RE: Aquinas's Fifth Way
November 26, 2014 at 6:58 pm
(This post was last modified: November 26, 2014 at 7:00 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(November 26, 2014 at 6:48 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(November 26, 2014 at 6:19 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Yes but why are the effects regular? That's the point of the argument.
Why wouldn't they be? Why is it that you think that, absent an intelligent mind directing things, the same causes in the same context would create completely different effects?
We observe that cause A causes effect B, assuming that there isn't anything else to interfere with it. Aquinas' argument, that the only reason this is so is because of an intelligent agent directing it begs the question by not offering any justification for assuming that things would be otherwise without that interference. We have the same observation, that A causes B consistently, and no indication either of an intelligent agent being involved in the process, or that A even could cause something other than B to happen in identical circumstances. Hell, we don't even have a mechanism for how that could happen.
There's a burden of proof here that's not even being attempted.
Wooter's one single operating principle is
"If wooters can ask stupid questions or make stupid assertions faster- sometimes by the simple expedient repeating the same thing as if there were different - than intelligent people can be bothered to humor him by answering and rebutting, then ta da god".