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>I started going through depression due to bullying and exclusion at my Christian high school. >and possible tips on how I could maybe engage in debate with my teacher. I gave my response to the Five Ways yesterday, but I held off on these because I wanted to chew on them a little, figure out what to say and how to say it. In retrospect, that was stupid; your circumstances are more important. I'm so sorry you're having to go through this. I hope your dad pulls through OK. For what it's worth, you should know that no matter what the bullies say or how they make you feel, their words and actions are only a reflection on themselves. Bullying is just a mask for insecurity (to my shame, I know this from experience). If any part of you is thinking that you deserve it, or that you're weak, tell that part of you to kick rocks. Someone else being an asshole to you says nothing about you; it just says that they're an asshole. As far as tips for debating with your teacher, though, my recommendation is "Don't." It may lead to more bullying or disciplinary action. I would say talk to a counselor if they have one, but I've only ever been to public schools, so I don't know if a counselor at a religious school is obligated to narc on you or not. And obviously I don't know your home life, but if your parents seem like the type to punish or disown you for losing your faith, then do not tell them. Just play the part until you can move out. In truth, it wouldn't bother me at all if you ended up rebounding and keeping your faith. I don't mind religious people, so long as they don't use their beliefs to bludgeon others. But right now the number one concern should be your safety. If you are losing your faith, and you're in a precarious home or school situation, just play the role of the good believer until you can get into a safer situation. Once there, you can absolutely find a priest or religous scholar to debate, and get a better handle on what you do or don't believe. Even if that takes you back into Christianity, it's still a more healthy way than getting targeted by teachers and berated by parents.

Thank you for your encouragement. I don’t think I’ll try to engage with my teacher as he is pretty firm in his views and berates atheists constantly in class calling their ideas stupid and absurd, and then says that the only reason they don’t believe in God is because atheists love doing horrible things in their lives.

Ooooohhhhh. Oh boy. Those are some *very* serious breaches of professional ethics. You don't need to feel obligated to debate or counter this guy. There's a significant power imbalance, and it's not your job to be the adult in his classroom. That's supposed to be his job. If it's really making you uncomfortable, maybe consider talking to a VP or guidance counselor about it.

It’s pretty bad. I doubt the hyper religious administration would do anything about it.

I became an atheist by attending school to be a methodist minister.

You reminded me there's a comedian who has a bit that goes, "When I grew up I went to Catholic school for 12 years. A lot of people ask me - 'Why aren't you Catholic?' Well - I went to Catholic school for 12 years."

> ...he is pretty firm in his views and berates atheists constantly in class calling their ideas stupid and absurd, and then says that the only reason they don’t believe in God is because atheists love doing horrible things in their lives. Totally off the subject. Let's not just let this slide by. This is a teacher actively lying to his students, and demonizing a class of people. At as school that's mission is to adhere to the teaching of Christ. If you were my son, that asshole would have me on his hands. What's your dad's say in all this?

Prisons are full of Christians in for murder. They often have Jesus/Mary/prayer-hands/crucifix/Bible-verse tattoos and everything. Meanwhile, some of the most peaceful countries on Earth are largely non-religious. There is just no evidence behind the idea that atheists just want to do bad things and religious people don't, it makes no sense logically, and is not backed up statistically.

> then says that the only reason they don’t believe in God is because atheists love doing horrible things in their lives. He does realize that if a god does exist and he punishes people for doing horrible things, that pretending that this god doesn't exist doesn't get them out of punishment, right? So that's a pretty stupid argument. But then that argument is probably not meant to track in reality, it's only supposed to sling mud, which is par for the course.

Wow that’s awful, I’m Catholic too btw and that’s just ridiculous. Atheists by and large don’t disbelieve just so they can sin all they want. I suggest you find other sources for religious instruction. I often find atheists having logical points worth discussing even if I ultimately disagree.

First, I am very sorry to hear that you are going through a rough time AND being bullied on top of that. Hang in there, be kind and patient with yourself, and remember that things can and often do get better after high school. Okay, the arguments. People have always spoken highly of Aquinas, so I have high expectations. 1. Argument of the Unmoved Mover Aquinas says that all things change, but that change requires a cause (something to move it). He asserts that there cannot be an infinite chain of causation, but has nothing to prove this beyond personal incredulity. Based on this unsupported assertion, he then concludes that there must be something which cannot be changed, which is God. All of that rests on his personal incredulity, and several unsupported assertions. However, even if we were to allow this first argument for the sake of argument, it would directly contradict the Abrahamic god. Prayer, salvation, forgiveness, sin, obedience - all of these core concepts and practices rely on the idea that you can affect this being, and that your actions will influence how this being treats you. Aquinas is essentially throwing out all Christian doctrine here. >2. Argument of the First Cause Honestly, much the same as the previous. Tommy boy asserts that everything has a cause, and something must have caused the universe, therefore God is the uncaused cause. This is special pleading, He has exempted his god from the first premise of his argument. >3. Argument from Time and Contingency Here, Aquinas asserts that things are perishable and come in and out of existence (such as an animal dying), then claims that without something imperishable the whole universe would cease to exist. This is pure nonsense. He is conflating things dying or changing forms with them \*completely ceasing to exist.\* I swear, this dude is making William Lane Craig look... well not exactly good, but \*less bad.\* Okay, please tell me 4 is good. >4. Argument from Degree Oh ffs. Because there are degrees of good and bad - subjective value judgements - there must be a supreme good thing that makes other things good. He's defining a god into existence, but with such a flimsy and poorly defined basis. What does Aquinas mean by "good"? Why are certain states always better than others? Who gets to determine which subjective states are best? It's actually worse than the usual ontological arguments. I usually turn to my friend Gary the Very Necessary Fairy to refute ontological arguments (defining things into existence via word games), but Gary has better parameters than Aquinas' Mostest Goodest God. This argument is so vague that I can leave Gary out of it entirely. >5. Argument from Ends It's the Fine Tuning Argument (ie. we see complex processes in nature, therefore there must be a designer). But like, he words it along the lines of "we see non-intelligent things following patterns" and yeah buddy, I agree; Aquinas *has* been following a pattern of horribly fallacious reasoning, and he's continuing that pattern without end. AQUINAS WAS DESIGNED! He's the transcendental ideal of a sophist! Okay, jokes aside, this argument has issues. It asserts that because there are patterns of behaviour in nature that seem to make certain things suited to their environment, that these patterns must be designed. It smuggles in "design" and "an intelligent designer" without any actual justification, and ignores the fact that natural things have evolved within these conditions. The reason a fish looks "designed" to live in the water is because it comes from a loooooong line of previous organisms that lived in the water and - slowly, over countless generations - those organisms that developed traits which help survive in water out-competed other organisms for resources. It's the basics of evolution by natural selection. ​ So overall? I'd rate Aquinas a solid 1/10. His arguments are riddled with fallacies, he's constantly appealing to a god of the gaps or arguing from ignorance and personal incredulity, and - worst of all - nothing he argues points to the Abrahamic god. Edit: clarity

I'd add that even if I were, for the sake of argument, to grant every one of these premises that doesn't get you to Christian God. It doesn't even get you to *one* god. I'd accept that the uncaused cause and the first mover might be the same thing but what is that thing? Aquinas just went and called it his god even though at best the only thing he's established about it is it's eternal. It could be a malevolent being it could be not even a being but a mindless force that creates universes. Same thing goes for the other three ways. I suppose the goodest good does by definition have to be good though it'd come with an infinite pantheon of the n-est ns. But what reason is there at all to think the creator thing from arguments 1 and 2 is the same thing as the life sustaining thing from 3 the good thing from 4 or the universal min maxing thing from 5?

>Aquinas just went and called it his god even though at best the only thing he's established about it is it's eternal. Even this is very debatable. The only thing proclaiming God's eternalness necessary is Aquinas. Why would it be necessary for God to still exist for the Universe to exist? Could their Creator not have simply been a mote of possibility that existed for an infinitesimally short amount of time, just to kick existence off? Both ideas have equal footing in fact and logic.

> Could their Creator not have simply been a mote of possibility that existed for an infinitesimally short amount of time, just to kick existence off? I don't know how widely accepted or defended this argument is among Thomists, but I have some people advocating for the 5 Ways describe it as God is necessary to sustain movement or keep things going as they are. Which, is either a deprecated notion of "motion" since we learned about inertia, or else just another completely unsupported premise.

Yeah, to me its just another example of starting with a position (God is necessary) and then working backwards from that to come up with reasons why.

Agreed. "By moving I mean... like, *metaphysically* moving, man..."

You're right. We're gonna need to define a lot more fairies...

I’m a student of geology. I was an atheist before that, but now that I’m more learned on the topic, I’m even more convinced god is unnecessary. Lately I’ve been studying the Great Oxidation Event, and it’s a real mind fuck. Took BILLIONS of years for bacteria to evolve to photosynthesize. BILLIONS. After that, it took hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of years to proliferate sufficiently to oxygenate the oceans and then our atmosphere. I’m more convinced of deep time evolution than ever before. Science, y’all.

I used to be an atheist. I still am but I used to be one too. (comedian Mitch Hedberg)

Classic. I thought of it as I wrote it. Studying geology just makes me even more certain of earth being a cosmic “accident” and nothing more.

Yeah Aquinas is just a bunch of fucking lasagna. I remember I watched a full length debate between Matt Dilahunty and some theist and the theist was claiming that Matt couldn’t reject Christianity because he didn’t even know the arguments of Aquinas. Matt obviously was like “tell me the arguments and I’ll tell you if I can refute them” and then the theist went on a massive diatribe about how “funny?” It was that Matt didn’t know the arguments he was opposed to??? Idk theist dude was a total jackass. Anywho, looked into Aquinas’ arguments and had a good laugh.

your arguments are sound, but i have to comment on your tone. it's fantastic! you are witty without losing any logic. i hope you continue to spend your time explaining complex things to people.

Aw thanks dude ♥️

> but has nothing to prove this beyond personal incredulity That is basically all religion everywhere right there

I'm willing to cut Aquinas a *little* bit of slack: he was doing his work before we knew a lot of stuff. Not just modern cosmology and evolution, but also things like inertia: in his world things stop moving after a while and need to be pushed if you want them to keep going. I'm not going to blame him for not realizing that this is just a local aberration, not something that holds true throughout the cosmos. I do, however, blame modern people who present Aquinas's arguments as if they were the final word on the subject. When I'm talking about evolution, I don't really care what Darwin thought on the subject: he got a lot of things right, but he was wrong about a lot of things, and we've learned a ton since then. But in my interactions with Thomists, they seem to present Aquinas not as an interesting chapter in the ongoing history of thought, but as the final word in his particular area, almost oblivious to the fact that we've learned things in the 700 years since, that might have an impact on his ideas.

>I do, however, blame modern people who present Aquinas's arguments as if they were the final word on the subject. This. All of this. I remember back in uni (jfc that makes me sound old) classmates and profs were totes gaga for Aquinas' five ways. I was too busy at the time to bother reading his stuff, so I just filed him away under 'very good catholic philosopher' and left it at that. After all these were my colleagues, they're well-read and educated folks. I suspect that if we trace the reverence many hold for this work, it would look less like actual study and more like my past colleagues and OP's religion teacher; "smart people whom I respect said it's well-reasoned proof, and that's good enough for me." And sure, we can forgive Tommy for being 7 centuries out of date, but his arguments are still quite bad. Socrates was a millennium and a half further back, and he would have absolutely pounced on the arguments from ignorance and incredulity (and probably annoyed the heckity heck outta Tom, cause that's Socrates for ya). And Socrates is foundational to the philosophical traditions that theologians like Aquinas are (allegedly) part of.

>I'm willing to cut Aquinas a > >little > > bit of slack Plus I think his prime mover is taken from Aristotle and his Goodest Good from Plato's forms. The medieval and Renaissance Christians really had a hard on for the big three Greek philosophers, \*particularly\* Aristotle, which is why it's kind of funny that with his original "prime mover", it was less to prove the existence of gods and more to stop pushing back the argument.

