RE: Angry Atheists and Anti-Theists
December 17, 2018 at 6:56 am
(This post was last modified: December 17, 2018 at 7:13 am by Belacqua.)
(December 17, 2018 at 6:13 am)Gwaithmir Wrote: Can you be more specific? Exactly what did Dawkins have to say that you disagree with? How did he fail to rebut Thomas Aquinas?
He says that Aquinas intended the Five Ways to be comprehensive reasons as to why we should believe in God. But they aren't that. They are more like the table of contents for fuller arguments, useful for students. No one would find the Five Ways persuasive on their own.
He doesn't understand the Aristotelian idea of primary and secondary causation, so he thinks a "first cause" is a beginning temporal cause, which it isn't.
He thinks that Aquinas argues for a temporal beginning to the universe, which in fact Aquinas specifically argues against.
He thinks the argument from natural teleology has something to do with intelligent design, which it doesn't.
He thinks that Aquinas' discussion of motion involves local movement from one point to another, when in fact it is about act and potency.
He mistakes arguments about transcendental perfection for something about quantitative magnitude, which it isn't.
He doesn't rebut any of them because he doesn't understand a single one. Granted, the terms are not familiar to a lot of modern people. But a lot of modern people have the good sense not to think they understand things they don't.
