Exposing the Intellectual Bankruptcy of Atheists Criticizing Religion

[Neo-Scholastic]

Chad, you're quoting fascinating persons, but isn't it obvious to you that these persons only could know what their time knew? The time when they lived is very important to this kind of discussion, since even the brightest minds didn't doubt the existence of the supernatural in Aristotles and Aquinas days. There were things they couldn't explain by other means. Things, we take for granted, since the last centuries found natural explanations.

Often times, Abaris, I end up responding to you indirectly by replying to others. I certainly do not want you to think you are on my ‘ignore list’ nor that I lack respect for the points you raise. Indeed, it is obvious that people are, to a greater or lesser extent, products of their time. Discoveries in the sciences and their technological applications have made profound changes to how we see the world. This doesn’t mean; however, that pre-modern thinkers did not make at least some important discoveries. Euclid’s proofs remain valid to this day and he discovered them without the benefit of computers or even the the number zero. No one disputes that early thinkers used examples that today no one would take seriously. Aristotle may have been a geo-centrist but his contributions to logic have stood the test of time. If you have not already noticed, I believe the truths discovered by ancient and Medieval philosophers transcend any particular theory or finding of natural science. I demonstrated this in my my last post with regards to the PNC.

If the logic of an argument is sound, and the premises appear sound, you can still come up with an unsound conclusion.

If the logic is sound and the premises are sound (and do not merely appear to be so) then the conclusion is sound.

It's not clear that all of the premises [of the 5W] are sound because many of them have no application outside the argument[1], are unfalsifiable [2], or are just plain weak.[3]

Without examples, I cannot effectively respond to the exact apparent flaws you see, except in the most general way.

[1] IF a premise is either 1) self-evident knowledge OR 2) universal sense experience THEN it can be used in multiple demonstrations, i.e. they can have application outside the Five Ways.

[2] Unfalsifiablity is not a synonym for uncertainy. Self-evident principles are certain because while people can deny their truth with words, they cannot deny their truth in thought. Some are very well known and universally accepted a) the PNC, b) the Law of Identity, and c) the Law of Excluded Middle. It is precisely because such as these are unfalsifiable AND certain that they make excellent first principles. In the Summa Aquinas uses another that is equally self-evident: something cannot give what it does not have.

[3] Premises based on universal sense experience will not be as strong as self-evident truths; however, none of those used by Aquinas seem particularly controversial. Here is the list of general observations used in the Five Ways:
Some things in the world change.

Only things that actually exist can have effects.
No cause is the efficient cause of itself.
Some things that could be are not and some things are not that could have been.
Some things serve as better examples of a concept than others.
Similar causes consistently produce similar effects.

None of the above statements seem particularly weak to me and most fair-minded people would consider them common sense.

When the conclusion of an ontological argument is all you have to say that a God exists, it's impossible to tell whether or not this conflicts with reality because there is no other evidence.

Are you suggesting that the Pythagorean theorem must be empirically verified before it can be accepted as true? Clearly that is not the case. Physical measurements, no matter how precise, only yield approximate values, not the absolute values that define mathematical results. The truth of the theorem does not rely on ‘other’ evidence nor is other evidence necessary.