Random Thoughts

[emjay]

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.

I agree that debate, if it was one, was a disaster. I too was dissapointed. And I agree that many debunkers do a poor job...almost as bad as many defenders.  That said, I am an amateur at philosophy so maybe I am way of base with my interpretation too (despite the tone of certainty in debate). If my interpretation of the Aquinas is off, I would certainly like to know.

Cool... so yeah, if you wanted to do another debate, that would be cool, but failing that, if you just wanted to talk about it with me, perhaps in PM, I'd be a willing listener Your call obviously though. I'm just feeling a lot more comfortable with my understanding of the material now (still a long way to go though), such as the distinction between essential and accidental ordered series, but at the same time find the former to be quite unintuitive as a way of thinking about causality (as does my dad, who I've been talking about this with... he's also a Christian, but not at all familiar with Aquinas), so would just be curious to see how you think about such and other similar things in real terms, among other talking points.