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Thomas Aquinas Argument For The Existence Of God

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Contingency of Being Thomas Aquinas argued for the existence of God through his understanding of science along with the help of physical evidence, unchangeable facts and logic. I will discuss Aquinas’ Third proof and how he does prove that there is a God or Gods without the need for faith and revelation. In philosophy, we often distinguish things between being necessary being and contingent beings. Necessary beings are beings that have always existed and that could have never not existed. A being that is permeant or immortal and cannot be created or destroyed. Contingent beings are beings that could easily have not existed, their existence is fully dependent on other things happening. Aquinas argued that “there are contingent things, and contingent things can cause other contingent things. Because that would mean that there’s an infinite regress of contingency, and a possibility that nothing might have ever existed. An infinite regress is impossible. So, there must be at least one necessary thing, and that is God”. What he was doing here is proving that there is that he says there needed to be a starting point and the …show more content…

In fact, the God Aquinas proves is so far off from the God that thesis believe in, it actually makes thesis very uncomfortable. His arguments prove that there must be at least but not limited to one God and not one in particular. His arguments also do not rule out the idea of polytheism or multiple Gods happening at once. Furthermore, his arguments also to not give us any insight into what God or the Gods are like in nature. There would be no way of telling if he or they would be smiteful, forgiving, loving, or actually have any hand into our lives at all past the point of creation according to Aquinas’ third

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I have to admit that Zimmerman’s talk was hard at times for me to comprehend. I would love feedback if I understood his divine argument wrong, because I have had a few discussions about it with my peers and many took away different views from his final argument for a divine being, and in this paper I will explain how I understood his final argument. To come upon the divine being of God, he had to eliminate all the other contingent and necessary options believed by other philosophers and scientists through reasoning. He explained how it wasn’t possible for their to be no answer for the cosmos, nor were any of the contingent explanations of science, philosophy, or an infinite past made any sense.

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In Meditation Five of Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes makes his argument for a supreme being, which he refers to as “God.” Descartes creates his argument based on the two premises that 1) if a supreme being exists, then it must hold all perfections, and that 2) existence is a perfection. These two premises lead to the conclusion that a supreme being does indeed exist, and in response to this argument, I will provide a counterexample, as well as the response that Descartes would likely provide to this objection. To begin his argument, Descartes first leads readers into his line of thinking in order that they might understand the possibility of the existence of a supreme being. Throughout his argument, Descartes relies on

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This assignment will discuss the shared idea of existence and causation within Goldstein’s argument and Aquinas’ argument, as well as the vague idea of God that both philosophers conclude exists. Both philosophers argue that something cannot be the cause of itself and that there must be cause of the universe or a “first cause”. This is a virtue of the general cosmological argument and establishes . Aquinas (Oppy & Scott 2010, p.83) proposes that a self-caused cause is impossible since an event cannot precede itself. This assumes that time is linear.

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The paradox of the stone heavily relies on Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of gods omnipotence. Aquinas proposes that Omnipotence is the power to do everything that is possible, not just to do anything. Aquinas breaks it down into two forms of possibilities; Relative possibility and Absolute possibility that will be discussed first in order to understand the paradox of the stone argument. Relative possibility is a power that lies within some beings, but not within others.

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Descartes gave a few arguments that God exists and is real. Desocrates believed our idea of God is that God is a perfect being, he believed he is more perfect to exist than not to exist. Desocrates also believed that God is a infinite being. Descartes idea would be that God gave us this idea to type this paragraph about him so he must be real. When he thinks negative of an idea or thought he wonders if an evil demon plotted those thoughts.

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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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(c) Therefore, there exists a self-existing being, and that self-existing being is God. (49) The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) has two points: where the existence of any being requires an explanation (point (a)), and

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The argument for God’s existence is that God is a perfect being, he is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, and supremely powerful. Descartes goes on to talk about how God exists because he can conceive of him as better than himself (AD 40). God is perfect and perfect at everything, and was the first thing that sent everything into motion (AD 45). God is the ultimate cause.

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However in the end, Descartes ' argument still relies on the fact a God exists, and without being able to prove a God exists, he fails at what he was trying to accomplish. Descartes can 't imagine a perfect God, because 'perfect ' is subjective and he can 't prove God to exist, because it is not necessary that we are created by a God. We could just as well be created by infinite invisible monster scientists, or the big bang. In conclusion, I have argued that Descartes ' proof of God, written about in Meditation III, is not a valid way of proving God 's existence.

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The greatest possible being must be a necessary being. The existence of a necessary being must be either impossible, merely possible, or necessary. We can conclude, for it cannot be impossible for a necessary being to exist, there is no contradiction in the concept of a necessary being. Nor can it be that a mere possibility the God exists, for such existence would be dependent and happenstance, and such a being could not be God. Therefore, a necessary being necessarily exits, that God does exist (Pojman

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In Thomas Aquinas, " Summa Theologica ", the author conveys that the nature of his universe is a place where you believe in the existence of God. However, in his universe not everyone believes in the existence of God. Aquinas argues against anyone that deny the existence of God and the goodness and salvation that bring to his universe. He wants his readers to believe and have faith in God and not question his existence. God is very important figure in Aquinas universe.

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The debate of the existence of God has always been a controversial topic and has been going on for centuries. Till this day it is still a debate. We have people who strongly believe in God and others who questions his existence. Those who have strong faith will try to convince everyone who does not believe in God that he exits. They will try to come up with arguments to show he is real and good.

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The objection against premise three states: “There can be an infinite series of numbers; why can’t there be an infinite series of past causes (PowerPoint 384)?” Thomas Aquinas is a famous philosopher who is well known for his theological writings. Here, Aquinas steps in to defend this premise saying that “if there were an infinite regress of causes, we could not have gotten to the present moment because we would have had to go through an infinite series to get here, and it is impossible to go through an infinite series (PowerPoint, 384).” William Lane Craig then comes in and discusses the claim of premise three and Aquinas’ defence and states that, “the idea of an actual infinite number of anything leads to contradictions. Both Thomas Aquinas and William Lane Craig’s defence claims help show that premise three is true, proving that the first half of the first cause argument is a sound

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His five proofs based on: the existence of a first mover, the necessary existent in itself, the first efficient cause, the graduation of things in nature to the best, and the necessity to have a realizer of an objects end, are all found in the Summa Theologiae, part one, question two, Article three. All of the assumed individuals needed for existence take on the name

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Dominican philosopher and theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, created the “Five Ways” of God’s existence – motion, causation, contingency, gradations, intelligence of design – in which the first two are cosmological arguments. Aquinas’s argument from motion states that it’s obvious some things in the universe are moving, and if they’re moving, something else must have caused them to move, and something else must have caused that to move… and so on. However, the pattern of movements can’t go on forever since there wouldn’t be that one thing that started the whole series. Therefore, there must be an “initial mover, an extraordinary being that started the universe moving but is not itself moved by anything else – and this being we call God,” (Vaughn, Lewis. Pg. 65).

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