Aquinas's Fifth Way

[Neo-Scholastic]

There is no mechanism present for causes to produce inconsistent results, so there is no reason why a cause would produce a distinct, separate effect each time.

To extend this idea, there is not a mechanism for causes to produce any effects whatsoever. The physical universe is pixelated at the Planck scale. In your universe, nothing connects one moment to the next.

[The Grand Nudger]

-Our- universe, you live here too.....at least some of the time.
(the mechanism by which most of the causes we're familiar with produce most of the effects we're familiar with is interaction btw - as in our example of light and photophobic or photoreactive substances and structures. Put them in a black box, prevent interaction, you prevent the effect by severing it from the cause. You can do this another level into the explanation, of course, inhibit the production of auxin and even if the cause is present, there is less interaction - relative to our baseline- and so we see less of the effect. You can manipulate it as well, shine a light - watch the plant grow and track..hence we know it's light, and not the sun, particularly. All to do with interaction at every level - in the case of plants).

[Esquilax]

There is no mechanism present for causes to produce inconsistent results, so there is no reason why a cause would produce a distinct, separate effect each time.

To extend this idea, there is not a mechanism for causes to produce any effects whatsoever.

The interplay between various physical phenomena is sufficient. X thing happens, which consequently effects Y by the simple fact that it did happen. We can observe and measure what happens for most physical phenomena with relative ease by now. We know why causes have effects. Your assertion is that there must be some extra thing that makes causes happen at all, and to keep effects both happening and consistent. Once again, you've failed to demonstrate this, opting to instead attack (what you consider to be) my position, as though if I'm wrong, you must be right by default. You're smart enough to know it doesn't work that way, so I can only see this as evasion now that you've been called on to demonstrate your assertions.

The physical universe is pixelated at the Planck scale. In your universe, nothing connects one moment to the next.

To start with, this is an argument from ignorance: if I don't have an answer to this, it doesn't mean you're suddenly right. Best start justifying those claims of yours.

Second of all, I don't live at the Planck scale. Time is merely perception, a length demarcated by the progression of events within it; what connects one moment to the next is that moment, and the next, and the progression of physical phenomena within that span of time. Sure, you can zoom in to such a resolution that individual events and objects become indistinct, but you can also create a color wheel of such detail that you cannot distinguish the point at which one color transitions into another. That doesn't mean that colors are inexplicable, or don't exist; the explanation we have for them is sufficient. It just means that there is a point at which the human mind can't parse distinctions. But a limitation of our ability to recognize things doesn't mean everything is magic.

[Angrboda]

A quick summary of Aquinas’s Fifth Way:

“…things that lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting, or nearly always, in the same way…watever lacks knowledge cannot move towards and end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence…therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are ordered to their end.”
. . . .
2: The regularity of efficient causation requires that causes be determined to particular effects; such that, when, in the absence of a countervailing influence, cause C is directed to effect E, then C tends to have E as a result.

I think to answer Aquinas more directly, I would note that all interactions are governed by four fundamental forces - gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. These four forces are sufficiently simple in their operation that they require no intelligence to explain their effects. If the forces weren't so atomistic and one-dimensional, an argument might be made that an intelligence is required to explain their regularity. At higher levels, such as in the behavior of plants and animals, or say the behavior of the tides, without this lower reduction to the four forces, the behavior of these higher order systems begs some explanation. With a reduction to these four forces, parsimony kicks in and no appeal to intelligence is required. One might still appeal to behaviors which don't seem reducible to the four forces, such as consciousness or free will, but then it becomes obvious that this becomes an argument from ignorance, a god of the gaps argument. "I can't explain why cause and effect are so regular, so they aren't.... therefore a regulating intelligence is required."

[FifthElement]

You still did not show how is infinite causality chain impossible..

At the Planck scale the regress stops.

Lol, what Planck has to do with anything here ???

BTW, Planck scale is a theoretical possibility, we know next to nothing about that world

Try again

[Mudhammam]

Natural science already takes causality as a given. The problem lies at a higher level of inquiry, mainly metaphysical (or as you say theological). Speculations and assumptions are not grounded by reason, which is the main tool of philosophy.

"'God is, or He is not.' But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here."

Pascal almost had it right. He can be forgiven of ignorance due to the age in which he lived, but modern man knows better than to believe in the ability of his unbridled imagination to forgo a quintessentially empirical endeavor by attempting to solve a question, with ad hoc assertions, that is itself not even vaguely understood.