RE: Arguments Against Thomistic philosophy
January 20, 2018 at 1:13 am
(This post was last modified: January 20, 2018 at 1:20 am by The Grand Nudger.)
All well and good, but in the context of offering a rebuttal to Thomist theology, it doesn't actually matter whether there was a first mover or not. One can grant a first mover and it will not necessarrily lead to Thomist theology..because a prime mover is just a prime mover. You need the special sauce to get to a god, and another helping of even more special sauce to get to the christian god.
Even thomists ought to know this, since aquinas wasn't the person to come up with the prime mover argument in the first place. He was collating what he had from classical sources (read: pagan) and seeing if christian theology could be conceptualized in a new and growing field that we would one day call "science" - for him conceptualized as "natural theology". In effect, he wanted to see if christian superstition could be hammered to fit the mold of pagan philosophy...which he seemed to think was highly informative. Unfortunately he was more of a copyist than a great thinker...so he added absolutely nothing to the argument itself, leaving it in the state it's been in since it was first uttered.
Even thomists ought to know this, since aquinas wasn't the person to come up with the prime mover argument in the first place. He was collating what he had from classical sources (read: pagan) and seeing if christian theology could be conceptualized in a new and growing field that we would one day call "science" - for him conceptualized as "natural theology". In effect, he wanted to see if christian superstition could be hammered to fit the mold of pagan philosophy...which he seemed to think was highly informative. Unfortunately he was more of a copyist than a great thinker...so he added absolutely nothing to the argument itself, leaving it in the state it's been in since it was first uttered.
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