What makes people irrational thinkers?

[emjay]

people like you and Neo, who want/need that

I can't speak for Neo, of course. But I'm not clear on what it is that you think I want or need.

I didn't mean any offence by that, I was just trying to summarise what @Neo-Scholastic has often said (or seemed to say) about his outlook... namely that he considers himself curious in a way that atheists/physicalists are not... to go beyond the brute facts of nature. And/or a different type of existential curiosity/angst, about purpose etc. Basically by 'want/need' I meant of a certain type of answers... that scientific enquiry cannot give... by definition almost, if it's considering the 'immaterial'/'transcendental'. Where in contrast, many athieists, myself included are less comfortable with speculation into the unknown and unknowable. And where you may think it is knowable, through logic, (eg the Five Ways etc), that remains an open question for me.

Though I should probably not have brought Neo into this... but since you two often seem to agree I assumed you might think alike on this question... so apologies to either of you if you think that was an unfair conclusion to draw.

I find theology fascinating, though I spend a lot of time reading other things too. (Currently I'm researching the roots of 20th century Japanese "decadent" literature. The authors (e.g. Nagai Kafu) claimed to be following in the footsteps of the European Decadents, but it seems pretty clear to me that they are firmly in a native tradition of eccentric writers and artists. This feeds into a larger thesis that I have, that imported systems provide new vocabulary and fresh enthusiasm, but almost always serve as a means of reviving something old. This applies to things like the importation of Buddhism into America. If this comes together properly I expect to publish something on the topic.)

I enjoy the beauty and wisdom of theology. I acknowledge that it's too hard for me to draw some kind of final conclusion one way or the other.

Just out of interest though, are you leaning Christianity, Abrahamic religions in general, or is the Five Ways as far you've got in your thinking?

it still asks us to believe that a complex and infinitely powerful being

Thomas says that God is absolutely simple, with no parts. It is omnipotent not in the sense that it can do anything (which Thomas doesn't claim) but in the sense that all potencies are activated by it and aimed at it. 

it still doesn't appear to even address the question 'why/how something rather than nothing?'

I think the Five Ways do address that issue. Or at least theology in general does, in that it tries to show that since there is, self-evidently, something, then the existence of this something requires an absolutely simple actus purus in order to exist. I'm not sure in what way this "kicks the can" a step further. The goal is to show that all contingencies require a necessity. This necessity is not a temporal beginning point, but the end of an essential or logical chain.  

But I also think that there's a tendency to put too much weight on the Five Ways, which were not meant as some kind of indisputable syllogism. They are more like a course syllabus, with each step requiring a huge amount of background knowledge. They certainly aren't meant to be self-evident.

I just basically mean, whatever God is claimed to be, it is something, not nothing.  Though granted that gets a lot harder to conceptualise the way you/the Five Ways are talking about it as logical constructs... the terminators of essential series'... but still, inasmuch as you're claiming that the Five Ways all refer to the same entity (as opposed to different, and separate, terminators, for different series)?, then that suggests to me a 'thing' with at least those five properties... as opposed to several things with one property... and thus a much more complex entity from that point of view, even if you consider it simple. And by 'thing' here I don't mean the contentious 'thing' of chair threads etc, but just something as opposed to nothing... even something immaterial would be something different from nothing, let's term it 'something-not-nothing' going forward for simplicity, under that way of thinking - however right or wrong that is, but that's the only way I can conceptualise it. If somehow you manage to conceptualise it as not-an-entity, as just somehow purely logic or whatever?, I just can't relate to that, and would argue that when most people think of a God they think of an entity of some sort, and as such something-not-nothing.

So what I meant by kicking the can is that we start with the universe as we know it, which is a something-not-nothing in these terms (whether taken as a whole or it's parts, any fallacies of composition notwithstanding), and then propose another something-not-nothing, in this case the entity of God, to explain it's existence... in the sense of the first cause etc... then you still have something that needs an explanation for its existence... and calling it an 'uncaused cause' for instance, even if that's what the logic of essential series demands, doesn't really help answer that question of why, or at least how, there is something not nothing. In other words, it appears to be, from that POV, just another brute fact to be accepted without question.

by basically appealing to the necessity of things in the future (ie the the Five Ways considered a necessary explanation for the universe as we know it... and I might add, a very human-centric view of that universe, which not everyone agrees with), to explain the presence of things in the past. 

I think I don't understand either part of this. In what way do the Five Ways ask us to believe something about the future? In what way are they human-centered? Of course not everyone agrees with them, that's clear.

Well granted this is a tricky one... basically depends on how you define God; if you consider it something that existed prior to the creation of the universe. I know there's nuance to the Five Ways that makes it perhaps not that simple in your eyes, but to whatever extent you consider god to have existed prior to the creation of the universe, it becomes in the sense I was talking about it, something that exists in the past (prior) used to explain the necessity of something in the future (ie post-creation), and therefore felt like it was kicking the can in the opposite direction in a sense. If somehow you can conceptualise God and his creation coming into existence at the same time somehow, like a big bang that includes god, then again that's something else, but not how I was conceptualising it.

As to the human-centric part, that's perhaps coming from a little bit of conflation with Christianity (as opposed to the Five Ways which doesn't imply any particular religion), so I guess, withdrawn. Ie Christianity puts humanity at the centre of the cosmos, as the sole purpose really of it's existence, but that's a discussion for another time, maybe.

necessity of the Five Ways to this bigger question of why/how God came to be/always existed, if you indeed do.

Well, the Five Ways are just one sort of shorthand summary of an enormous system. And personally I've never felt they're the most important part. I suspect that modern people point to them because they seem like they ought to be easy to deal with. 

Obviously Thomas thought that God has no beginning and no end, and that this is part of what it is to be a necessary being. 

But I may not be getting your point properly, so I'll be happy to try again if I've missed it.

So yeah, it was basically that 'no beginning' aspect I was referring to... that even if it's required of the logic (of a necessary this that or the other), still doesn't speak to why or at least how, something exists rather than nothing, as I said above. So therefore, from that point of view it appears to just 'kick the can' from the brute fact of the universe's existence to the (alleged) brute fact of God's existence, as a necessary being for the creation of the universe, with the latter requiring more assumptions/speculation and thus being a less parsimonious and therefore less satisfactory, explanation, from my POV. But to each their own.