Objections — Replies in AOA Key
- Cyprien.L
- Oct 5
- 34 min read
1) “Entropy isn’t a problem: life is an open system.”
Reply : True for the how (entropy export). The enigma is the durable maintenance of informed structures (codes, repair, inheritance) and their repeatability over time. Openness does not ground Ordo (stable laws), Attraho (teleonomy), or Actus (ongoing being). Dissipation shifts the question; it doesn’t found it.
2) “Self-organization (Prigogine, Turing) is enough.”
Reply : It yields transient motifs. Teleostability concerns coded persistence, error-correction, cumulative adaptation. A motif ≠ Ordo. Ordo is stable intelligibility serving Attraho.
3) Objection: “Order Is Just a Byproduct of Selection or Observation”
Some argue that order and stability are illusions arising from filters:
Evolutionary filter. Just as natural selection ensures that only organisms adapted to their environment persist, one might claim that only those systems in the cosmos which exhibit stability can survive. Chaotic or unstable systems vanish, leaving us with the impression that order is fundamental.
Anthropic filter. A similar claim is made with the anthropic principle: if the universe were not stable, conscious observers like us would not be here to notice. Thus, the fact that we perceive a stable cosmos is not surprising; it is simply the condition of our existence.
Reply : Both objections collapse upon closer scrutiny.
– The evolutionary analogy presupposes the very thing it tries to explain. Selection of any kind requires a stable framework: consistent laws of physics, reliable particles, conserved energy. Without such prior stability, no process of selection could ever get off the ground. The persistence of order cannot be explained by appealing to selection, because selection itself depends on pre-existing order.
– The anthropic version is even weaker. It explains why we happen to observe stability, but not why stability exists in the first place. It reduces the question to a tautology: “we see order because without it we would not exist.” This evades the metaphysical challenge rather than answering it. The real question remains untouched: why does an ordered, stable universe exist at all, rather than nothing or chaos?
In short, both filters assume what they are supposed to explain. They presuppose teleostability instead of providing an alternative to it.
4) “This is circular: you project order, then infer God.”
Reply : We start from empirical facts: stable laws, transmissible codes, self-conserving systems. AOA minimally names being/order/finality to ground what we observe. The circle would be to deduce order from God; we induce a principle to account for what is given.
5) “It is not falsifiable, therefore not scientific”
Reply : This objection confuses scientific method with reason as a whole. Modern science works through falsifiable hypotheses and reproducible experiments: it studies the how of phenomena within the physical order.
But the question of teleostability — why order persists, why laws remain stable, why there is something rather than nothing — lies at the level of metaphysics, that is, the conditions of possibility of science itself.
And in fact, the claim is falsifiable in principle: if a purely physical explanation could be found that accounts for the persistence of order without presupposing stability as a brute fact, the metaphysical argument would collapse. But every attempt to do so reveals the underlying materialist bias — the endless search for a cause behind the cause, which never addresses the ground of causality itself.
To say metaphysics is “not scientific” is not a refutation but a tautology. It simply means it is not experimental — which no one disputes. The real issue is whether reality calls for a deeper intelligibility than the experimental method alone can provide.
On this point, the history of thought, from Plato to Einstein, shows that scientific discovery itself demands metaphysical inquiry. To reject this level because it is not “falsifiable” by lab methods is to confuse method with horizon.
5bis) “The supernatural is extraordinary, therefore requires extraordinary proof”
Here again, the problem is semantic. To call the supernatural “extraordinary” already assumes naturalism as the absolute norm and treats transcendence as an improbable exception. This is a materialist petitio principii: it declares in advance that metaphysics is suspect and must bear an impossible burden of proof.
In fact, the inverse is true once teleostability is taken seriously. What is extraordinary is not the proposal of a relational Act grounding order, but order itself: that the laws of physics have remained stable for billions of years, that DNA replicates with fidelity sufficient for life to endure, that the cosmos is mathematically intelligible. Stability, intelligibility, and fruitfulness are already the “extraordinary proof” skeptics demand.
In other words, physics itself is the extraordinary evidence: the extraordinary lies in the given, not in the metaphysical account that makes sense of it. The supernatural is not a fanciful add-on but the name we give to the very condition of this persistent order. To deny this in the name of “extraordinary proof” is to invert the burden and to make the true miracle the existence of stable laws and intelligibility without reason.
6) “A multiverse makes everything statistically inevitable.”
Reply : (i) Ontologically costly and non-verifiable; (ii) does not explain local order that holds and replicates across scales; (iii) defers the question—what about the meta-frame of stable rules?
AOA is more economical: one source, three notes.
7) “Laws can emerge; they need not be ‘given’.”
Reply : “Emergent laws” presuppose a structured space of possibilities and stable meta-rules—already Ordo. If laws fluctuate, why does intelligibility (and thus science) hold at all?
8) “Attraho is anthropomorphic finalism.”
Reply : No: observable teleonomy (maintenance, reproduction, optimization), legible in systems theory (attractors) and variational principles—finality without psychology.
9) “Occam prefers ‘that’s just how it is.’”
Reply : “That’s just how it is” explains nothing (petitio principii). Between a stack of ad hoc fixes (multiverse + emergences + lucky cascades) and one source that gives (Actus), orders (Ordo), orients (Attraho), Occam favors unifying parsimony.
10) “Evil, predation, cancer—where is your teleostability?”
Reply : Teleostability ≠ present perfection; it’s order that persists despite fracture (the Fall). Cancer images perverted teleonomy (growth severed from the whole). AOA allows the drama (wounded Ordo) and keeps the eschatological horizon (Attraho). Here: participation; at the end: vision.
11) “Simulation hypothesis: simpler than God.”
Reply : It postulates a higher world, rules, and an agent—greater complexity, problem merely relocated. It explains neither Actus (why being) nor ultimate Ordo. AOA aims at the ultimate, not an intermediate layer.
12) “AOA is stealth tritheism.”
Reply : One Cause, three formal notes: Actus (gift), Ordo (form), Attraho (end). Distinction without division—Trinitarian, not tri-causal.
13) “You smuggle ‘time’ into God with your dynamics.”
Reply : The dynamism is on the created side. In God: eternal processions and perichoresis (no before/after). Hence the reversible formula Actus ⇄ Ordo ⇄ Attraho—it illuminates processions without importing time into God.
