Arguments for God's Existence from Contingency

[Edwardo Piet]

Resist providing a source for where Aquinas is thoroughly debunked? Yeah, so what?

Because I specifically and clearly stated that I wasn’t interesting debating external sources. I’m debating you.

Kind of makes debating Aquinas's argument pointless then

If I can't cite sources that debunk Aquinas then you can't cite Aquinas. And pretending something doesn't exist because you're "not interested" is kind of silly. I don't care if you'd rather debate me or if you're interested or not, that source explains very well exactly why Aquinas argument is pointless at best and fallacious at worst. What do you want me to do, paraphrase what the source said? And why would you want me to paraphrase that when the source already says it for me? It would be a pointless exercise and would test nothing more than my own ability to paraphrase.

Maybe because he wasn’t arguing for a deist god.

Irrelevant. If he can't even get to deism then he certainly can't get to more than deism.

How so?

Because if all "The Ground of All Being" means is "The first cause that is itself uncaused" then suddenly this 'being' isn't very interesting and it has a fancy name for no good reason. It's very easy to equivocate on the term 'being' and think of a living being, though, since you sure love your equivocations.

Just another unsupported assertion. Saying they are not successful is not the same as actually showing that they aren’t.

No, I am addressing the fact that Aquinas is making unsupported assertions. They are not unsuccessful because I say so, I say they are unsuccessful because they are unsuccessful. If you follow what Aquinas actually says, his arguments don't entail intelligence and perfection and how even could they unless he was starting from an unsound or fallacious premise to begin with?

It's not my job to prove that what Aquinas is saying is fallacious, it's his job to make a non-fallacious argument. The onus is on the person making the argument to make an argument that makes sense. Again, it's not my fault that you can't recognize non-sequiturs.

Aquinas gives one paragraph to the uncaused cause (2W). That’s hardly rattling on. The other paragraphs deal with the prime mover (1W), necessary being (3W), gradients of perfection (4W), and intelligence (5). Why do you keep ignoring them? But if you were wondering what unites all 5 ways you can find the answer in Question 4, Article 1 of the Summa “The Perfection of God”. That is why I continually refer to additional demonstrations. Aquinas isn’t just listing off isolated demonstrations. He is building a collective case.

It doesn't matter whether you consider it "rattling on" or not, the point is that talking about an uncaused cause doesn't get you to perfection, or even goodness, nor does it get you to intelligence.

Explain how what Aquinas says remotely demonstrates that the uncaused cause is perfect or intelligent. I am not ignoring the arguments, I am seeing the arguments and recognizing that Aquinas is making non-sequiturs and you are ignoring those non-sequiturs.

So what I am saying is this. You have not debunked 1W or 2W (which you seem to waffle back and forth about as if they were the same). In fact, you affirm them. You haven’t tried to debunk 3W. And you’ve just asserted the 4W and 5W are unsuccessful. If you’re trying to “debunk” Aquinas, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it.

Again, if all 1W and 2W are saying is that the first cause is uncaused and immutable then I don't need to debunk that because I agree with that. But of course that is not all that 1W and 2W say, despite what you say, because they also say that such things are understood to be God. And no, they are not understood to be God, because God is clearly more than that otherwise Aquinas wouldn't need to argue for perfection and intelligence. 1W and 2W are merely parts of God at best. My only quibble with 1W and 2W is the "This is understood by everyone to be God" part. Because, no, that is not understood by everyone to be God. And no, I am NOT talking about the Christian God. I am talking about any kind of conceivable intelligent and perfect creator of the universe. I don't need to try to debunk 3W because, once again, the part I disagree with is the non-sequitur at the end. None of these attributes by themselves are understood to be God, only all of them together are understood to be God, and not all of them make sense. Whether I accept any of them depends on whether Aquinias is going to equivocate on the end or not. If all he's doing is labelling something that isn't God as God then his exercise is pointless. He's clearly trying to do a bit more than that with the perfection and intelligence part, but those are the parts that don't even have a chance of being successfully argued for.