In his critique of religion, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins makes several fundamental flaws in his reasoning for disputing the arguments in Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways, particularly the Third Way: The Argument From Contingency. Dawkins writes of this argument, and the others, in a condescending, blatantly contemptuous manner. It is clear that he did not make an attempt to thoroughly understand the points that Aquinas makes, and in his rush to refute them, he overlooks a few errors of his own. Dawkins seems to have misunderstood the Third Way particularly egregiously. He misinterprets this argument, and then criticizes his misinterpretation for being false using faulty logic, and unfounded statements. According to Dawkins’ interpretation, …show more content…
In the text, the Third Way can be considered as a two separate things. Namely, an argument that is entirely secular, which reaches an entirely secular conclusion, and an objective truth about the catholic faith. The secular argument concludes that something must exist which is necessary for all other things to exist, but is not contingent on any other thing to exist. The objectively true statement that immediately follows is that Aquinas and the Catholic audience he is writing for call this thing on which everything depends God. This statement, the only reference to God of any kind in the argument, does not assume anything at all about the nature of God. It is a fact. The Third Way combines this fact with the secular argument and conclusion preceding it, and concludes that the thing which Catholics call God must exist in some capacity. Dawkins has already conceded that the only assumption made in the primary argument is true. Therefore, unless Dawkins considers a fact an unjustified assumption, the Third Way does not make any unjustified …show more content…
He states that the big bang, or some other, possibly unknown, physical thing would be a much better explanation for the thing that all other things depend on to exist. In fairness, the big bang theory is widely accepted as the origin of the universe as we know it. According to this theory, all matter and energy was once infinitely compressed into a single point, called a singularity, which then expanded into the universe we know. However, saying that the infinite regression described in the Third Way can be terminated by a singularity is, frankly, completely absurd. By Dawkins’ own definition, the regression described in the Third Way cannot be terminated by a physical thing. No physical thing can rely on itself, and nothing else, to exist. A singularity, composed of all the matter and energy that has ever existed, and will ever exist, is still a physical thing. Putting the main principle of the Third Way into his own terms, Dawkins says “there must have been something non-physical to bring them into existence.” (77) A better argument might have been made by refuting the assertion that all things rely on something that is non-physical to exist in the first place, but while Dawkins implies that this is wrong, he never provides evidence, or elaborates on his alternate explanation in any
In conclusion, it is possible for science and religion to overlap. Although Gould’s non-overlapping magisterial claims that creationism doesn’t conflict with evolution, it doesn’t hold with a religion that takes the biblical stories literally. Moreover, I defended my thesis, there is some overlap between science and religion and these overlaps cause conflict that make it necessary to reject either science or religion, by using Dawkins’ and Plantinga’s arguments. I said earlier that I agree with Dawkins that both science and religion provide explanation, consolation, and uplift to society. However, there is only conflict when science and religion attempt to explain human existence. Lastly, I use Plantinga’s argument for exclusivists to show that such conflict means that science and religion are not compatible. It demands a rejection t either science or religion.
Examining the two works against each other as if it were a debate makes it a bit clearer to compare. Aquinas, reveals his argument under the groundwork that there are essentially two methods of understanding the truth. One being that it can be surmised through reason an logic, and the other being via inner faith. On the surface at this point it could be argued that this ontological determination a bit less convoluted than Anselm, yet I tend to think it could be a bit more confusing. This is what leads him to the claim that the existence of God can be proven by reason alone or “a priori”. Stemming from this belief he formulated his Five Proofs or what he called the “Quinquae Viae”. The first of which is fairly simple based on the fact that something in motion had to have been moved. Agreeing that something set it in motion therefor there must have been a...
Anselm’s argument can be summarized as, “1. God does not exist. (assumption) 2. By “God,” I mean that, than which no greater can be conceived (NGC). 3. So NGC does not exist. (from 1 and 2) 4. So NGC has being only in my understanding, not also in reality. (from 2 and 3) 5. If NGC were to exist in reality, as well as in my understanding, it would be greater. (from the meaning of “greater”) 6. But then, NGC is not NGC. (from 4 and 5) 7. So, NGC cannot exist only in my understanding. (from 6) 8. So NGC must exist also in reality. (from 5 and 7) 9. So God exists. (from 2 and 8) 10. So God does not exist and God exists. (from 1 to 9) 11. So Premise 1 cannot be true. (by 1 through 10 and the principle of reduction ad absurdum) 12. So God exists. (from 11)” (262). This quote demonstrates how Anselms ontological proof is “God is that, than which no greater can be conceived” in understanding and reality by stating that a contradiction would be made if God didn’t exist in both (262). Aquinas cosmological proof stated that the existence of God could be confirmed in five ways, The Argument- “from Change”, “Efficient Causality”,
In the first part, Aquinas states that the existence of god is not self-evident, meaning that reason alone without appealing to faith can give a good set of reasons to believe. To support this claim, Aquinas refers to “The Argument of Motion”, proposing that:
Aquinas’ third way argument states that there has to be something that must exist, which is most likely God. He starts his argument by saying not everything must exist, because things are born and die every single day. By stating this we can jump to the conclusion that if everything need not exist then there would have been a time where there was nothing. But, he goes on, if there was a time when there was nothing, then nothing would exist even today, because something cannot come from nothing. However, our observations tell us that something does exist, therefore there is something that must exist, and Aquinas says that something is God.
