RE: Creationism
August 17, 2020 at 4:22 pm
(This post was last modified: August 17, 2020 at 5:54 pm by GrandizerII.)
(August 17, 2020 at 3:56 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Ever consider assessing these arguments critically?
OP:
The one fallible aspect of creationist thought is that all must have a creator.
What's the cosmological argument that contains such a premise?
Notice that, on the first page, at least one atheist (aside from Bel) acknowledged that this was a strawman argument.
Regarding the lawyer question:
That's easy. If this is the only context to go by, the argument isn't valid. It might've been not just one burglar but many, with the possibility that none of them would be me.
That is not analogous to what Aquinas is saying in each of his Ways (unless you willing to add further context to your burglary argument).
Aquinas, in each of the Ways, argues specifically towards a specific "entity" that turns out to be what Aquinas believes is God in the first place.
For your analogy to work, you'd have to have argued beforehand that I am the only being who would ever commit burglary or something like that.
If you want to strip Aquinas' arguments out of context and treat them strictly as standalone syllogisms, then yes, they would be non sequiturs if you want to include the God part. Otherwise, without the God part, they would not be non sequiturs and that would be the primary way to look at these arguments if you were to treat them each in isolation.