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David Hume Vs Aquinas Research Paper

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Arguments of Thomas Aquinas and David Hume
In this essay I will address the two opposing premises of Thomas Aquinas and David Hume on how the natural order observed in nature proves or disproves the existence of a higher being. Aquinas who was a Catholic monk, as well as, a theologian philosopher wrote about how this natural order worked towards the conclusion of the existence of life being controlled by a higher being. Hume’s works all fall under that of the empiricism, otherwise known as skepticism, category. For this one must set forth legitimate evidence which can withstand being questioned or torn apart by other premises. For Hume, the so called evidence set forth by Aquinas that even unintelligent beings work towards some end by the design of a more intelligent being, is not legitimate evidence because how can we apply reason to the order of nature? The two arguments are …show more content…

While studying in the church Aquinas discovered the works of Aristotle and began reworking them in order to fit the views of the church. He was able to accomplish this by using these writings as base to write his most widely known work titled “The Argument from Design.” In paper Aquinas sets forth several premises and one conclusion, all of which argues the question of does god exist. However, Aquinas does not outright mention God or the overall point of his premises till the very end when you get to the overall conclusion of the paper. This along with the structuring of the rest of his argument allows for several logical fallacies such as, not just appealing to faith, shifting the burden of proof, arguing from authority, begging the question, giving an argument from popularity, or arguing from the premise that something or someone caused the universe(or a self

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Philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas attempted to justify god’s existence through the study of the cosmos. With this argument, Aquinas borrowed many ideas from the philosopher Aristotle, which actually influenced some of his key parts. Aquinas offers five proofs to god existence in two of his works. Two out of the five are used in the cosmological argument for god’s existence. This cosmological argument is based on the observation of the physical world, which includes the cosmos.

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The objection addressed the validity of the argument which had the premise 1, nothing is the efficient cause of itself except God and premise 2, a chain of causes cannot be infinite. The argument thus concludes there must be a first cause. This conclusion agrees with my thesis that Saint Thomas Aquinas’s argument formulated in the second way leads to a valid argument, which concludes that there must be a first cause and that God

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Thomas Aquinas is a prominent philosopher figure during the Middle Ages due to his ideas being adopted by the Church. Unlike famous figures such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas demonstrates the possibility for faith and reason to be interconnected without necessarily being combined. At the time, there were two opposing groups; those who believe in God out of faith or those who recognize a divide between religion and philosophy. Thomas Aquinas however provides another viewpoint: faith and reason working together to achieve a better understanding of God. In other words, he argues it is possible to prove God’s existence with facts rather than blindly believing in God’s existence due to faith.

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Hume’s have stated that Aquinas’s design argument should not be based on religion and the intelligent designer lacks the intellectual capability to design a complex universe. These two objections lacks validity and is very subjective. Hume’s provides no reliable source to prove his claim. Aquinas’s presents a valid argument that the world is governed by God. First, he used philosophical reasoning suggesting that everything in the universe operate and moves for an end.

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In this essay, I will set out to prove that Thomas Aquinas’ First Cause Argument does not show that God exists and the conclusion that God exists does not follow from the premises of the first cause argument. I do think that the conclusion is valid and could be sound/or has the potential to be, but the premises fail to provide the basis upon which to reach such a conclusion. Hence, I will be raising some objections to the premises and will try to disprove any counter-arguments that could be raised in its defense. This would be done by examining Aquinas’ First Cause Argument and trying to disprove it whilst countering arguments in its defense.

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Still, Aquinas does a great job of staying consistent in his argument for efficient causation and not straying into fighting for his belief in God. Aquinas simply holds the position that everything has a cause, while also claiming that there is something that has no cause which people believe to be God. It is my personal belief that objects that come into existence need a cause and because of my faith and religion I choose to believe that God is that first cause. For this reason, I choose to support and argue for Aquinas’ argument of efficient

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1176 Words | 5 Pages

Thomas Aquinas argued that God does exist, and there is evidence to assist in proving his theory on the matter. Thomas Aquinas had many reasonings in believing in a higher power, such as a God, and two of those reason are the argument from motion and the argument from design. In Thomas Aquinas’ belief and idea he discusses an argument he refers to as the argument of motion. In the argument of motion he discusses, how our senses prove that some things always have the potential for motion.

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Evil is a hardship, meaning it is the lack of fullness in something that already has existence, and this we call God. Not a single thing is pure evil for an evil thing is starts as a first thing. This means that it has some existence, and some good, of which God is the cause. Since evil is the lack of existence, God is not the direct, i.e. per se, cause of it; He is the cause of evil only indirectly, i.e. per accidens, insofar as He causes things to exist in which there is found some evil. So, Aquinas believes that the existence of God can be proved from the fact that things exist and do not cause their own existence.

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Aquinas believed that reason and faith could not conflict because both lead to the same ultimate reality,

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In David Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature”, Hume shows people’s tendency to claim conflict between passion and reason. “Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason”. Hume argues that this is an ‘ancient fallacy’ and that reason alone cannot motivate the will. Hume argues that there are two kinds of reasoning.

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Hume’s response to this is through is character Philo, Philo said that we should not judge the attributes of god on something like Paley proposes. Philo argues that we cannot judge the entirety of the universe on one single part of nature because nature has an infinite number of springs of principle. Also that we cannot base God on our

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As a whole, we all use fact and reason to back up our arguments and also show why we are so passionate about the things we love, whether it is an object, activity, person, etc. However, Hume argues that there are limitations of reason and claims that reason is the “slave of the passions.” As we continue to have reasons for our passions, we go along with what we believe to be true. However, because of our own reasoning, we fail to admit the possibilities that either; there are others that have different views than we, individually, have, or that our reasoning could be wrong to begin with but we convinced ourselves that we are right anyway.

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His suspicious questions (Skepticism) concerning the relationship amongst circumstances, end results and additionally the presence of substances are to date the beginning stages for exploration on those subjects: they represent a portion of the most profound tested to the likelihood of any metaphysical inquiry, realized by Kant. Yet, Hume has given significant commitments additionally to the moral hypothesis, in which he protected a rendition of sentimentalism, a prominent perspective at the time in England as of now shielded among others by Adam Smith. Hume's record of religion, completely explained in the after death published Dialogs Concerning Natural Religion (1779), additionally constitutes a key stone ever, mining all endeavors to understand philosophical learning on balanced grounds. As a rule, Hume methodically condemned each one of those philosophical thoughts, hypotheses, and philosophies depending on rationalistic grounds; as a result of this, he is viewed as likely the principle champion of induction in Western

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956 Words | 4 Pages

He opines this position by arguing specifically against Aquinas, as mentioned. However, this paper will not focus on arguing that Hume is specifically refuting Aquinas; other critics have argued this idea thoroughly, so I will approach Hume’s opponent as evidently being Aquinas. Hume’s refutation of Aquinas is split into three parts; two of which are solely philosophical, and one that is theological: if suicide is morally impermissible, then it must be a violation of our duty to God, to society, or to ourselves. Hume thinks that suicide does not violate any of these duties, so he concludes that it is morally

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Hume on the other hand can only confirm what has already happened, being that is the most truthful and logical

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