Aren't each of the five arguments by Aquinas an example of special pleading? "Everything that is A must be subject to B, except for that A which we decided is not and therefore breaks the endless loop which would otherwise result." I'm guessing he never successfully applied that thinking in his day job as a janitor.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