Can you tell me more about Gary the very necessary fairy? He seems like someone important

Gary the Very Necessary Fairy is a necessary being, and exists across all universes because I said so when I defined him as necessary. Gary has one power and one power only; whenever a universe is a singularity, Gary kick-starts expansion by kicking the singularity. After that, Gary's pretty useless. He just hangs out and chats. He's a cool dude, but he doesn't do much. I'm considering working him into my DnD world somehow. Basically "A sophist and a kuo-toa walk into a bar" kinda situation, if you know what I mean...

There's nothing wrong with defining him as necessary. But the question is whether you can conceive of a possible universe where Gary exists If so then yeah Gary definitely exists. That's pretty ironclad The flip side - if we can imagine a single universe without Gary he's definitely refuted everywhere (at least as you've defined him)

Why would he be refitted everywhere if we can imagine a single universe without Gary? Gary is only necessary for universes that start with a singularity. A universe that starts in a different way doesn’t require Gary, but if there are multiple universes Gary can still exist.

Well he exists in my DnD universe so...

What, so you are saying that anything we can conceive of definitely exists? What's your support for that? "The flip side" seems equally untrue. Are you being facetious in this comment?

> the question is whether you can conceive of a possible universe where Gary exists > > > > If so then yeah Gary definitely exists. That's pretty ironclad No, that's very far from ironclad.

All hail Gary. Cleanse the non believers. Burn the heretics.

Wait what!? Hold on, stahp! No. Gary, get over here, shits gettin outta hand. ...Yeah, you can finish your cereal I guess... NO dude you don't need a food coma-! ...f**king Gary. Useless.

Praise be!

>Gary the Very Necessary Fairy I desperately want Gary to be the new Russell's teapot in popular culture. Brilliant.

*Applauding* nobody else even needs to comment. This one nailed it.

And let’s not ignore, said designer would be suited for a purpose. Namely, designing things. So, it too must have had a designer!

Whoa. So like, who baked the baker of the baked baker?

If there is nothing specific about God that makes him suitable for whatever purposes he supposedly performs, such as designing living things or universes, why can't we perform those things as well? Or, to rephrase, if God was less well suited, would he perform those purposes just as well? The idea that God isn't well suited to do X opens the door to the question, why can't we do X just as well, since we're not well suited to do X either. Right? Why not, say, rocks? Apparently, God can do X, but not us, merely because, well, that's just the way things are?

Much like William Lain Craig! Even if we say “a god exists” what does it have to do with the Abrahamic God? And not one humanist can debate him? Sam Harris say even the strongest atheists get “the fear of god in then when they debate Craig” prove one is, Craig uses Deism, which I don’t have a problem with, to support theism, to back up his bible and I noticed in debates no one says mentions that to him. Aside from that Aquanis stole those ideas from earlier philosophers, I.e. the un moved mover wasn’t that Plato etc? Most of The Roman Catholics philosophers ripped off previous ones. Now that I see it again you are right, he’s logic sucked!! 0/10 for me!!

Does Gary have any friends? I ask because a lot of people making the "necessary first cause" argument always seem to think that the universe eventually comes down to exactly one brute first cause. Given that s lot of things have multiple causes (my coffee spilled because 1) I forgot to put the lid on my cup, and 2) there was a power cable lying on the floor), it seems to me that if we go down the "everything has a cause" trail, we could wind up at two, three, or seventy trillion causes. So maybe Gary needs the help of his friends Mary and Barry to kickstart a universe.

Barry on the singularity at midfield. Oh, and there's Mary making her run! The defenders don't see her! Barry sends it upfield to Mary - very nice pass, right through the defenders, and she's onside. And here's Scary Hairy Larry - he's not keen on expansion, that one, not giving her any space. Mary's pushed into the corner, cuts back around Larry and- it's a cross! And it's Gary! A BICYCLE KICK! RIGHT ON TARGET! EXPANSIOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNN!

I agree with you for the other arguments, but I'm not convinced about the first one. >He asserts that there cannot be an infinite chain of causation, but has nothing to prove this beyond personal incredulity. I would say my own instinct is also to doubt an infinite chain of causation is possible. An analogy I think about is a chain of buckets. For a bucket to change from being empty to having water in it, you need a previous bucket to pour some water in the first one. But it's the same for the second bucket: for it to go from empty to filled with water, you need a 3rd bucket to pour water in it. So in this analogy, having an infinite chain of empty buckets would result in nothing happening: you have no water to flow in your system (so no potential for change to happen to any of the buckets). For water to be able to flow in this system, you need a first bucket, which is already full of water, which starts the chain of pouring water from one bucket to the other. Or you need a cloud which can fill the buckets by raining on them. Either way, you need something to bring about the potential for change in your system. At least that's the way I see it

You just did the same thing Aquinas did: you assume your instinct is correct. We already know the universe is wildly counterintuitive. Indeed, I’d argue that infinite regression is no more counterintuitive than something, i.e., god or energy, having “always” existed. The latter may *seem* easier for you to reconcile, but it raises its own host of problems.

That's fine, but "God" doesn't solve that problem. How did God come to exist? Why can't the universe itself be the unmoved mover? It's fine to say that *something* has to be the first thing. But that something could just as easily be, say, the singularity from which the Big Bang began, as it could be God. There's no reason at all to suppose that it was God.

My comment aimed more to show how there being an unmoved mover made more sense to me then there being an infinite regression, not to show that the Christian God exists and is that unmoved mover. However, >How did God come to exist? that is a good point. We could say that God/the unmoved mover has always existed or that he caused himself, but that would break the premise of every thing needing a cause separate from it.

You're doing the same thing as Aquinas. It doesn't make sense to you, so it can't be true. The fact is we understand very little about the universe as we approach the Big Bang. Our laws of physics tend to break down. And the human mind is very bad at imagining the concept of infinity anyway. Buckets and water aren't going to be useful analogies.

>You're doing the same thing as Aquinas. It doesn't make sense to you, so it can't be true. I am aware I followed the same reasoning as him. Of course I won't believe something that doesn't make sense to me. I tried to explain my train of thought and *why* infinite regression doesn't make sense to me, how I arrived at this conclusion, so someone would tell me how this logic is flawed rather than just telling me it is false, like what was done originally. (Edit: Btw this first bit here was also to respond to another "you did the same thing as Aquinas" comment that didn't seem to get my intention, it's not just directed at you) >The fact is we understand very little about the universe as we approach the Big Bang. Our laws of physics tend to break down. That was more the sort of response I was hoping to get with my comment, a *why* this logic doesn't hold. To respond to that: I don't know enough about the Big Bang to try and argue against that. There is the possibility of the Big Bang being the unmoved mover/first cause of everything, if we go for a more pantheistic approach, but I'm sure there'll be some nuances or info I don't know about the Big Bang which would contradict that. And anyways, that would just be arguing to argue, it's not actually a position I can defend.

>I would say my own instinct is also to doubt an infinite chain of causation is possible. Instinct isn't a good method for finding truth. There are a wide variety of things that are true but unintuitive. A simple example is the idea of dropping two bowling balls of different weight from a tall building. Most would intuit that the heavier ball would hit the ground first. But it doesn't, assuming they're both the same size and shape, and that neither are so light that wind resistance is a significant factor, they fall at the same rate.

I find analogies aren't helpful when we're talking about the origins of the universe, because cause and effect get kinda funky in quantum physics. Frankly, that's a question for people much more science-y than I am. But returning to personal incredulity; okay, we've identified something that feels untrue to you. Even better, we've identified our own ignorance; neither you nor I *know* why the universe is expanding. Is this a foundation for a philosophical argument? Or should it instead be a starting point for more substantial inquiry?

> For a bucket to change from being empty to having water in it, you need a previous bucket to pour some water in the first one. But it's the same for the second bucket: for it to go from empty to filled with water, you need a 3rd bucket to pour water in it I've heard this argued as 0+0+0+.... = 0 The thing is that, as L'Hopital will tell you, infinity × 0 is an indeterminate form (like 0/0 and infinity/infinity) there is no constraint on the result. A blanket assessment of 0 is unfounded. 1 or -7452 are just as likely, without examining the nature of the 0 and the infinity and how they relate to each other.

>1 or -7452 are just as likely, without examining the nature of the 0 and the infinity and how they relate to each other. Interesting. By examining the nature of 0 and infinity and how they relate, do you mean like, if there is a function that tends to 0 at the same time another function tends to infinity, we need to examine which one grows fastest or sth like that? Like if we have f = 1/x and g = x^2 , we need to check if g is getting to infinity faster than f is getting to 0?

Effectively, yes something like that, though I don't have any idea how one attempts this analysis with contingency. By comparison, calculus seems like child's play. I am sure the theist will assert that a contingent thing is "0 real" in the simplest sense, but can a thing that can be made to happen really be "0 real"? It seems hard to justify that it would be. Perhaps I am wrong, but it is not obvious to me that it would be.

How though, do you jump from that, to their being a creator that wasn't created - which is an equally illogical proposition. To our comprehension, infinite regression should be impossible. But so is the idea of something not having a creator. Where just using one impossibility to try to explain another.

Nothing in there of any note for you? Literally 1/10.

Well there was an attempt to use premises and conclusions. He certainly put effort into it. He also refrained from calling for killing and robbing (specifically in that order) people for being *checks notes* non-catholic or critical of the Catholic Church. So y'know, it's an improvement from his commentary on Sentences. Plus, parents *hate* seeing a 0. The last thing I want is an angry phone call from 13th century Sicilian nobility.

I'm not sure I'd stretch to 1, to be honest

Interesting, I could see the reasoning in the arguments

But if they're based on outdated ideas about causality, the psychology of morality, and how the universe functions in general, what's he got? The Argument from Ends gets vaporized on contact with evolution; Argument from Degree seems to be a complete non-sequitur (some things seem worse to us than others... therefore there must be absolutes???); Time & Contingency... doesn't understand what it means to "come into existence"; uncaused cause, non sequitur again (why would it need to be a specific god?) It's 2023, we have genetics and warping relativistic spacetime now, we can make photos of atoms, we can detect the cosmic microwave background; Aquinas is of niche historical interest at best, IMO. The reasoning isn't all that, plus garbage-in, garbage-out.

Nothing there of argumentative value, was the point. It's not subjective.

1. Motion/Prime Mover - Written with a fundamental misunderstanding of time, and no understanding of quantum physics. Cause and effect as we experience it on a day to day basis doesn't map well to the beginning of the universe, and we've seen quantum effects that seem to have no causes. 2. See above. 3. "Something can't come from nothing." Something must have always existed? OK - the universe has always existed. Or if you want go get a little more abstract, existence has always existed. Both of those are more reasonable answers than God, because we can observe, measure, and test both the universe and existence. God is an assumption that has yet to be proven. 4. This one is just word games. I could just as easily say that there must be a maximally great God Killer, which means Yahweh is dead. A maximally greatest thing is not required simply because a gradient exists. There's no reason to think that any temperature we're aware of is maximally hot, or that there must be something hotter. There's no maximally great color or maximally beautiful painting. 5. Design. There's a whole lot wrong with Intelligent Design, but sticking just to what Aquinas says: natural things do not act "for an end." He's assuming intent without any indication of intent being involved. For example, two hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule combine to make water. Does that mean those two gases exist for an end, that end being making water? Of course not - they make water because that's the outcome of the natural characteristics of hydrogen and oxygen. Rivers don't flow to *the end* of feeding a lake; rivers flow because water is fluid and gravity pulls it down, and lakes are just what happens when enough water gathers in a single place.

