Does God Exist?
St. Thomas Aquinas has written several important works. Some of them are: The Disputed Questions on the Power of God, Exposition of Dionysius on the
Divine Names and Disputed Questions on Spiritual Creatures. Most of Aquinas's works have been written to try to prove the existence of God. Aquinas has been a firm believer that everything had to have a creator and the only possible solution would be something called God. It is with this idea that Aquinas's
Third Way was written.
In his De aeternitate mundi contra murmurantes, Aquinas insists that human reason cannot prove the impossibility of an eternally created universe.
Once again Aquinas has written with the certainty that God has to exist in order to have created the universe. There is no doubt in Aquinas's mind that everything was created for a reason and that reason was God's will.
In the text Medieval Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas' article entitled
Does God Exist? , Aquinas tries to show the different steps that can prove God does exist and that the world had to have been created by God. This article is comprised of five different ways in which Aquinas tries to prove that we can be sure that God exists. In the third way, Aquinas tries to show that God exists if it is true that we exist.
In the article Aquinas says that it is possible for things to exist and for them not to exist. He means that living things will one day become non- living things. Aquinas believes that all things can not be mortal because if it were true, then at some point nothing would exist. What he means is if all things were living things, meaning that they had to be mortal, then at some time these things must also become non-existing.
Aquinas says that if everything were mortal, then nothing could be existing at present, because what is nonexistent begins to be only through something which already exists. This can be translated to mean that if all mortal things have to stop existing then there can't be anything which exists today. Aquinas believes that it takes a living presence to help create other live things in order for them to live also. This means that there must have been something which existed through eternity to help create living things which exist today.
Aquinas believes that something had to have created life throughout time in order for things to be living today. He says this thing must have existed from the beginning and that it must still exist now. His belief is that living
Saint Thomas of Aquainas may have been one of the greatest thinkers who attempted to bridge the proverbial gap between faith and reason. His Sacred Doctrine which was the initial part of his Summa Theologica was the basis for his conclusion about the existence of God. Aquinas tended to align his beliefs close with Aristotle's supposition that there must be an eternal and imputrescible creator. In comparison, Anselm's impressions were influenced largely by Plato. In his text Proslogion he outlined his Ontological argument that regarding the existence of God. It was simply that God was the ultimate and most perfect being conceivable, and that his state of existing is greater than not existing therefore god, being perfect in every way, must exist. This is where their paths divide, and although they essentially reach the same determination they paint the picture quite differently.
St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas were considered as some of the best in their period to represent philosophy. St. Anselm’s argument is known as the ontological argument; it revolves entirely around his statement, “God is that, than which no greater can be conceived” (The Great Conversation, Norman Melchert 260). St. Thomas Aquinas’ argument is known as the cosmological argument; it connects the effects of events to the cause for why they happened. Anselm’s ontological proof and Aquinas’ cosmological proof both argued for God’s existence, differed in the way they argued God’s existence, and had varying degrees of success using these proofs.
8- McDermid, Douglas. "God's Existence." PHIL 1000H-B Lecture 9. Trent University, Peterborough. 21 Nov. 2013. Lecture.
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.
A contemporary reader would argue that Aquinas neglects that the laws of physics and nature can exist beyond a creator. Even though the world is complex, a creator does not necessarily have to exist. For example, in Aquinas’ example in the text, the archer applied force in order move the arrow. This would follow Newton’s laws of motion and these principles are things that people can not violate because they are always true. Therefore, the intelligent being himself moved the arrow, but that the law of physics was also involved to get the arrow to its end. Another problem is in Aquinas statement that things “reach their goal by purpose, not by chance” (Aquinas 26). However, how do we know that the world does not have randomness or chance? Actually, there are some examples in science that debunks Aquinas’ statement. For example, Richard Dawkins believed that random mutations in species allows for variation and a bigger genetic pool in support of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Lastly, Aquinas claims that the designer has to be God because He is an uncaused cause. Even if people accepted this, Aquinas does not substantiate why it must be the case that the Catholic conception of the one and only true God is the only intelligent designer of all natural things. Aquinas leaves room for polytheism to exist, and hence more than one intelligent designer can move material things. If this is the
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.
He continues by saying that for any change to occur there must have been a previous cause that existed in reality and if one was to trace this line of causes and effects all the way back there must be a first cause that began the chain. But there cannot be anything worldly like that because anything natural must have an impetus already in reality to transform it from potentiality to reality. The only explanation, in Aquinas' e... ... middle of paper ... ... s a cause except God.
Instinctually, humans know that there is a greater power in the universe. However, there are a few who doubt such instinct, citing that logically we cannot prove such an existence. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, wrote of five proofs for the existence of God. The Summa Theologica deals with pure concepts; these proofs rely on the world of experience - what one can see around themselves. In these proofs, God will logically be proven to exist through reason, despite the refutes against them.
(i) Things do not come to be out of what is not, out of nothing.
from Motion, tries to prove the existence of God as the first mover which is unmoved.
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.
Emery, G. (2007). The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas. New York, New York: Oxford University Press Inc.
Thomas Aquinas uses five proofs to argue for God’s existence. A few follow the same basic logic: without a cause, there can be no effect. He calls the cause God and believes the effect is the world’s existence. The last two discuss what necessarily exists in the world, which we do not already know. These things he also calls God.
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.
In this essay I discuss why there is proof that there is a supernatural being known as God, who has created everything we know and experience.