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Thomas Aquinas's Five Arguments For The Existence Of God

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St. Thomas Aquinas wrote five arguments for the existence of God, part of his Summa Theologiae. Thomas’ second argument for the existence of God is one of the most compelling, as we can see examples from both the Bible and nature to support it. In the cause and effect argument, Thomas starts off with providing reason that all things that exist in the world must have an original cause to all the effects we see on earth. Thomas states, “There is no case known in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself” (Summa Theologiae I 2:3).Thomas is proving that nothing in nature exists without having a cause, and therefore it is impossible for something to exist in nature without something, the effect, prior to it causing it to exist. The bird, the effect, that flies around your backyard was created by two prior birds, the cause, before that one, and you can keep tracing the cause of each bird back far enough when …show more content…

If you use something in the universe, such as a star, you can attempt to follow the causes of each effect. The star is an effect of a high concentration of interstellar gas and dust in an extremely cold region of space. The next question is, where does interstellar gas and dust come from? Interstellar gas is formed from molecular gas, which was formed by a theorized concept, called the ‘big bang theory’. The big bang was an enormous blast of energy throughout the universe, which formed all things instead the universe. Using Thomas’ logic of causes and effects in world, this massive explosion could have produced the first effects in the world since science does not have a theory to what caused the big bang, Thomas would state, whatever the cause of the big bang is an uncaused cause. This would be considered God, which God’s only effect could be the big bang theory in which that would create other effects and eventually over time into the world we

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Falk seems to be oblivious of the assumptions used in debates on origins, and of the difference between data and understandings of data. No one has a way to go back in time and study our history, so all ideas must be based upon assumptions. Those assumptions are the foundation of our worldview, which is our central belief about where the world came from and how it became what it is today. The Bible has many verses about the timing of creation and God’s hand in it. God spoke the Universe, heavens, Earth, life, and man into existence (Genesis 1; Psalm 33:6, 9; 148:5; John 1:1-3).

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Timothy M Renick, author of "Aquinas for Armchair Theologians", questions why if God created a world of boundless goodness then why Satan (evil) exist. He also mentions that "If God is truly all-powerful (or omnipotent), then surely God has the power to eliminate Satan if he so chooses" (pg. 32). Many of his questions reflected on cultural and religious related questions that he believed others wonder. Renick did note that Aquinas admits that God does not make evil and only makes good. However, if evil is not a substance or a thing and does not exist at all then what then is evil?

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Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates this when he says that God was intended to better human life (doc 12). Catholics then believed God was the only source of creation in life, no other force could create and maintain objects. Connecting to the Scientific Revolution, this idea impacted the work of scientist and held them back from exploring who or what else may have created the Earth and all it beholds. Fearing that they would be shunned from the church for questioning the

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The main protagonist of the novel, Tom Joad, is known in story as a man with no regret. Although he had murdered a man and spent many years in prison, he showed no regret as he rarely brought up his past. Instead, he worries about his current problems and the issues his family is facing. Although he seems certain in his actions he does exhibit inner moral conflict as he soon found himself learning that he can’t always act, such as when he is unable to get a job and support his family. This situation, taking place during the middle of the novel, forces him to learn to be able to reflect on his problems without taking action.

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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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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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So the first cause argument proves that God does not exist assuming the first cause argument is sound then there must be some other cause because it is not God. In summary the notion of omnipotent is a miss-name because it implies the potency, power, causality when in fact all that it does is imply logical entailment, it implies that if it wills something you can deduce from the statement that something exists, you do not need a causal step, it is a logical deduction and therefore the first cause argument argues from causes in the world

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The cosmological argument looks to the world to prove God’s existence rather than pure definitions. The proponent of the cosmological argument was St. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian in the eleventh century CE (Solomon). He proposed that everything that exists must have a cause, and that the cause was God (Aquinas). Aquinas’ first point was based off of motion, that nothing can be both the mover and moved. An item sitting in place has the potential to be moving, but cannot move unless something that is already moving imparts motion to it

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The search for the unknown has been constant in philosophical and scientific revolutions in the west. From Aristotle’s theory of nature and the 4 different cause’s material, formal, efficient and final cause provided some reasoning’s. Then began the search for what it is to be happy? It later evolved into what is it to be an ethical person? A prominent religious and philosophical leader Augustine who had a wide spectrum of influences, struggled in answering questions that where larger than himself whether they were personal or intellectual.

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Instead the belief revolves around the idea that natural causes are sufficient to explain everything that exists in the

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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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Thomas Aquinas was one of the few philosophers to interpret theology as a whole distinguishing the difference between theology and philosophy by explaining Law in general in a detailed account, focusing on kinds of law which he classified as Eternal, Human, Divine and Natural law. In summation to these readings, Thomas Aquinas provided adequate information and supporting evidence proving why people obey the law and why they should. As a philosopher, he understands and describes law as, "being influenced by certain actions that man chooses to act upon or refrain from, which is entirely up to us or as he may put it, an ordered rule" (Aquinas, 47). But, I would like to narrow it down to two important laws discussed by Aquinas, which are Human and Divine law as they are key elements in proving my thesis and how the reading from John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable is related and interpreted.

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Humans have often wondered how the universe developed into what it is today. For centuries, it has induced religious and scientific discussions and debates, leading famous scientists to trying to discover the enigma which the development of the universe is. One of the most accepted model to represent the evolution of the universe is the big bang theory. “It is an attempt to explain how the universe developed from a very tiny, dense state into what it is today” (Strickland, 2008).

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Thomas Aquinas: An innate desire to inquire the source Thomas Aquinas argues that Plato's understanding leads us to a conclusion that all human beings have an innate desire to the divine and a strong desire to satisfy the human physical wants, which includes the desire to satisfy our curiosity. That the struggle between the physical and the metaphysical world, maintains this tension in human life such that human can never find true rest on this earth till they die and go back to their creator. This in its very form keeps the essence of life and human desire to live longer even though faced with many challenges in this life. This view also develops in the notion that everything that happens in life is designed for the final good of the whole

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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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