(August 13, 2020 at 1:24 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Buddy, I'm not arguing that a cat and a first mover are the same thing. I'm pointing out that tom failed to argue for a god, at all, in his argument for a god. Just as I would fail to argue for a god, at all, by holding up a cat.
It doesn't matter a single bit what all of toms thinking was on this or any other subject. I was asked to show the issues of validity that a specific argument, as stated, presents. There's one, well known and well acknowledged and not at all controversial. Even the great tom himself came to realize this. Textbook non seq. There are more, equally well established, well commented on, and well studied.
There is at least one argument where, if you accept every premise, you cannot reject the god conclusion. Toms aint it. You can accept every premise, and reject the god conclusion, because the god conclusion does not logically follow from any of the premises, even if the first mover does. Similarly, my god conclusion does not follow from any of my cat premises, even if cats do.
A special note here, it also doesn't matter what tom or anyone else's metaphysics would allow to be considered as a god. Ask an egyptian if a cat was divine. Or a man. Or, really, anything with insufficient and or unacceptable potency™. Do I even need to comment on how impotent toms god is, in reality? Absolutely no bearing on the validity of the argument being considered, and a ludicrous grab at deference on it's face. So what if he wouldn't accept a cat, he wouldn't accept a prime mover as a god either.
Except he did accept the "prime mover" as "God", because of what this "prime mover" is, which is unlike contingent beings with potency like a cat. You explicitly stated you see "cat" as logically equivalent to "prime mover" in this arguments. This suggests to me that you believe if you were to substitute "prime mover" with "cat", the arguments would effectively be the same because as far as you're concerned "prime mover" to Aquinas could have just as well have been a cat because it doesn't lead to Aquinas' God. But again, Aquinas' God is the First Cause.
You can bring up theological objections to this, fine. But the arguments in and of themselves appear to be valid (at least I'm not seeing how the conclusion fails to follow from the premises in each of the arguments, when we're considering the arguments in fully fleshed out form of course). So can we concede that this particular counter you're using is a misunderstanding of Aquinas' view of God? Or do you want to keep arguing that I'm the one not getting you?
