[Serious] For former Christians only, why did you leave your faith?

[Jehanne]

Kalam is about a temporal cause, Thomas writes of an essential cause. These are very different. "First exemplar cause" means it is essential for anything else to exist, not that it started the thing to exist in time.

Thomas agreed with Aristotle that there is no logical proof to show that the universe had a temporal beginning. He accepted such a beginning as faith, but agreed that it couldn't be proven. That's not what the First Cause argument is about.

Yeah, while Aquinas may have believed in a temporal beginning he knew that an essential first cause did not exclude an infinite past of pagan belief.

But I have ask Bella if you have ever questioned the premise that only things in act have causal power. I sometimes wonder if there is potency in the abyss.

Well, Thomas had no qualms about the "secular arm" burning relapsed heretics at the stake for any "pagan beliefs" that such individuals may have embraced, which Thomas, based upon divine revelation, regarded as having been intrinsically false, even if such beliefs were "not disprovable".