BillHoyt said:
kitten,
The page to which you refer comes to this single-sentence paragraph: "Aquinas therefore has failed to show that the chain of causation must have had a beginning. As a result, his entire argument falls apart."
Yes. I pointed that out, although not explicitly : "it's not that hard to refute Aquinas directly -- again, I refer you to the page cited above, which argues against him in a fairly strong and sophisticated fashion." As it happens, you didn't even pick up on the error in the refutation --- if time is finite, as modern science states, then it's an immediate consequence that an infinite chain of causes can only exist allowing infinitesimal time differences between causes and their effects. Since Aquinas (and, for that matter, modern physics) will not permit such infinitesimal differences, Aquinas' argument regarding a first cause remains valid in light of modern science. (Again, the page alludes to this in its discussion of "instantaneous causation," which the author accepts must also be ruled out. So even the page author, Franz Kiekeben, is also aware of another minor hole in Aquinas' argument as written [although Kiekeben evidently didn't think of infinitesimals]. Perhaps Aquinas wasn't as sophisticated a mathematician as we are now, or perhaps he left that sentence out in the interestes of brevity. Either way, Kiekeben is willing to grant the simple modification that would still allow the original argument to go through.)
The actual refutation of Aquinas' argument is subtstantially later : "[E]ven supposing that there was a beginning, it does not, of course, follow that there must be a God. There are, in other words, additional problems with Aquinas's argument. The first cause does not have to be a conscious being, much less one with all of the unusual properties commonly ascribed to God — it could be, for instance, the Big Bang." So, even granting the validity of the argument in favor of a first cause, it doesn't prove the existence of God.
This page, then, does an excellent job of
refuting Aquinas on his merits. Even assuming the questionable validity of the existence of the first cause, his statement that "everyone understands [the first cause] to be God" is simply incorrect. Franz Kiekeben has done an excellent job, first, of stating Aquinas' argument fairly, of granting due deference to possible alternative interpretations or wordings and of obvious easy fixes, and then utterly destroying the argument. Kiekeben scrupulously avoids any appearance of "straw-man" versions of Aquinas that could be argued to not represent fairly the intellectual force of his First Cause argument.
You do none of these.
I note for the record and for the audience that you continue to aim your guns squarely at skeptics on this forum, whom you continue to call scientistic, idiots and nitwits.
No. I continue to aim my guns squarely at
some soi-disant skeptics on this forum, who are doing the cause of skepticism a disservice by continuing to be scientistic, idiots, and nitwits. At the head of that list of
some I place you, in part because of your contining practice of presenting straw-man versions for believer practices and arguments and then ridiculing them instead of refuting them.
Unfortunately, in this practice, you (and, again, I refer personally to "you") not only make yourself look foolish, but you also poison the well for anyone who is actually trying to take the JREF educational mission seriously and present reasoned, well-founded arguments to illustrate the errors, instead of simply ridiculing the believers to annoy them. The JREF forum already "enjoys" a reputation of being a collection of closed-minded dittoheads (I refer you to "Interesting" Ian's periodic rants), in part because so many of the participants -- and again, I include you specifically in this list -- refuse to critically examine the believers' arguments, but dismiss them, rudely, out of hand. You're also unwilling to examine critically the idea that science might be wrong or to subject scientific claims to the same sort of scrutiny you propose for the paranormal. This isn't a difficult burden; science is as it is because there are masses of evidence for most if not all conventional scientific beliefs. However, to read your postings, science is as it is because it is True, and Truth is evidently something self-evident and apparent to all true believers in Science. As I have said before, that's not science, that's scientism.
I would be delighted if anyone on this thread were to formulate their own arguments or to think for themselves; that's part of
my educational mission. I specifically enourage you to forumate an argument, instead of sophistry. Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen.