14) “It’s just another hypothesis.”
Reply : Not all hypotheses are equal. Judge by coherence, explanatory force, unification, economy. AOA scores on all four: it accounts for being/order/finality together with minimal ontological commitments and no ad hoc patchwork.
15) “Chance suffices (stochastic stability).”
Reply : Such models presuppose a state-space and transition rules—that’s already Ordo. They describe local holding, not coded, multi-scale reiteration nor the stability of laws enabling the models themselves.
16) “Attraho kills novelty—determinism in disguise.”
Reply : Attraho orients without negating contingency (stochasticity, creativity, freedom).
Actus : God as first cause, who gives and sustains being (CCC 308).
Ordo: intelligibility and the cooperation of creatures, secondary causes (CCC 306–307).
Attraho: orientation toward ultimate perfection (CCC 302).
Key point: Providence is not determinism; it is a finalistic governance in which the universe is sustained (Actus), structured (Ordo), and drawn toward its fullness (Attraho).Finality ≠ fatalism.
17) “Category mistake: ‘meaning’ has no place in physics.”
Reply : We speak of structural orientation (teleonomy), not existential meaning. Physics itself uses variational principles and global constraints—a compatible, non-intrusive idiom.
18) “Palamas suffices—why invent AOA?”
Reply : AOA clarifies for today:— Actus preserves the inaccessibility of the Essence;— Ordo + Attraho reread the energies as communicated intelligibility + deifying dynamism;— on the Catholic side, Attraho culminates explicitly in the beatific vision (the Essence seen by the lumen gloriae). Same faith, a leaner lexicon that travels across theology and science.
Formula reminder : Actus ⇄ Ordo ⇄ Attraho. Two-way reading (source → end / end → source) : the real holds by its source, structures across duration, and is drawn by its fullness—without introducing “time” in God (eternal processions).
19 ) “AOA is just Thomism rebranded.”
Reply : AOA is compatible with Aquinas, but not reducible to him. It is a triadic framework that names, in one view: (1) the ongoing gift of being (Actus), (2) the stable intelligibility of forms and laws (Ordo), and (3) the effective orientation toward fullness (Attraho). Aquinas addresses creation, conservation, causes, and finality; AOA sharpens the focus on teleostability—the persistence of order against entropy—so as to engage directly with modern science and, in parallel, with Palamas.
What Aquinas does say about stability : Thomas does not use our modern vocabulary, but he clearly affirms the stability of creation in three ways:
Conservation in being (conservatio):
“The preservation of things in being belongs to divine providence… By His intelligence and will, He therefore preserves all things in their being” (Summa contra Gentiles, III, 65).
Nothing persists without God’s sustaining action:
“No creature can persist in being if the divine action does not preserve it” (SCG III, 66).
Order of the universe (ordo universi):
“The best thing creation possesses is the good of the order of the universe… This good… is the principal object of God’s will and causality” (SCG III, 64).
Thus, Aquinas does ground a doctrine of stability: everything endures only because God continually sustains it, and the order of the universe itself is the highest good willed by Him.
What AOA adds :
It names explicitly the problem of persistence against entropy, something Aquinas could not formulate in those terms.
It offers a transversal lexicon: Actus (metaphysical being/conservation), Ordo (laws, intelligibility, DNA), Attraho (teleonomy, finality) — bridging metaphysics, theology, and science.
It emphasizes the reversible reading (Actus ⇄ Ordo ⇄ Attraho) to mirror both scientific notions (attractors, reversibility in physics) and theological ones (Trinitarian perichoresis), without smuggling temporal succession into God.
It builds an ecumenical bridge with Palamas: Ordo + Attraho as “energies” communicated; Actus as essence inaccessibly grounding; and, on the Catholic side, Attraho culminating in the beatific vision (Essence seen by the lumen gloriae).
In short : AOA is not “Thomas 2.0.”
It is a strategic reframing - drawing on Aquinas’ solid ground in conservation and order, but making explicit the enigma of stability against entropy, the teleonomy of life, and the stability of laws — so as to converse both with science and with theology today.
20) Why Unitarian, Monist, and Deist Models Collapse Before the Question of Teleostability
The objection of teleostability raises a radical question: why does order persist ? Why, in a universe destined to entropy, is matter not reduced to chaos, but instead organizes, sustains itself, transmits itself, and even evolves in a cumulative direction ?
In response to this enigma, three major alternative models have appeared throughout the history of thought: unitarianism, monism, and deism. All, however, reveal a deep incoherence when confronted with the actual persistence and stability of the cosmos.
Unitarianism: A Solitary God Without Relation
Unitarianism asserts that there is one God in strict solitude, a pure essence without internal relations. While this model may project the appearance of absolute transcendence, it is logically fragile when faced with the question of stability:
A solitary, self-enclosed God provides no internal reason why He would sustain creation perpetually.
The world, in this framework, appears as a mere contingent product, which could collapse at any moment, lacking a relational principle that would hold it in being.
The persistence of order thus becomes an irrational enigma, incoherent with the very nature of such a God.
Concrete example : Consider the long-term stability of the fundamental “settings” that make chemistry and life possible — for instance, the fine-structure constant or the electron–proton mass ratio. A minute drift in these parameters over cosmic time would unbind atoms, disrupt stellar nucleosynthesis, and erase the chemical periodicity on which replication and metabolism depend. Teleostability presupposes that such parameters are not merely set once, but remain coherently held. In a strictly solitary God-model, there is no intrinsic relational reason for ongoing conservation rather than arbitrary drift; stability looks like a brute fact that could have failed at any moment. By contrast, if the source is intrinsically relational, sustaining and ordering are not add-ons but expressions of that very relational act.
In contrast, the AOA model (Actus–Ordo–Attraho) affirms that the divine Act is not solitude but communion. Because God is, in Himself, relational — Act, Order, and Attraction — He can communicate lasting stability to creation. The universe persists not despite God, but because it is borne by an eternal relational act.
Why Unitarianism Collapses into Absurdity
Unitarianism — the idea of a God in absolute solitude, without internal relation — appears at first to preserve divine transcendence. Yet, when measured against the persistence and intelligibility of creation, it collapses into contradiction.
