Several things stand out about this. First of all, what Dawkins presents as Aquinas’ proofs were not actually written by Aquinas. They were written by Dawkins. (Or maybe he borrowed them from elsewhere. In any case, he certainly should have quoted the real thing.) The five straw-man proofs of Dawkins include words and phrases that Aquinas never used, while carefully omitting important phrases and sentences from the real thing. The result is extremely misleading. Anyone who hasn’t actually read Aquinas will be left with a wrong impression of the text. Of course, anyone who has read the real proofs will spot the fakes immediately.
In fact, Aquinas has already dealt with both of the objections that Dawkins raises. I will explain in reverse order.
Second Dawkins says that there’s no need to give the terminator certain properties. Aquinas did not intend for the five proofs to establish any of the properties of God, only the existence of God. Aquinas tackles the properties of God throughout the remainder of the first part of the Summa in a series of scores of questions, covering several hundred pages. By failing to mention this fact and suggesting that the five proofs are intended to establish the properties of God, Dawkins further misleads his readers.
First Dawkins says that it’s an “unwarranted claim” that God is immune to regress. Why is this unwarranted? As usual, Dawkins does not provide any reason why I should believe what he says.
In fact, Aquinas has dealt with this objection as well. This is, I think, precisely the reason why Dawkins writes fake versions of the five proofs, rather than presenting the real ones. If he presented the real ones, the reader would immediately see that Aquinas has answered Dawkin’s complaints.
In the first proof, Aquinas says “It is impossible … that a thing should be mover and moved.” Hence, for every moving object, there is a mover. Furthermore, there cannot be an infinite chain, from moving objects to movers. We have confirmed these two points, through Newton’s first law and the impossibility of transcending the infinite. So Aquinas defines God as the first mover. To complain that the first mover is not “immune to the regress” is a logical error. In a mathematical proof you can debate whether the transition from one step to another is valid, but you can’t simply tell the person making the proof that you don’t like their hypothesis.
Aquinas does tackle elsewhere the questions of what makes it reasonable to believe that God is an unmoved mover. He also tackles the reasons underlying God as an efficient cause and a necessary being. (Incidentally the three arguments are quite different, and Dawkins is flat wrong in describing them as “saying the same thing”.)
For those wishing to see the topic analyzed at greater length, I recommend this blog post.
Well, I suspect your post could have been more clearly written, but I can’t argue. Dawkins, like many all very intelligent men, is a fool. We shuld not be surprised when he writes foolish things.
Albert Einstein Believed in God
On topic:
Dawkins is using an arcane rhetorical device known to the illumaniti and other shadowy forces as “summing up”. Perhaps he didn’t want to present the entire text of Aquinas’ ignorant, childish bullshit in what he was writing there?
If you honestly think that Aquinas proved god’s existence then there’s no helping you. No one can force you to think clearly. You have to decide to do it.
No he is not. Summarizing means presenting a shortened form of a certain text, but it does not change the meaning of the text. The fabrications that Dawkins writes have different meaning than the five proofs of Aquinas. They are not a summary, nor a translation, abridgement, or anything else reasonable. They are at best a straw man argument.
What are you talking about? How is ‘The unmoved mover’ not a summation of Aquinas first argument? You summed it up yourself in your OP, and ‘unmoved mover’ is a summation of that paragraph. Yes, it leaves out details, because that’s what a summation does. How would you give a short one sentence summary of Aquinas first argument?
Newton’s first law doesn’t say every moving object has a mover… it says an object moves at constant velocity unless acted upon by a net force. How do you get from the latter to the former?
Furthermore, if we accept both the hypotheses “Every moving object must have a mover” and “Well, actually, some things can possibly move with no mover”, we can prove anything we like, since they contradict each other. Which is all good and well in terms of sound mathematical deduction, but also rather uninteresting; I could prove that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone from the hypothesis that 20 was prime, if I liked, but no one would care.
Supposing, then, that we start only with “There can not be an infinite descending movement-causation chain” (itself not logically mandated, but one we can agree to assume as a hypothesis) and “At least one thing moves”, we can conclude that “At least one thing moves without being under the influence of a mover”. Great. We have proved the existence of at least one unmoved mover. But we have not proved uniqueness; i.e., we have not proved that there is only one unmoved mover, so that taking “God” as “the unmoved mover”, the term is not guaranteed to be well-defined.
ITR, when your post contains an admonishment to someone for not quoting sources, you should probably make sure you don’t yourself not quote a source, as you have not for the Dawkins’ quote that you post here. I’m guessing The God Delusion?
Well, certainly, these are paraphrases. Unless we are to claim that the only fair representation of something is the exact words themselves, the question is really whether or not the paraphrasing is fair - that is, the words themselves are changed, but is the meaning of them changed, whether deliberately or accidentally? Let’s compare Dawkins’ paraphrasings with your cite.
I do see a flaw in this paraphrasing, and it is that it misses out on Aquinas’ logic on how that which is moved cannot itself be the cause of the movement; that one way out of the regress is for something to be both the moved and the mover of itself, and that Aquinas shows this not to be possible (well, he says it, and offers no reason to believe him, as I believe you are fond of saying). So i’d say a black mark against Dawkins on this one, but since Dawkins does not then go on to use the excised part against Aquinas, I don’t think we can call it a deliberate excision for purposes of lying.