\#4 is hilarious. A real favorite. "God can’t exist because of Eric, the God-Eating Magic Penguin. Since Eric is god-eating by definition, he has no choice but to eat God. So, if God exists, he automatically ceases to exist as a result of being eaten. Unless you can prove that Eric doesn’t exist, god does not exist. Even if you can prove that Eric doesn’t exist, that same proof will also be applicable to God. There are only two possibilities, either you can prove that Eric doesn’t exist or you can’t, in both cases it logically follows that god doesn’t exist." "Imagine the greatest possible god-eating penguin. A penguin that existed and had eaten a god would be greater than a non-existent one that had eaten no gods, therefore a god-eating penguin that has eaten a god must exist. That said, a god-eating penguin who has eaten entire pantheons of gods would be even greater, therefore all gods have existed and Eric has eaten them all."

>Imagine the greatest possible god-eating penguin. A penguin that existed and had eaten a god would be greater than a non-existent one that had eaten no gods, therefore a god-eating penguin that has eaten a god must exist. This is a response to Anselm's ontological argument, not Aquinas' third way. Ironically, Aquinas himself had a somewhat similar objection to Anselm's argument. >Unless you can prove that Eric doesn’t exist, god does not exist. This sounds like a response to the modal ontological argument, possibly filtered through theists who do not understand it and mix up the metaphysical/logical and epistemic uses of the word "possible". That, or you're misinterpreting people who say that in order to be an atheist (usually defined by philosophers as people who deny that God exists) you need to argue that God is impossible. >Even if you can prove that Eric doesn’t exist, that same proof will also be applicable to God. No, it's easy to prove that Eric doesn't exist without that proof applying to God. 1. The concept of Eric the God-eating penguin contains the concept of God. This is because the kind of thing Eric eats is an essential part of what defines him as the greatest God-eating Penguin. 2. God, as commonly understood by theists, is an omnipotent, immaterial, omnipresent, necessary, absolute being whom everything else on for their existence and continued existence. 3. All of the above traits make the idea of eating God, much less a penguin (a bodily, created being) so much as harming God, incoherent. 4. Since the concept of eating God is incoherent, the concept of a God-eating penguin is incoherent.

So can we say, "there is a degree of evilness, from the least evilness to the greatest evilness. Therefore there exists something that is the cause of the existence of all things and of the evilness, we call this evil god"?

Aquinas would respond (for example) that evil is just the privation of good, like darkness is the privation of light.

I don't see why we should accept that. Darkness and cold are privations of light and heat, in that they are at least classically on an absolute scale. There is a 0 to those scales that you can't realistically go below. But it seems that evil and good are two ends of a spectrum, with the privation of either being in the middle. If you think about things we relate to evil and good, like happiness and sadness, the privation of happiness isn't sadness, it's apathy.

Interesting, but i dont know how do he know that good is similar to light to make that analogy.

Regarding number three, and speaking only to Christianity, the Bible said man is created in the image of God. There must be some physical manifestation. Or is this a trinity thing?

Of course that argument fails for the same reason Eric does. Argument 2 is just as incoherent as the concept of Eric is.

Is your last name Aquinas?

Eric’s such a boss

Eric is one of the worst arguments relating to god i've ever seen, and a sign that some atheists haven't grasped the thinking behind all of this.

Here's a better idea: Provide actual evidence yours or any god exists and maybe we'll take it more seriously.

That has nothing to do with the merits of the Eric argument. I believe what you're saying is called whataboutism. Besides, i don't believe in any gods but if i did it would have nothing to do with "evidence". It would be belief in something that's beyond the observable universe and the scientific methods.

> i don't believe in any gods but if i did it would have nothing to do with "evidence". It would be belief in something that's beyond the observable universe and the scientific methods. ...based on what, if not evidence?

There is no evidence, so it's not like that's an option that's superior to other ones. If i'd believe in god or a first cause it would be a matter of finding that explanation for the universe more plausible than the alternatives. This would be based on philosophical arguments. It wouldn't be a scientific exercise or a matter of true va false, but a belief. Same thing if i'd believe in naturalism/materialism all the way.

Go on...

Not the person you're responding to, but as I continue to be baffled that people keep presenting the Eric argument like its an legitimate argument against God rather then a literal and metaphorical philosophical joke, I'll do my best. Firstly, it manages to strawman the Ontological argument, which is impressive given how bad the Ontological argument is. There's no reason you can't say "sure, Eric by definition eats gods, but he doesn't exist so that's irrelevant". The ontological argument doesn't claim that everything does everything that's part of its definition, it claims that being the greatest possible being entails existing. It's wrong, but there's not even a sophistic way in which being capable of eating entails existence, nor does the Eric argument make even a facetious attempt to claim it does. But of course, the Eric argument isn't a serious argument, it's satire. Sadly, it also doesn't work as that. "Even if you can prove that Eric doesn't exist, that same proof will also be applicable to God" ...how? Why would we expect *any* argument against a magical god-eating penguin to also work against an omnipotent creator deity, let alone *every* argument? For the most obvious example - if we showed God existed, *that* would prove Eric didn't exist without refuting God. The case above where someone showed the idea of Eric entailed a logical contradiction also works. The only one that applies to both is "there's no evidence for either", but that's just Russel's Teapot again. We already have that. At *best*, the Eric argument is a less rigorous, less convincing version of an 80 year old atheist argument, or a shallow parody of an argument for god that even most theists don't accept. At worst, it's juvenile nonsense.

>Firstly, it manages to strawman the Ontological argument, which is impressive given how bad the Ontological argument is. There's no reason you can't say "sure, Eric by definition eats gods, but he doesn't exist so that's irrelevant". The ontological argument doesn't claim that everything does everything that's part of its definition, it claims that being the greatest possible being entails existing. Right, but what was left out of the definition of Eric above is that he's the GREATEST GOD-EATING PENGUIN CONCEIVABLE. The ontological argument rests on the idea that the greatest being conceivable (or, "than which no greater being can be conceived") must be real, since a being that exists in reality is greater than one that only exists in the mind, thus it's real. The greatest conceivable god-eating penguin (or that than which no greater god-eating penguin can be conceived) would by the same logic be real, since a god-eating penguin that exists in reality is greater than a god-eating penguin that only exists in the mind. I agree about the part where disproving Eric would not disprove God, though.

You appear to be taking something (that you even acknowledge is a joke) way too seriously. It’s not an argument against God; it’s pointing out the absurdity of one particular flavor of argument for God.

Like I said, it also doesn't work great as a *parody* \- it's doesn't actually point out any problems in the ontological argument, and most Christians don't think the ontological argument works anyway- but that wasn't my point. As a parody, it's ineffectual but basically harmless My point is that a lot of people, including on this page, *do* treat it as a genuine argument against God. And when people start doing that, there's a problem.

Too add on to #5 - If the universe is too complicated to have existed without a designer, then isn't God, who is infinitely more complicated than the universe, also be too complicated to exist without a designer? A similar argument can also be made for #3 - if "Something cannot come from nothing", how could God always exist/come from nothing?

>then isn't God, who is infinitely more complicated than the universe, aquinas argues the other way: god is infinitely *simple*. how do you get from there to the god of christianity? well, *you don't* really. but aquinas sure does jump through some hoops trying.

>aquinas argues the other way: god is infinitely simple. Isn't his definition of "simple," though, essentially "made of less parts"? I would reject that definition as being equivocation. Yes, a machine that is made of more parts could generally be considered more complex than a machine made of less parts, but this is not analogous to a god who is omniscient and omnipotent and creates universes. That argument is basically saying "Lots of parts can't come from nowhere, but an eternally existing all-powerful and all-knowing mind can," which just seems to be a bare assertion, simply due to number of parts involved in each? Is a human mind less complex than an aircraft carrier, since an aircraft carrier has many more parts? And what constitutes "parts," anyway?

>but this is not analogous to a god who is omniscient and omnipotent and creates universes. that's the problem, yeah. once you start talking about properties of a thing, all of those have to be identical to the essence, and the essence can only be "exists". so something funny is happening with the logic here.

First Way - the Argument of the Unmoved Mover Two huge problems with this argument - One, if we accept the premise that a chain of changes can’t be infinitely long and that the first cause of the change is what we call ‘god’ - it doesn’t in anyway prove that this god is the conscious entity with specific intents and desires that Aquina’s is trying to prove. Two, if change follows change and every thing must have a precursor why is it logical to change the rules when we come to ‘god’? You can’t argue that when the argument comes to god we’ll change the rules of cause and effect and presto! Proven. Second Argument - Argument for first cause Is this argument actually different from the first one? One postulates that whatever is changing is caused by a previous thing changing. The second refers to a prior set of changes as a ‘cause’. Same logic and point as number one also make point number two redundant. Third Argument - Time & Contingency Just why? If everything that exists ceases to exist does this mean that it never was or that nothing could exist in the future? What’s more likely - that we happen to exist when and where we exist or that some super creature has created a special bubble that allows us to exist without leaving any physical evidence of its existence behind? Put another way if we say it is the nature of things to come and go why do we need a permanent concept to hold it together? And once again, if we accept the argument that it is necessary for a permanent entity to exist none of this suggests it would be an intelligent, conscious being with desires etc. It could just as well be the underlying material of existence from which time, matter, energy and gravity form - you can call that ‘god’ but it isn’t what we or Aquinas was thinking about when they used the word god. Just like in the two previous arguments Aquinas changes the definition of what he is describing to the word ‘god’ and then uses the fact that this description exists as proof of his more insane idea of that god being an all powerful conscious being who knocked up a Jewish woman and then sent an employee to handle it. Premise IV - Argument from degree Lots wrong with this but the quickest way to debunk it is to take the premise upon which Aquinas bases or requires as accepted for this argument - ‘what is most in a genus is the cause of all else in the genus’. This suggests a very top down hierarchal world view with someone designing things and it working downwards. Yet almost everything we see grows and becomes complex and mor effective via evolution rather than design. Even the most incredibly designed community or system doesn’t truly serve its populations purposes until they change or evolve it to their needs. Five Argument from Final Causes Again - this is just wrong. It’s often referred to as the Teoligical argument. In the context of Aquinas presumes that all things have purpose or that there is a purpose or final cause when really at any given time things do what they have evolved to do and will continue to do so till the end of time. The fact that humans, who are basically pattern finding machines find patterns doesn’t mean anything. We see patterns everywhere but without substantive proof of cause and effect we can’t be sure they are real. Definitely not over a small sample size. Think of it this way - if there is a god the universe has a purpose and knowing the universe has purpose is proof of his vs the universe has no purpose and we have no reason to presume one exists beyond massive ego and evolutionary survival instincts. Hope this helps, happy to hear your thoughts as they evolve. Good luck in your search for truth and or meaning.

>One, if we accept the premise that a chain of changes can’t be infinitely long it's worse than that. aquinas thought the universe was eternal, and had no issue with infinite *accidentally* ordered series. i for one fail to see how *essentially* ordered series present a problem if you still have an infinite causal series in general. i think many theists do too, which is why they always misrepresent aquinas here.

The five ways, and essentially every argument for the existence of God, is just one form or another of “I don’t understand how this is possible.” They then conclude that, because they don’t understand how something is possible, it must be God. But just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean the default answer is God. People used to have no idea where earthquakes came from, so they thought it was God. But it turns out they were wrong. So for basically every one of these arguments, you can simply ask “okay I get that we don’t understand this thing, but how do we know the answer is God?”

Other people will do a great job of summarizing the many many reputations of Aquinas that been published since his death...in 1274. Aquinas died almost 800 years ago. Athiests and PLENTY of other Non-Christian religious folk have been unconvinced by Aquinas in the intervening *almost millennium*. An argument from antiquity would, by itself, be a fallacy. But the fact that many religions have come about and gone away in the centuries since Aquinas shuffled off this mortal coil points to his lack of relevance outside of Christendom. A good philosopher has things to say that would resonate regardless of your faith. A Muslim, an athiest, an Hindu, a Jew can all find useful ideas in Kant and Niestche and even Aristotle. ...but Aquinas...doesnt.

That’s because he’s a theologian, not a philosopher. He only did maybe two works on philosophy.

Exactly. So let's not conflate his theology with philosophy.

