[geye1234]

> Maybe you at least agree that atheism/science is compatible with iGod in this sense

I note the equation of atheism and science but make no further comment :-)

>The book's defense of this sense of free will, where God is free to choose not to cause the universe, is simply that "the freedom of the divine will is mysterious to us", which I think you'll agree is not any sort of proof.

Feser is not offering this as proof of the existence of God's free will. He's answering a particular objection: how is it that an unchanging Being can will, given that we, as changing beings, necessarily change from willing to not-willing and back again? He says that using this as a ground against God's having will is to commit the fallacy of accident. And then he's saying we can't understand the full details of how God can will without changing, but that we can nonetheless safely say what is not the case: that God lacks will. (My summary of his argument is below.) Therefore I think your characterization of his argument is inaccurate.

If either A xor B is true, and we can show that A is false, we know that B is true. Perhaps there are implications of B that are impossible to grasp even in theory, but this doesn't undermine the truth of B. Agree?

One way we know that God wills freely is by comparing a lion, a unicorn and a dinosaur (I'm paraphrasing the argument on Will in Chapter 6 here). There is nothing about the concept of a lion that causes it to exist, there's nothing about the concept of a unicorn that causes it not to exist, and there's nothing about the concept of a dinosaur that caused it to exist at one time but then caused it to stop existing. On the contrary: I could describe the concepts of a lion, a unicorn and a dinosaur in infinite detail, and you wouldn't know from what I had told you which is real, which is historical and which is imaginary.

What I said about those three animals is true about everything. You could describe the concept of anything in infinite detail without knowing whether that thing exists or existed. There is nothing about a lion as such that makes it real, and nothing about a unicorn as such that makes it imaginary. There is nothing about a lion that makes its existence necessary, and nothing about a unicorn that makes its non-existence necessary. The existence or non-existence is a completely separate question from what it is (its qualities, etc).

Now consider the principal of proportionate causality (described in the book in detail). This basically says that if a thing doesn't have a particular quality in itself, that quality must be caused by something else. Example: I can't lift myself 10000 feet into the air, but an aeroplane can cause me to 'have' this quality. A particular pool of water may be red; it is not the water itself that's red, so something else must be giving it this quality. Etc.

The result of this is that any object that exists must be caused by something else to exist, and that this 'something else' must exist in and of itself. (This is obviously contained in some of the proofs.) Obviously the proofs say that God is such a 'something else'. Therefore, God is causing lions to exist, caused dinosaurs to exist at one point but no longer does, and has never caused unicorns to exist.

But we know that there is nothing in lions that makes them exist, nothing in unicorns that makes them not-exist, and nothing in dinosaurs that makes them stopped-existing. So, assuming the claim that God causes their existence from moment to moment succeeds, if follows that their existence or non-existence is a matter of choice. The fact that He is causing one to exist and not the other two indicates that He is choosing to do this. Given that there is nothing in any of the three that causes it to necessarily exist, it follows that the real things we see are not some sort of 'natural bursting forth' from an impersonal being, but rather exist by the choice of this Being. If the universe 'burst forth' from God, then anything that could potentially exist, would exist.

>> God cannot possibly lack anything ... It would be impossible to cause something that you don't in some sense have yourself

> base qualities and emergent qualities...But that does not mean iGod itself can be attributed the quality of being an atom or a galaxy or a human body. Causing some quality to exist down the causal chain does not mean it is meaningful to port those qualities back up the chain.

I disagree with the reductionist account of a table that is I think implicit here -- I think tables (or at least the wood that constitutes the tables) are metaphysically prior to the atoms that compose them, and the same for all natural objects. By this, I mean that the parts can only be understood in terms of the whole, and must be understood as subordinate to the whole, not vice-versa. But if I understand your objection correctly, I think I can work through it even allowing for the reductionist ontology. The principle of proportionate causality illustrates things well. Could you read the book's account of this principle? It's early in Chapter 6, I think pretty much the first section. I think you're using the 'heirloom principle' to object, which assumes that the Principle says that an effect must exist formally in its cause, and ignores that it can also exist eminently or virtually. The book defines these terms, and attempts to explain why the objection is not valid. Do you think the attempt succeeds?

If you think the attempt succeeds, I will go on to discuss why, given some things in reality (human beings) have a will, it follows that that which causes human beings' existence must also have will, either in the same sense as human beings or in some greater sense.

