First order logic, set theory and God

[Pat Mustard]

Re Thomists, if they are against the chain of causality argument as you suggest, then they are against Aquinas, as that is his first cause argument, ie that everything must have a cause, therefore god (and don't ask about god's cause).  This is because Aquinas restated Kalaam for a christian audience.

My reading would indicate something different. I checked the ultimate cause of all truth (Wikipedia) just now. Their summary of Kalam is this way:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause;
2. The universe began to exist;
Therefore:
3. The universe has a cause.

I may be wrong, but I see that as a temporal beginning. 

Aristotle thought the universe had no temporal beginning; it was eternal. Aquinas reasoned that neither science nor logic can show that the universe began. If we think that it had a temporal beginning point, as in a literal reading of Genesis, we have to take it on faith. 

But I'm pretty sure that Kalam goes for a temporal first cause, whereas Aquinas/Aristotle is talking about a non-temporal, essential series.

Here is how it was explained to me by a guy I chat with on line sometimes. He's at the University of Chicago, and is a leading expert on Aristotle:

Try: an essentially ordered series vs. a temporally ordered one.

e.g. Parents are temporally and necessarily prior to their children. Even should the parents die/vanish, the children remain (temporally ordered series)

Space-time is essentially and necessarily prior to carbon atoms. Should space-time vanish, so too, simultaneously, do any and allcarbon atoms vanish (i.e. there can be space-time without carbon atoms, but there can't be carbon atoms without space-time)

Your reading is wrong. Aquinas' three points are the same as the Kalaam points, except god replaces allah.