The dilemma of creation
If God is pure solitude without relation, His relation to the world can only fall into one of three options: necessity, arbitrariness, or relational rationality.
Necessity: God “had” to create. Then the world is as necessary as God Himself, collapsing the Creator–creature distinction. Unitarianism thus slides into disguised monism, where creation is simply a deployment of the One.
Arbitrariness: God created “just because,” without any intrinsic reason. In this case, the order of the world is grounded in nothing rational; it is radically contingent and ultimately unintelligible.
Relational rationality (love, wisdom, logos): God creates and sustains the world for intelligible and stable reasons. But such a relation requires that God already contain relationality within Himself — word, wisdom, love — prior to creation. And by definition, unitarianism denies any intradivine relation.
Thus, unitarianism is forced into either necessity (monism) or arbitrariness (voluntarism), both of which undermine divine rationality and the intelligibility of creation. In both cases, creation makes God contradictory: either He “unfolds” by necessity and loses His transcendence, or He posits an order without reason — contradicting the very idea of a wise God.
The metaphysical consequence for stability
The persistence of order (teleostability) requires stable reasons: not only for the world to come into being, but for it to remain. If God is solitary, the conservation of laws, constants, and living structures has no intrinsic rational anchor; it is only a brute decision, indistinguishable from caprice. Either God “starts to sustain” and therefore changes (contradicting immutability), or He does not change but His sustaining is without any intrinsic rationale — rendering the universe opaque.
One is left with a God whose creative or conserving act expresses no inner wisdom, but a fiat without logos: an absurd God — “absurd” in the strict sense of being without inner word or reason. Yet the Abrahamic tradition explicitly ties God to wisdom and an ordering Word; a God who cannot ground the rationality of reality contradicts that very framework.
The empirical test
The universe displays profound, mathematical coherence: symmetries (Noether), minimal Lagrangian structures, renormalizability, fine-tuned hierarchies of constants that permit chemistry, the genetic code that can replicate and self-correct. This coherence is not just an “initial setting”; it persists and yields cumulative fruitfulness (stellar nucleosynthesis, periodic tables, biochemistry, ecosystems). There are only two options:
– Either these features arise from a logos intrinsic to the creative principle, that is, from a source internally relational and rational.– Or they are the outcome of a sheer decree without inner reason.
In the latter case, the elegance and robustness of the laws are a perpetual arbitrary miracle, and science ceases to explain; it merely records the absurd. In the former case, the intelligibility of the world flows from a prior intelligibility — exactly what teleostability requires. But unitarianism cannot house such a logos in God without ceasing to be itself: to acknowledge word (reason) and love (relational will) in God prior to creation is to abandon pure solitude.
Strict unitarianism breaks either on necessity (monism) or on arbitrariness (absurdity). It cannot ground the rationality of God nor the intelligibility and stability of the cosmos. A truly wise and immutable God cannot be solitary in the sense of non-relation; He must be relational in Himself so that His relation to the world is free, rational, and stable without change. This is precisely what a relational model such as AOA expresses: the one Act is, in itself, order and attraction, thus able to give and sustain an intelligible world without dissolving into it or reducing it to caprice.
2. Monism: If All Is One, Nothing Holds
Monism — found in some Eastern philosophies and in certain Western metaphysical systems — teaches that all is one undifferentiated reality. Diversity, distinctions, and persistence of forms are said to be illusions. But this model collapses before reason and observation. If all is One without real otherness, then the stability of distinct structures — DNA, galaxies, the physical laws themselves — becomes incoherent. Why would distinct entities persist if their distinction is nothing but illusion?
A concrete example makes this clear. Consider DNA replication. Modern biology shows that life depends on the strict distinction between nucleotide bases: adenine must pair with thymine, cytosine with guanine. If those differences were illusory, as monism suggests, then replication would be impossible: all bases would collapse into the same indistinct “one,” and the code of life would instantly dissolve into randomness. No organism could survive more than a single generation. The same is true in physics: if all were truly undifferentiated, there would be no electrons versus protons, no attraction distinct from repulsion, no stable atoms or molecules.
The universe would collapse into a uniform blur, incapable of generating order or sustaining persistence. Monism, rather than explaining teleostability, denies its very possibility. It erases the difference upon which stability depends, and so renders the world as we actually observe it impossible. By contrast, the AOA model affirms alter-unity: unity that includes distinction. The divine Act is one, but relational; it is unity that embraces otherness. Thus the persistence of creation becomes intelligible as participation in a relational harmony, where difference sustains order rather than dissolving it.
Why Even “Lukewarm Monism” Is a Dead End
Some monisms, less radical than those that deny all distinction, at least acknowledge the existence of apparent differences, but reduce them to mere “modes” or “expressions” of a single substance (as in Spinoza) or of an ineffable principle (as in Plotinus). One might think this compromise suffices to account for the world’s stability. In reality, however, this position remains incoherent for several reasons:
Difference is made secondary and accidental. If the distinction between things is not real but only an “appearance” or a “mode,” then the persistence of structures (physical laws, DNA, galaxies, human relationships) has no true foundation. It becomes a mere epiphenomenon, a surface illusion — which amounts to saying that the world as experienced has no proper consistency.
It evades the question of stability. Lukewarm monism does not solve the enigma of teleostability; it sidesteps it. It explains order not by showing why it holds, but by denying that this holding has any ultimate meaning. Reality, in this scheme, is not truly respected: its structures are dismissed as “passing appearances” doomed to dissolve.
It is a logical non-sense. For if all is one substance, then one must explain why this substance always manifests itself in a stable and ordered way, rather than collapsing into undifferentiated chaos. In other words: why does the One yield a structured cosmos instead of a formless mass? Monism has no internal explanation to offer: it posits a single principle, but one incapable of accounting for relation and stability.
It denies the value of otherness. Yet without real otherness, there is no love, no dialogue, no authentic relation. To reduce every difference to a mere appearance, even in “lukewarm” fashion, is to dissolve the human and cosmic experience into an empty abstraction.
In short, even the most nuanced monism remains an escape from the fundamental question: why does the universe hold together? Why does difference persist and generate cumulative coherence? Monism, whether radical or lukewarm, refuses to take the reality of otherness seriously, and thereby falls into non-sense.
