What makes people irrational thinkers?

[emjay]

@Belacqua

I wonder if you could at least answer poly's question regarding how a Five Ways type God, if it were true, would be any less a brute fact requiring no further explanation than that which it attempts to explain... ie why it's not just 'kicking the can' further back so to speak. As, though most of what he says is clearly way above my pay grade, that particular issue is one of my biggest issues with the five ways. Ie I understand that it has more explanatory power for people like you and Neo, who want/need that, in explaining the little bubble of reality we all find ourselves in... and in that sense you may (or may not) indeed see it as kicking the can, but to a more comfortable place... but it still doesn't appear to even address the question 'why/how something rather than nothing?'... because it still asks us to believe that a complex and infinitely powerful being has always existed, just because, with no further explanation required, inside or outside our universe (however you want to define it).

And in addition to this at this point it almost feels like the can gets kicked in the opposite direction, 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. Though granted I may have misunderstood you there (and/or elsewhere) so I'm very curious how you would answer these questions and how you would relate the (granted, disputed) necessity of the Five Ways to this bigger question of why/how God came to be/always existed, if you indeed do.

The 5W are, in the tradition of all classical philosophy, mostly about identifying and describing the most fundamental priniples of the world. Some here think physics is most fundamental and mathematics contingent on that. (Yes, I used the word contingent dispite some otherwise intelligent people finding themselves perplexed by ordinary everyday concepts.) The 5W demonstrate that the sensible world is not fundamental. There is a layer below that is known by the intellect.

Well this is still an open question for me, pending better understanding of the Five Ways, though granted it's most likely I'll fall on poly's side of this, but regardless, I don't think it much affects what I was saying to Belacqua, as Angrboda pointed out in different words (well maybe, maybe not... but it feels like it relates); whatever is fundamental, beit the sensible world or something else, is still something (ie something-not-nothing).

Regardless of whether you're addressing me, or someone else with that sarky comment, I agree with poly that there is indeed a lot of conflation possible/evident when talking about things like 'contingent', 'necessary', and even 'being'... in these contexts... and that indeed was what I hoped to clarify when I first expressed an interest in all this.