RE: Creationism
August 14, 2020 at 12:50 am
(This post was last modified: August 14, 2020 at 12:51 am by GrandizerII.)
(August 13, 2020 at 9:43 pm)Paleophyte Wrote:(August 12, 2020 at 1:22 am)Belacqua Wrote: Thomas Aquinas believed in the God of the Bible. He was clear that the first cause argument could not prove that.
"...and this we understand to be God."
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, The Argument from Contingency
I think what's happening is we're not fully understanding each other and thereby talking past each other here. Aquinas' Ways serve as summaries of arguments for God-as-the-First-Cause and such, but not God as Yahweh/Trinity. For the latter, revelation is necessary (per Aquinas' view)
Note I italicized summaries above. This is because the Ways that you read on Wikipedia and elsewhere aren't meant to be the full arguments for God. So when anyone critiques the Ways without being familiar with the underlying reasoning, a lot of context is missed, a lot of premises that are implicit aren't realized, and people end up arguing/misarguing that therefore they're non-sequiturs and such.