Only a relational model — such as AOA — allows us to understand that unity does not destroy difference but upholds it, and that the stability of reality is neither an illusion nor an accident, but the echo of an eternal Act that unites without confusion.
3 - Deism : An Absent Watchmaker That Dooms the Universe to Collapse
Why Deism Collapses into Contradiction
Deism imagines God as a watchmaker: He once created the world, set it in motion, and then withdrew. The cosmos is supposed to function by its own mechanical inertia, without ongoing relation to its source. This view, appealing to eighteenth-century rationalism, proves incoherent when confronted with teleostability.
The contradiction at the heart of Deism
Classical metaphysics defines God as actus purus — pure act without potentiality, eternally identical with His own being. Such a God cannot “act” in the human sense of starting and stopping, of intervening and then retiring, for that would imply change, indifference, or caprice within Him. Yet the deistic model imagines precisely such a sequence: God first creates, then ceases to sustain. This anthropomorphic projection contradicts the very definition of God as immutable pure act.
In other words, deism tries to combine two irreconcilable pictures: the God of metaphysics (eternal and unchanging) and the God of the Enlightenment artisan (who acts once and then withdraws). The result is self-contradiction.
The failure to explain persistence
Inertia may explain temporary motion, but it cannot explain the dynamic stability of the cosmos: the self-repair of organisms, the replication of DNA, the growth of ecosystems, the fine balance of cosmic constants over billions of years. These are not products of a one-time push, but of continuous relational coherence.
Without a perpetual relation between God and creation, there is no reason why order should remain coherent across time. If God withdraws, the world has no anchor beyond entropy, and the laws that science discovers become an ungrounded fluke. Teleostability becomes a meaningless anomaly.
The absurd God of Deism
Thus deism, in denying God’s living relation to creation, ends up portraying a God who is rational in essence yet irrational in action: He creates a structured cosmos and then abandons it, as if divine wisdom were indistinguishable from human negligence. This makes the world intelligible only at its beginning, but unintelligible in its endurance. It collapses into the figure of an “absurd God”: one who establishes rationality yet refuses to uphold it, undermining His own act.
Deism cannot coherently affirm both the immutability of God and the enduring stability of creation. If God is actus purus, He cannot withdraw without contradiction. If He withdraws, creation has no rational ground for its persistence. Deism therefore negates the very teleostability it must explain.
Only a relational model such as AOA makes sense of both divine immutability and cosmic endurance: stability is not inertia, but the constant echo of an eternal relational Act that sustains order without ceasing.
21) Why the “Pink Dragon” Objection Misses the Point
A common skeptical retort claims:
“Believing in God is no different from believing in a pink dragon, or an invisible elephant.”
Reply : The aim is to equate theism with arbitrary fantasy. Yet, once examined anthropologically, historically, and metaphysically, the analogy collapses.
Anthropological depth
The notion of God as relational source (AOA: Act–Order–Attraction) is not a whimsical invention of one mind, but a universal anthropological constant. Across cultures and epochs, humanity has intuited a transcendent ground that sustains order and gives meaning: whether expressed in myth, ritual, philosophy, or theology. By contrast, pink dragons or invisible elephants have never served as universal, structuring horizons of culture. They are ad hoc constructs with no anthropological depth, invoked only in late modern polemics.
Historical continuity
The theistic hypothesis is the fruit of millennia of reflection: from the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, through Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, to the synthesis of theology and science in the Middle Ages and beyond. The “dragon” analogy has no such pedigree. It lacks the accumulated testimony of philosophers, mystics, scientists, and saints who consistently engaged the divine as an intelligible, lived, and transformative reality.
Experiential scope
The reality of God has been sought, prayed to, and experienced by billions of people throughout history, shaping civilizations, ethics, and art. Religious experience, whether contemplative or communal, is not reducible to fantasy play. A pink dragon, by contrast, is never worshipped, never prayed to, never experienced as the transcendent ground of being; it exists only as a rhetorical device.
Metaphysical distinction
At its core, the “pink dragon” analogy betrays a categorical misunderstanding of what classical theists — and in particular Trinitarian Catholics — mean by the word God. The God of Christian metaphysics is not an entity within the world, like a rare creature whose existence could be confirmed or denied by empirical sighting. He is not “one more being” among others, perched somewhere in the universe, hidden like a dragon or an elephant.
Rather, God is ipsum esse subsistens — subsistent being itself — the source from which all that exists derives its being, and the relational Act by which the universe is held in order and intelligibility (AOA). To compare such a principle to a dragon is to commit a basic category mistake: dragons, however fanciful, are contingent objects of space and time; God, as conceived in Trinitarian thought, is the condition of possibility for any object of space and time to exist at all.
Thus the analogy is not only false, it is revealing. It shows less a genuine attempt at philosophical reflection than an ideological gesture — a will to flatten all claims about transcendence into the register of fairy tales. This is not neutrality, but prejudice disguised as wit.
In Catholic theology, to name God is to speak of the ground of being, relation, love, and logos. To dismiss this by invoking a pink dragon is not to refute it; it is to demonstrate ignorance of what is actually being claimed.
The comparison reduces metaphysical reasoning to caricature, and thereby exposes more the desire to “win the point” than the pursuit of objective understanding.
Conclusion
The “pink dragon” objection dissolves upon scrutiny. It confuses arbitrary fantasy with the deepest anthropological, historical, experiential, and metaphysical current of human reason. The AOA model is not an arbitrary projection, but a coherent account of why the world holds together. The dragon is a distraction; the question of God remains the question of intelligibility itself.
22) Ockham’s Razor (properly used)
Ockham’s Razor Misused and Recovered
Today Ockham’s razor is frequently invoked in skeptical or scientistic discourse, but almost always in a distorted form: “the simplest explanation is the material one.” Such a claim is not only foreign to William of Ockham, it inverts his intent. Ockham, a Franciscan friar and theologian of the 14th century, formulated his principle not as a weapon for materialism, but as a rule of intellectual economy: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem — entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.
As a theologian, Ockham applied this principle within a horizon where God’s existence and revelation were presupposed. His concern was to safeguard logical rigor, not to eliminate metaphysical or theological dimensions. To wield the razor as a dogmatic exclusion of transcendence is therefore a misuse — a petition of principle in favor of materialism.
