said the same thing for Donald Sterling, right?
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@JWilliamPope An authoritarian leftist? I don't know anyone who needs that.
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Via NR:"Despite the image of Francis as a man of dialogue and compromise, he is regarded in Rome as the most authoritarian pope in decades."
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St. Thomas Aquinas and the Existence of God
On my program today I said I’d post a couple reading links, and since I don’t have a proper show notes page at TomWoodsRadio.com (a problem that’s being rectified as we speak, as the show is being moved over to this site), I’m posting them on this page. I’ll post more as they occur to me.
First, here’s a YouTube version of the episode itself:
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The key readings are:
Edward Feser,
The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism
and
Edward Feser,
Aquinas.
Even though the Aquinas volume is in a “Beginners’ Guide” series, don’t be fooled: this is not easy reading. I suggest starting with the other book first.
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Chris • 21 days ago see moreI'm ashamed to admit that I was one of the obnoxious atheists you referred to in the beginning of the show. I left a snide comment on your blog in the summer of 2013, and you shot me down easily with Aquinas' arguments which I had never heard of before—the only arguments I had previously heard from theists were something like "because I have faith" or "because the bible says so", but admittedly I never sought out any real arguments because I am rarely confronted by theism, living in a largely atheist country in Europe. I cringe every time I think of how insulting my comment was, and I would like to offer an apology. I am still an atheist, but a far more humble one, thanks to you. -
Vee Voluntary • 21 days ago see moreThis is the first logical explanation I have ever heard of for the existence of God. I went to 8 years of Catholic school as a kid and the experience made me an atheist. I have been an agnostic for a long time, but after listening to this podcast, I might change my mind. Thanks. -
Guest • 6 days ago see moreHi, Eric. Emer. Prof. Thomas E. Woods, Jr. explains in his audio recording entitled "No, You're Not a Dummy For Believing in God" (TomWoodsTV, YouTube, Oct. 27, 2014) that, using the Thomistic terminology, an essentially ordered series requires the First Cause to contain all actuality and no potentiality, i.e., for it to be pure actuality; or, in other words, for the First Cause to be all potentiality fully realized, i.e., fully actualized.This by itself gives a rather detailed definition of God, since logically there are an infinite number of potentials which can be actualized, this requires the First Cause to be infinite action, i.e., that God is the collection of all action which is logically possible to take place, which includes all thoughts which are logically possible to think. Since the potential for such thoughts is logically infinite, we already have the concept that the First Cause must be infinite in intellect, i.e., that it is omniscient: having an infinite intelligence and knowing all that is logically possible to be known. We also have the concept of the First Cause being omnipotent, because it is the collection of all logically possible action, of which is infinite. Additionally, we have the concept of God being omnipresent, since as Emer. Prof. Woods explains in his aforecited audio lecture, a perfect copy of a thing is that thing. This is actually called the Law of Identity in the field of logic, which requires that A = A. Since God is the collection of all action, all actions are simply subsets of God. From the Law of Identity, we also get the concept of the Oneness of the First Cause, i.e., of monotheism, because to posit different Entity which had all these properties yet which is not in fact the Entity we had previously been discussing would be equivalent to saying that A != A.For much more on these matters, Eric, including the answers to your other concerns, see my below article, which details physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics. The Omega Point cosmology demonstrates that the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point: the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity having all the unique properties traditionally claimed for God, and of which is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause. The Omega Point cosmology has been published and extensively peer-reviewed in leading physics journals.James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, https://archive.org/details/Th... , http://theophysics.host56.com/... .Additionally, in the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of Prof. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos.James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk[at sign]4ax[period]com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/foru... , http://archive.today/a04w9 .-
James Redford > Guest • 6 days ago see moreThe above reply to Eric was actually made by me, but Disqus bizarrely removed my authorship from the post because I tried to delete it (which is an option it gave, but obviously it didn't work correctly) so that I could instead make it a reply under Eric's post.-