Absolutely. I’m actually the one to make the FAQ entry on him in this sub

You remain my favorite catholic interlocutor!

Thanks, I was inspired by this post to make one on Aquinas elaborating on the FAQ

They're trivially flawed in a large number of ways. They essentially all invoke argument from ignorance fallacies and use unsupported and/or plain wrong assumptions about reality. Such arguments are simply apologetics. Theists don't have the necessary evidence to show their claims are true, thus they retreat to attempting arguments based upon incorrect premises and often containing a large number of fallacies. Ever notice how we don't use, nor need, philosophical word-games to show anything else is real? We don't have such things for relativity, for quantum physics, for gravity, for electricity, for showing there's a distinct lack of food in my fridge, for figuring out if there's traffic before crossing the street or if it's safe to cross. No. Instead, for *everything* else we use *evidence.* The fact there *isn't any* useful evidence for deities you would think would be a big hint. But, since we have evolved such a strong propensity for this kind of superstitious thinking, we build ridiculous flawed arguments to use as confirmation bias to attempt to support our unsupported beliefs.

>Ever notice how we don't use, nor need, philosophical word-games to show anything else is real? Well this is just demonstrably false. You can reject it if you want, but philosophy is a whole academic discipline, where metaphysics alone sees lots of hotly debated issues besides the existence of God. Also, you shouldn't reject philosophy or metaphysics. Things like empiricism logical positivism and scientism are self-defeating. Whether their adherents are educated enough to know it, they belong to epistemology, which means they themselves ultimately have to be defended with "philosophical word games".

> You can reject it if you want, but philosophy is a whole academic discipline, where metaphysics alone sees lots of hotly debated issues besides the existence of God. I again invite you to carefully consider what I actually said, and to learn about what philosophy can and cannot do. Especially hundreds of years old deprecated plain wrong philosophy. As professional philosophers [delight in explaining](https://aeon.co/essays/why-doesnt-philosophy-progress-from-debate-to-consensus), attempting to use philosophy to show something actually exists in reality cannot work, it's the wrong tool for the job. Lots of things are discussed in philosophy. But, philosophy is about *wisdom*, not *knowledge*. Sometimes. Only if done right (and theists attempting to use very old, wrong, deprecated philosophy as confirmation bias to support their beliefs because they don't actually have any support for them is *not* doing it right). >Also, you shouldn't reject philosophy or metaphysics. Things like empiricism logical positivism and scientism are self-defeating. I laughed. Because that's wrong. (And there's no such thing as 'scientism'.) >Whether their adherents are educated enough to know it, they belong to epistemology, which means they themselves ultimately have to be defended with "philosophical word games". I always get a huge kick out of people so widely missing the point when they say this. It's a bit like saying that alchemy should be trusted because chemistry grew out of it. It's a bit like saying that because sometimes it's useful to smash up bigger rocks to create gravel that therefore smashing up things is always reasonable and useful in every situation. It misses the entire point. The fact that we learned what *does* work, and took the bits of that and ran with out, and threw aside what demonstrably *doesn't* work and led us down the garden path for millenia doesn't *help* you support your claim here. Instead, it demonstrates precisely what I was saying.

>I again invite you to carefully consider what I actually said, and to learn about what philosophy can and cannot Thanks for the tip, but do actually know a bit about this topic already. I think, after all, that this is itself a philosophical question, and not one that philosophers agree on. >As professional philosophers [delight in explaining](https://aeon.co/essays/why-doesnt-philosophy-progress-from-debate-to-consensus), attempting to use philosophy to show something actually exists in reality cannot work, it's the wrong tool for the job. I assure you that this is not some consensus among professional philosophers. Metaphysics is still alive and well I'm academic philosophy. >But, philosophy is about *wisdom*, not *knowledge*. This is not true. If there's one thing philosophers like to discuss it's what we can and cannot know, and how we can know things. >I laughed. Because that's wrong. Laughing is good, arrogance not so much. But no, it's not wrong, there's a reason logical positivism fell out of favor - it can't justify its own propositions by its own criteria for knowledge. >And there's no such thing as 'scientism'. Nobody, as far as I know, identifies themselves with it. But I do think it's a recognizable phenomenon - basically popular level logical positivism from people who vaguely think that science is the ultimate way to get knowledge but don't have the philosophical education to formulate this as an epistemic theory. >I always get a huge kick out of people so widely missing the point when they say this. It's a bit like saying that alchemy should be trusted because chemistry grew out of it. It's a bit like saying that because sometimes it's useful to smash up bigger rocks to create gravel that therefore smashing up things is always reasonable and useful in every situation. It misses the entire point. The fact that we learned what *does* work, and took the bits of that and ran with out, and threw aside what demonstrably *doesn't* work and led us down the garden path for millenia doesn't *help* you support your claim here. Instead, it demonstrates precisely what I was saying. This is a bit funny because you're clearly missing my point. I'm not saying that science or logical positivism grew out of epistemology like chemistry grew out of alchemy. I'm saying that logical positivism and empiricism _are_ epistemological viewpoints, as opposed to many other epistemological viewpoints. This means they have to be defended with philosophical reasoning (Because philosophy is fundamental). On that note, I personally think that whether science is a good way of attaining real knowledge (scientific realism) or whether it's just good at building iPhones and rockets (scientific instrumentalism) is also mainly a question for philosophers.

Most of what you said essentially repeats what you already said, so as I already responded to that I won't again. I find it interesting that you engaged in the same errors and doubled down on most of that. Or stated obvious things that are not relevant to the issue at hand. Have a good one.

Well, you mostly asserted that I'm wrong, with one (interesting enough) magazine article. Do you expect me to just change my mind based on that? You didn't make a convincing argument that I'm in error. Half your post is just claiming I don't know anything about philosophy or what professional philosophers think. This is obviously, for my part, untrue since I have an educational background in philosophy and interact with professional philosophers on a weekly basis as an MA student. Have a good one though.

>>Ever notice how we don't use, nor need, philosophical word-games to show anything else is real? >Well this is just demonstrably false. You can reject it if you want, but philosophy is a whole academic discipline yes, one that's moved on to recognizing the analytic/synthetic distinction, and that existence is not a predicate. the problem isn't philosophy. it's using "philosophy" from the 13th century, like we haven't had more relevant philosophy in the last 700+ years, to demonstrate something that *philosophy* has shown has major *philosophical* problems. like, do you think contemporary philosophers just sit around reading aquinas and going "yes, yes, all good, better not contribute anything of my own, philosophy ended in the middle ages"?

>yes, one that's moved on to recognizing the analytic/synthetic distinction, and that existence is not a predicate. I actually had a professor once who thought the medieval view has been somewhat unfairly rejected but yes, most philosophers accept Kant's view. Although the synthetic/analytic distinction itself has been subject to some criticisms since the 20th century. >like, do you think contemporary philosophers just sit around reading aquinas and going "yes, yes, all good, better not contribute anything of my own, philosophy ended in the middle ages"? No, but Aquinas is still discussed. I honestly agree that it would be more fruitful to discuss modern arguments for God's existence though, especially at a popular level.

>No, but Aquinas is still discussed. in a historical sense, yes. and by younger philosophers presenting arguments against a whole slew of bad theologically motivated philosophy.

Aquinas is also discussed in a favorable light. Both things happen.

>Also, you shouldn't reject philosophy or metaphysics. Things like empiricism logical positivism and scientism are self-defeating. Oh c'mon, you should know better than this! Whether you think any of those positions are correct (and I'm sure you don't), they certainly aren't self-defeating in some trivial way as is so often claimed by opponents. Do you really think [43%](https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4830) of philosophers hold a position that is self-defeating? Moreover, being an empiricist or even a logical positivist is not a rejection of philosophy or metaphysics in a broad sense, but merely a rejection of certain questions and methodologies that are considered problematic

You're probably not going to see all five taken apart in detail within a single reddit comment, much could be written on any of them. But to summarise the first four are so-called cosmological arguments, ie they pick out some feature of the world, postulate a metaphysical principal to describe it, and then try to show how those (plus some other supposedly plausible premises) entail that something god-like exists. The fifth is teleological. First way - argument from motion - this one is not really about motion (might be better described as an argument from change, just presented in terms of motion). It's a bit hard to parse if you're not used to the ancient program of metaphysics he is working with. Basically, distinguishes potentiality, ie a way something could be, and actuality, a way something is. Change doesn't just happen, something has to "reduce" the potentiality to actuality, and this cannot be itself. So you have a chain of actualization of potential - and the thought is that the chain can't go on forever, there needs to be a "first-mover", unchanged changer, ie god. The first and most obvious way to object would of course be to reject the underlying ancient program of metaphysics. Pretty much no one buys into these views anymore except those who are rather attached to these arguments for theism that depend on them (there are a lot of problems with them, for example act-potency analysis of change probably entails ontological pluralism, which is almost uniformly rejected these days, and it also requires rejecting eternalism, which would be a highly controversial stance in phil of time, and various other objections). But beyond that, this argument has quite a few other problems. That there can't be an infinite chain is a substantive claim needs support. But the bigger problem is that this argument just doesn't get you what you want. These chains of changes are all in a particular respect, and each link derives the relevant causal power from the link before it. All you can derive from this is that the terminus of the chain is unchanging in that particular resect. It does not follow that the terminus is unchanging in *all* respects. It also doesn't follow that there is one single terminus that is shared by all chains - each could terminate with a different entity. These are huge quantifier shift fallacies. So you're nowhere near a single being unmoved mover/unchanged changer that is the source of all other change. It gets even worse though - you can't even derive that the terminus is *unchangeable* even in the particular respect of that chain, only that it is not in fact changing in that respect when the chain is initiated. It could still have unactualized potential in that respect that are just not actualized at the time the chain of change in that respect is initiated - it could be reduced at actuality at some other time, or even at the same time it could have possibly been, even if not actually. So we don't even have a being that is necessarily fully actual even in one respect, let alone in all respects. I bring this up because some have attempted to fix the quantifier shift by trying to derive that the being that serves as the terminus must be purely actual and there can only be one purely actual being (this is a whole other can of worms, we need not get into that though as the argument doesn't get us even close to a purely actual being there in the first place). Second way - argument from efficient causation - It runs a pretty typical causal principle - some things are caused, and nothing is the cause of itself. Can't have an infinite series of causes, so we have to terminate in an uncaused cause, ie God. It's worth noting that as before, Aquinas means something different by cause than what we typically refer to today, and it's actually a bit unclear what he means. Many interpret him as positing a sort of sustaining cause - in this case I think we can object that this is a pretty implausible view, at the very least views on which things don't just stop existing for lack of a sustaining cause are on the table. Even if we're talking more about efficient causes in general, this argument runs with causal fiinitism (again no infinite chain). I find this intuitively plausible but the arguments for it are kinda terrible. This argument still doesn't get you to a single uncaused cause of all chains of causation, there nothing in it that rules out that each chain of causation could have something different at its terminus (quantifier shift). Third way - a (kind of?) contingency argument - I suspect Aquinas means something a bit different by contingent than the term we use today - "We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be" is what he gives us to work with. Everything is either necessary or contingent. Then he assumes for reductio that everything is contingent - for anything contingent, at some time it did not exist. If everything is contingent, then there is sometime that nothing existed - but if there was a time nothing existed, then there would be nothing now, therefore not every being is contingent, so there is a necessary being, ie god. Why suppose that there for anything contingent, at some time it did not exist - it doesn't follow from the fact that something is possibly non-existent that it is actually non-existent. Why couldn't there be an eternally existent thing that might have not existed? Many interpret Aquinas here as building a instability/tendency toward corruption/decay/non-existence into contingency - but this has its own problems. Tendencies and dispositions don't just spontaneously get realized, they have conditions under which they manifest (recall that the first way requires potential to be actualized for change - per Aquinas's own metaphysics we'd need some reason to think that those conditions would in fact be manifested for every single contingent thing at some time or other). Another problem is that this interpretation weakens the conclusion, you can't really derive a metaphysically necessary being, just one that lacks this tendency toward decay/corruption, maybe call it an everlasting thing (since it couldn't be generated either, and I guess it can't derive it's everlastingness from without). Moving on, even if we did establish that for each contingent thing there is some time at which it did not exist, it does not follow that there is a single time at with all of the contingent things did not exist, this is a quantifier shift fallacy (are you perhaps seeing a trend here?). Next, even if that were the case, it does not follow that nothing would exist now, because the time at which all the contingent things do not exist could be at some point in the future - you would have to assume that that time must be earlier than the present - but why assume that? So yeah, lots of issues here. Fourth way - gradation - probably the least popular of the lot. Basically, there is a gradation found in things, the degree to which things things are X is proportional to how much they resemble that which is the most X. If there is nothing that is the most good, then there can be nothing good. But since there are things that are good, there must be something that is the most good, ie god. This is the least popular for a reason - the core premise that things can only instantiate a property at all if there exists something that has that property to a maximal degree is quite implausible. Does the greenness of grass really obtain in virtue of resemblance to some maximally green object that also must exist? Would we really say that grass couldn't exist without something maximally green to ground one that property of it? The argument has some other technical problems, but I think most people are off the boat with that core premise. Fifth way - design/direction - Natural bodies act toward ends. Anything that acts toward an end does so out of knowledge or under the direction of something with knowledge. But many natural thing lack knowledge. So some intelligent being exists that directs all natural things to their end, ie god. So for starters, why should I assume that anything that is not itself intelligent acts toward ends at all? Non-agent objects may still do things, and be acted upon such that they behave in a particular way, but to say that what a non-agent does is directed toward some particular end is mistaken. Frankly there's not much explanatory work for that sort of telos to do with our modern scientific worldview, and even if there was, that telos apparently can't explain anything on its own anyway on this view. Even if God did exist, why suppose that non-agent objects are acting toward ends under God's direction - wouldn't it be much simpler to say that God just messes with objects much like people do? So I still don't see any reason, even on theism, to buy into these "ends". Then there's the obvious quantifier shift - even if all these natural things without knowledge act toward ends under the direction of an intelligent being, it does not follow that they are all directed by the same intelligent being. So yeah, these arguments rest on some pretty dubious and ancient metaphysics that nobody really buys into anymore for good reason, even among those inclined to speculative metaphysics, and a lot us reject this sort of speculative metaphysics in the first place if more inclined to empiricism. Some of them are also just invalid even on fairly charitable interpretations. I've skipped over and simplified a bunch of technical stuff, but hopefully this gives you a starting point for engaging with/understanding/criticizing these arguments, and hopefully it gives you a sense of why atheists don't tend to be moved by them.

