Still, I notice that many such skeptics know some math, physics, and formal logic -- but they may be short on metaphysical insight. I suspect the reason is that they are essentially scientific materialists, which makes it hard for them to grasp really spiritual insights.

I did not read his entire blog, but the following sentences caught my eye:

"So one can easily grant the Thomist the claim that God’s eternal will never changes, but this does nothing to assuage the problem. God still has to wait to sustain future moments of time, and God still has to wait to perform certain actions until those future moments become present. This is not something that a timeless God can do. A timeless God cannot wait to perform actions. A timeless God cannot wait to be present to, and sustain, yet-to-exist moments of time."

Perhaps he says something elsewhere that could correct my impression, but it seems to me that here he is unintentionally inserting the "timeless" God into time.

If God has to "wait to sustain future moments in time" and "wait to perform certain actions until those future moments become present," then he may be timeless in that he is unchanging and without beginning or end, but I don't think the author grasps the full meaning of God being "eternal."

Eternity means the simultaneous and complete possession of infinite life. We have trouble grasping how the eternal "now" occurs, and so, we say God "simultaneously" has infinite life. That word means "all at the same time," so even we have trouble expressing God's eternity without including a very misleading predicate.

But since God experiences his creation "all at the same time," his being outside of time does NOT have him looking at time going by and waiting to learn things or act on them. God does not wait for anything.

Time and space are limitations of creatures, not God. The author's misconception of the divine eternity probably permeates and undermines his entire blog's thesis.

But, as I said, I have not read the whole blog.

My article on eternity in God might be of interest:
https://strangenotions.com/god-eternity-free-will-and-the-world/

Do not hesitate to contact me again if I may be of help.

Edit: Here is the article you really must read if you want to understand how the reality of temporal succession can be defended without being forced into accepting either the A-theory OR B-theory of time:

http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/philtheo/temporal/temporal2.htm

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/divine-eternity/god-and-real-time/

Warning: It does not analyse the proofs with intent to test their validity, but rather is examining the function of the principle, "The per accidens necessarily implies the per se," in each of several contexts, of which the Five Ways is the main area in which it is tested.

As to ranking the Five Ways, just looking at them makes it rather evident that the most detailed exposition is in the First Way, which he tells us begins with a datum that is "most certain and evident to the senses," motion. So that appears to be the most rigorously presented of the ways -- quickly "backed up" by the Second Way from causality. Both address explicitly the problem of infinite regress, which the Third Way simply adopts for itself.

But one could write a book on the Five Ways, as in fact I have done. That makes it hard for me to comment on them, since I am tempted to open up too many aspects for a brief answer to your question.

The Third Way is most difficult and simply does not seem to work as it stands. One problem is that the Latin manuscript used by most translators is itself in error, leading to a complete non sequitor in its logic. Most readers simply substitute their own version of an argument from the possible to the Necessary Being.

The Fourth Way, like all the others, presupposes a ton of metaphysical presuppositions, and even makes strange statements to our ears, like saying that fire is the hottest of all things. Still, reworked in its metaphysical content, I find it one of the most satisfying arguments -- but, you have to read it conjointly with the argument in the De Ente et Essentia..

As I indicate above, the Fifth Way seems most incomplete and in need of shoring up with other matter.

I am not trying to undermine the Five Ways, but we have to understand what St. Thomas was doing there and how much material from other of his writings needs to be consulted in order to understand fully the force of the arguments he so briefly outlines in the Five Ways.

My greatest concern is that those who read and criticize the Five Ways do so while holding them strictly to the wording of the ways themselves -- and then reject them as invalid or simply false. They need to be read as guidelines of argumentation that are able to be buttressed by the rest of St. Thomas's metaphysics -- so as to become a definitive proof or set of proofs.

Also note that he merely gives a nominal definition of God at the end of each way, saying that this is what all men call God. Only later does he fill out the ontological content of the conclusions with other arguments by which he finally shows that in each case this is the God of Christian tradition.

Johnson discusses how he thinks Aquinas stratified the five arguments together into a whole, in which each "way" builds on the previous, so that the Five Ways together look at the question of God's existence from perspectives that themselves are ranked. "The intention of Thomas is best brought out by a reading of the Five Ways in their entirety and in their context. When we do that, we see that Thomas intends for all the arguments to be compelling for all readers ... Each of the Five Ways starts with a particular effect, under whose formality it attains to a corresponding first cause, which is then and only then called 'God.' Having done all that, we are not just left with five, repeated claims of 'God exists.' Rather, we possess five different enunciations which, while all including God's existence in them, are such as to be later used as formally distinct premises in arguments that attain to the various divine attributes in accordance with their own demonstrative capacity." ~ Johnson pp. 109, 115

Correct. It probably isn’t going to help. So instead we discuss why it doesn’t help. Then we meta discuss that.

Meta culpa.

Mike

>"Not all naturalists reduce all explanatory factors to a thing's tiniest parts. Many naturalists take into account things' typical structures."

The real question is whether or not macroscopic entities constitute substantial unities. That is what I addressed in this article:
https://strangenotions.com/how-we-know-the-human-soul-is-immortal/

The question of "retrospective causal efficacy" of the final cause reduces, in my judgment, to assessing the intelligibility of there having to be a sufficient reason why an agent tends to achieve a given end and why it does so from the very beginning of its motion. Absent any relation to the end as actually achieved, I do not see how one can maintain the reality of a needed sufficient reason.

The only alternative to the final cause posed by naturalism appears to appeal to the efficient causality of the natural agent. But, as I explain above, efficient causality alone can explain why something is produced, but not the intelligibility of why that something must tend to a given end.

That "other" aspect requires a real causal influence "pointing" toward something that does not yet exist, but which really will exist in the future. When you get to the "future point," you can look back and say that the natural agent's former state is the explanation. But the problem is that when you examine the "explanation," you find that was was needed was a causal influence aimed at producing the now "present" state.

This makes the reality of the present, looking back at its past, intelligible only if a real causal influence in the past was operative and moving the agent to the present state. Since now, the formerly future, now present state, is an actual reality, so must have been the causal influence oriented to the now present state's production.

Hence, the tendency to the end is grounded in a real causal influence that belongs not to mere production, but also to really moving toward the end before the end is actually achieved.

I think this line of reasoning gets closer to explaining why the end must exist intentionally before it does so extramentally, since when you focus on the end as actually achieved, it is no longer just a mere possibility, but a reality that can only be explained by a sufficient reason in the past that was actually aimed at its fruition.

I have no text presently at hand where St. Thomas claims such "retrospective power" for the final cause, but I think the inferences made by Thomists today are supported by St. Thomas' claim that there must be some intellect present to account for natural bodies that lack knowledge reaching their ends.

Edit: Distinction: While the final causality present in the natural agent is retrospectively discerned, it exists and operates prospectively in the natural agent at the point at which it begins its agency.