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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Aquinas's identification of the first cause with the God of religion goes beyond what the causal reasoning of the cosmological argument strictly establishes.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The cosmological argument is grounded in causal reasoning.
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    • 2.Identifying the first cause with a religiously described God requires theological commitments beyond causal inference.
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    • 3.Aquinas's move from first cause to God is motivated by his view that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology, not by the argument's internal logic.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The cosmological argument's conclusion is a metaphysically minimal 'uncaused cause,' logically compatible with impersonal principles like Spinoza's Deus sive Natura or the Neoplatonic One.
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    • 2.Attributes like omniscience, moral goodness, and personal agency are not entailed by causal primacy alone, as Hume demonstrates in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Part IV.
      ?

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    • 3.Aquinas's own Five Ways conclude only to a first mover and necessary being, requiring the Summa Theologiae's subsequent treatise De Deo Uno to supply the theistic attributes through separate argumentation.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The inference from 'causally first' to 'worthy of worship' commits what Findlay called the gap between ontological ultimacy and religious adequacy.
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    • 2.A causally sufficient originating principle need not possess intentionality, since brute physical singularities or abstract necessitarian structures can satisfy the regress-termination requirement without personhood.
      ?

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