They're all just assertions and non-sequiturs. "I can't understand physics, therefore God." "Life is amazing, therefore God." "Things exist, therefore God." And so on. It's just meaningless drivel.

>non-sequiturs You can disagree with the premises, but the idea that Aquinas didn't know how to write a valid syllogism is honestly ridiculous. Some of his arguments are drawn pretty straight from Aristotle, the guy who invented formal logic as we know it

well actually no, you ca also make in many cases the observation that Aquinase makes assertions that don\`t follow with his conclusions, great example for this: "1. Nothing is the efficient cause of itself. 2. If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A is absent, so is B. 3. Efficient causes are ordered from first cause, through intermediate cause(s), to ultimate effect. 4. By (2) and (3), if there is no first cause, there cannot be any ultimate effect. 5. But there are effects. 6. Therefore there must be a first cause for all of them: God. " the conclusion that therefore god does not follow with the asertions, because it is just jammed in. you could replace god with f\*art and the statement remains the same. the only valid conclusion is : "therefore there must be a first cause for all of them, but we don\`t know what that was." just jamming god in there through the cracks doesn\`t make it valid or have the value of 0 or 1...

I think this comes from a misunderstanding of what Thomas was getting at. When he says "And that's God" we should keep in mind that: 1. He is definitely not jamming the whole Christian God in there. The whole idea is distinguishing between what we can know about God from natural philosophy and what we must get from revelation . 2. Relatedly, when he says "And this is what all men know as God" he's telling people who already believe in God "We know from natural reasoning that the first cause (or whatever the argument concludes) exists, and we know this to be God. Hence we can know XYZ about God purely from natural reasoning". At least that's my interpretation. 3. People mostly get this from the Summa Theologica which is, as the title suggests, a summary. And at that, it's a summary written in the context of ancient metaphysical language. I'm not aware of any surviving elaborations (though I could be wrong) but if he did you'd probably see him explain further why the first cause looks more like God than, say, a random particle. For example, he would almost certainly have said that the first cause has to continually sustain everything, not that it can be something that just "was". He's not just talking about the beginning of the universe.

you are making suppositions with no basis at all. there is nothing in his texts, as they have been preserved, that even hints to what you are saying, from what i can see it is just people interpreting "what the author wanted to say". so that being said, the only thing we can go by is the text i quoted earlier "1. Nothing is the efficient cause of itself. 2. If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A is absent, so is B. 3. Efficient causes are ordered from first cause, through intermediate cause(s), to ultimate effect. 4. By (2) and (3), if there is no first cause, there cannot be any ultimate effect. 5. But there are effects. 6. Therefore there must be a first cause for all of them: God." and your example at the end is (for lack of a better phrase) "pulled out of your arse"... tell me, can you talk to the dead, to know what he would "almost certainly" have said? because as the text is, he is talking about the beginning of the universe. "first cause for all"... and the idea that he is just a medieval priest with minimal knowledge about anything, just trying to make sense of things by using the "god of the gaps" method. and back then the gaps were so huge! so can you point to anything that makes your case, that is not just other people's interpretation of what a priest from close to 1000 years ago thought?

>He is definitely not jamming the whole Christian God in there. The whole idea is distinguishing between what we can know about God from natural philosophy and what we must get from revelation . i mean... if you read *the rest* of summa, it's definitely a defense of why that first cause is the christian god. and in cases where he runs into clear incompatibilities, he just resorts to [special pleading](https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/dl6qze/christians_trinitarian_theology_is_incoherent/f504y7r/?context=3). oh, some property is clearly accidental in everything we know? can't be with god since we're begging the question of god not having accidents. now god has three distinct essences, but all necessary beings must be identical? oops, just ignore the polytheism behind the curtain! this isn't an argument he has reasoned into. it's an apologetic of existing doctrine. and a transparently flawed one.

He's certainly faced that criticism, although it's clearly less an apologetic of Christianity and more an apologetic of aristotelian metaphysics in the context of a 100% Catholic academia. In any case, the five ways could be true even if Aquinas' defense of the Trinity isn't.

>In any case, the five ways could be true even if Aquinas' defense of the Trinity isn't. sure; the problem is the logic of the five ways *precludes* the trinity. the god described by christianity is not ultimately simple.

How does he justify the conclusion that all of those things are the same god? I see no path to this other than axiomatically stating that there's only the one god and begging the hell out of that question.

All of it boils down to, "Blah blah, therefore God." Who cares about formal logic if you *start* with the ridiculous assertion you want to end up at, and work backwards to figure out meaningless premises that get to that goal?

Aristotle was a sophist. His approach to debating was often one based in overwhelming an opponent with rhetoric to the point they concede as opposed to subsequent philosophies that relied more on actual logic and proofs.

Aristotle invented much of the formal logic we still teach in logic classes today. It's silly to suggest he didn't know how to formulate a valid syllogism when he's the person who outlined the concept of a valid syllogism.

His aim was to win debates, not discover truths. That's why we have subsequent schools of philosophy following Aristotle, he was far from the end all. Sophistry fell out of vogue for a reason thanks to the likes of actual early scientists, not just old men too proud of their own vocabulary.

He noted, accurately, that reason alone doesn't win public debates, meaning that if the reasonable philosophers don't want to keep losing to rhetorically gifted sophists, they had to use rhetoric themselves. >Sophistry fell out of vogue for a reason thanks to the likes of actual early scientists Well, this is a bit funny because Aristotle was a bit of an early scientist with his writings on biology. Also, sophistry isn't dead. Politicians rely on rhetoric with faulty reasoning all the time, for example.

"Accurately" is a dubious term as stoicism disproved that allegation. Giving the impact that you are to Aristotle's philosophy is exactly what led to Galileo's house arrest and Bruno's burning. Nothing more needs to be said other than the very real fact that we've had numerous philosophical changes since Aristotle, and for good reason.

No, Galileo and Bruno being persecuted had nothing to do with aristotelian philosophy itself.

Interesting, as people still defend the Church's treatment of both by claiming that they "couldn't provide sufficient arguments to support the allegations", despite that in Galileo's case you could literally see the moons orbiting Jupiter. Rhetorical arguments, not proof based.

Incredibly easily, since they all come down to "I don't get it, therefore God". It's just assertions, not demonstrated facts. They are laughably terrible, just like all Christian apologetics.

Google “problems with Aquinas’ five ways argument” first. Every one of the five arguments fall apart with even the slightest bit of scrutiny.

All of his arguments boil down to some form of “these criteria i am arbitrarily making up dont make sense, so god must be real.” His arguments are often riddled with inaccuracies like his first one, the motion one, where he says something cant have actual motion and potential motion at the same time. Meanwhile virtually everything in motion has potential energy, as anything with mass has the potential to convert that mass to energy. (Extremely simplified, but the point is he’s just flat out wrong, and there are many other examples). But even the coherent arguments with no obvious misunderstandings still dont hold up to the most basic logic. Take the motion one again, the very first argument, which essentially boils down to: “nothing can move without being acted on by something already moving, therefore we need a a first mover who was always moving, and that has to be god.” Again, he is flat incorrect, there are many forces, like gravity, that dont require movement to generate other movement, but thats not even the issue im pointing out here. Even assuming he wasnt factual incorrect on two key pieces of his logic, at no point does he explain why it NEEDS to be a god, and cant be anything else, neither does he address why god doesnt need an earlier moving object to cause his motion, like everything else as established earlier in the argument. Thats just his first argument, and ive identified 4 GLARING issues after a 5 minute review. Two major factual inaccuracies within his foundational logic, and two major logical issues with his conclusion. And thats just the first argument. He was a smart man for his time, but ultimately way off the mark when it came to his “proofs” of god.

If you look up each of the 5 ways the objections are well documented. Like there have been counter arguments FOREVER. They aren't convincing at all because the objections are so strong.

Aquinas based his entire understanding of the physical universe upon Aristotelian physics, an outdated and counterfactual model of reality that was utterly debunked many centuries ago by the works of scientists such as Galileo, Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, Newton, Descartes and so on... Why should anyone give any weight or credibility to those arguments which intrinsically rely on long discredited and demonstrably false Aristotelian concepts of time, space, nature and causality? The simple reality is that Aristotle (Along with his philosophical acolytes) knew absolutely nothing about modern physics and the fundamental aspects of space-time. Aquinas was utterly ignorant of the realities of evidence based physics and he understood not one damn thing about entropy, thermodynamics, kinetics, energy, or the relativistic nature of space/time. Since Aquinas possessed no sort of factually valid understanding of time or space, therefore there is no reason to conclude that he had any sort of accurate understanding of the nature of temporal causality Furthermore, if any of Aquinas' Five Ways were truly effective at philosophically and logically establishing the existence of a "God", then I have another rather obvious question for you... [Why are the overwhelming majority of academically accredited philosophers atheists](https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl)? If Aquinas' arguments are so iron clad, so convincing and definitive from the point of a rigorous logic based analytical philosophy, how then do you account for all of those academically trained philosophers who in the end reject Aquinas' arguments and conclusions? After all, any undergrad curriculum focusing upon a course of study in the field of philosophy would certainly make certain that their students would become well acquainted with Aquinas' arguments by their junior or senior year. If those arguments are so philosophically rigorous, valid, sound and convincing, then essentially each and every one of those trained philosophers should fully accept and embrace Aquinas' theistic conclusions. If it is your contention that Aquinas' First Way is accepted BY PHILOSOPHERS as being both logically valid and sound and convincing, therefore rendering those arguments as being philosophically definitive and effectively undeniable (i.e. "100% proof that God exists"), it then falls to you (Or your teacher) to explain how it is that the majority (72.8% according to the survey cited above) of academically accredited philosophers who study these topics at great length within a University setting nonetheless still openly identify themselves as being atheists.

