Treatise on God
...e to be known as the Five Ways, namely, five a posteriori proofs or demonstrations of the existence of God. First, “The Argument From Motion,” Aquinas states from common observation that an object is in motion (e.g. the planets, a rolling stone) is put in motion by some other object or force. From this we may safely conclude that in the first way Aquinas is arguing for a first mover by which we can account for the movement of the physical universe. This first mover accounts for all motion or change in physical quality, quantity and location. Everything in the world changes and Aquinas used this notion to speak of the sustaining work of God. Thus without God the heavens and the earth would not exist. James Rachels writes, “A different form of the argument appeals to the idea that we have the same evidence that the universe was designed by an intelligent creator, such as, computers were designed. Paley introduced one of the most famous analogies in the history of science, that of the watchmaker. Suppose we find a watch lying on the ground. If we inspect it, we inevitably conclude that it must have been designed by an intelligent being. After all, it is made of many small parts… In Paley’s words… some parts are formed for motion… We rightfully conclude that objects such as watches are made by intelligent designers because they have parts that work to serve a purpose.” Even Aristotle argued that planetary motion in which caused the seasons to change required an unmoved mover who would maintain the order of things. The second way is from the nature of efficient cause. Aquinas says, common sense observation tells us that no object creates itself. In other words, some previous object had to create it. Aquinas believed that ultimately there must have been an Uncaused First Cause who began the chain of existence for all things. Whereas this First Cause must account for all activity, He must be of pure form and possessing no matter, in other words, God is immaterial. This lack of matter implies pure form. Now the essence of any immaterial being is the form alone; God is his own essence or nature. We see, that compared to the first, the second way yields a much greater exposition into the nature of God. The notion of cause and effect means you cannot have the effect without the cause. There cannot be an endless regression of cause and effect thus there must be a first cause in which is God. There would be nothing if there wasn’t an original cause of everything and, as far as Aquinas is concerned, challenges the notion that the physical realm is infinite. Jostein Gaarder writes, “Finally, we are bound to fail if we attempt to prove the existence of God with the aid of reason. Here the rationalists, like Descartes, had tried to prove that there must be a God simply because we have the idea of a supreme being. Others, like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, decided that there must be a God because everything must have a first cause. The third way defines two types of objects in the universe: contingent beings and necessary beings. A contingent being is an object that cannot exist without a necessary being causing its existence. Aquinas believed that the existence of contingent beings would ultimately necessitate a being in which must exist for all of the contingent beings to exist. This being, called a necessary being, is what we call God. The third way results in the conclusion that an infinite series of necessary beings of who derive their necessity from others is clearly impossible. The principle conclusion in which Aquinas is able to make from this argument is that God is his own existence. Things exist in the world but they need not. There was a time before certain things existed and there will be a time when they no longer exist. There must also have been a time when nothing existed. Objects have contingent existence but only God has necessary existence. Thus if God did not exist nothing else would exist. We can assume that God created the world out-of-nothing. Aristotle imagined the movement of the stars and the planets guiding all movement on Earth. But there had to be something causing the heavenly bodies to move. Aristotle called this the “first mover,” or “God.” The first mover is itself at rest, but it is the “formal cause” of the movement of the heavenly bodies, and thus of all movement in nature. The fourth is formulated in a way from a very interesting observation about the qualities of things. For example, one may say that of two marble sculptures one is more beautiful than the other. So for these two objects, one has a greater degree of beauty than the next. This is referred to as degrees or gradation of a quality. From this fact Aquinas concluded that for any given quality (e.g., goodness, beauty, knowledge) there must be a perfect standard by which all such qualities are measured. These perfections are contained in God. We can see in the world degrees of perfection and goodness. We know these degrees because we can compare them with the maximum in any genus. As humans ha...