Explain The Three Proofs Of St. Thomas Aquinas

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The Medieval philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas, argued against non-specific atheists that the existence of God, or a god, could be proven with natural reason. The most important arguments of Aquinas which supported the concept of a higher power are in his first three proofs: the arguments of motion, efficient cause, and necessary being. These proofs were based on the premise that God acted on potential objects and actual objects, and that to understand the existence of God, one would need to examine the effects that God had on the world. Aquinas’ belief that God can be indirectly observed is important in how he uses the human senses as the means for understanding the effects of God, which had previously been doubted for viability in searching for a universal truth. …show more content…

This means that there is a hierarchy of objects in which all actual things were once potential things. For example, an actual rubber material changes into a potential ball when acted upon by a ball making machine. In this example the potential ball was the actual material which was changed by the ball making machine, which was changed by a ball making machine engineer, which was changed by the engineer’s company, and so on, until a massive universal hierarchy was established. Aquinas concluded that it is impossible for there to be an infinite number of potential objects changing, without an actual object (God). Aquinas uses this argument to cement the foundation for the rest of his

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