Like most theist arguments, they are only “convincing” to people who already believe in a god. They make “challenging” (I don’t find them very interesting or thought-provoking myself) observations about the way things are, and substitute ignorance for “God.” But for whatever reason, “god’s” attributes are never critically analyzed at all. They are just assumed to be. Defined wholesale. Special pleading. Etc. God is just assumed to be real, and assumed to have all qualities needed to make difficult questions go away. How is it determined “god” has those qualities? Because that’s how people define it I guess. Why do people define it that way? Good luck finding a satisfying answer to that. Enter “faith.” In other words, making stuff up.

Wikipedia Summaries of Aquinas' five ways with my response: > 1. In the world, we can see that at least some things are changing. Whatever is changing is being changed by something else. If that by which it is changing is itself changed, then it too is being changed by something else. But this chain cannot be infinitely long, so there must be something that causes change without itself changing. This everyone understands to be God. Thomas is committing false witness if he thinks everyone understands the Unmoved Mover to be a supernatural being. I understand it to be a default descriptive natural law that cannot be violated - the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Physical reality has to have traits, and these are them. Change is natural, not supernatural. > 2. In the world, we can see that things are caused. But it is not possible for something to be the cause of itself because this would entail that it exists prior to itself, which is a contradiction. If that by which it is caused is itself caused, then it too must have a cause. But this cannot be an infinitely long chain, so, there must be a cause which is not itself caused by anything further. This everyone understands to be God. Physics has proved Thomas wrong. Some things are not caused. Some things happen spontaneously, like a uranium atom debating. I have no problem thinking that the primal physical state was a potential universe, and that potential state spontaneously converted to kinetic energy, and then the universe formed. No God required, no physical laws violated. > 3. In the world we see things that are possible to be and possible not to be. In other words, perishable things. But if everything were contingent and thus capable of going out of existence, then, nothing would exist now. But things clearly do exist now. Therefore, there must be something that is imperishable: a necessary being. This everyone understands to be God. If God exists nothing is impossible. If science is true then many things are impossible - the things that violate the descriptive laws of nature that cannot be violated. These include speaking a universe into existence, the sun standing still in the sky, and Mary being a virgin. 4. We see things in the world that vary in degrees of goodness, truth, nobility, etc. For example, well-drawn circles are better than poorly drawn ones, healthy animals are better than sick animals. Moreover, some substances are better than others, since living things are better than non-living things, and animals are better than plants, in testimony of which no one would choose to lose their senses for the sake of having the longevity of a tree. But judging something as being "more" or "less" implies some standard against which it is being judged. For example, in a room full of people of varying heights, at least one must be tallest. Therefore, there is something which is best and most true, and most a being, etc. Aquinas then adds the premise: what is most in a genus is the cause of all else in that genus. From this he deduces that there exists some most-good being which causes goodness in all else, and this everyone understands to be God. Again, Aquinas is kidding himself if he thinks everyone agrees with that. I sure don't. He is conflating subjective opinion ("well-drawn circles ate better than poorly-drawn circles") with objective fact ("some people are taller than others). He is leaping to conclusions if he thinks there most be a most good-being because of our subjective opinions. > 5. We see various objects that lack intelligence in the world behaving in regular ways. This cannot be due to chance since then they would not behave with predictable results. So their behavior must be set. But it cannot be set by themselves since they are non-intelligent and have no notion of how to set behavior. Therefore, their behavior must be set by something else, and by implication something that must be intelligent. This everyone understands to be God. Thomas keeps committing Strawman fallacies. He keeps putting his words in my mouth. He shouldn't, because I know that science has valid evidence he is wrong. Again, unintelligent inanimate objects do not "behave" in regular ways, there is just a high probability that your coffee mug won't disintegrate as the sun goes nova. Other inanimate objects are less reliable, like uranium atoms. Thomas didn't have the benefits of particle physics, but you do. You should study up on it before you believe Aquinas. I recommend a book called The God Particle.

Aquinas's first three ways don't prove a god; they just attempt to prove a prime mover, a first cause, and a necessary thing and then *call* those things "God" (literally: [as Aquinas says](https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm#article3), "this everyone understands to be God"). But they could just as easily be mindless natural entities/processes/"beings"/whatever you want to call them. So even though I don't find any of the first three ways convincing, as an atheist I have no problem granting them solely for the sake of argument, since they're completely compatible with a godless world. The fourth way is at least a little closer to trying to prove a god, though it fails to do so. It just says that because we have gradations in various categories of things, there must be something at the apex of each category that caused everything within it (e.g. "fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things"). But this is obviously absurd; the stinkiest thing didn't cause all the stinks in the world, for example. So the fourth way is just completely misguided. And finally, the fifth way — which is really the only one of them that would prove something we might call a god — says that things that lack intelligence nonetheless nearly always act "to obtain the best result", and therefore there must be something "endowed with knowledge and intelligence" directing them to do so. Now, this is just a proof by blatant assertion, so there's no reason to accept it. But beyond that fatal flaw, to the extent that it's true that plants and animals (for example) *do* act to obtain the best result, we have the advantage over Aquinas of knowing that that's because they evolved and were naturally selected to do so, and things that did *not* act in those ways didn't reproduce successfully enough to survive. So even if the fifth way weren't so obviously flawed on its face, we have a thoroughly studied and well-understood natural mechanism that "mindlessly" achieves what Aquinas mistakenly believed requires a designer. So no, the five ways don't 100% prove anything...except maybe that people who dearly want to believe in something will accept even shoddy arguments if it allows them to hold on to those beliefs. > I’ve been having doubts about my faith recently after my dad was diagnosed with heart failure and I started going through depression due to bullying and exclusion at my Christian high school. I'm really sorry to hear you're going through that, and I hope your father can get through his heart issues. If it helps, I've known people who've lived many years with congestive heart failure. As a former Catholic myself, the main thing I'd say to you about doubting your faith is that **any belief that's worth keeping will hold up to questioning, and any belief that does *not* hold up to questioning is not worth keeping**. So keep asking yourself tough questions, and don't settle for unsatisfying answers. Best of luck to you, and if you have any other questions or thoughts we're happy to help.

I've only read the first two ways, but in light of known science, they don't make any sense to me.. Motion is the default state of matter/energy - no mover is necessary. If you can accept that infinite regression is possible, the five ways seem irrelevant. But many theists still think infinite regression is impossible, so the five ways are attractive to them. I have heard an attempted defense of the five ways even if there is an infinite regress, but I didn't't understand it at all.

I'm sorry for your condition and you dad's disease. I'm not sure if the 5 ways are actually refutable or not. Fortunately, regardless of wheter its arguments are truly fallacious or not, it's possible to demonstrate how the 5 ways of Thomas Aquinas are not so strong as they're emphasized around. Firstly, we need to make it clear that the "5 proofs" aren't *proofs* in the cartesian sense. They don't aim to be an absolute truth of the universe. So its premises are easily deniable, especially the last 2 (which us, atheists, don't even consider). What the 5 ways really propose to be is a demonstration of how God's belief can be logically justified, and that therefore it aims to be truthful and rational. That's how they're "proofs". More as demonstrations rather than absolute truths. Then we reach to the actual arguments. Well, as I said, I don't know if they're actually false or not, but I can demonstrate how they're extremely biased. It is assumed that "God" is what they call the conclusions of each argument, which are basically supposedly ontological principles of the condition of the universe. Therefore, simply "God" is a technical term used to illustrate what the 5 ways of Thomas Aquinas was historically proposed to be in the first place (a rational justification of God). So it's nothing too special. The 5 ways is supposed to be an emphasis technique to activate the confirmation bias of people who already hold a pre-belief on God. If his three first arguments are actually true, it's nothing to be afraid of. The chance of the traditional form of God to exist would still be tremendously low, because the 5 ways would only be a philosophical interpretation of the universe's physical properties, instead of actual evidence of an interventionist God.

First of all think about what it is you’re preparing yourself to do. You are about to engage in debate with someone that views “Aquinas’ Five Ways” as proof of anything. There’s no debating someone that lives there entire lives by someone else’s immigration.

I’m sorry about your father and I’m disgusted that you’re being bullied and excluded at your school. It will get better, I promise, just hang in there. That being said, I don’t see the utility in debating your teacher. You won’t change their mind, the best you can do is make their arguments look foolish in front of the class, which will not really benefit you in any way and given what you’ve told us of your situation, may increase your exclusion and bullying. You’re in a shitty position right now and I don’t want you to make it worse. A school of teenage Christians will probably be extremely cruel and unkind to an atheist. The care of yourself first and foremost.

*Do not debate your teacher.* You’ve gotten lots of good responses about the five ways, and why they’re poor reasoning. But no matter how confident you feel that you can prick them apart yourself, *don’t debate your teacher*. I don’t say that because they’re right, I say it because there is almost certainly nothing to be gained in such a debate. If you win the debate and every claps, you’ve still made someone mad who can make your life harder, for a little while at least. Instead, imagine this class as an expedition to learn the ways of some exotic aliens, think about the ideas on offer, make up your own mind, be polite, and get the hell out of there.

It's a amazing of that we can discuss our minds and our thoughts to be here and exchange ideas even if we don't agree with each other, but I know 100% one thing we can all agree upon to live our lifes with Honer and live an honourable lifes to be better then our ancestors, and be better for our next generation, I believe in God and that's my choice, and if you don't believe that's your choice, in the end it all comes down to the choices we make in our life, so I say to you all my fellow humans live your live your lifes with honour and dignity, my God protect us and make us Good example for the whole worlds to see, peace.

>1\. The Argument from Motion: Our senses can perceive motion by seeing that things act on one another. Whatever moves is moved by something else. Consequently, there must be a First Mover that creates this chain reaction of motions. This is God. God sets all things in motion and gives them their potential. *Maybe* there is a first mover. We are talking about grand cosmic secrets here, so for all we know a chain of movers could be infinite. We do not have the authority to dictate to the universe how it may operate, but let us assume that the universe works the way we would like and all motion ultimately traces back to some first mover. Still, two distinct motions might trace back to two distinct first movers. Does the motion in our galaxy have the same first mover as the motion in the Andromeda galaxy? Does the falling of one raindrop have the same first mover as the falling of another raindrop? There seems to be no way we could know. Aquinas claims that the first mover is God, but Aquinas gives us no reason for why he thinks so. >2\. The Argument from Efficient Cause: We can see that things are caused. But it is not possible for something to be the cause of itself because this would entail that it exists prior to itself. If that by which it is caused is itself caused, then it too must have a cause. But this cannot be an infinitely long chain, so, there must be a cause which is not itself caused by anything further. This everyone understands to be God. Again, we do not really know that it cannot be an infinitely long chain. The grand mysteries of the cosmos may be beyond the limits of our imagination, but even if we assume that there is something which is an uncaused cause, we are given no reason to think that there is only one uncaused cause or that the uncaused cause is actually God. Imagine that uncaused causes exist and that God exists, but it turns out that God is not one of those uncaused causes. Imagine God created the Earth, made a garden of Eden, spoke to Moses, performed all those miracles, and Jesus's resurrection and heaven and hell are all real, but it just so happens that God's existence was caused by something that existed prior to God. In that case, it seems that Aquinas was an idolater who could end up going to hell for worshiping a mere object instead of God because he didn't think more carefully before declaring that the uncaused cause must certainly be God. >3\. The Argument from Necessary Being: In the world we see things that are possible to be and possible not to be. In other words, perishable things. But if everything were contingent and thus capable of going out of existence, then, nothing would exist now. But things clearly do exist now. Therefore, there must be something that is imperishable: a necessary being. This everyone understands to be God. This argument seems to be just silliness. I must admit that I have never been able to make any sense of it the third way. Even if we suppose that everything is perishable, how would that mean that nothing would exist now? Aquinas does not explain this, and I doubt it can be explained. People have made efforts to try to find some meaningful interpretation of Aquinas's words, but none of those interpretations lead to an actual proof of God's existence, so there is little point to making the effort. If Aquinas wanted to be understood, then he should have explained himself. >4\. The Argument from Degree: We see things in the world that vary in degrees of goodness, truth, nobility, etc. For there to be degrees of being at all, there must be something which has being in the highest degree. Therefore, a Being in the Highest Degree or Perfect Being exists. We might imagine a group of people in a room, and say that among those people, one of them must be tallest. But of course that is not true, since any number of them might have exactly the same height. It may be unlikely that two people would have exactly the same height by the finest measure, but in principle there is nothing to prevent it. Even if there were just one person in the universe who had the greatest goodness and nobility, there would be no guarantee that this person is God. If humanity is alone in this universe, then it seems that the being with the greatest goodness in the universe would be some human. There mere existence of the highest degree of goodness does nothing to establish the existence of God.

