Atheism is irrational.

[Angrboda]

You may be right regarding liking God with nothing. However, if there's no God, then there cannot be something which is absurd. Because, upon analyzing the world, there must be a Unmoved Mover, First Cause, Uncaused Necessary Cause, Perfect Being, and Supremely Intelligent Being, which people call God.

The fourth and fifth way are extremely unconvincing. The first through third way don't necessarily point to a god. You've exaggerated the quality of your evidence, if I were to even call it that.

Perfect being? Platonic nonsense. That things can be ranked doesn't mean there is an ultimately supremely ranked thing inspiring them. Does there being varying degrees of tallness imply that there is an infinitely tall thing? No. At best it's an unproven conjecture.

The fifth way fails in that things behave the way they do because of their essence as material things and the behavior of forces. No intelligence required.

So we have three arguments that something must have started the chain of being. That doesn't get you to God.

[Primordial Bisque]

Ah, St. Aquinas and his 5 ways of special pleading god into our imagination. How....13th century....or earlier. Didn't he base those arguments on Aristotelian philosophy?

Pretty much Aristotle because his philosophy has stood the test of time. Which of the 5 ways do you consider special pleading and why?

1. The Unmoved Mover states that whatever is moving must be moved by another mover; however it cannot be infinite because there would be no first mover; therefore an unmoved mover must exist, which everyone understands to be God.

• The conclusion directly contradicts the premise, that anything in motion requires another thing in motion. Special pleading occurs when it is stated that god has to be the exception.
  

• "it cannot be infinite because there would be no first mover", I believe, is very close to what was actually written, or translated from the original language at least. I'll never understand the problem with infinite succession/regression; but this statement seems to be saying "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain - because if you do, the god-concept won't work."
  

• "Which everyone understands to be God" insinuates that a preconceived notion that god already exists is required. It's worth mentioning, but not that important since these types of arguments are targeted at people who already believe, and are willing to look beyond the flaws.
  

2. The Uncaused Cause states "there is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause in itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible.". It follows the same path as the first argument, mentioning  "if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name God."

• Again; the conclusion directly contradicts the premise, and special pleads god as an exception to the rule; citing infinite regress as the roadblock. This argument also requires a preconception that god already exists.
  

3. The Necessary Being argument follows suit, stating that there is no being that owes its existence to itself. But, due to infinite regress, there will never be an ultimate necessary being; therefore an ultimate necessary being exists, which everyone calls God.

• Once more; the conclusion contradicts the basic premise of the argument by making god an exception; citing infinite regress as the reason why.
  

4. The Absolute (Perfect) Being argument is a bit strange, referring to the gradation among things; stating "among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But more or less are predicated of different things according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum". It uses heat and fire as an example; stating that the gradient nature of heat, when it reaches it's maximum, will become the hottest fire. It concludes with "Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God."

• The main problem with this argument is that it seems kind of "thrown in there". It borrows a bit from the first cause argument, thus inherits come of it's logic problems - but, it's more or less a bizarre concept with a 'god did it' tagged on at the end.
  

5. The Grand (Intelligent) Designer argument should be familiar enough to everyone...I hope. But for those who aren't:

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but designedly. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it is directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

• The entire premise of this argument paints the universe as a perfectly designed thing in order to toss in a 'god dit it' at the end. However, it (our universe) is only workable in very few parts, like our planet; but completely hazardous and threatening to us Earthlings in the vast majority of it's space. Don't get me wrong, I think our universe is awesome; but not something I would call intelligently designed. It bears the mark of something more chaotic, whimsical, amoral, apathetic, and certainly not sentient.
  

[Neo-Scholastic]

- delete -

[robvalue]

Yup, special pleading nonsense. If I'm allowed to use this kind of broken logic, I can prove pretty much anything.

The idea of a very linear causality chain is not even consistent with science either, especially as you approach the Big Bang.

[Pat Mustard]

You may be right regarding liking God with nothing. However, if there's no God, then there cannot be something which is absurd. Because, upon analyzing the world, there must be a Unmoved Mover, First Cause, Uncaused Necessary Cause, Perfect Being, and Supremely Intelligent Being, which people call God.

Ah, St. Aquinas and his 5 ways of special pleading god into our imagination. How....13th century....or earlier. Didn't he base those arguments on Aristotelian philosophy?

As modified by pseudo-Dionysus in order to claim that Aristotle prefaced christianity.

[Pat Mustard]

Ah, St. Aquinas and his 5 ways of special pleading god into our imagination. How....13th century....or earlier. Didn't he base those arguments on Aristotelian philosophy?

Pretty much Aristotle because his philosophy has stood the test of time. Which of the 5 ways do you consider special pleading and why?

Well his first three are special pleading because his second premise invalidates his first ( evertyhing must have property X, therefore there exists a thing without property X), his fourth is special pleading because it assumes his prejudice is objective reality (perfection is defined in his subjective terms), and the fifth is special pleading because it tries to pass off an assertion as fact (it is in fact the same argument as Paley's watch, so gloriously debunked in On the Origin of Species).

[robvalue]

1. All green cars are slow.
2. My car is green, but it's a special car that isn't slow.
3. My car is green and fast.

Bleh.

Oh more accurately:

1. It seems to me there is a paradox.
2. I don't think this paradox can be allowed, so I invent something to plug the paradox.
3. Hey presto, no paradox.

What a load of crap.

[Whateverist]

Gotta try this sillygism thing. This is basically the way these things as presented by theists always look to me:

1 Is the loneliest number
2 Is the number required to interact with another
3 Is the sum of 1 and 2
4 Rhymes with the end of "therefore'

QED

[Tonus]

1. It seems to me there is a paradox.
2. I don't think this paradox can be allowed, so I invent something to plug the paradox.
3. Hey presto, no paradox.

That's the issue I have with it. If every A has quality B and this leads to an endless regression, then your options are to accept that there is an infinite chain or to dismiss the premise. If you introduce an A that does not have quality B, you haven't 'solved' the problem, you've invalidated the premise. If the 'mover' and 'cause' arguments are approached with no preconceived ideas, you would throw the premise out.

[robvalue]

All these arguments are really saying are:

1. Some things need a cause. [Fair enough, although you should really talk about material and efficient causes to be clear]

2. Out of the things that need causes, there can't be infinite regression. [This is just an unsupported assertion, but let's allow it]

3. So there must be something that doesn't need a cause starting the chain.

How do we determine what that thing is? We haven't even narrowed it down to one thing. You can't just announce that there is only one thing is this set, and it happens to be what you want it to be. And we certainly haven't excluded reality itself as being one of the candidates. The criteria for not needing a cause is often "begins to exist", but (a) that's an unsupported assertion if applied uniformly to all of reality and (b) we haven't shown reality itself began to exist.