Creationism

[GrandizerII]

Set aside the fact that Aquinas was a Christian, and regardless of his motivations, the arguments in and of themselves could be said to lead to the existence of some First Cause/Unmoved Mover/Ultimately Necessary Being/Being/Pure Act/whatever. Maybe they're still not successful arguments, but there's no inserting the Trinity God going on here anyway (even if that's what Aquinas believed in).

Not a necessary being.  There's no argument for the first cause being a being, there.  Big part of why it fails as an argument for a god.   I disagree about whether or not saint tom inserted his triune god.  He absolutely did, that's exactly what you asked me to forget here at the outset....but the problem is that he inserted -any- god.  It's a problem, because he didn't argue for a god. 

He argued for a cat, and concluded a god.

And a cat (???), by the way, is a contingent being with potentiality and is not pure act, so this cat argument wouldn't have been a challenge for Aquinas.

 I say that we all understand pure act to be a cat.  Tommy couldn't answer this criticism in his own time.  He knew he fucked up, too.

Per Aquinas, the First Cause isn't a being, but THE Being/existence. A cat is a being and has potency, so cannot therefore be pure act. If you are saying this just to be humorous, whatever. But otherwise, it reveals a misunderstanding of his metaphysics. For his arguments to work, one does have to establish Aristotelian metaphysics as true. But aside from that, without needing to presume Trinity or anything to do with the Christian god specifically, the arguments seem valid and will take some work to counter rather than resorting to kneejerk/sarcastic responses.

And again, it's irrelevant if Aquinas intended for these arguments to serve as starting points towards proving the Trinity. Aristotle (if he was able to time travel to Aquinas' time) could've had a look at these arguments, be convinced of their conclusions, and not ever feel the need to convert to Christianity.