Josh, to be honest, I am not sure that your argument will invite believers to let-go of their faith. I am really not sure if it worthwhile the effort.

What I am sometimes wondering is what makes you and some of your colleagues so "apologetic" in your mission? It's useful to ask or to discuss for learning purposes, okay, but just for trying to pursuade someone that there is NO God - is this really worthwhile? Just a question.

And I agree with you that some arguments are better than others, but btw Aquinas is great and he gives credit to all sides. Sometimes he takes examples from nature - they are sometimes quite a bit off, but science made some progress, so that's okay.

"You can't legitimately argue that St. Aquinas blindly accepted Aristotle's teaching."

I didn't. Aquinas was trying to reconcile the two, serving two masters if you will. I would say the Church was a higher master for him, but that's what I said before. His religion dictated certain conclusions he had to 'prove'. Or can you point me to doctrinal points where he concluded Jesus or scripture were mistaken?

But it's quite a bold claim that "the Christian Creed purified it to be more consistent with the real and natural world" ! What in the Christian Creed improved on Aristotle with respect to the natural world? The Trinity? Transubstantiation? God nature and Man nature in the same thing? 'Perpetually' virgin births?

Aristotle's abstract intellectual unmoved mover(s) is the same as the Israelite god of sacrifices and magic displays is the same as a dead Palestinian preacher circa 30 AD?

Of course, there are contributions like 'impetus' from Christian thinkers in the pre-scientific era, just as Galileo and Newton were themselves Christians, seeing as almost everyone in Europe was a Christian. But it is pretty imaginative to find 'impetus' in the Bible. I've seen people try to argue that Christian doctrinal points forced people to concede that Aristotle could be wrong. That's kind of a tough argument to make with any surety, but regardless, it only reinforces the point that religion was dictating people's conclusions. Sometimes history proceeds with one bad idea dethroning another, that doesn't legitimize the second idea.

It was more like this: When the Christian West received the Greek writings from the Muslim world and translated them, Aristotle was revered pervasively by the scholars. It would have been silly of St. Thomas not to deal with Aristotle, but he did not accepted Aristotelian teaching without question. He corrected what he thought needed to be corrected while staying as true to it as possible, the same way scholars today advance knowledge.

Also, as an aside, the Catholics at the University of Paris rejected a long list of Aristotle's teaching because it did not jive with reason and revealed religion. One of the ideas they rejected was the idea that objects fall to the ground twice as fast if they are twice as heavy, something ancient Greeks and Muslims alike failed to note in daily life because they stayed so true to received teaching without challenging it. They also rejected the idea that celestial bodies were divine and magically moved, instead arguing that a natural forced moved them. The "impetus theory" led to Newton's first law of motion, and the birth of modern science.

Bottom line: You can't legitimately argue that St. Aquinas blindly accepted Aristotle's teaching. You can legitimately argue that the Christian Creed purified it to be more consistent with the real and natural world.

Far be it for me to argue that Catholicism has never changed its teachings or approach. But Aquinas's religion is still his religion, regardless of whether his version of it differed from other peoples religions in the same tradition. Aquinas seems directed throughout his arguments at reaching certain conclusions essential to his faith, or simply taking them for granted. These are things like the importance of scripture, the reliability of the Apostolic tradition, God's omnipotence, authority, goodness, knowledge, etc.

He was of course deeply impressed with Aristotle, and his project was to syncretize his revered Philosopher with his revealed faith.

Brandon,
I think perhaps you overestimate my 'commitment' here. I'm not even in the top five commenters even months after 3 of those five left the site. It's just a hobby I've taken up for a little while.

Why would an atheist determinist try to change peoples minds? Well, first put aside that atheism has nothing directly to do with determinism. But being a determinist only means that if one could take an outside-the-system perspective, then everything would be predictable/determined. One piece of the system (myself) can certainly influence another (some reader) and I don't have the information to know whether or not I will be successful.

I don't know what you want by 'ultimate' meaning, but it is meaningful to me. I care to have the argument, I care what people believe and what they do. What more needs to be said? Now the actions of religious people definitely affect me because I care about other people. E.g., no one will prevent me from having an abortion but I don't think other people should be prevented either. Now religion is a big and multi-faceted problem. It's not like I can just get the pope into an argument and solve the problem if he concedes a point. It's like an election, my actions individually are small and perhaps irrelevant, but if it is a worthwhile cause (to me) then it is worthwhile to work for the right side of it. Is Islam a bigger problem than Catholicism? Arguably, and I'm equally critical of its followers. But look how hard I have to work with people like yourself who claim to want rational argument and share more of a cultural background with me! Will I make more headway trying to draw a pro-Jihad zealot into a debate on causality? There just isn't an obvious 'best' strategy to adopt, so I'm working with one that is currently convenient.

