God exists subjectively?

[theologian]

How do you get to an unmoved mover or an uncaused cause?  By assigning a specific quality to an entity for one reason only: so that it does not contradict the premise.  But in doing so, we invalidate the premise.

We arrive at an Unmoved Mover or an Uncaused Cause not by assigning a specific quality, but by metaphysical demonstration and logical deduction that shows that there couldn't be anything, if all are moved and are caused.

What do you mean by invalidating the premise?

 I realize we're going in circles, but you have not resolved the issue of where this quality comes from or why we would know to assign it to an entity whose existence we cannot validate unless we apply that quality to it.  We have to invent god before we can prove god, with a logical exercise whose premise is broken by the existence of god.  Forgive me if I'm being thick, but I cannot see a way around this.

Okay, to clarify, your problem with Five Ways is that God's existence has already been affirmed in the premise, and therefore it is fallacious by being a circular, is that correct?

If that is the case, where in the Five Ways can we find the premises that affirms God's existence before concluding that He exist?

No, I don't want that because it would be the same approach and would run into the same problems. If we approach the five ways without any preconceptions, we don't come up with an answer at all.

I argue that there's no preconception in the Five Ways regarding God. For, all of the premises about Five Ways are about the things we see and we understand. If that is not the case, please quote the part of the Five Ways which has a pre-conception of God.

We can, sure. But we do not have to. We can arrive at other conclusions. For example, we can come to the conclusion that the perfect being is the ultimate form of evil. Or hate. Or that there is no perfect being at all.

If one will say that from Five Ways, one can arrive at the conclusion that there will be a Perfect Being that is the ultimate form of evil as you say, then one doesn't get Aquinas, and is funnily affirming Perfect good that is ultimately evil, which is an oxymoron, because Perfect Being is Perfect Goodness, because being and the good are just one and same and are just looked in different perspective. Because, Aquinas, in his Fourth Way, is talking about the degree of truth and goodness in the things we see and understand. Further, evil is not being but a non-being. Because, evil is a privation. Privation is the habit of not having what must be there. For an instance, a man -- whose nature is to know the truth and love the good -- choose to be ignorant of what is true and good in his action is choosing and will surely do evil, just as a blind eye is not a good eye, for the nature of eye is to see.

I don't understand how one can conclude that there's no God after the premises of the Five Ways. For, in concluding there is no God, then one is affirming that the things we see and understand are not true and real, and that is absurd.

No, I am saying that what we have discovered and learned in the intervening centuries indicates that supernatural causes don't exist at all.  Thus, for any questions that remain unanswered today, the likelihood that the cause is natural is 100% until such time as we verify the supernatural cause for even one single thing.

Now, if one's scope of study is only about natural occurrence, then one will not bother to look for supernatural cause. But, if one's study has the scope of all reality like and metaphysics, one can see that if there is no supernatural, then no natural things will exist too. But, you are talking about here of natural science and not Metaphysics. And to argue regarding the supernatural with the premises from the knowledge which has limited in scope like natural science is to argue invalidly, just as to argue invalidity that elephants does not exist absolutely, just because I don't see an elephant in this room.

Two answers to this:

1- It is correct that the claim "there is no god" cannot be proven and is not scientific.  However, it is reasonable to hold such a belief in the face of a lack of sufficient evidence for god, especially when the evidence on display is generally very poor and cannot be tested or validated even by the people who claim it.  The approach I see used most often is similar to Aquinas five ways, which is to try to posit that god must exist.  Not that he does, but that he has to.  The notion that the best we can do is try to find god via a process of elimination strikes me as a reason to doubt that any of the gods that people profess belief in exists.

Aquinas Five Ways is stronger than science, since to deny the conclusions of the former is to deny both reality and logic (for Aquinas' Five Ways starts from the things we see and understand which is reality) while the latter argues from a limited scope and naturally corrects itself from time to time.

Regarding the existence of God people believed, what must be checked there is not the existence God, but the source of their belief, if we consider Five Ways already and the other things we can deduce from it, and indeed that we must consider, because not considering relevant truth is to argue from an incomplete premise, and that is how to argue invalidly.

2- All well and good, but is there a consensus on how to properly study "being" so that we can compare and (in)validate statements and beliefs?  Is there any way to peer-review metaphysical claims to separate truth from falsehood?  Without a foundation for establishing ways to test and verify claims we end up with a world where there are many different religions and denominations within them, where most of them claim that the others are wholly or partly false and none can establish their case with sufficient certainty that they are able to sway all of the others.

There is a way to study "being" systematically and correctly, and that is by way of sound metaphysics. Metaphysics actually is the foundation of and also is assumed in science which method is verification in experiment. If that is the case, Metaphysics is beyond experiment, and it's conclusion is clearly more certain. For if that is otherwise, then we may want to deny verification in experiment too, which is again founded and assumes metaphysics.

Religion is different matter here, because to study religion is to consider the source of faith, and that is to go beyond reason. However, discussion regarding religion will only be fruitful if by reason alone, we already agree that God exists, especially by the way of sound theistic arguments for God's existence which is the Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas. Because, religion already accepts that God exist.