Exposing the Intellectual Bankruptcy of Atheists Criticizing Religion

[Esquilax]

Esquilax,

In my last post, I carefully isolated and dismantled your every objection.

Well, just so long as you're not being full of yourself anymore.

In response you have repeated those objections.

Plus refined them. And pointed out additional areas where you failed to answer. And added a few new points that I missed the first time. But hey, what does all that matter, in the face of your premature victory lap, eh?

I see little point in attempting to persuade you to read Aquinas correctly.

I think you mean "persuade you to read Aquinas precisely as I interpret it." You theists really do have trouble separating your personal interpretation from a necessarily correct reading of the text, don't you?

At this point, I leave you in the hands of the Holy Spirit in the hopes that He will lead you away from affections that darken the intellect.

"I failed, so... magic!"

Chad, do you really think vague, passive aggressive character assassination is going to come across at all honestly? I mean, really: you won't discuss your views beyond the most surface level, and when you fail to convince someone the first time you just stop trying and go with attacking the person rather than trying a little harder. Is it really so intellectually fulfilling for you to not even consider the possibility that you aren't immediately, one hundred percent convincing every time?

There is, of course, a larger problem with Aquinas that I mentioned earlier, which is that arguments are not evidence. No amount of twisting will ever get you to rational justification for belief; theist apologists are good at shifting around disparate, unconnected facts to make a hole into which they can insert their god, but the thing they need is what fills that hole, not the self serving arguments they make to create the boundaries of a god-shaped empty space. Only people who can't prove their claims do exist need to work so hard to show that their claims must exist, and in the case of Aquinas you're kinda attempting to make a cumulative case based on a collection of bad arguments. They don't coalesce into something cogent just because there's a lot of them, Chad: a million bad collected arguments is just a pile of bad arguments, and in this case many of the ways ultimately fail because they don't isolate contributing factors. It's all just "oh, this must be god," despite the fact that there are other, far more parsimonious explanations that fit better with the science that developed between Aquinas' time and the present day. When I point that out- among other things- all you do is back away.

And then, somehow, accuse me of not adding anything to the argument. At the very least, I added an explanation of the fallacy of composition that infects every level of the five ways, when seemingly you didn't even know what that fallacy was the first time around. It's kinda baffling, to spend time carefully explaining my position, only to have it dismissed out of hand by someone who claims to value intellectual theological discussion. I guess it really is more important to feel right, than to get right.