Eric > James Redford • 6 days ago see moreAs best I can tell, you've now defined God as Everything.That's fine, but then what is one to conclude from that? A math professor of mine once defined a natural log in a strange way, and I asked him how he could do that and he quipped, because I am God. What he meant is that any definition is fine, since all it means is that you now have a shorthand way of describing the longer definition. In his case, he then proved several results about logarithms that we had already known from high school. He just began with different axioms and definitions.So, now that we know your definition of God (collection of all action) what can we deduce from that? Can we deduce that all action leads to the existence of an entity that can perform miracles, listens to prayers, get angry and punish us? Can we deduce that gravity is only attractive except on every other Tuesday at midnight? Or do we merely have a trivial proof that a thing is a subset of everything that exists?When people say they believe in God, most mean they believe there is a personal God: i.e. a super powerful entity similar to a parent. We use personal pronouns: He is angry (e.g. at Moses for destroying the tablets) and He performs miracles (causes water to turn into wine).I believe in a God that is everything, how could I not? But I'm an atheist with respect to personal gods, such as zeus, yaweh, Jesus etc. But when I use the term God, my listener generally assumes that I mean the God of the Bible. Einstein often confused issues by using the term God to mean the laws of the universe, but he strongly rejected a personal God (i.e. a God that is quite like a human being, with thoughts, emotions, etc.).But of what use is it to confuse matters by calling the universe and everything God, when so many think that it means something else.-
James Redford > Eric • 4 minutes ago see moreHi, Eric. Your questions and concerns were already addressed in my above post to you, with a great deal more detail provided in the following resources which I listed therein:James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, https://archive.org/details/Th... , http://theophysics.host56.com/... .James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk[at sign]4ax[period]com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/foru... , http://archive.today/a04w9 .Since you yourself apparently are not interested in studying this issue, then you oughtn't even bother to comment on it. Prof. Murray N. Rothbard noted that the mass of mankind is generally disinterested in intellectual matters, so your form of disinterest in this subject is nothing rare. Just be on your way and stop troubling yourself about it.
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Eric • 7 days ago see moreI just listened to your show on God. Here you give a "logical" proof on the existence of God. My problem is that in the entire "proof" you never actually defined the term "God". In logic, one can never prove anything without beginning with assumptions (axioms) and definitions. In America and elsewhere, the term God is generally assumed to be the God of the bible, a being with human attributes such as jealousy, anger, needs, etc. If by "God" you mean the prime mover, and nothing else, then you might just as well call this the laws of physics in our universe. It's a far stretch, however, to go from that (which atheists all accept) to Yaweh of the old testament bible, or Jesus of the newer version.-
James Redford > Eric • 6 days ago see moreEric, Disqus is being naughty. See my reply to you above (or wherever within this thread Disqus chooses to place it at any particular time).
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James Redford • 8 days ago see moreInterestingly, God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see my below article, which details physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics. The Omega Point cosmology demonstrates that the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point: the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity having all the unique properties traditionally claimed for God, and of which is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause. The Omega Point cosmology has been published and extensively peer-reviewed in leading physics journals.James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, https://archive.org/details/Th... , http://theophysics.host56.com/... .Additionally, in the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of Prof. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos.James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk[at sign]4ax[period]com , July 30, 2013, https://groups.google.com/foru... , http://archive.today/a04w9 . -
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Steffen • 21 days ago see moreI have one question about a thing, I did not understand. Maybe someone can help me out with this. It is clear, that god can't be perfectly good and perfectly bad at the same time, just as the egg, tom mentioned, can' be hot and cold at the same time. But why should we define badness as a lack of goodness (or cold as a lack of warmth) and not the other way around? To understand what I mean, maybe think about Goethe's attempt to show, that darkness is not a lack of light, but light a lack of darkness.-
Alexander Paulsen > Steffen • 21 days ago see moreI think what he was trying to say was the good an devil are not things per-se, evil is a lack of goodness like blindness is a lack of sight. Cold is a lack of heat energy - hot is just a generous supply of heat. hot and cold are relative to each other and not absolute things.-
Steffen > Alexander Paulsen • 21 days ago see moreIf you imagine a continuum between the poles goodness (g) and evil (e), the question is: why should g be the final stop? Chris and I already mentioned that you can think of it the other way around. But not only that. You can take every single point between g and e and do the same thing. Let's say there is a point x somewhere between g and e, why shouldn't god be
perfectly x instead of being perfectly g? After all god would have a potentiality to become x, if he where located on g. You can do that with every point on the continuum and get a negative definition of it. Why should we see g as a superior point to any other, if every state lacks something to be be any other state? -
Chris > Alexander Paulsen • 21 days ago see moreI could just as easily define goodness as a lack of evil.
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Andy • 22 days ago see moreGreat resource Tom. Trent Horn has a good resource page I've used for better defending/arguing that there are good reasons to believe in the existence of God. -
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