I'll try to respond to your other post when I get a chance. Some of the points are fairly different from what we're discussing here. I'm happy to talk about whether God revealed Himself, and in what sense he governs our conduct (or has a right to do so), but it's a pretty different conversation.

[sdht0]

> the equation of atheism and science

Ah sorry I didn't mean to imply an association, only that both atheists and scientists, from their perspectives, would have no qualms with (and in fact should necessarily accept) an impersonal First Cause.

> we can't understand the full details of how God can will

I'm quite wary of arguments that invoke the "beyond the capability of our minds to understand" clause. But I get it, let's see if A: "we can nonetheless safely say what is not the case: that God lacks will" holds up. I don't think the book makes a good case for A and only offers B, hence my comment.

In general, I think the quibble again is in the definition of the term existence.

* Logical existence: Everything, that is not logically inconsistent, logically necessarily "exists". God has no say here. This is the logical metaphysical landscape, with mathematics and all possible universes with all possible constituents such as tables and unicorns.

* Ontological existence: A small small subset of the metaphysical landscape that we experience with our senses. Here, some things "exist" and others don't. This is what we want to talk about right? What we think about when we ask the questions: where did this come from, who caused this, etc. At least I exist. Thus something exists. Ex nihilo nihil. And thus, a First Cause sustains this something's existence. And the question then is, of the things that do exist, how much control does First Cause have for their existence?

I think your argument above switches between these two definitions, hence the disagreement.

> You could describe the concept of anything in infinite detail without knowing whether that thing exists or existed.

Yeah I read this, but not sure if I agree. That infinite detail would contain its history and details of its components, no? And that would lead to a description of an entire universe, where we can judge whether it makes sense for that things to exist. But anyway, doesn't matter for our present purposes. We can take unicorns to be metaphysically true as an axiom, for instance.

> There is nothing about a lion that makes its existence necessary, and nothing about a unicorn that makes its non-existence necessary.

This is perhaps true for metaphysical existence, but the ontological existence of a lion and the non-existence of an unicorn can absolutely be determined by the physical laws and the initial conditions of our universe. As far as we have probed our senses, the physical world seems to be, with absolute consistency, following a set of laws. All the First Cause has "control" over (right now) is selecting/sustaining what the laws and initial conditions were. The rest of the entire history of the universe is then already logically implied, either deterministically (single line) or probabilistically (a tree), including +lions and -unicorns. First Cause has no say whatsoever.

> Therefore, God is causing lions to exist, caused dinosaurs to exist at one point but no longer does, and has never caused unicorns to exist.

> I disagree with the reductionist account of a table that is I think implicit here

> the parts can only be understood in terms of the whole

This is the core of the disagreement then. "Existence", by which I mean to take this physical universe that we experience with our senses, is empirically reductionist. No God is needed to explain why the Sun rises or why tables retain their form. Each emergent level [0] has a necessary and sufficient cause from the level below it. Tables -> atoms -> quarks -> QFT -> ? -> First Cause. In this sense, First Cause is causing and sustaining the universe. But again, passively, not actively.

Theists obviously disagree with this. But my point is, just from the proofs as the book claims, why can we claim that God chooses unicorn not to exist? All we can say is God chose/is the First Cause physical laws, no? The non-existence of unicorns is implicit in the laws (and initial conditions). No choice needed. And since I have shown an alternative explanation that is consistent with the proofs, a personal God is not a logical necessity, is it? Theist will have to rely on the Bible (etc) for that, not logical proofs.

And also:

> has never caused unicorns to exist.

> If the universe 'burst forth' from God, then anything that could potentially exist, would exist.

Well we don't know! We cannot make any claims about what "exists" beyond our universe. It is absolutely possible that unicorns exist in some other universe. It is possible that the entire metaphysical landscape has ontological existence. We just don't know. And thus these statement cannot be considered true (or false) with any certainty.

[0] Except the origin of our universe and consciousness. The former will ultimately have a brute force First Cause. And the later is an open question right now (a gap).

[sdht0]

> I disagree with the reductionist account of a table that is I think implicit here

Even the proofs imply a reductionist account no? The first proof says: the table holds up the glass, the floor holds up the table and the earth holds up the table. And then asks, what holds up it all? Answer: necessarily God. But then God is at the edge (first) of this causal chain and the table is still holding up the glass (directly), no? And God is holding up the universe (directly) and everything in it (indirectly). Thus, saying that God is holding up the glass would be misusing the usual meaning of the term "holding up".