Here we shall remain faithful to the razor’s genuine meaning: true parsimony, neutrality of method, and demand for coherence. Each model will be judged not by ideological presuppositions, but by whether it posits fewer irreducible assumptions, avoids ad-hoc fixes, and explains more with less. Only in this light can Ockham’s legacy serve reason rather than prejudice.
Prefer the hypothesis that:
posits fewer irreducible principles,
introduces fewer brute facts/exceptions,
explains more with less (unifies diverse data without ad-hoc patches),
respects what is evidently there (order, persistence, intelligibility), rather than denying it.
Cost comparison
Monism
Primitives: 1 substance/principle.
Hidden costs: must add the massive patch that all differences (laws, particles, DNA base-pairing, persons) are “mere appearance”—then must explain why the “appearance” is stable, lawful, and cumulatively coherent. That’s a second, unacknowledged principle (“stable illusion”).
Net cost : 1 stated principle + 1 covert stabilizer + global illusionism. Expensive and self-defeating.
Unitarianism (strict solitude)
Primitives: 1 God without internal relation.
Hidden costs: to get a world that arises, endures, and is intelligible, it must import brute decrees (why create? why these laws? why continuous conservation?) or slide into necessitarianism (collapse toward monism).
Net cost : 1 stated principle + a bundle of ad-hoc brute facts (creation, conservation, fine order), or else loss of contingency. Expensive and unstable.
Deism (absent watchmaker)
Primitives: 1 God + initial push.
Hidden costs: must smuggle in a mysterious guarantor of long-term coherence (why parameters don’t drift, why life-compatible order persists) while insisting God has “withdrawn.” If God is actus purus, “withdrawing” contradicts immutability; if He truly withdraws, teleostability becomes luck.
Net cost : 1 stated principle + contradiction (immutable yet retires) + reliance on cosmic luck for persistence. Expensive and incoherent.
Materialism (brute cosmos)
Primitive: Matter/energy + laws.
Hidden costs : At first glance, materialism looks parsimonious: it claims to posit only the physical world. Yet this apparent simplicity hides enormous assumptions. The very laws of physics — their existence, form, and persistence — are simply taken for granted. Why do stable, elegant, and mathematically intelligible laws exist at all, rather than chaos or shifting patterns ? Why do these laws remain coherent for billions of years without collapsing into randomness ? And why are they so finely tuned that they allow complex chemistry, planetary systems, and life itself?
Problem : Materialism presupposes precisely what it needs to explain: teleostability. It does not account for the persistence of order, it assumes it. Worse, it treats laws almost as eternal Platonic forms — which contradicts its own claim to reject metaphysics. In this way, materialism secretly imports a metaphysical principle (stable, universal law) while pretending to be purely physical. Its appeal to “brute fact” is not parsimony but intellectual resignation: it asks us to accept the most fundamental features of reality on blind faith.
Net cost : 1 declared primitive (matter/energy) + several hidden ones (laws as unexplained metaphysical absolutes, fine-tuning accepted as luck, stability taken on faith). Far from being the most economical, materialism is extravagant: it multiplies brute facts rather than offering a coherent explanation.
Multiverse
Primitive: An infinite ensemble of universes with random laws.
Hidden costs: Requires a generating mechanism beyond all universes, and an infinite supply of energy to produce endless realities.
Problem: Violates thermodynamics — an infinite system of finite energy should already have been exhausted if it existed from eternity. Simply pushes the problem back: why does the generator itself persist? why its laws?
Net cost: More entities, more assumptions, no solution. Razor cuts it away.
Simulationism
Primitive: A higher-order intelligence simulating our cosmos.
Hidden costs: Requires an even more complex system behind ours (hardware, energy source, programmers).
Problem: Infinite regress: who sustains their system? If it too is simulated, the chain never grounds. If it is “real,” then why is it stable? Same question re-emerges. Also needs effectively infinite energy to sustain indefinite computations.
Net cost: Adds more layers, multiplies the mystery, solves nothing.
Infinite-cosmos models (eternal recurrence, steady-state, etc.)
Primitive: Universe (or cycle) without beginning.
Hidden costs: Requires infinite energy to prevent entropy.
Problem: Thermodynamics: if finite energy has existed for infinite time, it should already be exhausted → no order left. If infinite energy, it is indistinguishable from positing an eternal sustaining principle (AOA), but with less parsimony.
Net cost: Either contradicts physics or covertly assumes what only AOA supplies.
AOA (Actus–Ordo–Attraho)
Primitive: One principle, intrinsically relational: Act (being), Order (logos), Attraction (teleology).
No hidden costs: Creation, conservation, intelligibility, and direction flow from the same relational Act.
Problem solved: Teleostability is not brute, not luck, not illusion, not an infinite regress. It is intelligible as the echo of a relational source.
Net cost: 1 principle, internally sufficient, no ad-hoc patches.efficient/formal/final causality. Cheapest coherent package.
The razor’s verdict
Fewer irreducibles: AOA posits one principial reality whose inner relationality is not three things, but the one Act as Ordo and Attraho—no extra stabilizers needed.
Fewer brute facts: Stability is not an add-on; it’s how the Act relates.
Greater explanatory reach: Same principle accounts for coming-to-be, remaining-in-being, intelligibility (logos-order), and directedness (teleology) without contradictions.
No denial of the data: It honors real difference and real order (physics, DNA, minds), instead of calling them illusions or luck.
By contrast, AOA is the most economical: one relational principle, no regress, no brute patch, no violation of physics, no denial of intelligibility.
Therefore, by Ockham’s razor rightly applied, AOA is the leanest and only coherent explanation of teleostability.
23) Teleostability Introduce Change in God ?
Reply : This objection rests on a confusion between temporal sequence in creatures and eternal act in God. In every rival model, stability is either absent, unexplained, or patched by ad hoc assumptions :
Unitarianism yields no reason for a world to be stably sustained; order reduces to arbitrary decree.
Monism dissolves difference and thus erases the very possibility of persistent structures.
Deism inserts contradiction: a God defined as pure act, yet imagined as “withdrawing.”
Materialism simply presupposes laws and order as brute facts.
Multiverse and Simulationism defer the problem into regress, requiring infinite energy.
Infinite cosmos models contradict thermodynamics, assuming what should already have decayed.
In all these, teleostability is either ignored or explained away with petitions of principle.
