(November 12, 2016 at 11:20 am)theologian Wrote: However, one of the premise of your point is false. For, in the First Way, the conclusion states that there is an Unmoved Mover and not Unmoved Moved, and that one of the premise states that everything that moves (or in motion to be precise) must be acted upon by another and not that every mover must be acted upon. In that case, there is no contradiction between the premise and the conclusion. So, your first reason why the First Way of the Five Ways is a special pleading, i.e. the conclusion contradicts with the premise, is found to be not the case.It seems as though you re-stated the case. Everything that moves must be acted upon by a mover, with one exception. Either the mover does not have to be moved (unproven assertion) or the mover is unmoved (unproven assertion). Since the example is being used to prove that God is required, it cannot be used to confirm the qualities that are being used to prove that God is required. Unless you can demonstrate how God is unmoved or how he is an exception to the rule, the conclusion is not compelling.
Quote:Second, you label the Five Ways as special pleading, because the Unmoved Mover, the First Cause, the Necessary Being, the Perfect Being and the Super Intelligent Being Which proven to exist in Five Ways can just be other Being other than God.I am not saying that it can be a different being, I am saying there can be another cause. If we are going to use intuition to walk us through the examples, then we "know" that not every action has a conscious intellect as its cause and thus we cannot say with certainty that the first cause is one. These proofs for the existence of God cannot work if they rely on unproven assertions of qualities that are required for the proof to work.
But, that can't be, for beings other than God are those things which HAVE being, in contrast with God Whom is NOT a thing having being, but the Being Itself, for the term God means which nothing greater can be thought of the Being Itself is Infinitely greater than things have just being. So if there is an Unmoved Mover, First Cause, Necessary Being, Perfect Being and Super Intelligent Being, then that can only be God, as people call Him.
"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