[geye1234]

That's not what it says at all. It's using the glass-table-floor-earth picture as an aid to understanding, to illustrate the difference between a linear series and a hierarchical series. It is separate from the actual argument, which comes later.

[sdht0]

Huh. Maybe you have a proper example of a hierarchical series then?

I'm thinking God -> object1 -> object2 -> object3. Is this not what the book means?

[sdht0]

> you wouldn't know from what I had told you which is real, which is historical and which is imaginary.

This is obviously true. It is slightly amusing that this is then used to imply that God choose what things actually exist, while I as a naturalist take it to mean we have to empirically look at the world to determine what exists.

> Do you think the attempt succeeds?

Alright. So I suppose I don't think the attempt succeeds, no.

Take a table. It has a quality: it's solid. As compared to air, which is gas. However, in what sense is it meaningful to say that an individual atom is solid or gas? Isn't it true that concept of solid or gas only comes in when there are a group of atoms, none of which individually have a "state"? Yes of course, the property is inherent (eminently or virtually as you say) in an atom, but it only materializes in relation to other atoms, not individually. And so on down the abstraction levels.

The book defends PPC with arguments that are quite weak and only work they are talking about the same emergent level. Yes, giving $20 works only when I have $20. But do atoms which constitute me also have $20 dollars? It's absurd no? The concept of owning $20 does not "exist" at the level of atoms. Same for the argument about evolution. Within genetics, the same DNA is evolving into different forms. But again, what about the atoms constituting the DNA?

So no, I don't think it makes sense to talk about qualities that emerge in higher levels to hold at the lower levels. First Cause doesn't have the quality of tables, states of matter, or human will directly, only in an indirect weak sense. The book says it too: "explanations in terms of potentialities may often be only minimally informative", but this "minimalness" makes all the difference! How can this minimally informative quality expanded to be maximally relevant when talking about the First Cause? Yes, the First Cause in a causal chain leads to human will. Minimally weak sense. Wondering how you think instead that First Cause has will "in the same sense as human beings or in some greater sense".

> part of the effect (the human intellect) is not material > given some things in reality (human beings) have a will

I will note that these are agree-to-disagree statements, given the basis of consciousness is an open question for now. From my naturalistic perspective, humans only have emergent "free" will, not libertarian free will, which is what theists usually mean by the term. But I'm happy to accept these statements for this discussion and am more interested in understanding why First Cause needs to have any will, given human will.

[geye1234]

> Ah sorry I didn't mean to imply an association

I should have read your point more charitably, my bad :)

> This is perhaps true for metaphysical existence, but the ontological existence of a lion and the non-existence of an unicorn can absolutely be determined by the physical laws and the initial conditions of our universe

This may ve true, but irrelevant to my point. The 'laws of physics' are themselves one thing, and not another. It is logically possible to imagine a universe with anti-gravity instead of gravity (that is, where mass repels mass), or where natural processes were such that a lion's DNA ended up giving rise to a unicorn. It is equally logically possible to imagine a universe where unicorns pop in and out of existence, independently of any biological process. And infinite other possibilities. But this is not so. Your appeal to physical laws doesn't affect my point, which is not that we can know firstly about God's Willing, and secondly (and thereby) know about the existence of one and the non-existence of the other. Rather, it's that reality is certain particular things, and is not certain other particular things that it might logically have been. And this implies that certain concepts (lions, gravity) are willed into existence, and continue to be so willed here and now; and certain other concepts (anti-gravity, unicorns) are not.

The multiverse concept does not affect my point. If such a thing existed, there would be a Will that willed unicorns (and the supporting laws of physics/biology/etc) exist in the other universe, but not our one. This is unaffected by infinite multiverses. So the point stands.

>> You could describe the concept of anything in infinite detail without knowing whether that thing exists or existed. > Yeah I read this, but not sure if I agree. That infinite detail would contain its history and details of its components, no?

I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

>> you wouldn't know from what I had told you which is real, which is historical and which is imaginary. > This is obviously true. It is slightly amusing that this is then used to imply that God choose what things actually uexist, while I as a naturalist take it to mean we have to empirically look at the world to determine what exists.