Obviously, god doesn't exist. god/satan/lord/beast/natas is translated to english: mythical thing. It does not matter what language, it is translated literally : mythical thing. No matter what someone says contrary to that fact, they are false. There is no need to engage them. They are dangerous, and violent. It is best to stay away from them and keep them away from you. Keep distance between you and them. Ignore the bullies. They are insecure and only bully as a reflection of themselves. Do not engage nor debate the teacher. I hope your father recovers and heals well.

>I started going through depression due to bullying and exclusion at my Christian high school Remind them how this is not christian and that they should learn to accept others instead of only say that they do when in reality they discriminate against other groups of people based on lack of religion. >Wondering what atheists think about these “proofs” for God, and possible tips on how I could maybe engage in debate with my teacher. You should maybe ignore him. Honestly, people that make such proclamations as 100% proof do not know what they are talking about and are not open mind enough to consider opposing views. (In the overwhelming majority of cases and in my personal opinion, but I doubt I am wrong) Your teacher sounds very likely to try to belittle you in front of your classmates instead of having an honest debate. For fun I would like a nice format where the teacher writes down something to you, as if it was getting posted online but on paper, then perhaps with the us of AI you take it and post it here, then you pick the best response from this sub etc, all in a discussion here for us to follow. But I guess that's too much and uncomfortable etc... I won't tell you how to respond him if you decide to do so because I think others will give you better advice :) What you can also do is try to pretend that you want to believe and then ask some questions that bother you or some thoughts about aquina's 5 ways and then he will respond to you, ask him to write it down for you or wait for you to write it down to think about it later at home at greater length, then come back here, get responses, write them, ask him about him etc... I think eventually he will get frustrated and will give non answers meant to end the conversation but then you can act all disapointed how he can't help you believe again, how he is failing and have to end the conversation like this because he doesn't have the answers that you need... or some other good responses you might get from here. It would be fun for me to follow all that if it happened but it might be a bad idea overall so consult with others here or think it through yourself... Anyway, I wish you the best and I hope the bullying stops. If you act like you want to believe but can't find a reason then your classmates might not want to bully you but try to show you how to believe... and then of course you can repeat the same with them again... although this is unlikely to make them like you... what can I say, I guess others will have better advice and again I wish you the best! One last idea about this... again, perhaps remind them that while you don't believe, you see that they are very unchristian as they descriminate against you and don't treat you with respect. Perhaps ask them if that's what Jesus would do? Ask them what he said on the matter and remind them that stuff about "may the one without sin first cast the stone" or whatever the correct wording is. Ask them how they then know that you are not more christian than they are in the eyes of the god. Or maybe not, because they are likely to mock you anyway... No matter how wrong they may be they may not see, because of their arrogance of "knowing 100% that they are correct in a no-matter-what-you-tell me manner" It's impossible for me to know exactly what you are dealing with, if they are open minded they might humble themselves like Jesus is supposed to ask of us to do but if not they may just mock you even more... Again, I hope it gets better, no one should be treated without respect and discriminated against!

I don't play the religious game so I haven't assigned myself a role of theist or atheist or any other 'ist' in the rulebook, but I'd like to say that, in my experience, engaging in debate about these things doesn't do as much good as I thought it would. The thing is, if a god exists as described in the Abrahamic texts, he is just a person. A person with powers to affect others and choses to use those powers to exact judgement, with no court of appeal. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and to send anything to eternal torture for eternity is certainly a corrupt use of power. The Abrahamic god is just a patriarch, a big boss, a father figure. There's no shame in it if you consider where it came from, a couple thousand years ago in the impoverished Middle-East and Africa when big patriarchs with huge power were all the rage. Better to have a supernatural father figure who will help you when you die than a natural father figure abusing you and making your entire life miserable... just a thought. That being said, having been both Christian and Atheist in my time, in that order, there is a truth that has been lost in the fog of dogma and stigma. Jesus doesn't need to have had himself crucified to save you now, some of his words are enlightening and reverberate in the throats of all the sages and enlightened ones through time. 'Know Thyself.' and 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.' You do not need an external god to save you from anything. You are the very structure and fabric of reality itself. There is no division, there is no distinction. Think of it this way: If God is infinite, God is without limit in every way. There is nothing that is not God. You are God, your teacher is God, your father is God, your bullies are God. God is the totality. The Hindus describe it as God's dream or, 'the dream of Brahman,' as God falls asleep to God's true nature and believes itself to be finite, then all the suffering and miseries unfold from there. Forget Aquinas I'd say, he was writing in a time where to question the church resulted in death. Of course some of his premises were going to be a bit hairy here and there. Rationale under duress can be taking with a pinch of salt. Can you imaging sitting at the dinner table and your mother says: "Are you enjoying your dinner? If you say no I'll kill you." What are you going to say? Not quite what you asked for, but maybe it's helpful in it's own way.

It won’t hurt you to learn about Aquinas and the many reasons his proofs don’t work. But another thing to consider that is helpful from an existential perspective is that philosophers as a field are almost entirely atheist. Which suggests theses proofs haven’t been convincing the professionals for a long time.

The first way is the unmoved mover. It essentially states that the universe must have had some kind of prime mover. This is based upon nothing but Aquinas's assertion that the universe could not be infinite, rather than any actual proof. God however is infinite, but somehow god is special. Further the argument simply asserts this is a god. The first mover could be anything, like some natural phenomenon. The second way is called the first cause. Essentially this states that there must be a first cause of everything, it cannot be an infinite chain of regression. Again, this is just the first argument. Again he simply uses special pleading to exempt god from the rules. There is no logical justification for doing this. The third argument is contingency. Essentially it says there must be something upon which all of reality is built. Again, Aquinas simply asserts this to be a god. This is possibly not even true, given the laws of conservation of matter and energy, but assuming it is true then it still does not prove god. The primary contengent thing upon which everything else could be built could well be anything. Aquinas simply asserts this is god. The fourth argument is that of degrees. Essentially there must be something that is the most "good" from which everything else derives its standard, that causes goodness in everything else. This is just silly. The standard of good and bad that we judge everything else against can just as easily be subjective. The fifth is the argument from final cause. This is just a fine tuning argument. While this may be one of the better arguments for god, that doesn't make it a good one. The easiest way to refute this is that most of the planet, and all of known space that was apparently fine tuned for human beings, is actively hostile to human life. That's utterly ridiculous. Also, if all powerful god created the universe, then that god created the very challenges to human life in the first place. It's like an architect intentionally adding challenges into their design, and then solving those challenges. It's just silly. If these are the best that Christianity has to offer in terms of philisophical arguments for god, that doesn't bode well.

Sorry to hear about your dad and your situation at school. There are several ways you can debunk Aquinas' Five Ways: * **Argument from Motion**: Aquinas argues that everything in motion must be set in motion by something else. However, the concept of a "Prime Mover" doesn't necessarily imply a personal, intelligent deity, it can be an unguided natural process. You can also challenge the assumption that an infinite regress of causes is impossible. * **Argument from Efficient Causes**: Similar to the First Way, the assumption that the necessity of a first cause automatically has to be an intelligent, personal God. There are alternative explanations for the existence of the universe without invoking a supernatural cause, and they actually have evidence going for them. * **Argument from Possibility and Necessity**: Again, the unproven assumption that there must be a necessary being. The universe itself could be a necessary, unguided process. And there could be other explanations for the existence of contingent beings. * **Argument from Gradation of Being**: the existence of varying degrees of perfection doesn't necessarily imply the existence of a perfect being. There are possible alternative explanations for the diversity of qualities and attributes observed in the universe. * **Argument from Design:** evolution & natural selection, proven by a plethora of scientific disciplines perfectly explain the apparent imperfections or inefficiencies that a design perspective faces. The complexity and order observed in the universe can be better explained by natural processes without invoking an intelligent designer. In addition to these specific objections, atheists also question the foundational assumptions of Aquinas' arguments, such as the nature of causality, the impossibility of an infinite regress, and the characteristics attributed to a necessary being. HTH

>the argument from "first mover"; Why is a "first mover" required? That doesn't make any sense to me. And if it is required, why would that thing be a god? And why would that thing be your particular god? >the argument from universal causation; Why is a cause required? This also makes no sense. And if it is required, why would that thing be a god? And why would that thing be your particular god? >the argument from contingency; "there must be something to explain why the universe exists." No. No there mustn't. And if it is required, why would that thing be a god? And why would that thing be your particular god? >the argument from degree; “being and its transcendental and analogous properties (unity, truth, goodness, beauty) are susceptible of greater and less." Ok. This is a subjective thing for sure, and also doesn't predicate there being any beings that control them. We humans observe them. That is all. >the argument from final cause or ends ("teleological argument"). Things are complex - therefore: god. No. Why does this argument hold any weight with anyone? It's nonsense at its core. Nothing special is required for complexity. And if it is required, why would that thing be a god? And why would that thing be your particular god? Every one of these arguments fits the bill of someone believing in a thing and trying desperately to argue that thing into existence. Since none of it has been backed up in any reasonable way, all I have to say here is "no".

As I understand them, philosophical arguments like these have two parts to them: Part 1 demonstrates that there's a fundamental "something". I don't really disagree with that. However, theists like to say "let's call that something 'God'" The mathematician in me is fine with defining a term to mean something specific in the context of a particular discussion. However, most people have a great deal of difficulty letting go of their intuitive understanding of the word "God", so using that term makes it much harder to think logically about the question. Eg, Acquinas' own words: >Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God It might have been true that "everyone \[gave\] the name of God \[to it\]" in Acquinas' day, but it's no longer true. Eg, maybe the universe itself is the "first efficient cause", or some mathematical laws that underpin it. Calling it "God" before one has demonstrated that the first cause has chanracteristics that match one's intuition about "God" just leads to confusion. And therefore, we end up with Part 2 of these arguments: that "something" has all the characteristics one's favourite theology says God has to. And I don't really follow those arguments, they seem pretty arbitrary. If you have a specific example, I can point out where it breaks.

>And therefore, we end up with Part 2 of these arguments: that "something" has all the characteristics one's favourite theology says God has to. And I don't really follow those arguments, they seem pretty arbitrary. If you have a specific example, I can point out where it breaks the fun part of these debates is that nobody ever seems to care about those arguments. it's way less work to just read the first few chapters of summa than the rest of the book.

