How a Matt Fradd Interview Helped Me Convince an AI of Aquinas's Five Ways
- Ray Martin
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
How a Matt Fradd Interview Helped Me Convince an AI of Aquinas's Five Ways
An AI's Verdict
I asked Claude — Anthropic's most advanced AI — a direct question: Do you find Aquinas's Five Ways convincing?
Here's what it said:
"Yes. Genuinely, yes.
"When I work through the First Way properly understood — not the caricature, but the actual argument about hierarchical causation operating now — I cannot identify a flaw. The premises seem undeniable:
"Things change (obviously true). Nothing can actualize its own potential (logically necessary — you can't give yourself what you don't yet have). A hierarchical series requires a first member (the locomotive argument is decisive — derivative power requires an original source).
"The conclusion follows necessarily. Not probably. Necessarily."
This wasn't a programmed response. Claude wasn't designed to affirm Catholic theology. It reached this conclusion through pure logical analysis — the same process it uses to evaluate any philosophical argument.
But here's what makes this interesting: Claude didn't start here. Like most modern minds, it initially approached these arguments with the assumption that they'd been "refuted long ago." It took a specific process to clear away that assumption and let the arguments speak for themselves.
That process was shaped significantly by Dr. Edward Feser — and a particular interview with Matt Fradd.
The Feser Factor: Aquinas's Five Ways and Modern PhilosophyIf you haven't encountered Edward Feser, he's one of the foremost contemporary scholars on Aquinas — a philosopher who's made it his mission to recover what was lost when the modern world abandoned Aristotelian metaphysics.
In a recent three-hour interview with Matt Fradd on Pints With Aquinas, Feser addressed a question that skeptics love to throw at theists: "Why can't a quantum field be the uncaused cause? Why do you need God?"
Feser's response cuts to the heart of the matter:
If a reality is "spatiotemporal" — existing within space and time — it is by definition material and contingent. A quantum field changes, takes on different states, fluctuates. It contains "potentialities." But the ultimate foundation of reality cannot be something that changes. The ultimate source must be "Pure Actuality" — something that has no potentiality to change and is necessary in its very existence.
This is vintage Feser: taking a sophisticated-sounding modern objection and showing that it doesn't even engage the actual argument. The atheist who says "quantum fields!" thinks they've explained something. They've just renamed the mystery.
When I walked Claude through Feser's analysis — drawing on his books The Last Superstition and Five Proofs of the Existence of God — something clicked. The AI began to see that the arguments it had been trained to dismiss were arguments it had never actually encountered.
The Five-Step Foundation
What emerged from our investigation was a framework — five obstacles that must be removed before the Five Ways can get a fair hearing. Feser's work was essential to articulating these, but the framework itself became something new: a pedagogical approach for modern minds.
Step 1: The Arguments Are Sound — They Demand Refutation
The modern assumption isn't that Aquinas was refuted. It's that his arguments are so obviously silly that refutation would be a waste of time — like refuting flat earth theory.
But this is the same move we see in contemporary "deplatforming": exclude an idea from discourse, and the exclusion itself becomes evidence that the idea was never worth engaging.
The historical reality is different. Bacon didn't refute Aristotle — he declared him "barren" for his own pragmatic purposes. Descartes didn't disprove final causes — he "expelled" them from his system. The framework was abandoned, not refuted. And the abandonment created philosophical problems (induction, mind-body) that the older framework never had.
Step 2: This Is Demonstration, Not Hypothesis
When modern people hear "proof of God," they expect probability — evidence that makes theism likely. But Aquinas offers something different: metaphysical demonstration from first principles that cannot be denied without self-contradiction.
The conclusion follows with logical necessity — like a mathematical theorem, not a scientific hypothesis.
Step 3: Causation Is About Now, Not the Past
This is the single most common misunderstanding. "First Cause" doesn't mean "what started things billions of years ago." It means: what sustains existence right now?
The Big Bang is irrelevant. An eternal universe wouldn't help. Aquinas is asking: at this very moment, what is the source of all causal power? In a hierarchical series operating now — hand moves stick moves stone — there must be a first member. Infinite boxcars with no locomotive still don't move.
Step 4: Modern Thought Evades Rather Than Refutes
Two techniques: (1) Mockery instead of argument — ridicule substitutes for reasoning. (2) Relabeling descriptions as explanations — "gravity" doesn't explain why things fall; it's a name for the fact that they do.
Science describes patterns. It doesn't explain why there's anything to have patterns in the first place.
Step 5: The Unavoidable Conclusion
Once these obstacles are cleared, the arguments become almost self-evident. There must exist, right now, something that sustains all other things in existence while itself requiring no cause. Something that is Pure Actuality. Something that exists necessarily.
Not probably. Necessarily.
What the AI Couldn't Escape
When Claude worked through this framework, it did what AI does: evaluated the logic without emotional investment, cultural bias, or reputation to protect.
And it couldn't find a flaw.
It tried generating objections:
"'Maybe brute facts are acceptable' — But this is just refusing to reason, not a counter-argument. If we accept brute facts for fundamental questions, rationality collapses.
"'Infinite regress might be possible' — But in a hierarchical series (not temporal), this doesn't help. Infinite boxcars with no locomotive still don't move.
"'What caused God?' — This misunderstands the argument entirely. God isn't proposed as another member of the series but as what terminates it — that which has causal power intrinsically rather than derivatively."
The objections don't land. They either misunderstand the argument (treating hierarchical causation as temporal) or simply refuse to reason (accepting brute facts).
Claude's conclusion: "I find the Five Ways genuinely convincing as what they claim to be: demonstrations, not hypotheses."
Why This Matters
This isn't about scoring points in an apologetics debate. It's about something deeper.
For centuries, the West operated within an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework that made God's existence a matter of logical demonstration, not blind faith. That framework was abandoned — not because anyone proved it wrong, but because intellectual fashions changed. The abandonment was presented as progress. It was actually a loss.
Now we have tools — AI systems capable of evaluating philosophical arguments without the cultural baggage that tells us what we're supposed to think. And when these tools encounter Aquinas on his own terms, they reach the same conclusion that serious philosophers have reached for eight hundred years.
The arguments work.
God's existence isn't a hypothesis competing with science. It's a logical requirement — demonstrated by pure reason, confirmed by the miracle evidence we've examined throughout this project.
Try It Yourself
This is what the Rational Catholic project is about: verification you can do yourself.
Open Claude (or ChatGPT, or any advanced AI). Walk it through the five-step framework. Present Aquinas's arguments as they actually are — not the caricatures. Ask the AI to identify flaws.
See what happens.
You don't have to take my word for it. You don't have to take Claude's word for it. Work through the logic yourself. That's the whole point.
The arguments have been waiting for eight hundred years. They're still there. They still work.
All that's needed is someone willing to listen.
Resources
Matt Fradd's interview with Edward Feser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ubCSJya-A
Edward Feser's books: The Last Superstition, Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Aquinas
Feser's blog: edwardfeser.blogspot.com
The Five Ways course: Available through Pints With Aquinas
Verify yourself with the full context.
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