These are not mutually contradictory. In any case, is it 'obviously true' or are you 'not sure if [you] agree' as you stated in your first reply? :-)

On a larger level, I don't think we can continue without discussing ontological reductionism. I can see that the PPC would make no sense if you think everything can be explained entirely in terms of its constituent atoms, which I think is your view. My own view is that the objects of our senses -- like pieces of wood, or apples, or dogs, or human beings -- cannot be reduced to the particles* that constitute them. To put it another way, what these things are is not the same as the particles they're made of. Nor is it the same as a particular arrangement of particles. "What a thing is" is a unity, and is distinct (though not separate) from the particles that compose it. This unity determines the particles' behavior -- or more generally, the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa. This also is true for an individual thing's properties, like color, ability to move, and (crucially) will.

If you think this is a useful line of enquiry, start kicking my view!

* Choose whatever level of particles you like: molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, quarks, etc. It doesn't affect the argument.

[sdht0]

> the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa

Good. I think we can agree to disagree at this point. I try to reach the core premise of viewpoints I don't agree with and I think we have reached it here. I'll try to explain my viewpoints a bit more, but I imagine you'll remain unconvinced. Well, my own overall takeaway is still that I don't need the (personal) God hypothesis to explain the universe (yet) (~Laplace).

I'll say this though. You promised much better arguments than what I had encountered before. I'll admit I found my readings of natural theology pretty interesting. My exposure to arguments beyond using the Bible was only the Kalam Cosmological argument. Many of the ideas in Feser's book and blog articles were a refreshing take, and I had to think a bit about them before I could pinpoint the core ideas and where I disagree. So thank you for that.

> This unity determines the particles' behavior

To me, an empirical study of the universe we sense seems to indicate that the properties of the parts completely determines the properties of the whole. After we have explained the properties of H and O, the properties of H2O are completely fixed and determined. The game of life starts with a simple set of rules and an initial state, and the wonderful patterns that emerge [0] are completely determined after that. Same for the Mandelbrot set. Same for everywhere we look.

My question is, what will help convince you that the behavior of a whole can be determined by its parts? Is being able to accurately predict its behavior by predicting the behavior of just the parts not sufficient? What is left after accounting for the behavior of all the parts of a lion? What is in this essence of lionness that cannot be explained just from the combined behavior of cells?

> The 'laws of physics' are themselves one thing, and not another.

See here we agree. Our universe has a particular set of laws and initial conditions that could have been otherwise. Science takes this as a premise and studies what happened after that. But now take a Laplace's Demon [1] and ask, given the premise, does the universe contain [2] a lion? Answer: yes. Does the universe contain a unicorn? no. Does the universe contain a forum called hacker news where sdht0 and geye1234 are discussing natural theology? yes. I don't see why we need a God who is choosing things to exist or not. We may need God to fix the premise, but everything after that can be God-free. I'll try to explain my viewpoint another way:

> And this implies that certain concepts (lions, gravity) are willed into existence, and continue to be so willed here and now; and certain other concepts (anti-gravity, unicorns) are not.

This is a statement I can agree with, but our takeaways are so different. Imagine a canvas with a lion but no unicorn. If I'm correctly interpreting your concept of "willed", you're saying that there is a God who has two cutout images, that of a lion and a unicorn, and He decided to put the lion on the canvas but not the unicorn. I'm saying, there is a "God" who has a computer program, consisting of just 0s and 1s, which when run on a computer controlling a brush drew a picture of a lion on the canvas.

So I'm just repeating myself now, but regardless of the essences of the objects that inhabit our universe, their existence and behavior is completely determined once the laws and initial conditions have been set as a premise. The question of course remains, where does the premise come from? Here I'm open to possibilities. First Cause. God. Eternal physical laws. Etc. When I read the 5 proofs, that's what I thought, that the books are showing the existence of God at this level. At the edge/beginning of the chain. But you seem to have something else in mind (also as per your other comment) which I don't understand/agree with.

I think you'll agree that given the axioms of mathematics, 2+2=4 is true and not even God can change that. In the same way, as a naturalist, I'm saying that given the laws of our universe (whatever they are) and the initial conditions, lions exist and unicorns don't and even God cannot change that. I'll freely agree that the former is from logic and hence necessarily true. But the later is just from empirical observations. As I said before, if tomorrow God does choose ;) to reveal Himself in a convincing manner, I'll have to change my views completely. Similarly if unicorns start popping in and out of existence.

