ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this episode of Apostate’s Imprimatur, Colin and I react to Jesusandwhatnot’s video titled "How the Communist Manifesto Proves God's Existence," explanation of Aquinas’s famous Five Ways: the arguments from motion, efficient causality, contingency, degrees of perfection, and final causality.
We dig into act and potency, infinite regress, first causes, divine simplicity, Aristotle, physics vs. metaphysics, and the assumptions hiding underneath these arguments. Even if we grant some version of a “first cause” or “unmoved mover,” how do we get from there to an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving personal God, much less the God of Christianity?
Along the way, we ask whether Aquinas’s arguments describe reality, whether confusing someone with technical philosophical language actually proves anything, and why arguments that have been debated for centuries are still sometimes presented as obvious and uncontested proofs of God.
Noah's original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUOZcbNeKIE
00:00 Who Is Jesusandwhatnot
09:33 Aquinas Five Ways Intro
10:26 Motion Proof Explained
13:47 Potency and Ontology Debate
26:10 Causation Chain and Regress
31:50 Physics Pushback and Forces
34:03 Nothing Truly Begins
36:32 From Prime Mover to God
39:46 Special Pleading and Language
41:02 Perfection Smuggled In
52:29 Efficient Cause Argument
54:23 Physics vs Metaphysics Definitions
01:01:59 Infinite Regress and Cosmology
01:06:18 Contingency and Nothingness
01:08:09 Third Way Rehash
01:12:58 Logic Above God
01:16:07 Blendered Proofs Critique
01:17:22 Degrees of Perfection Setup
01:20:49 Fire Causes Heat Debunked
01:23:13 Nominalism and Genus Problems
01:25:26 Goodness Category Errors
01:34:00 Begging the Maximum Cause
01:35:44 Fifth Way Explained
01:36:59 Teleology Meets Evolution
01:39:10 Ends Are Human Uses
01:45:38 Special Pleading Intelligence
01:49:36 Modern Physics Pushback
01:54:33 Summa Ethics Detour
01:57:52 Thomism As Party Trick
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