Very interesting response. I had one thought as follows.. we tend to reify obviously and from my St Mike's philosophy courses I remember the caution to avoid treating "form and matter" as two more or less concrete sensible entities but to keep in mind that these concepts are two metaphysical principles necessary to make sense of our making sense of the world. The intellectual soul is the form of the body and who thinks we have a clear apprehension of what even the word "physical" means? Physics give us quantitative relationships but no resolution of the mystery. So while , as universals applied to singular events and things , I really can see the intellect and free will as "spiritual" or a principle of action not reducible to what we call the sensible for physical and accordingly do not think a full resolution of the interaction problem or even identity is likely achievable in our finite experience of our participated being grounded in the transcendent where the analogy of proper proportionality guides the mind. Our experience of chairs or trees reduces finally to a perception of ends... purposes.. goals of things. Their intelligibility is as ordered to ends grounded in the transcendent and necessarily transcendent. So all becomes somewhat intelligible mystery. This leaves room for truth, beauty and the good. I find naturalism almost cartoon level by comparison. Forgive my amateur deficiencies.

so many word games. so much decadent theo-philosophizing.

as dawkins says, there's not one jot of credible evidence for the existence of a supernatural deity.

all of this is pathetic navel-gazing and intellectual contortionism.

2) I am pleased that so many ground based inputs were shared in such polite way.

3) I have not the deep knowledge as many (all) of you demonstrated.

4) I would like to enrich my perspectives with your teachings and thoughts, please.

a) However, we have an high level of cognitive complexity because or not when we compare with other animals. We are not capable of understand what we do not know. How to understand what is a color (red, yellow...) if I was born blind?
How to understand quantum chemistry if I even do not understand quantum mechanics?

b) The cognitive revolution is very recent event (70000 years?). With it came the possibility of us to play and be amused with intangible concepts (stories) such power, God(s), money, state, nation, public limited company, science...
How can we master the use of such recent tool?

c) We switched off the mechanism of evolution by natural selection at least for the population of the planet that belongs to "haves" and in some parts of the "have nots" (China´s one child policy for example).

d) We are having capabilities of producing homo sapiens sapiens with AI (artificial intelligence).

So my questions are:

I) How will be the transition phase between the emerging of new homo sapiens sapiens (those with AI) and extinction of us?

II) What stories will guide us?

III) And the classical one, why is all of this?

☺

"The problem with Feser is that he asserts that the reason people like myself are unconvinced with the cosmological argument because we do not understand it. I don't find that to be very productive, especially whenever I ask questions about the argument I am given assertions and hand waving."

Well, for example, I said, "Aquinas never infers that the universe has a cause from the fact that its parts do. He rather argues that there is a purely actual first cause for each contingent thing, and later argues that those 'causes' would really just be one cause." You responded, "Aquinas's arguments implicitly invoke the premise that what is true of parts must be true of the whole." So I sketched why Aquinas argument doesn't (and doesn't need to) invoke the premise, and you then told me (without any citation of the argument) that it does. Now, in hindsight, it looks a lot like you were told by that article on Outshine the Sun that contingency arguments in general are structured like that one in that article (which explicitly invokes the premise you claimed Aquinas's invokes).

"The problem with Feser is that he asserts that the reason people like myself are unconvinced with the cosmological argument because we do not understand it."

I don't think that is what he asserts. Take, for example, his 'Cosmological Argument Roundup', which makes some claims that sort of resemble the ones you cite here. I'll quote him at length:

"Most people who comment on the cosmological argument demonstrably do not know what they are talking about. This includes all the prominent New Atheist writers. It very definitely includes most of the people who hang out in Jerry Coyne’s comboxes. It also includes most scientists. And it even includes many theologians and philosophers, or at least those who have not devoted much study to the issue. This may sound arrogant, but it is not. You might think I am saying “I, Edward Feser, have special knowledge about this subject that has somehow eluded everyone else.” But that is NOT what I am saying. The point has nothing to do with me. What I am saying is pretty much common knowledge among professional philosophers of religion (including atheist philosophers of religion), who – naturally, given the subject matter of their particular philosophical sub-discipline – are the people who know more about the cosmological argument than anyone else does.

"In particular, I think that the vast majority of philosophers who have studied the argument in any depth – and again, that includes atheists as well as theists, though it does not include most philosophersoutside the sub-discipline of philosophy of religion – would agree with the points I am about to make, or with most of them anyway. Of course, I do not mean that they would all agree with me that the argument is at the end of the day a convincing argument. I just mean that they would agree that most non-specialists who comment on it do not understand it, and that the reasons why people reject it are usually superficial and based on caricatures of the argument. Nor do I say that every single self-described philosopher of religion would agree with the points I am about to make. Like every other academic field, philosophy of religion has its share of hacks and mediocrities. But I am saying that the vast majority of philosophers of religion would agree, and again, that this includes the atheists among them as well as the theists."