> I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

I'm not sure how to separate those. Doesn't the concept of a lion contain the fact that a lion hunts for food? Which needs biology, chemistry, physics, etc to explain. Or by concept do you mean just the shape? Then is a statue of a lion an actual lion? Like I'm trying to imagine how to explain to an alien from another galaxy the concept of a lion. How can we do that without explaining the entire history of life of Earth, etc?

[0] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon

[2] I'm assuming a deterministic universe for simplicity, but it can be sufficiently adapted for the quantum nondeterministic universe by taking about a tree of possibilities and whether any or how many of the branches have some property.

[geye1234]

Will be a couple more days before I have time to reply, thanks for your patience.

[sdht0]

Some further thoughts:

* There is a crucial assumption in the 5 proofs that I think is worth thinking about. Given that something exists (I, the world, causes, parts, etc), it follows that there must be a First Cause/God. Also given ex nihilo nihil fit, it follows that the First Cause has to be eternal. The debate then is about the rest of the qualities, which I'm distinguishing as impersonal vs personal. However, note that this reasoning relies on the apriori fact that the world exists, from which we (and the proofs) intuit the presence of a First Cause. This still does not answer the big question: why is there anything at all? [0] There could have been no world and even no First Cause. We can imagine that there would exist only logical possibilities but no ontological "existence". There would be just be Nothing. Yes, the First Cause is eternal. But why? How did the First Cause arise in the first place? I think it's a valid question but it's unclear what the answer could be. One possibility is that logical existence is all there is. [1] But in any case, the eternalism of the First Cause, as in the proofs, is contingent on cogito, ergo sum and is not a necessity beyond that. I find it an interesting realization.

* I am curious what you exactly mean by "the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa". One reading of it clashes wildly with all of our scientific investigations. From being a civilization which attribute everything to Gods and angels--making the sun go around the sky and natural calamities and good luck and bad luck---we've managed to figure out that we don't need such an attribution. Simple rules can generate a lot of complexity. Thus emergence and not God is what makes the world go. But the above statement seems to bring those ancients ideas back somehow. What am I missing?

Also, I think even granting PPC and that the whole determines the parts still does not prove will. God can still be bound by some underlying rules. I don't know if logic alone can lead us to God's free will, until we have some empirical proof such as God actually willing unicorns into existence instead of lions. Even for humans, just saying I have will ("I can will myself to fly but don't want to") doesn't really count until I show it.

* I'd like to hear your thoughts on my earlier question. If Christianity were to be shown as "false" as the other religions, and thus no human religion can demonstrate divine providence, how much will your belief in a personal God remain? Just from the proofs, do you think you will still strongly take a loving caring God who actively created and sustains this universe to be true?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts when you have the time.

[0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/08/13/epis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...

[geye1234]

I agree that 2+2=4 and God cannot change that. It cannot possibly be otherwise, given what 2 is, what 4 is and what addition is. But the physical laws of the universe are not like that. They might have been otherwise. Not only that, but theoretically, they could logically change to being otherwise at any point. The fact that they have behaved predictably in the past in no way implies, in and of itself, that they will continue to behave predictably in the future. There is nothing, theoretically, from causing mass to start repelling mass once we hit the year 2025. We can both conceive of that concept. (Appealing to probability won't help you here since probability assumes that the future will be like the past.) Similarly, it is logically possible for things to happen that violate the laws of physics, such as a unicorn popping into existence from nowhere. There are an infinite number of things that could logically happen but do not. But only certain concepts have ontological being. These are: lions and not unicorns, laws of biology rather than sudden appearances of animals, etc.

It is not logical to appeal to the laws of physics in order to undermine what I'm saying, since (to repeat myself) these are as contingent as anything else. We can conceive that the laws of physics might have been otherwise, that they might change at some point in the future, or that they might not govern every event in reality. These concepts are logically possible. So are multiverses where the laws of physics are different. Therefore, the laws of physics are contingent, not necessary like mathematics.

It therefore follows that, if the Proofs successfully establish the existence of the First Cause, then said Cause must be causing some concepts to exist, and not others. There is nothing in the concepts themselves that make one exist, and the other not-exist. Choice is the ability to bring about effect A xor effect B, where A and B contradict. Therefore there is something on the part of the Cause that is causing one to exist, and the other not. And this obviously implies will on the part of the Cause. (Again, Feser and I are talking about the First Cause causing existence from instant to instant; not about looking back in time to what brought the universe into existence in the first place.)