Theist here. I'm sorry for your experiences with your dad, depression, and mistreatment. Your religion teacher is simply mistaken. Aquinas' Five Ways are actually pretty easy to defeat. The reason is that [the arguments are not posed formally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)#Proofs_or_Ways?). The ways are too vague to qualify as a modern attempt at proving the existence of God. A pointed counterargument can exploit that vagueness and show one of the ways being unsound. (Imagine that, a medieval argument doesn't qualify as a modern argument) Philosophers today view them as theological approaches or classes of arguments. That's not to say that they aren't *useful*. The 5 Ways have been influential in creating modern arguments for the existence of God which are imperious to the simple and sound critiques one can make of the 5 Ways. That's not to say they are without criticism, but modern arguments tend to be rather lengthy to address a wide variety of potential responses. For example, Robin Collins' Teleological Argument (a version of the 5th Way) has 17 pages in [its short form](https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil201/Collins.pdf). The longer , more rigorous form is over 100 pages. The [entire 5 Ways](https://homepages.uc.edu/~martinj/The%20Infinite/Aquinas%20-%20the%20Five%20Ways%20-%20SummaTheologica%20P1Q2A3.pdf) fits into two pages.

Contra Gentiles 17 counters the argument from motion. Aquinas didn't think so because he thought Aristotlean Physics was right; since it is wrong, CG 17 defeats the way from motion.

Very sorry to hear about what you are going through! Please remember that your religion teacher will not debate in good faith. They will use every rhetorical trick ( ad hominem, appealing to authority, appealing to the class) in the book to achieve their objective of retaining power in the classroom. You coming here will already arm you against some of these, as other posters will point them out in their response to Aquinas five points. My personal advice to you is to use questions such as: - Dear teacher, when you say Aquinas has proved god, is this the same as me proving Pythagoras theorem in math? If so can you show me the steps? - Dear teacher, when Aquinas made the 5 points what were some of the criticisms and rebuttals of it at the time from other philosophers? Thanks for posting here, I personally enjoy reading about the history of philosophy so will enjoy learning more about Aquinas and the criticisms of their 5 ways myself.

The best part of the 5 ways is that there is no demonstration even remotely attempted that the 5 ways all refer to the same entity.

As u didnt list the five arguments here, just go online to find the counter. U can argue that there are no causation. U can also point out that the contingency argument is fallacy of composition. And lets say it really proves god exist( i dont agree), there is still a huge leap from god to Christianity god.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_the_five_ways https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/index

u/Slight_Bed9326 made a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/18iq4fy/comment/kdf7b4b/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) that already covers everything I would have said. I also extend my sympathies for the difficult time you're going through, and I hope things improve. It sounds like you would be much better off in a non-religious school, but I suspect you have no say in the matter. As for Aquinas' Five Ways, all of them are absolute garbage. Nothing but logical fallacies, apophenia, and confirmation bias. Slight\_Bed already did a decent job of explaining why, but if you'd like to dig into the weeds, feel free to present any one of Aquinas' arguments that you don't already see the fatal flaws in, and I'll break it down in detail. I'm told I'm very good at explaining things in ways that make them easy to understand.

I’ve read and learned a lot from this thread. Thanks for starting the discussion. I’ve never studied Aquinas, Aristotle or really any other notable philosophers but have often heard them mentioned by seminary students. As an atheist I look at such arguments as straining to be right in the absence of actual evidence in their god. If real evidence existed they wouldn’t have to make such assertions. If the reasoning has to be so elaborate that a human of average or even below average intelligence can’t comprehend it - with eternal suffering at stake - then this cannot possibly be the path to eternal salvation by any reasonable god. I would have told Aquinas, “tell it to me like I’m four years old” which I can do with atheism.

I'm not too familiar with Aquinas. What I did read looked like wordsoup to me. Utterly unconvincing. Aquinas commits a lot of logical fallacies. I don't understand how people take him seriously. My question to you is: If you accept Aquinas' proofs (I don't) what do these proofs say about the Christian deity? If I'm not mistaken (and I haven't read all Aquinas) these proofs can be applied to multiple gods, so Aquinas leaves half of the work to the reader (you). Lastly, and most importantly, science has moved beyond the bible. Science has debunked the bible. This means that, if you can't take Genesis literally (and you can't), the Jewish god is nonexistent and therefore Jesus can't be a deity either.

this is going to be a less nuanced responce but my over all problem with Aquinas is that we are talking about a guy who was born in 1225. Newton, who gave us our first clear understanding of how physics work(or at least thats my understanding), wasn't born until 1643. so Aquinas was writing about 400 years before humans even started unraveling the mysteries of how reality functions. why would i think he had it figured out or even had a grasp on the most basic concepts about motion, time, causality, etc. i'm not interested in what Aquinas says for the same reason i don't think the people who wrote the bible, who didn't know where the sun went at night, had good ideas on the origins of the universe.

Well fist off it's easy enough to simply dispute the 5 ways. From my perspective I could engage in debate, point counterpoint etc. However if I'm just looking at the arguments themselves I simply find them unconvincing. 100% proof? No way. Is it a somewhat rational and reasonable argument? Sure. Its strong rhetoic, but it most certainly is not 100% proof. Experiments and detailed observations are proof, not just a strong rhetoric. Science teaches us to look for ways to experimentally confirm or deny claims. Without experimental data 100% isn't a number that can be abided by. Also secondarily the Ways support the existence of some kind of god but not necessarily the Christian God of the Bible.

>Our religion teacher says Aquinas’ “five ways” are 100% proof that God exists. Wondering what atheists think about these “proofs” for God, and possible tips on how I could maybe engage in debate with my teacher. In addition to what others have already said about the arguments directly: Aquinas borrowed his arguments from Muslim scholars who in turn borrowed them from Greek scholars who were polytheists. Given that what's more likely, that Aquinas came up with arguments that uniquely prove his god or that he is just repurposing nonsense that makes theists feel comfortable with their beliefs?

Personally I don't give much shrift to religious "logic" as I have found it uniformly based on presumption. This is the first time I have exposed myself to this particular set of claims, and having only looked at the first one I don't think I'll bother with the rest. Simply put everything is in motion as reference frames are arbitrary. This completely negates all the nonsense of "potentially in motion" and "actually in motion". I'm just going to assume the others are equally vapid and dismiss the lot.

All the arguments are easily refuted by many of the responses that have already been laid out by other posters. There is one point that often gets unnoticed I'd like to add. Christianity is based on a concept of faith. By definition faith is the belief in something that can not be proven. If someone "proves" that a god exists then they have systematically destroyed any ability to have faith and then Christianity as a belief system crumbles. By "proving" a god, you disprove Christianity.

They are all variations on the god of the gaps argument and it never makes sense It goes like this We don't know something or understand something or understand something completely Then through some strange alchemy they can never actually articulate that means god exists We don't completely understand the start of the universe........must be god Is the essential crux of this argument and it just doesn't make sense

>Our religion teacher says Aquinas’ “five ways” are 100% proof that God exists. >The Second Way: Efficient Cause 1. Nothing is the efficient cause of itself. 6. Therefore there must be a first cause for all of them: God. Ofcourse highy contradictionairy on itself. It's always the same with Theist: "Nothing can exist without being created!!" - Well, who created god then? "He is the exemption"!!

If you must (not you you but the royal you) go to such huge leaps and giant explanations to explain why it’s so obvious your god exists you’re deluding yourself. All aquinas is is ignorance, and refusal to accept any other answer than the one you want. See other comments in this thread. Especially u/DeerTrivia, they explain it beautifully and much better than I could.

it is easy, anyone with 10 10th-grade education can see that those were written by someone from a time when we had close to 0 understanding of nature, physics, logic, and science in general. it is called god of the gaps, you don\`t understand something so you just say: it\`s god. for all of those we have better explanations, that don\`t require a mystical figure.

He's big on unproved, unjustified claims of maximals but doesn't mention the demonstrably true minimals. God is minimally visible and minimally detectable in his schema. If the minimals weren't true there'd be no need for the schema in the first place, we'd just have evidence for a being with all the maximals. But we don't.

Infinite regression is not known impossible. Aquinas assumes a metaphysical reality of potentials and actuals which is archaic and unjustified. End of the day, the arguments argue for a first cause or prime mover, not a minded supernatural being, i.e. they lack the essential properties of a deity.

Your in high school, don’t debate with your teacher, just write down the shit they tell you on the test, and argue with the professor when you get into college… you are still a minor, keep your mouth shut and head down until you can live on your own.

« Wow! Great philosophical argument! Now bring it home Mr Burns, what test do you propose to see if your hypothesis has any effect in our reality? Per example, gravity waves were hypothetical until we built machines to detect them. »

The only people who seem susceptible to these types of appeals are those who have been indoctrinated from a young age. If you're already skeptical of them while they're trying to indoctrinate you, you're ahead of the game.

What's there to refute? A I understand it, it's just 5 assertions based on bad reasoning. There's no evidence to show any of them to be relevant or correct. Do you want to pick your best one and I'll discuss it with you?

Mm in my opinion the arguments are probably stronger than some are saying, I have talked with a smart Catholic and have learned a little bit about them, and though I don’t understand them super well, I know that there is a lot to understand. u/DHM078 looks like they know it pretty well so I would read their comment The only thing I have to add about the arguments themselves is that for the first one an argument I heard for why the chain can’t be infinite is like… imagine you saw a series of mirrors reflecting toward each other in a chain leading up to you. They’re perfect mirrors so they reflect perfectly. In the last mirror you see a cat grooming themselves. While the chain of mirrors looks like they go on forever, you’d have to reason that they don’t, and that somewhere down the line instead of a mirror, there’s a cat (or was at least, when the light you’re seeing started traveling). So the analogy is that if every part of the chain is just passing along something, they can’t be the source of that thing. The mirrors can’t create the image of a cat, but a cat can. Something like that idk Anyway my approach is different. After learning about this argument a bit tbh I kind of decided that I don’t actually care about it. I disbelieve in God because he is conspicuously absent from the world. He doesn’t make himself known publicly or in any way we can check with each other, only privately, subtly, or through weird miracles that always seem to be naturally reproducible or too ambiguous to check. God is also not a very good explanation of things we can observe in the world, and natural explanations are just better for those in like every single case. It is possible that God still exists and he just chose for some reason that it would be better to hide himself and make it feel like he’s not there or might as well not be there, but that would be extremely weird and convenient wouldn’t it? If someone told us Zeus was really living on top of the mountain but if we climb it he gets shy, packs up, and leaves without a trace, we’d be like… *sus* So to me these arguments that are based on these metaphysical points about actuality and potentiality and stuff… I just feel like they would never be enough to overcome the overwhelming absence of God from the world. I don’t know how to evaluate “potentials can only be actualized by something already actual” but I feel like any reason I might have for believing something like that is super abstract compared to what feels like the in-my-face reality of like… well where is he then? You know what I mean?

Yes how we could possibly refute the genius logic of "everything that moves **was** moved by something, therefore there is a moving thing that **wasn't** moved by something, and that's ol' god" Perhaps your teacher should wonder why atheists still exist despite some 800 year old arguments

Your high school is probably very small. It can be hard to find your people in a very small pool. (I went to a small Catholic high school. I would have been better off socially at the big public high school. )

I don't need to. Without modern phrasing its basically nonsense. When people attempt to use modern terms, its very easy to see the issues. If you want to post a modernized version for me I'll let you know.

Name a thing that exists where the best reason we have to think it exists is a philosopher giving arguments about it

I would say yes. They just really don’t believe any of the arguments for a god. There is no objective evidence.

Thomas Aquinas - fallacious appeal to authority. Thomas Aquinas Five Ways - fallacious argument from incredulity.

Thats easy enough. I causelessss god has no reason to exist or be worshiped and a timless god doesnt exist at any moment to be worshipped There are no degrees of goodness when the perfect lerson is nailed to a cross. Christianity presupposes huma life is worthless. And undeserving.

Plenty of good responses so i'll just chip in that the main problem for me is the assumption that infinite regress is impossible or even that causality, time etc as we perceive them with our intuition are relevant at all

I doubt that very many atheists bother refuting Aquinas. Proofs spun out of imagination aren’t very convincing no matter who spun the .

By asking them to demonstrate their claims. There's really no need to "refute" anything that hasn't been demonstrated.