So if you lump yourself in with people who have not taken to studying the argument in much depth, then perhaps he is saying that "people like you" (on average, roughly) don't understand the argument. He isn't saying that that is necessarily why you are not convinced by it; he is acknowledging that there are smart atheists who do understand the argument and reject it.

Read through, for example, Edward Feser's debate with Keith Parsons. Some of their older exchanges were a bit hostile and would probably turn you off; but recently they engaged in a debate on much friendlier terms. Some of the posts can be found here:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/search?q=parsons&updated-max=2011-01-12T18:33:00-08:00&max-results=20&start=4&by-date=false

"Do you think that the cosmological arguments prove the existence of an immaterial first mover?"

I do.

Though I should note, over time, I have been more inclined to favor arguments from finality like Aquinas's Fifth Way, as well as something like Barry Miller's contingency argument. I think that Aquinas's First Way is sound, but more controversial ground clearing is necessary to present it. I think, for example, that the objections from inertial motion and quantum mechanics that you mention are answerable, but for those other two arguments, they need not be answered.

"As far as I know, nobody actually believes the Scientism that Feser is attacking."

The authors he critiques do: Ross and Ladyman, Alex Rosenberg, Lawrence Krauss. Some of them explicitly adopt the label scientism and explicitly make claims of the sort posters here hasten to disavow. (This is a common move in philosophy; soften one's position to be merely epistemic. But it's one that Feser critiques in his book.)

I am not sure about the other cosmological arguments you've vetted, but as far as the cosmological argument on the page you linked is concerned, it was designed to commit a fallacy, so that the fallacy could be called out.

I have been commenting on SN since the summer. We have probably had a cosmological argument every other week - I usually comment on those articles. SN is currently running a 6 part series on a contingency argument. I have voiced my issues with the arguments in every article. These are the cosmological arguments that leave me unconvinced.

I know there might be a bit of bad blood over this example, due to the harshness of the language in some of Feser's blog posts that were reposted here, but it is like refuting the argument with the premise "Everything has a cause".

The problem with Feser is that he asserts that the reason people like myself are unconvinced with the cosmological argument because we do not understand it. I don't find that to be very productive, especially whenever I ask questions about the argument I am given assertions and hand waving. Also, I find it rather irritating when says that Russell was ignorant of X instead of just saying that Russell was wrong about X and this is why.

I don't defend the argument here because it is pointless to defend in a combox when there are better treatments elsewhere, though I sympathize with the desire to see it. No one likes blank checks.

The problem with this is that the better treatments still leave unanswered questions. This is why I like forums like this one. If someone proposes an argument, I can ask the arguer for clarification for something I am unsure about. Let me ask you this. Do you think that the cosmological arguments prove the existence of an immaterial first mover?

I am referring to the same theory of act and potency to which Feser refers in this article and which he defends in his book(s). It isn't a testable theory in the sense that theories in the natural sciences are. (Hence Feser's arguments against scientism.)

Before Feser told me that I misunderstood the Cosmological arguments, I would have rejected them in two ways. Firstly, I would have noted that things can move without having a mover. According to Newtonian mechanics, an object continues on its path unless some impetus is given to change that path. Aristotle and Aquinas believed that an objects natural state is rest. Therefore, when they see objects in motion, they believe that something must have moved it away from its natural state of rest. This is incorrect. An object could just move in a straight line forever.

Secondly, I would note that Quantum Mechanics calls into question the theory of actuality and potency. The theory of act and potency arose from observations of the external world. Observations on motion and change. It is not a metaphysical principle immune to counterexample.

As far as I know, nobody actually believes the Scientism that Feser is attacking. I have been accused of being a believer in Scientism a few times on this forum and I find the scientism attack is usually leveled in place of actual arguments:

https://strangenotions.com/orwellian-analytics-christians-atheists-and-bad-statistics/#comment-1620360143

However, I am not a believer in scientism. Personally, I don't believe that nature neatly demarcates herself into the branches of metaphysics and science. Some problems are purely philosophical, but to say that truths discovered scientifically should not inform our philosophy would seem to do a great disservice to our philosophy .

Feser does argue against a loop of causes (kind of), but not on the basis that if you group them together they will still need a cause. It is rather that a vicious circle is not actually explanatory. (I qualify because it is not the circle or the infinite regress itself that is claimed to be problematic in Thomistic arguments, but rather the lack of explanation. Granting that there is an explanation, a Thomist would not deny that such things are possible.)

