Aquinas Five Proofs For God's Existence

Since the beginning of the earliest civilizations, humanity, not just philosophers, has faced the ongoing debate of whether or not such a thing as God truly exists. Among one of the many renown philosophers in history, Thomas Aquinas, a medieval thinker, proposes an argument in favor of God’s existence, developing five different proofs of what he considers solid evidence. Aquinas’ five ways serves as the most efficient and convincing argument to prove the existence of God not only because of its incorporation of universal objective truths, but also through its application of common human experiences to develop logos and pathos, respectively. Aquinas’ first three proofs greatly hinge on consistent and undebatable concepts that logically flow and thus appeal to the mind’s need for rationality. For example, his Argument from Motion and Argument from

Similarly, it goes without saying that, as Newton suggests, an external force must have acted upon the universe, since the universe could not have caused or moved itself. The cause and movement of the universe must have derived from an initial “First Mover” and original “First Cause”, respectively. Thus Aquinas’ first two arguments does well to apply the universal truth of motion and scientific law in support of God’s existence. Furthermore, his third proof, the Argument from Necessity, uses the nature of possibility and necessity to demonstrate the flawed logic behind believing in all things as contingent. For if all things did not need to exist, then there must have existed a time when nothing