Arguments for God's Existence from Contingency

[Angrboda]

Source: http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.co.uk...thing.html

You just couldn’t resist could you?

He doesn't literally say the words "Therefore God" but that's what he is saying, i.e. that is what he is arguing for…God isn't simply the first cause, God has to at least have an intelligence and be more than simply an uncaused cause, something that Aquinas hasn't argued for…. All Aquinas has done is made an argument for an uncaused cause and labelled that with "God"…. He's not talking about gods at all, he's not even successfuly arguing for a prime mover with a mind or a diest God, let alone a Christian God. He's merely arguing for an uncaused cause, that's it. Merely by asserting "This uncaused cause is God" is a completely bare assertion because it doesn't have the properties of God or the mind of God and it isn't anything like God, it's just an uncaused cause. Literally the only thing it has in common with God is the uncaused cause aspect… If all Aquinas is doing is arguing for the existence of an uncause then he has demonstrated no god at all, not even a deist one. He's demontrated an uncaused cause, at best. And he hasn't even necessarily demonstrated that because he hasn't demonstrated that the universe is necessarily finite.

You have simply taken 1 part out of 5 and saying “Aquinas didn’t argue for that,”, again and again and again, which is simply untrue. Don’t  blame Aquinas just because you cannot be bothered to read the next 4 paragraphs.

In question 1 of the Summa, well before the 5W, Aquinas distinguishes between natural revelation and special revelation. He very explicitly states that natural reasoning cannot take you anywhere near the Christian God. But it does get you, in Question 2, to the God of Classical Theism – full stop – which is as follows:

Immutable (1W)
Eternal (2W)
Ground of Being (3W)
Perfection (4W)
Intelligence (5W)

Taken collectively, I do not see how anyone could not recognize that a Being having all these attributes satisfies the fundamental criteria of God for all three Abrahamic religions, and perhaps even Hinduism. Basically everyone.

Ignoring for the moment your rather generous characterizations of what each way concludes, the problem with this, Neo, as I've pointed out to you in the past is that the five ways are all logically independent demonstrations. You have no reason to conclude that the immutable entity in 1W is the eternal entity in 2W. If Aquinas is arguing that these five demonstrations taken together outline the traditional character that we otherwise know as "God", then Aquinas is guilty of a non-sequitur and his overall argument fails. Addressing the five ways as a whole, 4W and 5W are basically shit arguments, so don't bother hanging your hat on them. That leaves 1W-3W, none of which require that the entity in question be possessed of an intelligence or a mind, and thus they are, "not what everyone knows as God." That's a quick nutshell pass through the argument Aquinas is making which is sufficient to dispel your starry eyed notion that the five ways are some iron clad proof of God. They simply aren't.