[Serious] Thomism: Then & Now

[Neo-Scholastic]

Would you mind explaining them in your own words and/or providing a link with summary descriptions you feel are accurate?[/i]

Sure, I think this translation works: Summa Theologiae
Here is the debate that prompted this thread:Debate

Quick questions before things commence: Are there any of the 5 you feel is strongest, Neo? Is there one that you consider weakest? And why (for both)?

The 1W, Prime-Mover, and 2W, Efficient Cause, kind of blend together in people's mind. That makes them less convincing than they might otherwise be. Maybe because human cognition needs physical metaphors, like time and space, to imagine concepts like logical priority. Anyways. IMHO 1W and 2EW both have to be salvaged from any imagined notion of being about time. Doing that with the 1W is a hard sell. Doing that with 2W is nearly impossible.

IMHO the 3W, Necessary Being, is by far the strongest but it is also the most difficult to understand - which is also to say that I could be way off myself. But it also takes us back to the profound ontological speculations of Heraclitus and Parmenides.

The 4W would get us closer to a discussion of Platonic Forms, if that's your interest, since the God being demonstrated is basically a Neo-Platonic "One" or "All" that Plotinus would have recognized. But the analogy Thomas used, gradiation of heat, doesn't work. I think that taints the effectiveness of the demonstration.

The 5W IMHO is also fairly strong but I do not what to discuss it because it gets confused with intelligent design. In contrast to this, I consider it an explanation of why there are particular natural laws,...meaning that there is a reason for the laws of physics; they aren't just brute facts or the illusion of order in an otherwise cartoon world. My defense of this would be the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Not everyone finds the Principle of Sufficient Reason as important as I do. To each his own.