Creationism

[Pat Mustard]

Kalam's first cause is temporal first cause (as you go backwards in time, eventually you get to that first cause).

Aristotelian/Thomistic is an atemporal type of first cause. Assume time is frozen, if you go "downwards" (for lack of a better term), eventually you get to that first cause.

Kalam: everything that begins to exist is caused.

Aquinas: everything that requires cause is caused

I find this Wiki page to be overall fair because it does reflect current status of discussion on Aquinas' Ways. Unlike with the Kalam, atheists have yet to come up with something strong against these arguments. This doesn't mean there aren't reasons to reject them, of course, but effective counters are nevertheless currently lacking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)

There's plenty of strong arguments against the Thomist three ways (1, 2 & 5 are the exact same argument), firstly the Teleological argument (the three that are one) depends on the unstated assumption of "firstly, assume god exists. Aquinas doesn't prove god's existence with this argument, he doesn't offer any evidence for the assumptions underpinning his arguments nor show that they are necessary conditions of existence.

Argument three assumes that for anything to exist something must exist for ever. There are two problems with this 1) it's an unevidenced assertion given with no attempt at proof and 2) if true it doesn't lead anywhere near god without a lot more evidence being provided to come to that conclusion. Given our current knowledge we have a possible candidate for an "eternally existant" thing, which is energy, not god.

Argument four is simply Aquinas assuming there is a perfect everything and asserting god embodies all those perfections. No proof offered to show that there is a perfect justice or love oe whatever, just Aquinas proclaiming it to be true because he says so. And again he makes no effort to show that if his premise is true that it must lead to god, he simply asserts it.

Even in his own time his fellow theologians could see tbat Thomas Aquinas was arguing from faulty assumptions and often making "because I say so!" declamations. They knew his three ways were not proof of god, nor that they provided evidence for it.