Thomas Aquinas

This post is primarily a response to an angry anonymous commentor, but it is also a look into the mind of a prominent theist by the name of Thomas Aquinas. Here are links to information about him that I will refer to throughtout this post Quinquae Viae /// Thomas Aquinas

So, Aquinas believed that there are two pathways to truth: natural revelation and supernatural revelation. Supernatural revelation can be broken down into three different categories: Holy Scripture, Magisterium, and Prophets. Natural revelation consists of information available to people through their human nature such as interacting with physical objects or other people. However, closer examination reveals that the categories Aquinas dubbed natural and supernatural revelation are one in the same. Holy scripture refers to the bible or other texts of a religious nature while magisterium is the authority of those high up in the religious hierarchy such as bishops and ministers. Prophets similarly are people such as Jesus or moses who have been historically documented to have existed as humans. Thus, all the categories of "supernatural revelation" are merely physical objects (the bible,) or people (jesus bishops) and would fall under the category of natural revelation which is knowledge learned through regular human experiences like interpersonnal communication and manipulating physical objects.

The fact that Aquinas could form a dichotomy out of a single thing shows a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance. Furthermore, Aquinas is regarded as an empiricist yet his work the Quinquae Viae does not reflect this school of thought. Please read the Quinquae Viae and you will notice that while the argument is valid, the premises are not coming from experimental evidence. Thus this is inconsistent with the thought of an empiricist. Also, the premises are in no way backed up and the truth of a vast majority of them could be debated so the arguments made in the Quinquae Viae are simply unsound.