Obviously the natural sciences (physics, zoology, etc) give us true information about the lion. For example, part of the concept of being a lion is that it needs food to continue its existence; that it is made up of cells that behave in a certain way; etc etc. And the details of all this could fill libraries. This is uncontroversial. But the natural sciences cannot provide a complete explanation of the lion's existence and the unicorn's non-existence, because (among other reasons) the the natural sciencse themselves are one concept rather than another, and because the need for things to 'obey' the laws of natural sciences is itself a concept that exists, etc. So your reference to biology, zoology, etc, while true, does not undermine my point. It is an explanation -- thus far we agree -- but it is a partial explanation of existence, which can't explain why some concepts exist and not others.

As for reductionism, hopefully you're happy with my definition (that everything's behavior can be explained in terms of my constituent particles). In effect, this would mean that natural objects are like artifcats. Consider an artifact like a computer. It's possible to explain how a computer works by explaining the behavior of its component parts, and then referring to their arrangement. For example, copper behaves a certain way, the plastic in the PCB behaves a certain way, the silicon in the ICs behaves a certain way, the electrons passing through the copper, silicon, etc behave in a certain way, etc. And then these things are arranged in a particular structure, and the combined behavior of all the parts gives us a computer. Obviously the same is true for a car, or a house, or whatever artifact you care to list.

Reductionism basically says that natural objects are like this as well. But this is false. Consider water, made up of H and O. Now hydrogen is a gas at room temperature, it burns with an invisible flame, it combines with nitrogen to form ammonia, with carbon to form methane or any number of things, it has one electron 'orbiting' one proton, and so on. All these things are properties of hydrogen. It is by the existence of these properties that we know hydrogen is present. Now, obviously, none of these things are true for water: literally everything I've listed is false. Certainly, hydrogen is present as a part of water -- don't get me wrong! But everything indicating the presence of hydrogen ceases to exist once it becomes part of water: an entirely new set of contradictory properties take their place. The behavior of the hydrogen has changed completely. And the same is true for the oxygen. The behavior of water cannot be explained by considering the properties of hydrogen and of oxygen, and 'combining' them in the way we would to explain the behavior of an artifact. In an artifact, the parts are unchanged, they just happen to be arranged in a certain order. In a natural thing like H20, the parts are completely changed to adapt to the whole of which they are part. So an artifact is the sum of its parts, but a natural thing is not.

You can consider a similar thing with a lion. A lion's liver, or eye, or paw, only acts like a liver/eye/paw while it is part of the lion. If you tear it out, its behavior fundamentally changes (it stops being a liver and becomes a lump of rotting flesh). So similarly, a lion cannot be said to be the sum of its parts. Rather, its parts can only be understood in terms of the whole of which they are part.

Therefore, empirically, it is false to think of every natural thing as the sum of its parts. Rather, the parts are derivative of the complete object, which is fundamentally one object. This is true for molecules, rocks, plants, animals, and human beings, along with any number of other things.

That's one reason reductionism is false. A second is that reductionism says that objects like lions are nothing more than particles arranged in a certain way. But the only way it can define this 'certain way' is by referring to a real lion. Sure, it can describe the 'certain way' in great mathematical detail, but ultimately it will be describing a lion. Reductionism is therefore circular. The only way out is to say that the lion doesn't really exist, and that it's a concept that we 'impose' on the particles. But there's no good reason for thinking this, and obviously, claiming that lions don't really exist can lead you into some pretty weird and anti-rational territory :-)

Thirdly, there is no actual good reason for thinking that things are nothing more than the sum of their parts. The fact that one can explain a thing's behavior according to its parts in no way implies that it is 'nothing more' than those parts as they would exist separately from that thing. Methodological reductionism does not imply ontological reductionism.

> Just from the proofs, do you think you will still strongly take a loving caring God who actively created and sustains this universe to be true?

To answer very, very quickly: I'd believe in the qualities that Feser outlines. But not 'loving caring' in a personal way. Not in the sense that one would hope a good parent to be. Only in the sense that God wills that which is good for everything. We'd know of His existence, but He would be very distant and unknowable. The Trinity and the Incarnation are complete game-changers in this regard, which is why they are the absolute foundational teachings of Christianity :-)