(October 4, 2021 at 1:49 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(October 2, 2021 at 5:20 pm)emjay Wrote: I've been getting interested in reading philosophy again, long overdue, and was just thinking how cool it would be if the formal debates area of the forum was used again, as it hasn't been in a long time. At the moment my main philosophical interest is in 'God of the philosopher's' type stuff (eg, Anselm, Aquinas etc) and coming on here looking for threads about that, I came across @Neo-Scholastic's, ahem, failed debate... so I just thought, as a random thought, how cool it would be if he would be willing to debate that subject again, but with someone else, say @vulcanlogician or @The Grand Nudger... someone willing to debate it thoroughly on logical grounds and take it seriously. I mean, I know I'm not in a position to ask for much on this site given I rarely post any more, but just offering it as a suggestion in case anyone was interested. I'd certainly read it, with interestAnd it's just nice seeing debates in that form, so even if no to this, I think it would still be cool if the debates area started getting used again.
Well, I suppose I could argue on behalf of atheism :-) againt pantheism.
Anyway, one of my main motivations for that debate was to present the 5W in an organized and nuanced way. IMO detractors of the 5W tend to dismiss them based on misunderstandings about classical notions of causality.
Well FWIW, I for one would love to see you redo that debate, since it never really got off the ground, to put it charitably, the first time round. I understand what you mean about it being nuanced and open to misunderstandings, and that's why I would love to see it clarified and then argued on it's own terms. For instance I'm reading at the moment about 'essentially ordered series' and the concept is pretty complicated, but I understand that it's necessary to understand that, and similar concepts, before I can even hope to truly understand what Aquinas is actually arguing in the five ways. For instance, I've watched quite a few videos on YouTube about it and I have to say, the ones claiming to debunk it, have been disappointing thus far; even in my limited understanding I can see terms - like 'necessary' for instance - getting conflated and used in multiple ways left, right, and centre. So basically I would just like to see a good, honest, and thorough logical debate on it, one with clearly defined terms that help avoid equivocation or misunderstandings.
