The Fifth of the Five Ways

[Neo-Scholastic]

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Hmmm...when I read the 5W it seems much more to me about physical dispositions and the regularity of natural processes. Glass is disposed to shatter, as opposed to bounce. Wax melts in heat, as opposed to exploding. IMHO the 5W is a refutation of an arbitrary and absurd reality. Instead, we live in an appartly rationally ordered world. God is the the order but the seemingly cause of this order. Aquinas is setting up God to become the onltologically transcendent object of the scientific method. Brilliant really. Are you sure you're not reading "Origin of Species" back into where it never really was? If so, your painfully simple refuation may or may not apply.

The 'Origin of Species' was about biological evolution - I'm not proposing that Aquinas was attempting to refute a theory which did not exist in his lifetime.

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But I don't know how anyone can read that passage and not infer that Aquinas was positing that the universe was intelligently designed...

Boru

Thomas would have considered creation designed on a cosmic scale, sure. And that would mean that he considered physical reality a product of intelligence. But the text of the 5W doesn't commit him to any particular theory of natural science, biological or otherwise. As to whether Thomism is compatible with evolution by natural selection, I see no obvious conflict. I used to have a good academic paper on the subject, but cannot seem to locate it at the moment.