Defense
The 20th century Christian apologist Richard Swinburne argued in his book, Simplicity as Evidence of Truth, that these arguments are only strong when collected together, and that individually each of them is weak.
Philosopher Keith Ward claims in his book Why there almost certainly is a God: Doubting Dawkins that Dawkins mis-stated the five ways, and thus responds to a straw man. Ward defended the utility of the five ways (for instance, on the fourth argument he states that all possible smells must pre-exist in the mind of God, but that God, being by his nature non-physical, does not himself stink) whilst pointing out that they only constitute a proof of God if one first begins with a proposition that the universe can be rationally understood. Nevertheless he argues that they are useful in allowing us to understand what God will be like given this initial presupposition.
More recently Edward Feser has argued in his book Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide that Dawkins, Hume, Kant, and most modern philosophers do not have a correct understanding of Aquinas at all; that the arguments are often difficult to translate into modern terms; and that the Five Ways are just a brief summary directed towards beginners and must be understood in the context of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Aquinas’ other writings. He argues that Aquinas’ five ways have never been adequately refuted when thus considered.
Read more about this topic: Quinque Viae, Controversy
Famous quotes containing the word defense:
“Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.”
—Sun Tzu (6th–5th century B.C.)
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”
—Barry Goldwater (b. 1909)
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)