By contrast, in the AOA framework, the sustaining of creation is not an added sequence of divine actions, but the very mode of God’s eternal Act.
God does not first decide to create, then later decide to “keep” the world in being, as a human artisan who alternates between work and rest.
Rather, because God is Act itself, pure relation (Actus–Ordo–Attraho), His sustaining is not a temporal change but the eternal character of His being. Creation endures because the eternal Act is relational: it gives being, form, and orientation without ceasing, and without any modification within God.
Therefore, teleostability is not an ad hoc invention to “patch” divine immutability. It follows necessarily from what is already affirmed about God: that He is pure act, eternal, and relational.
If God were solitary, or arbitrary, or absent, the persistence of order would require additional fixes (brute laws, lucky fine-tuning, regress of universes). But with AOA, no such patch is needed: the same relational Act explains creation, conservation, intelligibility, and orientation.
Conclusion :
Teleostability does not introduce change in God; it expresses the coherence of His immutability. Unlike competing models, it is not a supplementary hypothesis bolted on, but the direct consequence of God’s being as pure act and relation. Far from being ad hoc, teleostability is the only way to avoid ad hoc explanations everywhere else. And more deeply still: like the Trinity itself and the theistic God confessed in the great Abrahamic traditions, teleostability does not fabricate a reality to suit our wishes.
It simply names what is already encountered in the very structure of the real. Where other models invent a cosmos according to projection (the simulationist anthropomorphizing a programmer), or by negation (the materialist reducing difference to brute facts, the monist erasing it altogether), the AOA framework articulates — without distortion — what experience itself compels: that reality persists, coheres, and relates, because it is borne by a relational Act.
24) Objection: “An Unknown Principle Will One Day Explain It All”
A skeptic might argue that teleostability is unnecessary because science will eventually discover a “theory of everything” — perhaps through quantum gravity or some deeper unifying law. Once such a principle is identified, they claim, the persistence of order will be fully explained within physics itself.
Reply : This objection only shifts the problem without solving it. Even if a deeper law were found, the question would immediately arise: why is this law itself stable rather than fluctuating, self-destructing, or absent altogether ? A new principle could unify known phenomena, but it cannot account for its own intelligibility and endurance.
In other words, the discovery of a fundamental law would be a triumph of physics, but not the end of metaphysics. Teleostability would still be required to explain why such a law exists, why it holds universally, and why it continues to sustain order rather than collapse into chaos. The metaphysical question remains untouched: what makes even the deepest law reliable across time and space ?
25) Objection : “Laws are nothing but observed regularities — why speak of stability?”
Some argue that the so-called “laws of nature” are simply regularities we have observed. On this view, there is no deeper principle: what we call “stability” is nothing more than habit, description, or statistical recurrence.
Reply : But this reduces law to a tautology. To say that “laws are regularities” does not explain why these regularities hold at all. Why does an atom not suddenly transmute into something else without cause? Why does a body fall according to gravity rather than drift randomly ?
Why do physical constants not fluctuate wildly? Regularity by itself is not stability. Without an underlying principle, there is no intelligible reason why anything should persist. Teleostability provides what mere description cannot: an account of why order endures across time.
26) Objection : “Doesn’t mathematical chaos prove that order can arise without a stable principle?”
Chaos theory is often invoked here: from simple equations, unpredictable and complex patterns arise — fractals, turbulence, weather systems. Some conclude that apparent order can emerge from instability itself, without requiring a principle of stability.
Reply : This is a misunderstanding. Chaotic systems still depend entirely on the stability of the equations and constants that define them. The Mandelbrot set is infinitely complex, yet its complexity is only possible because the underlying formula never changes. Weather systems are sensitive to initial conditions, but this sensitivity still plays out within unchanging physical laws. Chaos presupposes stability: without fixed equations, constants, and frameworks, chaos would not yield richness but collapse into pure noise. Far from replacing stability, chaos theory reveals how fecund a stable order can be.
The Casino Metaphor : Why Chance Requires AOA
Those who claim “chance is enough” imagine the universe as a casino : with endless time and spins, even the most unlikely outcomes will occur. But probability theory, from Pascal to Kolmogorov and von Neumann, shows that chance never floats in chaos — it always operates within fixed rules.
A casino is in fact one of the least chaotic places : every game is constrained by mechanisms, laws, and calculable odds. Remove the rules, and you don’t get a game — you get meaningless noise.
So too in the cosmos: “chance” presupposes a framework of stable laws, constants, and interactions. To say chance explains order without asking why this framework exists is like gambling while denying the existence of the table and the wheel.
Apparent randomness always hides a deeper order. The real question is not whether improbable outcomes arise, but why the arena itself is stable enough to make probability possible at all.
27) “Why not accept the absurd ?”
Reply : This is the most radical objection. After all, why try to preserve coherence? Why not simply admit that reality is absurd — without reason, without foundation, without explanation?
At first glance, this position seems lucid, even heroic. Camus himself defined the absurd as “the confrontation between man’s call and the unreasonable silence of the world.” But on closer inspection, accepting the absurd is not a solution — it is an escape :
The absurd destroys reason. To say that “everything is absurd” undermines the very basis of logic. For to affirm anything — even that reality is absurd — one must use coherent thought, meaningful words, and the principle of non-contradiction. The absurd is therefore self-refuting: it must borrow from the rationality it denies in order to express itself.
The absurd makes science impossible. Science depends on the idea that nature obeys regular laws. If the universe is fundamentally absurd, why trust physical constants, equations, reproducible experiments? The laboratory itself would become a theater of illusion. Yet no one seriously doubts that the laws of gravity or chemistry will still hold tomorrow. To believe in the absurd is to betray the very trust we place daily in the order of reality.
The absurd denies human experience.Human beings seek meaning, love, give themselves, hope. Even the one who proclaims “everything is absurd” continues to live as if the world were intelligible: trusting loved ones, planning the future, acting as if choices mattered. No one truly lives in a totally absurd world. The absurd is an intellectual pose, not a livable condition.
The absurd is sterile.Ultimately, to accept the absurd is to shut down inquiry. It is to say: “there is nothing to understand.” Yet human history testifies to the opposite: whenever reality seemed arbitrary, the discovery of deeper order overturned despair. From the motion of the stars to the structure of DNA, science has advanced precisely because it refused to settle for absurdity.
