Why should I read him

>believed that humans and demons could have sex

>people claim he is one of the greatest minds of all time

ok Veeky Forums why should I read him?

>he thinks demons aren't real

You aren't ready for him, don't bother.

back to /r/science

Demons are real and are a thousand times more terrifying than you think because media has desensitized you to them.

>tfw I've read a couple of primers/introductions to Aquinas
>tfw I cannot understand his metaphysics

And it's not just him, really. I DO NOT understand why it is that philosophers don't think the mind can be reduced to a computer. Can someone explain this better?

What you have to understand about Aquinas is that, for one thing, he's brilliant. Perhaps one of the five smartest people in all of history. And for another thing, he's Catholic. Not a cultural Catholic, but a real, believing Catholic, one who takes the Gospels and the Sacred Tradition deadly seriously.

Put those two things together, and you get stuff like in-depth treatises on witchcraft. But you also get stuff like a beautiful, intricate moral philosophy that's basically unrivaled in all of global thought.

>his metaphysical thought is determined by the metaphors suggested to him by the technological products of his country and age

You aren't ready for metaphysics kid. Back to /r/science with ye

Demons exist and are in places of power.

A demon is a being that is unrelenting in its hate of humanity and God's creation as given to humanity in general.

>tfw no succubus gf

Wait.. Do they work on Saturdays?

>he avoids the distinction by redefining the word ambiguously

you're either all in or you're out
back to /r/science

I understand that the mind is not literally a computer (it doesn't store things in memory per se, for example), but I'm not following the argument which denies the following claim:
>if we build a machine that perfectly mimics the neurons in the brain and attach it to a body, it will have a rational soul

Why would this not be true?

when you realize that theology describes MEANING

and

defns are RELATIVE

he will make more sense

Aquinas also said that you can only have sex in the missionary position, because - get this -

If the woman is on top her water will break and release all of the juices on you.

Yeah, he's that kinda guy. I respect him for his metaphysics he did but goddamn he's a fucking cockmuncher no-fun-allowed kinda shithead.

How long have you been waiting to unleash this nonsense on someone?

>acknowledges sex is disgusting
a true patrician

A couple of months. It's hard to have a conversation on the mind-body problem when you are not on a college campus.

He did not though. He accepts sex for the purpose of fathering children as something beautiful and sacred.

He's perfectly right though. If you ever make a woman cum you'll know.

I'm not defining it ambiguously at all, and I am all in.

Why would a demon from from two millennia ago and now share the same form?

A Nero as he was wouldn't work today, more subtlety is needed.
>neurons exist
>rationality is defining and exists
your argument is garbage
btfo

Aquinas doesn't deny that things exist, user-kun. Certainly not that rationality exists.

that does not imply that the sexual act itself is not disgusting, which it is, objectively speaking.

I'm not Aquinas.

well, he's certainly wrong about the water breaking, but you're certainly right about being cum on being slightly disgusting.

I don't care much about bodily fluids, luckily. they don't bother me.

I think beautiful & sacred definitely does imply "not disgusting"

but whatever lets you sleep at night you poor soul.

yeah.. right

>sweatingthomas.tiff

pfft, no they aren't! go back to sleep, babby.

Have you considered reading a book about it?
You? No. Everyone interested in philosophy? Yes.
I'm going through my 4th on Aquinas text right now and will read one more and then more Aristotle and I hope I'll be able to get it. He's deceptively hard and incredibly easy to misunderstand.

>reading medieval thinkers on modern premises.

You guys are some anachronistic nutheads.

If the universe is finite, then it is solved, and then the mind really is a computer, nobody denies this, but then how are we conscious?
Oh, easy, consciousness is brain matter, it just arises out of a natural and bounded process.
Sure sure, but that's reductionism, you haven't adjudicated consciousness on its own terms, you just danced around the problem by saying perennially insufficient bullshit like "space dust dude lmao."
This is materialism, the problem with materialism is that it considers reality abject from experience.
The truth is that whatever is known is real, the mind knows things that don't exist, and by knowing them they exist, because those things are just as eidetically vivid as the things with physical substance.
So by considering reality abject from experience you are just tricking yourself into thinking that your made up little model of everything is the extent of reality. You are not admitting that our mental formulations exist, even though you are experiencing them. Which is a contradiction because materialism also asserts that everything is a matter of perception and that there is no objective reality; this of course is at odds with appealing to a purely material vision of reality since, without a consciousness in which things can attain to existence via participation, the universe would be uniform or in quantum equilibrium and nothing could be said to exist at all.
That's the effect of God, his love disturbs the equilibrium, makes consciousness out of unconscious matter, light out of darkness, good out of evil, salvation out of sin; he expresses the universal in the particular, indeterminism in determinism.
It's the power that expresses one thing in the contradiction of that thing, without compromising the integrity of either.
Without this self-imparting of the divine consciousness nothing would differ from any other thing, it's hard to understand, I'm struggling even typing this, I can only understand it sometimes.

words words words words words.
You really should have learned a trade kid.
Have fun with your virginity.
I lost mine in some bad pussy...

Is it merely a coincidence that half the people I know who are religious/believe in god tended to be heavy drug users w/brain damage resulting from said drug use?

>tfw no succubus (male) fuckbuddy

>Why should I read him

See him as a contributor, not as a definer. All contributors have their contributions, and their detriments. It's up to you to sift through it.

That's an Incubus my man.

>he doesn't know about succubi (males)