Many readers follow Descartes with fascination and pleasure as he descends into the pit of skepticism in the first two Meditations, defeats the skeptics by finding the a version of the cogito, his nature, and that of bodies, only to find them selves baffled and repulsed when they come to his proof for the existence of God in Meditation III. In large measure this change of attitude results from a number of factors. One is that the proof is complicated in ways which the earlier discourse is not. Second is that the complications include the use of scholastic machinery for which the reader is generally quite unprepared -- including such doctrines as a Cartesian version of the Great Chain of Being, the Heirloom theory of causaltiy, and confusi ng terms such as "eminent," "objective" and "formal reality" used in technical ways which require explanation. Third, we live in an age which is largely skeptical of the whole enterprise of giving proofs for the existence of God. A puzzled student once remaked, "If it were possible to prove that God exists, what would one need faith for?" So, even those inclined to grant the truth of the conclusion of Descartes' proof are often skeptical about the process of reaching it.
Back in 1200s, St. Thomas Aquinas has provided "five ways" to prove for the existence of God, which I am persuaded by, and hopefully others would see the same 'light' in this argument--unfortunately, it does not provide sufficient answers regarding the 'nature of God' (Bailey and Martin, 2011, 37). All five arguments share the "form of logic called syllogism," "initial premise, starting from the empirical facts," and the existence of "transcendent cause" to everything (Bailey and Martin, 2011, 25). Here, I will choose the second way, the argument of "efficient cause," which I feel it as the most compelling argument and sums up other arguments to demonstrate for the existence of God. 'God,' here is defined as the God introduced in the Bible of Christianity.
For Dawkins, evolution of a species is dependent upon the transmittance of this information to the next generation; the individual species is irrelevant (2). This theory is a departure from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which concentrates on the species. Species, to Dawkins, are "survival machines" whose purpose is to host these genes, as species are mortals and fleeting, whereas genes are not (2).
Also, he does say he is certain only of his uncertainty, but he could claim some reason for how he exists, as well as God. Descartes believes only in what’s in the mind and how he experiences things in the world. I do agree with some of Aquinas’ claims. Such as the idea that nothing comes from nothing. I believe something has to happen to become.
Secondly, the first and second arguments are invalid because the way the Big Bang happened and the universe was created was left to a good deal of chance and it would have been illogical for God to have created it that way. If God did create it in this form then it would be contradictory to Aquinas' idea of a completely rational, benevolent, and omnipotent God. Aquinas' third argument is unsound because he states that not every entity can fail to exist, but during singularity all of the matter in the universe is suspended in one lawless and unlocatable point. The lack of governing laws and any way to tell where that point would have been is proof that it may not have existed. The scientific proof of the beginning of the universe renders Aquinas' first three arguments from Summa Theologica unsound.
In Dawkins’ novel, he aims to prove how the explanation is not a religious answer but a biological and cumulative natural selection. According to Dawkins, the theory of Darwinism is what changed the mystery of our...
existence to those who could not accept or believe God on faith alone. Aquinas’ first way
Aquinas’ Cosmological Arguments The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God, as propounded by Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Third Way. It is the third of Five Ways in Aquinas's masterpiece, "The Summa" (The Five Ways). The five ways are: the unmoved mover, the uncaused causer, possibility and. necessity, goodness, truth and nobility and the last way the teleological.
In this paper I will be exploring two arguments on the topic of the existence of God. In particular, I will focus on Saint Thomas Aquinas’s efficient causation argument for God’s existence and an objection to it from Bertrand Russell. After an analysis of Aquinas’s argument and a presentation of Russell’s objection, I will show how Russell’s objection fails.
Thomas Aquinas was a teacher of the Dominican Order and he taught that most matters of The Divine can be proved by natural human reason, while “Others were strictly ‘of faith’ in that they could be grasped only through divine revelation.” This was a new view on the faith and reason argument contradictory to both Abelard with his belief that faith should be based on human reason, and the Bernard of Clairvaux who argued that one should only need faith.