Conclusion : Accepting the absurd is not an answer, but an intellectual and existential suicide. Reason, science, and human experience all demand that we seek a foundation. This is exactly what teleostability names : not a flight into irrationality, but the recognition of the coherence of reality — a coherence that everyone, believer or not, experiences and presupposes.
28) Objection : Is the Uncaused Cause Arbitrary? And Why Not Say the Universe Is Uncaused?
Reply : Some object that speaking of an “uncaused cause” amounts to setting an arbitrary rule, as if the believer were dictating how reason itself must function. Others add: if an uncaused cause is indeed necessary, why not say that it is the universe itself ?
1. The Uncaused Cause Is Not a Mere Petition of Principle
This is not a religious postulate but a consequence of reason itself. Every experience of causality rests on one observation: what changes, what depends on something else, does not suffice for its own existence. An effect cannot be its own cause.
Two outcomes are possible:
– either an infinite regress of causes, which never gives a final reason why the chain exists at all,
– or a first uncaused cause, which gives existence without receiving it.
To reject this logic is to make reason incoherent: it amounts to renouncing any explanation of why there is something rather than nothing.
This idea does not contradict logic; it flows from it.
– If everything is dependent, then nothing would ever exist, because each effect would demand a cause without ever reaching a source.
– Reason therefore requires a being that exists in itself, not through another: the uncaused cause.
This is the direct consequence of the principle of non-contradiction applied to existence: a contingent being cannot explain itself.
2. The Uncaused Cause and Science
Science, strictly speaking, describes how phenomena occur, but it does not answer the question of why being exists at all. The uncaused cause is not a measurable object but a metaphysical necessity that grounds the very possibility of science.
Science already presupposes the stability of laws, the constancy of particles, the intelligibility of the real. To say there exists an uncaused cause is to provide a rationale for what science observes but cannot justify.
To refuse this idea is to reduce science to a bare description of regularities without ever explaining why such regularities exist or why they endure.
This is the most serious objection, but it collapses under scrutiny. By nature, the universe is contingent:– it changes (expansion, entropy),– it is measured by time (and to be measured is to be limited),– it could have been otherwise (different constants, different laws).
An uncaused being, by definition, must be necessary, eternal, pure act. The universe, however, is unstable, dependent, always “in becoming.” To affirm that it is uncaused is to deny its most obvious features.Why an Infinite Regress Explains Nothing
Some think they can avoid the notion of an uncaused cause by admitting an infinite chain of causes: each effect has its cause, but there is no need for a first cause. The chain, being endless, would somehow sustain itself.
But this solution explains nothing.
An infinite series of borrowings never cancels the debtIf every cause is itself caused, then none has within itself the reason for its existence. It is like a chain where each link is suspended from the next, endlessly: there is never a true anchor. An infinite chain of contingent beings remains contingent; it can never become necessary by sheer accumulation.
The question concerns “why there is a chain at all.”Even if the series of causes were infinite, one could still ask: why does this series exist rather than nothing? Why does the motion continue instead of collapsing into non-being? Infinity does not replace a source; it only pushes the question back without answering it.
Infinity does not explain stability.Imagine an infinite line of falling dominos. No matter how long the line, if none was ever set upright at the start, nothing would ever happen. The length of the chain adds no intelligibility. It is the same in metaphysics: without a first act that depends on nothing else, no series — however infinite — can exist.
Even science runs up against this point.Physical cosmologies that posit an infinite universe (multiverse, eternal cycles, etc.) only displace the problem without solving it. They must still explain why this “infinity” is structured, why it does not exhaust itself, why its laws remain stable. Infinity is not a cause but a modality.
In sum : an infinite regress of causes never provides an ultimate reason. It multiplies links without ever offering an anchor. Without a necessary being to sustain the whole, the entire chain hangs suspended over nothing.
29) Objection : The Quantum Physics Objection
Reply : The objection drawn from quantum physics has become a classic : some physicists and popularizers claim that quantum mechanics has revealed the existence of “acausal” phenomena, as if events could arise from nothing, without cause, thereby making the notion of a First Act unnecessary.
To answer this seriously, several levels must be distinguished :
1. “Acausal ≠ without cause” ?
In everyday language, quantum events are sometimes described as “uncaused” because they are unpredictable. For example:
the radioactive decay of an atom occurs at an indeterminable moment,
the path followed by a particle in a diffraction experiment cannot be predicted individually,
the outcome of a quantum measurement (e.g., the spin of an electron) cannot be predicted with certainty, only with probabilities.
But to say that something is unpredictable does not mean it is without cause in the metaphysical sense. It means the cause is not deterministic but probabilistic. The atom does not decay “out of nothing”; it decays because it possesses an unstable structure, described by a wave function and governed by precise equations (the Schrödinger equation, Fermi’s theory, etc.). There is therefore a causal framework: not deterministic in the classical sense, but certainly not absent.
2. The distinction between physical causality and metaphysical causality
Even if quantum physics were to demonstrate truly random phenomena (which it does not: randomness is always constrained by stable statistical laws), this would not touch the question of the First Act. Why? Because the causality of metaphysics is more fundamental than the causality of physics.
Scientific causality describes relations between events or states of affairs in time. It concerns observable and measurable regularity.
Metaphysical causality asks why there are laws at all, why entities exist rather than nothing, why there is a stable framework that makes quantum physics itself possible.
In other words, even if a quantum event is “acausal” in the sense of escaping deterministic predictability, it cannot be acausal in an absolute sense, because it occurs within an ordered system, governed by fixed equations, in an intelligible universe.
3. The irony of the situation: quantum physics presupposes extreme stability
Quantum physics is often invoked against the argument for a First Cause, but in reality the opposite is true. Quantum mechanics is one of the most stable and precise theoretical systems ever devised by the human mind. Its equations work everywhere, always, with staggering accuracy (quantum electrodynamics predictions have been verified to a precision of 10⁻¹²).
This means that even quantum “randomness” rests on an extraordinarily stable regularity. This is exactly what the idea of teleostability underlines: behind local variability and unpredictability lies a deeper stability that makes these phenomena intelligible and statistically reproducible.
