Atheists, tell me, a Roman Catholic: why should I become an atheist?

[pocaracas]

Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention to the conversation before I jumped in.... what's this "being-itself" that you speak of? [1]

5) Ignorance can be divided in a few categories. I'll go with two, the "known unknowns" and the "unknown unknowns".

We know that we don't know how our Universe came into being, hence inserting a god as the kick-starter is wishful thinking, at best. [2]

Way 3 seems to refer to the ignorance of nothingness. An ignorance which we are mostly unaware of. For one cannot claim that such a state as total philosophical nothingness ever existed. Ignorance of how the universe came into being... again! [3]

Way 4 is just silly. Good is a concept used between humans. That which is good depends on the people involved. Some people think Brexit is good, others think it's bad. What is good, in this context? I admit that, within a single population, the "goodness" of the way people treat each other can be quite homogeneous and make it look like one can devise an ultimate goodness where every person is pleased... but in today's intermingled world that is increasingly difficult... someone will always feel treated badly.
But I leave to you the exercise of defining "good". I like it when believers realize that words have multiple meanings and it's important to know exactly which meaning you're using at each moment. I want to use the same as you. As for me, I think this works on an overall ignorance of how "good" is determined within a population. [4]

Finally, the fifth way (oh, look.. this link has them all) stems from the ignorance of how intelligence can arise from purely deterministic bio-chemical operations. Granted, even science is mostly ignorant of the mechanism by which intelligence arises from the complexity of the human brain's neurons, but that's where it seems to reside, that's where we'll get our answers... and I seriously doubt that the answer will be "this bunch of neurons cannot possibly convey rational thought, it is clearly being bestowed, before birth, from some external, all-permeating intelligence"... [5]

1) Another way of describing necessary being.

There we go again!
Are you using "being" as a verb or noun, here?
- To be necessarily? - in this case, I'd posit that existence is an axiom. Things exist. From the least tractable space-time, to billiards balls.
- A being that is necessary? - in this case, We go back to my original comment.

2) I agree.

YAY!!!

3) So you think this conditional statement is argued from ignorance: "Therefore if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus now nothing would be in existence" -T. Aquinas ?

If that argument hinges on a condition, then the conclusion must necessarily be conditional, too, right?

4) Good is a transcendental quality of "being". It is the "desirable" aspect of "being", or it is the way the 'being' of objects "attracts" us. On the one hand there is the actual good or the true good of objects (you might call it the objective goodness of things), and then there is the apparent good of objects, or the way objects appear good to us (you might call it the subjective goodness of things). People disagree about the good because they are different subjects to which the goodness of things appears differently.

In so far as things are what-they-are, they have transcendental goodness. There is also a teleological goodness of things. In other words, things may also be good for obtaining some other good. E.g. Soil is good for the good of growing plants. Both of those goods appear differently to different people. Rational discourse about goodness and what is truly good, hopefully, can reconcile any disagreements. Essential goodness and teleological goodness.

Usually, we try to seek "lower" goods for the sake of obtaining "higher" goods. That is what is called "well-ordered". But if you seek lower/smaller goods (individual nutrition, reproduction, etc) for the sake of higher/greater goods (e.g. society, the common good, etc.), then that means there is a "gradation" of goods. If there is a gradation of goods, then that must mean there is some "best" thing toward which all our seeking of lesser goods is aimed. I think that is about as far as our common ground could take us in the 4th way.

Awesome definition.
But I note that it is intertwined with another common definition of "good", what you called "lower" good.

Teleological good is great! Rain is both good and bad. Good for crops and plants and replenishing water reservoirs. Bad for traffic, mobility and remaining healthy. It's good for astronomy, as it cleanses the atmosphere of dust particulates.

I honestly don't see things as on a sliding scale of goodness. Everything is good for something and bad for something else, I think...

5) I think you may have misunderstood the 5th way. This way never mentions intelligence arising in things. In fact, it explicitly only deals with non-intelligent things. This is the teleological argument. Teleology considers how things like tree seeds just seem to naturally obtain their "end" of becoming an adult tree. Its metaphysic understands that things are teleological. If you don't accept the teleology of things, then you've rejected the implicit premise from which the argument begins.

It is possible I looked at some different version which induced me in that error, yes...

So, he says that things move towards some goal... from physics, we know that this "goal" is a state of maximum entropy, or least energy.
The argument claims that this process is guided.... but there is nothing in any scientific literature that hints at the existence of such a guiding hand. No "intelligence" can be perceived behind it... it's just how things work. No intelligence required, as they always work in he same way.