The Different Starting Points of Aquinas' Arguments

Dawkins doesn't see that because he just doesn't really know anything about the philosophical background within which Aquinas is writing. The first way again starts from the idea of change and the analysis of change as the actualization of potential. Second way has a very different starting point. It's arguing from the existence of what Aristotle calls efficient cause, the generating cause of a thing. And in the third way, he's arguing from contingency and necessity and from generation and corruption. Those are not just different ways of saying the same thing. What one might say about one of those arguments wouldn't necessarily apply to the other.