4. Why the quantum argument does not refute the First Act
The First Act does not mean a “cause” in the sense of an earlier event. It is not a billiard ball that strikes the others to set them in motion. The First Act means a foundation: that which gives being to all that exists, at every moment.
Thus, even if the world were populated with random events, this would change nothing: we would still need to explain why such events exist, why quantum laws hold, why the quantum vacuum has measurable properties instead of nothing at all. To say “it is acausal” only describes an internal modality; it does not answer the question: why is there something rather than nothing ?
Quantum physics is not a refutation of the First Act but a striking example of the distinction between the scientific and metaphysical levels.
Scientifically, one can say: some events are unpredictable, therefore “acausal” in the deterministic sense.
Metaphysically, nothing escapes the fact of being sustained in existence. Quantum unpredictability unfolds within a framework of stable laws, which reason cannot regard as self-sufficient without falling into nonsense.
Far from making God unnecessary, quantum mechanics actually reinforces the deeper question: who sustains the very possibility of an intelligible universe, where randomness exists but only within perfectly constant laws ?
30) Metaphysics Is an Escape
Reply : It is tempting to dismiss metaphysics as nothing more than a veneer of belief. Yet such an accusation does not withstand serious examination.
All science presupposes metaphysicsScience describes how phenomena occur, but it cannot explain why laws exist, nor why they remain stable. Quantum physics, for example, rests on remarkably fixed equations (the Schrödinger equation, fundamental constants) — yet their very existence cannot be “proven” by science itself. Science works within an intelligible framework; metaphysics questions the existence of that framework. Without this distinction, science cancels itself out, relying on presuppositions it never justifies.
To say that an effect cannot be its own cause, that the contingent cannot explain itself, that an infinite regress provides no grounding — all this is not an invention of believers, but the application of the principle of non-contradiction. If these principles are rejected, one does not rescue science from the “religious”: one destroys logic itself.
The materialist objection is a petitio principi
To accuse metaphysics of being “absurd” because it goes beyond the observable is to impose arbitrarily a rule: “only sensory experience counts.” But that rule itself does not arise from experience: it is a hidden metaphysical choice. Materialism does not abolish metaphysics, it adopts one by default — and a metaphysics that refuses to name itself.
Recent developments (relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology) have not rendered metaphysics obsolete, but more urgent. The more we discover the fine-tuning of constants and the precision of equations, the more the question arises: why this stable framework rather than incoherent chaos ? Teleostability underscores that the heart of the question is rational: the persistent order of reality demands an explanation.
Conclusion
Metaphysics is not an escape for believers : it is the recognition that reason must go to the very end of itself. It does not replace science; it is the condition of possibility for science. To refuse metaphysics is not rigor, but the abandonment of ultimate explanation — and the acceptance of the absurd as the only horizon.
31) “Is Emergence Enough ?”
The Objection “Order, life, consciousness, rationality are not ‘given’ from the start: they emerge spontaneously when matter reaches a certain threshold of complexity. No need to posit a principle of stability (teleostability): emergence produces novelty, including stability.”
Clarification : two kinds of emergence
Weak (epistemic) emergence: macroscopic phenomena are, in principle, deducible from microphysical laws, but too complex to calculate. We speak of “emergence” because new descriptors (order, temperature, information, etc.) become useful.
Strong (ontological) emergence: genuinely new causal powers arise at the macro level (e.g., consciousness), not reducible to micro laws. This implies downward causation (the whole acting on its parts).
Refutation in 6 Points
Emergence presupposes the stability it claims to explain.Every flagship case of “emergence” (phase transitions, self-organization, dissipative structures, biological networks, cognition) requires a base of stable laws (interactions, constants, symmetries, well-defined state spaces). Without invariants, no attractors, no durable “order,” no coherent “levels.” Emergence uses teleostability, it does not ground it.
Weak emergence explains nothing ultimate (it re-labels complexity).Saying, “It’s too complex to deduce in practice” does not answer why order persists or why laws are so mathematically fruitful. It’s a change of descriptive scale, not a sufficient reason. Weak emergence is a methodological convenience, not a metaphysical answer.
Strong emergence faces a causal dilemma.If the macro level has autonomous causal powers, then either it violates the causal closure of the microphysical (conflict with physics), or it duplicates micro causes (the “causal exclusion problem”) and explains nothing extra. In both cases, it fails as a foundation for stability.
“Emergent laws” depend on invariants (symmetry breaking, renormalization).Phase transitions (ferromagnetism, superconductivity), universality and renormalization groups show that macro “laws” inherit from deeper symmetries and invariants. The emergent law holds only because something deeper holds. Stability is propagated, not originated.
Self-organized structures “win” locally against entropy by paying it elsewhere.Crystal growth, Bénard convection, Belousov–Zhabotinsky reactions, primitive metabolisms: yes, local order increases, but always within a stable energy gradient, under fixed laws, at the cost of exported entropy. “Emergence” consumes regularity; it does not create it ex nihilo.
Life and consciousness: emergence ≠ foundation.Even if life or consciousness “emerge” from complexity (a debated claim), this still does not explain why the cosmos is finely tuned for reliable emergence (stable chemistry of information, bounded error rates, robust neuronal plasticity). Emergentist arguments lean on teleostability; they do not replace it.
Scientific Side Notes
Phase transitions & order parameters. Macro “laws” (critical laws) depend on invariants and symmetries that are already stable; universality arises from a robust underlying architecture, not from caprice.
Superconductivity / superfluidity. Emergent states (Cooper pairs, condensates) require precise conditions and stable interactions; the “new effect” is conditioned by deeper regularities.
Biological self-organization. Metabolic and genetic networks “work” because information is copiable and errors bounded — properties that presuppose reliable physical bonds and underlying laws.
Emergence Is Not a Foundation
Emergence describes how new patterns become salient and operational at higher scales; it does not ground the being or the stability of the laws that allow those patterns.
Weak emergence: useful but instrumental (model shift, not metaphysics).
Strong emergence: costly (conflict with closure / causal duplication) and silent on the source of stability.
In short : emergence ≠ ultimate explanation.
Teleostability names what emergence uses without explaining : the intelligible persistence of a law-ordered cosmos. In the AOA framework, that persistence is not an accident but the sign of a relational Act that gives, orders, and sustains — making “emergence” possible, but never its substitute.
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