Aquinas' Five Proofs of God's Existence

[Dream]

I recently read a great book explaining the 5 ways in which St. Thomas Aquinas proves the existence of God. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with it, so I found a good summary online.

First Way: The Argument From Motion

St. Thomas Aquinas, studying the works of the Greek philsopher Aristotle, concluded from common observation that an object that is in motion (e.g. the planets, a rolling stone) is put in motion by some other object or force. From this, Aquinas believes that ultimately there must have been an UNMOVED MOVER (GOD) who first put things in motion. Follow the agrument this way:

1) Nothing can move itself.

2) If every object in motion had a mover, then the first object in motion needed a mover.

3) This first mover is the Unmoved Mover, called God.



Second Way: Causation Of Existence

This Way deals with the issue of existence. Aquinas concluded that common sense observation tells us that no object creates itself. In other words, some previous object had to create it. Aquinas believed that ultimately there must have been an UNCAUSED FIRST CAUSE (GOD) who began the chain of existence for all things. Follow the agrument this way:

1) There exists things that are caused (created) by other things.

2) Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can create itself.)

3) There can not be an endless string of objects causing other objects to exist.

4) Therefore, ther must be an uncaused first cause called God.



Third Way: Contingent and Neccessary Objects

This Way defines two types of objects in the universe: contingent beings and necessary beings. A contingent being is an object that can not exist without a necessary being causing its existence. Aquinas believed that the existence of contingent beings would ultimately neccesitate a being which must exist for all of the contingent beings to exist. This being, called a necessary being, is what we call God. Follow the argument this way:

1) Contingent beings are caused.

2) Not every being can be contingent.

3) There must exist a being which is necessary to cause contingent beings.

4) This necessary being is God.



Fourth Way: The Agrument From Degrees And Perfection

St. Thomas formulated this Way from a very interesting observation about the qualities of things. For example one may say that of two marble scultures one is more beautiful than the other. So for these two objects, one has a greater degree of beauty than the next. This is referred to as degrees or gradation of a quality. From this fact Aquinas concluded that for any given quality (e.g. goodness, beauty, knowledge) there must be an perfect standard by which all such qualities are measured. These perfections are contained in God.



Fifth Way: The Agrument From Intelligent Design

The final Way that St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of has to do with the observable universe and the order of nature. Aquinas states that common sense tells us that the universe works in such a way, that one can conclude that is was designed by an intelligent designer, God. In other words, all physical laws and the order of nature and life were designed and ordered by God, the intellgent designer.

A more complete explanation of St. Thomas' Fifth Way about God as Intelligent Designer can be seen on my web page dedicated to Paley's Teleological Argument.


This is taken from http://members.aol.com/plweiss1/aquinas.htm and reprinted with permission.

God bless.

 

[Dream]

Bump

 

[Carrye]

I've heard that modern philosophy has claimed to debunk them, but have yet to hear how. Any ideas?

 

[Dream]

I've heard that modern philosophy has claimed to debunk them, but have yet to hear how. Any ideas?

Your the theology student, you should know.

 

[Carrye]

Your the theology student, you should know.

That's what's known as a False Assumption, DT. One person cannot know the whole of philosophy and theology. Well, unless her name begins with an M and ends with ichelina.

 

[Dream]

That's what's known as a False Assumption, DT. One person cannot know the whole of philosophy and theology. Well, unless her name begins with an M and ends with ichelina.

Well you've been able to answer all of my questions thus far, one could only assume that you possessed the answer to all of life's questions.

 

[Aaron-Aggie]

lol

 

[Asimis]

-Both the First and Second way arguments are virtually the same Cosmological Argument or First Cause Argument. To them the atheists will simply ask "What Caused God?" In here the Christian will say "He is Uncaused and Eternal", and the discussion will the lead into the atheists telling you that why YOUR(the christian God) is the creator and not Zeus, Horus, etc. So it is basically pointless

-The Third way is a bit taken more seriously since every object is contingent and only God can be posited, defined as being not contingent. Some will argue that the universe can be non-contingent and not have a begining, or others simply fall into the same argument that we have no ability of proving which God actually is the necessary being.

-The Fourt and Fifth ways are a bit relative and the atheists have didicated a lot of space and time into finding "flaws" on different living organism to debunk the intelligent design argument. Here they also use the problem of evil and animals feeding off of each other in order to survive and this they see as a "bad design." So it won't hold much water.

Hope that helped

By the way here is a link with arguments pro and against God:

http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/

 

[Dream]

-Both the First and Second way arguments are virtually the same Cosmological Argument or First Cause Argument. To them the atheists will simply ask "What Caused God?" In here the Christian will say "He is Uncaused and Eternal", and the discussion will the lead into the atheists telling you that why YOUR(the christian God) is the creator and not Zeus, Horus, etc. So it is basically pointless

-The Third way is a bit taken more seriously since every object is contingent and only God can be posited, defined as being not contingent. Some will argue that the universe can be non-contingent and not have a beggining, or others simply fall into the same argument that we have no ability of proving which God actually is the necessary contingent being.

-The Fourt way is a bit relative and the atheits have didicated a lot of space an dtim einto finding "flaws" on different living organism to debunk the intelligent design argument. Here they also use the problem of evil and animals feeding off of each other in order to survive and this they see as a "bad design." So it won't hold much water.

Hope that helped

By the way here is a link with argument pro and against God:

http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/

Yes, these are all very good points.

In my opnion, the first 2 proofs are probablly the ones that hold the most weight. They both follow simple logic. But like you said, they in no way prove the Christian God exists.

The 4th way just seems purely hypothetical.

The 5th way is just a basic observation that truly depends on the way you look at things. If athiests didn't want to see a perfect design, they most certainly wouldn't.

