...it's important to remember that Aristotle was the greatest philosopher in history, at least up to St. Thomas' time...
Now you've stepped in it! I'm going to have to drag out one of my favorite Alfred North Whitehead quotes:
"Aristotle dissected fishes with Plato's thoughts in his head."
Whitehead had a real gift for the apposite (slight) exaggeration. Here's another famous one which is relevant in the present context:
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
I stand with Whitehead on this question.
I beg to differ with Albert North Whitehead...
You have an interesting pantheon, snarks. Would Alfred North Whitehead be a major prophet or just one of the twelve, so to speak (so long as you feel content to make poetic allusion suffice for critical analysis, which is all ANW is adding so far).
I don't take Dawkins or Darwin as infallible (and I don't take St. Thomas as infallible either, just less likely to err).
Dawkins steps well over the bounds of discourse in this and, by denying the contingency of the cosmos we occupy, severely damages intellectual inquiry. If Darwin has anything right, it will be within the context of a theory which provide some kind of cosmological basis for the rules of development he enunciates to work.
I can accept just one infinite unbounded system: a creating transcendant Being, to whom (can't be to which) the plane of reality we jointly occupy is completely subject.
Whether there is also need for that Being to provide the means for our reality to subsist is a further question, but I don't want to push you past your endurance in this.
Me too, snarks. Me too!!!
No offense Aquinasfan, but Plato is Numero Uno!!! :^)