Arguments for God's Existence from Contingency

[Neo-Scholastic]

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.

That’s the most absurd thing I’ve heard in a long time. If you're talking about what Aquinas wrote then you have to quote Aquinas. Duh. I’m putting this one in the Hall of Shame.

…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.

If you’re going to “debunk” Aquinas you need to get things straight. The 3W deals with necessary being. It’s the 2W that deals with first cause. 1W in the unmoved mover.

… 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.

Bullshit. It is too your job. You’re saying that the 5W have been thoroughly debunked. Debunking means showing that the arguments are fallacious. And yet, you refuse to do the heavy lifting of showing which premise is false or where there is a gap in the logic. How in the world can you claim that the 5W have been “debunked” when you have explicitly stated the Aquinas did indeed prove the existence of the Unchanged Changer, First Cause, and Necessary Being? As for 4W and 5W, you haven’t even tried.

You seem to be hung up on semantics. Apparently your only problem with each demonstration is that it concludes with the phrase “everyone understands this to be God.” Look, if the English word for an immutable, eternal, necessary, perfect, and intelligent agent was “Duck” then I would have to say that I worship Duck.

I can understand why you think Aquinas is slipping in hidden concepts at the end. That at worst is a rhetorical flourish. It invites the reader to ask themselves what else could possibly be the Unchanged Changer (etc.) if not God. He sets the stage for Question 3 where all those connections are made explicit.

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 as I have said Question 2 ends by presenting 5 phrases, “this everyone understands to be God” which you are calling non-sequitors. If Aquinas had stopped writing then I would agree with you. While it seems intuitively obvious, for many at least, that each of the things proven by the 5W must also have the attributes of the others - meaning, the immutable agent of 1W, the Unchanged Changer, would have the necessity of the agent in the 3W, the Necessary Being, etc. – that alone does not an argument make. The logical demonstrations that prove what is only apparently in Question 2 are presented in Articles 2 thru 7. Since these demonstrations are spread out, I’ve never before put them into my own words. I am not prepared to do so at this time; although I will have to come back to it at some point soon. So I guess if you want to elevate a semantic point to the level of "debunking" I'm not going to stop you. At the same time, that's a far cry from pointing out a faulty premise or break in the chain of logic.