I am not sure about the other cosmological arguments you've vetted, but as far as the cosmological argument on the page you linked is concerned, it was designed to commit a fallacy, so that the fallacy could be called out. I know there might be a bit of bad blood over this example, due to the harshness of the language in some of Feser's blog posts that were reposted here, but it is like refuting the argument with the premise "Everything has a cause". I actually wouldn't be surprised if internet atheists had seen that argument defended by a theist somewhere, but certainly it hasn't been defended historically or professionally. (Well, actually, the modern rationalists, i.e. Descartes, Spinoza, and I think Leibniz, did defend arguments with that premise, and they claimed that God was 'self-caused', and that any other thing would could not be self-caused.)

I don't defend the argument here because it is pointless to defend in a combox when there are better treatments elsewhere, though I sympathize with the desire to see it. No one likes blank checks.

I am referring to the same theory of act and potency to which Feser refers in this article and which he defends in his book(s). It isn't a testable theory in the sense that theories in the natural sciences are. (Hence Feser's arguments against scientism.)

The reason I ask is that in the arguments that I have seen presented thus far, there is a flaw in the reasoning somewhere. For instance, in the series that is going on currently, it was argued that finite set of conditional beings need an unconditional being to exist. I pointed out that a set of contingent beings say A, B, and C could loop around so that A is contingent on B, B is contingent on C, and C is contingent on A. I was told that the contingent circle would also be contingent on something. This seems to commit the fallacy of composition.

Secondly, when it was shown that an infinite regress is impossible, one assumes a finite regress to show that the infinite regress is impossible.

I cannot make a substantial comment on your arguments without knowing what they are. I have seen enough of these cosmological arguments to have a general idea of what you are saying, but I am often told that when I reject a cosmological argument, I am rejecting a caricature.
What do you mean when you say "theory of act and potency"? Is this a testable theory that we could falsify with a counterexample from the physical universe? I'm told that realities have the potential to change (actualize), and they are only actualize by other realities. In big bang nucleosynthesis, what actualized the electons, protons, and neutrons potential to bond? To me it seems like a case of self-actualization.

I am not going to define 'contingent' and 'purely actual cause' here since we are talking about the fallacy of composition and (as I made it clear) that is not a full spelling-out of the argument. (But 'contingent', here, will mean something other than what many logicians would mean by that term. What is meant by a purely actual cause is, I think, best spelled out in a presentation of the argument along with the theory of act and potency. Feser's book on Aquinas would touch on those topics, for example.)

I really don't care to say that "the universe belongs to the set of things that must have a purely actual cause." I care to say that the universe is the mereological sum of natural substances, and each of those natural substances (where those, also, are understood in scholastic terms) has a purely actual cause, which is in fact the same purely actual cause in each case. That is, in my view, a sufficient sense of "creator of the universe".

Each individual contingent thing (it is argued) has a purely actual
cause. It is furthermore argued that any 'two' purely actual causes
would in fact be the same (Aquinas has three arguments for this.) So
each contingent thing in fact has the same purely actual cause. No
inference made from the contingency of the objects in the universe to
the contingency of the universe itself.

You have to precisely define what you mean by contingent and purely actual cause. What is the purely actual cause of the universe and how do we know that the universe belongs to the set of things that must have a purely actual cause?

Not a terrible article. It is a better attempt at responding to Feser than I have ever seen from an atheist reader from this site. Nevertheless:

1. As far as saying that it is "not always a fallacy" going, the charitable way to read my comments is as conceding that new premises relevant to the property in question need to be added (but may be implicit). For example, if someone appealed to a scientist X on a scientific topic Y, but did not add the premises "X is a relevant expert on Y" and "Relevant experts on Y are probably correct", it would still be improper to accuse that person of engaging in a fallacious appeal to authority.

2. I gave an argument by analogy to redness, but I also suggested that the inference is sound in the case of contingency and needing-a-cause. (Since the claim that a mereological sum of contingent things requires a cause, in general, is just as plausible as the claim that the contingent things require a cause. One can supplement this by consideration of causal chains and by arguing for the impossibility of vicious circles. I leave this as an exercise to the reader.)

But most importantly...

3. Aquinas's argument from contingency never makes this move, fallacious or otherwise. The argument in that article is, of course, a straw man designed specifically to be fallacious. This is the kind of crap Feser has taken issue with: on how many other philosophical topics, would you critique a class of arguments without quoting anyone, by appeal to a general argument form that is formally invalid? Literally no one would do that.

I spelled out why Aquinas's argument does not need to infer from the contingency of things in the universe to the contingency of the universe above. But I'll repeat myself. Each individual contingent thing (it is argued) has a purely actual cause. It is furthermore argued that any 'two' purely actual causes would in fact be the same (Aquinas has three arguments for this.) So each contingent thing in fact has the same purely actual cause. No inference made from the contingency of the objects in the universe to the contingency of the universe itself.