Exposing the Intellectual Bankruptcy of Atheists Criticizing Religion

[Neo-Scholastic]

No, the five ways do not work within what we currently know, all that we can currently surmise, about the universe and how it began. The argument from motion requires the existence of a first mover, stating that a sequence of movers cannot go back infinitely, but the concept of "first" as it stands in linear time doesn't necessarily apply beyond the big bang. The chain of movers both does not go back infinitely, and does not require a first mover necessarily, because this trades on an idea of causality that is not present: you don't need a first anything when time does not progress linearly forward and effects do not require causes...The argument from efficient causes has the same problem, positing the need for a first efficient cause in a framework that does not recognize the necessity of either first anythings, nor causes. For the third way, there's no reason why the universe could not be the end result rather than god, but again, the idea of contingent and noncontingent entities does not work the same way before the big bang.  

Emphasis Added.

First things first.

You are under the impression that “first” cause means the starting point of a temporal axis. In Latin term Aquinas used was ‘primus’.  Just as in English, first can mean a temporal beginning but it can also refer to what is primary and fundamental. The first Three Ways are based on a rejection of an infinite essentially ordered series. Events in time can be accidentally ordered and that is why the argument has nothing to do with time. Aquinas only mentions ‘time’ in the Third Way and even there it doesn’t refer to a specific starting point for creation. In the Third Way he is talking about any given point in time not a temporal beginning.

If you don’t believe my interpretation of Aquinas is correct then you should at least know it is not unique to me. I refer you to the following paper: “There Must be a First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects, Infinite, Essentially Ordered, Causal Series” by Gavin Kerr. I can give you other references as well.

There are other problems there that I've mentioned before, but you've ignored them earlier today and I have no hope that you'll suddenly muster up the intellectual fortitude to address them now....It's really rather sad: you'll bitch about anyone and everyone who doesn't agree with you, whining that they clearly don't understand Aquinas' arguments, but you won't even bother understanding the cosmology you think you see fit to dismiss out of hand. You're a full fledged hypocrite, Wooters.

It’s not whining if you really don’t understand Aquinas which is clearly the case. As shown above, you continue in your ignorance of what ‘first’ means, even when it is central to the argument, and even when the correct denotation was given to you more than once. Why would I would undertake to address all your other stubborn misconceptions?

For a person that always cries about others making assumptions about him, you presume to know the extent of my education in the natural sciences. I do not need to prove to you that I have a reasonable layman’s understanding of modern cosmology. In your post you made no statements about cosmology with which I disagreed. They simply do not matter.

I didn't dismiss uniformitarianism....I rejected the assertion you made that the things you listed are, in fact, uniform in all corners of reality, at all times, because that is what the science bears out. I didn't throw away anything basic to epistemology, I threw away your unqualified blanket assertion because the evidence contradicts it. Do try to get it right before you scoff.

... all observations of reality, by necessity, are made within a (very small, I must remind you) band of time and space, which is itself within our singular expansionary model of the universe. To take them as some overall relief map to the workings of everything is to argue that, because we have observations of an infinitesimally small quantity of the overall universe, within an equally small period of time, therefore everything works that way all the time, including something that is not that universe.

Gee, that sure sounds like you did. The only wiggle room you have is the last part when you talk about something that is “not this universe” but that’s trading on an ambiguity that doesn’t distinguish between the physical universe and all of reality.