 

[Asimis]

Yes, these are all very good points.

In my opnion, the first 2 proofs are probablly the ones that hold the most weight. They both follow simple logic. But like you said, they in no way prove the Christian God exists.

The 4th way just seems purely hypothetical.

The 5th way is just a basic observation that truly depends on the way you look at things. If athiests didn't want to see a perfect design, they most certainly wouldn't.

Exactly, even if the atheist acceps the existence of a God arrived at philosophicaly speaking, it is a big leap from that to the Christian God. The atheist might just go with the Deist God or simply appeal to the religion that he thinks fits his own criteria and personality better. This is what happened with the Pascal's Wager argument in which the atheists will choose allah over God because of the after life with the 70+ virgins which they consider better than the Christian after life.

 

[Dream]

Bump.

 

[Michael G]

When discussing the existence of God, I tend to like Blaise Pascal's "The Wager."

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

I studied logical proofs with respect to mathematics not philosphy but I think Way's one and two are fatally flawed.

They appear to be proofs by contrdiction and the problem with a proof by contradiction is that it cannot contradict itself which both of these do.

The postulate on both is the nothing can move or cause itself, they then claims to prove the something CAN move or cause itself (in this case God). The proofs appear to me to be circular. Which means that they don't have to be disproven since the do not prove what they claim to prove.

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

When discussing the existence of God, I tend to like Blaise Pascal's "The Wager."

Most Christian's have a blind spot to the problem with Pascal's wager.

Assume, for sake of argument that God does not exist. (After all Pascal's wager asks you to do this) If God does not exist the assumption is that a Christian life leads to a better existence than you would otherwise have if you chose not to follow Christainity.

Assuming that you are trying to convince an otherwise moral person that leading a Christian life is superior to any other option in a Godless universe you have just given this person a tool that works of any other philosophy/Theology to which he applies it. He can use Pascal's wager to show that he should follow Buddism, Islam, secular humanism, all out hedonism, it will work for any of them.

This is really the basis for modern existentialism: the idea that no matter what choice you make it does not, can not, make a difference.

Pascal's wager only works well with people who are predisposed to believe in the first place.

 

[Michael G]

I studied logical proofs with respect to mathematics not philosphy but I think Way's one and two are fatally flawed.

They appear to be proofs by contrdiction and the problem with a proof by contradiction is that it cannot contradict itself which both of these do.

The postulate on both is the nothing can move or cause itself, they then claims to prove the something CAN move or cause itself (in this case God). The proofs appear to me to be circular. Which means that they don't have to be disproven since the do not prove what they claim to prove.

And thus they break the Law of Non-Contradiction which is the basis of all philosophy in the first place?!

 

[Markh]

I, when asked if God exist point people towards this page

http://www.faith.org.uk/homepage/ideas/canwebesure.htm

I think it is quite convincing and it follows Aquinas' ideas only using modern day science to back up his points.

 

[Rising_Suns]

There's a person named David Sloan who puts forth excellent arguments for the existence of God, based soley on science alone, like the balance of the universe, big bang theory, etc. I'll see if I can paraphrase some of what he said...


1. WHAT SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW
First we must realize that science is deeply flawed in that it can only observe what already exists, but cannot really say anything about creation itself; science does not know how something can possibly come from nothing, and it will never be able to.

So already, creation is out of the realm of science, so there's no possible way it can disprove an "intellegent designer" or other creation theories. But looking to what we can observe, we can observe evidence of a designer through how delicately our universe operates. There are so many factors involved that perfectly balance our universe in such a way that life can exist, and if any of those factors varry by the smallest fraction (this is an overstatement really, as sometimes a variance of just 1/10^34 is needed), then life would cease to exist.

Ok, so somehow, we now have a perfectly balanced universe. So how did it get here?

2. FLAW IN THE BIG BANG
The big bang thoery takes a stab at it, but this theory is greatly flawed. Think of this universe as we see it today as a finely tuned watch (say, a nice Rolex). Now, take this watch, put it in a bag, and bang a sledge hammer on the bag for 10 minutes. Now open the bag, take out the pieces, and throw them up in the air.

Now, what do you think are the chances the pieces will land in such a way that the watch will be put back together and fully functioning again?

This is a ludicrous question, is it not?

Well, the big bang theory relies on this logic to explained the creation of the universe! It's just as ludicrous as saying that you can set a bomb off in a junk yard and all the pieces will land in such a way so as to form a fully functioning car. ha!

3. MONKEY TYPING SHAKESPEAR
Now, they argue that if given enough time, the explosion would result in a new car, or the watch pieces would land to form a new watch, or here's an interesting one; a monkey would eventually type the complete set of works of shakespear.....if given enough time.....

um, no. lol.

This is a completely false assertion. The chances are not 1 in 100000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 that a monkey will eventually type the complete set of works of shakespear. No. The chances are 0! It's simply not possible. Even if a monkey had an infinite amount of time sitting in front of a keyboard, he would never even come close to typing the complete set of shakespears works.

Why?

Randomness does not produce order on any significant scale.

I believe it was the person who came up with the big bang theory that used an analogy to portray his reasoning (probability based on infinite time). He said that, if given enough time, it is possible that all the atoms in the arm of a marble statue could randomly move in one direction at the same time. Therefore, he concluded, there exists a possibility that a marble staute could wave at you.

what?

Does this not seem like an empty faith in probability? And some real scientists base their arguments on this logic?

It seems 1,000 times more reaosnable to have faith in God than to have faith in this probability.

phew, ok. I need get going, but there's great resources of information out there that provide very interesting arguments like this, and probably better articulated as well.

May the Lord give you His peace!

-Davide