Thread by @EveKeneinan

Yes they do.

1 Reality is known to have a cause-effect structure.
2 There cannot be an infinite regress of causes.
3 So there is a first cause.
4 This is what is called “God.”

3 validly follows from 1 & 2.

https://twitter.com/Conserberal/status/1354530682496823299

4 is just a term stipulation. If you want to admit there is God, but you personally won’t call God “God”, that’s changes nothing in reality. Not calling something by its proper designation doesn’t alter reality. So go nuts with *that* one.

If you deny 1, cause and effect, you undercut not just that argument, but all arguments, since you are implicitly denying any connection between reasons and evidence and what they show. If you want to deny reason, just to avoid God, good luck with that one.

If you deny 2, you are denying reason in another way, namely, denying the principle of reason itself, since an infinite regress cannot have a reason or ground, each “reason” for something being deferred to “the one prior,” so no ground is reached.

So your options are
Attack premise 1 by rejecting reason.
Attack premise 2 by rejecting reason.
Attack premise 3 by rejecting logic, and so reason.
Attack conclusion C nominally, by admitting there is a God but “winning” by refusing to call God “God,” which is a sham “victory."

Obviously the version of the First Cause argument I laid out is its barest logical schema. To present the argument fully and substantially would take many more steps, but the bare bones schema is still sound.

Here’s Ed Feser’s rather longer schema of Aquinas’ argument. Note this is *still* just a schema, albeit much longer than the one I gave.