This seems an entirely fair paraphrasing.
Dawkins misses out entirely here on Aquinas’ point on necessity. Major black mark here, since that seems to be the main point of Aquinas’ proof here. And I say that as a person who finds that particular proof practically entirely devoid of logic.
I’d add also there’s the slight problem that you’ve referred to the “five” strawman proofs of Dawkins, but he appears to only have offered three of them. I’d check up to see if he added points on the other two, but I don’t know where your quote is from.
Incorrect. And you’ve rather failed on that point, too. Aquinas does not mention the properties of god. He mentions the properties of God, as do you. If Aquinas were only talking of gods in general, then he’d not capatalise it. And here we have something of a problem, since I assume the Summa Theologica was originally in Latin, not English. By that translation you have provided, I think it’s fair to say he was talking about God, since, you know, that’s the word put down. Furthermore, even to assume the existence of a god is to assume further than the proofs; the proofs only suggest the existence of a first mover, first causer, and so on. Yet Aquinas (and you) happily refer to this being as a god. I rather think Dawkins point on what Aquinas believes is correct - while yours and the man himself’s assumes too much.
You’ve pointed out that we must judge what Aquinas says based not on his writings in that specific section, but in the entirety of his text. So, to be fair, we should do the same with Dawkins. Does he not address the issue of God’s immunity to regress *anywhere *within the unnamed text from which you quote? I hope you have scoured the book, lest you be presenting a double standard.
But that is what is happening. Dawkins is pointing out that if the initial idea is “for every moving object, there is a mover”, then it does not follow to end up with “there is, however, a moving object which has no mover”. Contending that there is a first mover at all is a logical error, one which cannot be resolved unless we amend the first statement to “some moving objects have no movers”, which opens up rather a can of worms but at least is logically sound.
For someone who dislikes being asked to take them at their word on something, you appear to be quite willing to ask people to take you on your word. By your own example, you should have provided direct proof right there. Please, stop making the mistakes you castigate in others, especially in the same post. It’s just impolite.
Weak, ITR, weak. But also par for the course. First, Dawkins’ presentation of the first two arguments is fine. They are the unmoved mover and first cause arguments. As you quote Dawkins, that is precisely what he is saying. Aquinas’ third way is strictly speaking about necessary vs. contingent beings. It’s probably a mistake to gloss this in terms of physical/non-physical beings, but hey; why call something an error when you can call it a lie? Also, Newtonian physics doesn’t claim that we have to explain why things are in motion. AIUI Newtonian mechanics only requires that a *change *in something’s motion requires explanation. And finally, criticizing Aquinas for claiming that everything needs a mover/explanation/etc. except for God is not a “logical error”. It is merely a standard atheist complaint that God is for the theist quite literally a deus ex machina which the theist can use to explain anything without actually having to do any heavy lifting. Frankly, the God hypothesis is a handy mechanism for begging the question. “Everything needs a cause. Except, of course, God. Everything is contingent. Except, of course, God. Everything requires a mover. Except, of course, God.” It’s easy to win debates if you stipulate all the rules in your favor at the outset.
I’m no Dawkins apologist. Frankly, I found The God Delusion disappointing, as I find nearly every work by scientists trying to do philosophy. But criticize the man on legitimate grounds.
Don’t you find it somewhat amusing that in your accusations against Dawkins misrepresenting what Aquinas wrote, you provide no citation as to where you have pulled the Dawkins’ quote, thus allowing no way for anyone who has not memorized his work to check the accuracy of your representation?
Not that I am suggesting you would misquote him, but including a citation would be good form, especially given the type of attack you are launching.
Well, yes, you will, all the time. Otherwise, I agree. Dawkins may be right, and he may be wrong. He’s certainly wrong if he asserts that the existence of God can be disproven. He’s right when he says that the proposition that God exists is unnecessary to prove anything about the physical world. Aquinas is wrong when he asserts that the existence of God can be proven, and that His existence is necessary to explain anything about the physical world.
He does say god means infinite goodness. What a joke. Die with a sin and get an eternity of flame and pain. That is infinite goodness. I will pass.
In infinite regression god is not a logical conclusion. it is a man made construct to define away what makes people feel insecure. It provides an illogical answer to the unanswerable. it should only work on children.
Aquinas was smarter than you are, and he took atheiasm seriously hundreds of years before you were born.
He spelled out here, in just two paragraphs, the ENTIRE argument for atheism (yes, Aquinas managed to say in just two paragraphs what it’s taken Richard Dawkins 5 books to say):
**Article 3. Whether God exists?
Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word “God” means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.
Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God’s existence. **
There are EXACTLY two compelling arguments against the existence of the Christian God, and Aquinas wrestles with both. When Aquinas speaks of “infinite goodness,” he’s speaking just as an atheist would. He’s asking, on behalf of atheists, “If there’s a God who’s all good, why is there evil in the world?”
The second argument he considers is, “God is unnecessary. There are other, natural explanations for everything that exists.”
Understand, there are NO other real arguments against the existence of God! Richard Dawkins and others have killed thousands of trees and published a host of books, but ultimately, they have nothing more to say than:
“If there’s a God who’s all good, why do bad things happend,” and “Natural causes explain everything, and there’s no need for a God.”
See? You didn’t need to read a single atheist screed. Dawkins has nothing to say that the Church hasn’t heard a million times befor.