There is a very logical answer to that. This piece of obfuscationist fancy was made by a follower of a belief that had not advanced since the Dark Ages. So I'll leave you with something a little more modern and i think a lot closer to the truth.
"Faith", is the last resort of those who do not wish to face the truth. - Friedrich Nietzsche, 1884 - 1900
Warning ! Off topic tangent, (since I am a dupe who easily falls prey to this type of flaming) !
I just felt the need to correct a bit the wrong impression about Thomas Aquinas that some younger or more impressionable forum members may formulate for themselves.
(I absolutely hate
philosophy myself, mostly because I am too lazy to try to figure out what those men one calls professional philosophers mean by using abstract words one needs to actually use time to look up in dictionaries and encyclopedias before figuring out what they really meant, plus it is my admittedly naive, and also probably superficial and judgmentally biased opinion that reading or thinking too much about
philosophy, especially while smoking pot at the same time, can be actually quite detrimental to one's health, plus I also think that many
philosophical quotes have not only been misunderstood, but also never adequately explained to the general population, and also possibly misused in unethical ways).
What I wanted to say about
Thomas Aquinas was that, although indeed he was a
Christian monk, he is also considered a very important scholarly philosopher in the history of the liberal arts discipline named
philosophy, and that he is actually considered as someone who carried forward and explained for the
Middle Ages historical period living people, (who indeed were living in what is also called the "Dark Ages", or obscurantist times), the teachings of another important philosopher who lived even way earlier in ancient Greece, named
Aristotle.
I am aware that Thomas Aquinas may have argued with some of Aristotle's views, but this is not unusual among philosophers, because I have noticed, by reading mostly on wikipedia, that since the very beginning and up to our days, most professional philosophers are typically very
narcissistic, (in the sense that most actually enjoy gazing at their own navel more than in an actual mirror), and each seems to wish to be recognised as the sole unique holder of "the truth" and of "understanding", and that all other philosophers are or were a little dumber than them, if not totally wrong. And, although I haven't studied this in depth, I do not really have a particular reason to doubt that Thomas Aquinas, although a Christian, may make exception to this observation of mine.
Whether one argues or agrees with Thomas Aquinas, or Aristotle, or
Kierkegaard, or
Nietzsche for that matter, was NOT the point of my convoluted post. The point was that I wish to actually
confess that I myself have held a bad opinion for quite a long time about Nietzsche just based on the prejudice that he wrote that totally stupid quote "God is dead", (as if God could ever be, if He existed, a biological organism that lives and dies), and the fact that he suffered from chronic severe mental ilness, not to mention that, while he himself despised anti-semitic people, he seems to have influenced another philosopher, named
Martin Heidegger, who not only later became a member of the Nazi Party, but also had, while being married, inappropriate and unethical sexual relations with his female students, regardless of their religion, at least one of whom,
Hannah Arendt, was unfortunately adversely affected, IMHO, terribly, because of that. But then, more recently, spurred by a challenge, I read
some more on wikipedia, and I found out that not only Nazis, but also French Socialists have acclaimed Nietzsche, and not only was he liked by
Mussolini (a fascist), but also by
General de Gaulle (who, I believe it would be safe to say, hated the French socialists), and even Mr. President
Theodore Roosevelt (a
progressivist Republican, who was the gentlest one of all and who I doubt hated anyone, except maybe fools, and surely extremists & psychopaths)...so that is to say...I had then to slightly modify my initial prejudice held against that philosopher, and the way I did that was to say to myself that, after all, he was just a human being like everyone else, thus prone to error, and to illness, just like Thomas Aquinas was, or just like you and me...
...the final point being that I do not think it is ethical to use quotes from professional philosophers to make
political points unless one is actually a
political philosophy student engaged in a debate which counts for one's GPA, because in other contexts then lazy people like myself have to do a lot of volunteer work on-line in order to:
1. encourage people to read from wikipedia before they utter one more word in public on the Internet, where I wish to reming everyone that underage persons may be lurking, and I think there may be a risk of unethically biasing young people's brains by pitting Aquinas vs. Nietzsche, or religion against atheism, when this whole thread is mostly about political opinions on the mass media;
2. create scholarly kindergarden level diversions in order to prevent yet another "ideological" Internet forum "flame war" (
I hate fire);
3. encourage everyone to not be afraid to take philosophy courses for college credits, but PLEASE take everything they say with 3 big grains of salt, and DO NOT use cannabis while researching for the term papers.
