Arguments for God's Existence from Contingency

[Angrboda]

I'll give you yet another example, Neo, on how 'debunking' Aquinas doesn't really take any real 'debunking' exactly, and it's really nothing more than a game that I shall call "Spot The Non-Sequitur". Wanna play? Here we go. Here's the so-called fourth of Aquinas's ways, the one about God's so-called perfection:

1. Objects have properties to greater or lesser extents.

Yep.

2. If an object has a property to a lesser extent, then there exists some other object that has the property to the maximum possible degree.

Yep.

3. there is an entity that has all properties to the maximum possible degree.

Yep.

4. Hence God exists.

*cough* *cough* non-sequitur *cough* *cough*

Can you spot the non-sequitur?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_degree

And, to quibble a little more, the 3rd point here is false as well if it's really saying that there's necessarily one object that has ALL properties to the maximum degree. That's another non-sequitur if that is what it is saying.  There's no reason to believe that one object exists that has all of those degrees to their maximum. There may be one object that is the most intelligent, another object that is the most divine, another object that is the strongest, another object that is the fastest, for example, there's absolutely no reason to believe that one object has all those things, to say otherwise is yet again just another non-sequitur.

There's another reason premise three fails. An object which contained all perfections (whatever that means) would include perfect justice and perfect mercy. Since justice consists in giving people what they deserve, and mercy consists in giving people less than they deserve, the two can't be perfectly fulfilled at the same time. The entity in question is incoherent. Thus the fourth way fails. But die-hard kool-aid drinkers like Neo will deny it to their utmost. The fourth way is a really shitty argument. I'm surprised that anyone defends it.