Also, I probably wouldn't be doing this if I saw no hope and hated every minute of it. I'm a critically minded person and I enjoy a good argument, even when I don't think the opponent has a leg to stand on. There is something fun about dismantling a bad position. There is also no reason it shouldn't be fun, which is why I think you make a mistake in trying to discourage any and all wit, snark, irony, sarcasm etc. Finding a clever way to say something is part of the process, and pointing out a flaw using slightly indirect means isn't a gratuitous insult. But the most important thing is: don't ignore the criticism because of the format.

You say criticism is 'unproductive and unhelpful'. But if, for the sake of argument, you are wrong, and if I want you to change your mind, what else could be productive and helpful? If you go to a website like Dawkins's or Jerry Coyne or others you can find plenty of testimony from people who changed their minds and credit it to the critical work of such outspoken atheists. I'm very much for charitable dialogue, which is why I try to correctly represent another persons views and to honestly present my own without dodges, but that doesn't entail ignoring the errors another person makes. I'm happy to learn from others, but, well, I don't run into much new in the arguments here and in particular, I don't run into arguments that are good enough to make me change my positions. I think, if you don't want as critical an exchange, then you will have to stop approaching this as a Catholic apologist. You don't seem to treat most of these topics as open questions which you wish to discuss, but as defenses of definitive Catholic positions, which, allegedly, can be demonstrated by reason.

I know tone can be hard to read through comments, but I'm not angry with you, although I'm of course occasionally frustrated with intransigence. This is the type of conversation that will not seem fruitful to you until it does, if and when you change your mind on anything. (Or I do.) C'est la vie.

"If I were a convinced atheist, and adopted the worldview that flows from that conviction, I doubt I would waste my time on a site like this when I could be engaged in so many other worthwhile activities."

Brandon, help me out here. When somebody wishes to learn what this site is about, they find the following:

StrangeNotions.com is the central place of dialogue between Catholics and atheists. It's built around three things: Reason. Faith. Dialogue. Each day you'll find articles, videos, and rich comment box discussion concerning life's Big Questions.

Yet with Josh, we learn that you don't understand why he would waste his time on a site like this. I'm curious, did you only want unconvinced atheists? Did you only want mutually reassuring discussion between these two factions? You complain that Josh is like a cranky food critic, yet have hosted numerous articles that atheists have found condescending, snarky, patronizing, etc.

Come now, you wonder why he spends so much time trying to tear down Catholicism while arguably spending more of your own time trying to do the same to atheism. Those of us who have followed this site long enough already know that when you say that you want to foster dialogue, what you really mean is converting atheists to Catholicism or defending the faith. Fair enough, what with it being your site and all. However, you don't see us insinuating what else might be motivating you. How about you return the favor to Josh and the rest of us?

PS. As comments such as this tend to illicit the usual "why are you here?" from you, I'll say that I find the discussion enjoyable, often educational, and occasionally hilarious.

Yes, again, I agree that in general, whether or not something is difficult to understand has no bearing on its truth claims.
Maybe we are conflating two distinct subjects; the existence of some kind of prime mover, and the truth claims of christians. The former claims are so abstract, since they deal with the beginning of time itself, which is such a mind-bender! The latter claims, I would suggest, are much much much more specific, yet much more extraordinary, since they have to do with suspending the laws of nature that we all take for granted. Those claims require extraordinary evidence. There isn't any, beyond hearsay and speculation. It is to those claims, specifically of that of a god-incarnate who defies death and flies up to heaven, that do not benefit from referrals to medieval theologians. Theologians, though smart for their time, knew so much less about anthropology, comparative religion, human psychology, evolution, etc.
Theology defending orthodox christianity rests on supernatural claims and the belief in evidence unseen (aka faith). Not the same as science. It just rings false to me that a perfect, benevolent god would require reading dense theological tomes for searching humans. Surely such a god would make himself much more available and believable... the believer usually mumbles about god's mysterious ways. Not convincing at all to one who doesn't believe.

"You seem to be asserting that christian dogma (including claims of ancient miracles) are as provable as the mathematical equations of quantum physicists!?"

Sorry for the confusion. This is not what I was asserting. My point was that the complexity of a topic has no bearing on whether it's true. Just because philosophical argument for God may seem difficult to comprehend, that's not reason to dismiss them any more than dismissing quantum physics for its own complexity. Wouldn't you agree?

I would question that Aquinas desired "to reach the predetermined conclusions of his religion" given that he faced very substantial condemnation from the Catholic fundamentalists of his day.

The small number of Catholic thinkers today (are there any?) who reject Thomism and its underlying Aristotelianism is evidence that what Church teaches is actually quite malleable over time.

Very funny, Steven, thank you.

So that's the way Dawkins can be converted.