Do Atheists Misrepresent Aquinas' Five Ways?

There is no reason to believe that it is any specific god.

There's reason to believe that it's the God of the Western monotheistic tradition. Whether the Jews, the Christians, the Muslims, or someone else is right about their additional beliefs about that God is another matter. Aquinas makes his case for Christianity elsewhere in the Summa Theologica and in other writings.

there is nothing i see in any of them that would require the thing called god to continue in it's existence after the start point of the universe.

Well, for one, Aquinas' argument has nothing to do with the starting point of the universe, so this seems very weird. His argument concludes in a first sustaining cause, such that if it were to stop existing, everything were to stop existing, so it has to continue to exist. Luckily we need not fear, since one of the characteristics of that God is eternal existence.

The entire argument works equally well if i use it to prove the existence of perfect universe creating pixies.

Not pixies in the plural, since God is one and simple. But sure, if that universe creating pixie, or the FSM were immaterial, omnipotent, unchanging, essentially good and perfect, among other things.

The entire argument seems to be nothing more than an attempt to define god into existence by latching on to a bunch of things that couldn't be explained and claiming it's god.

On the contrary, this is nothing like the arguments Aquinas gives.

Aquinas states all things are caused as part of his first cause argument.

No, he doesn't.

There are events that happen on the quantum level that have no discernible cause, the coming into existence of virtual particles and certain decay events in radioactive materials are examples.

But these do have causes in the sense relevant to Aquinas, since these things only happen under certain conditions, like the existence of certain quantum fields, or radioactive material. As such, these events depend on the existence of those things and are thus caused by them.

The proof from design falls apart once you understand evolution and natural selection.

Very compelling counterargument, this. Very interesting too, what with the lack of premises.

The Argument from Gradation

I don't really understand this argument myself, but one things that's important to note here is that perfection is a technical term, with a long history in philosophy. So that a lack of consensus among lay folk about what is perfect in an everyday sense is entirely irrelevant.

Why is it a single god?

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1011.htm#article3

Why does this god have to have any of the attributes that are attributed to the claimed deity?

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm

What evidence or justification exists for believing that it would still exist today?

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm

/r/DebateReligion Thread