Gods Existence
...g to Aquinas, the way in which it is self evident does provide sufficient reasons for believing in God. He feels that if it is self evident in itself that is enough for us to believe in God. If it is self evident in itself than that means that it is real and if it is real than we can believe in it. Aquinas second way for explaining the existence of God is called the cosmological theory. It is the theory of cause and effect. In his second way of demonstration it considers efficient causes. Aquinas says that nothing is the efficient cause of itself. He then goes on to say that if nothing is the cause of itself than it has to be caused by something other than itself. He says that a chain of cause and effect can not stretch infinitely backward in time. Moreover, if the chain cannot stretch infinitely backward in time than there has to be a first cause. Since there has to be a first cause, Aquinas said that this first cause will be called God. His argument means that one thing may have many efficient causes but all these causes are in an order. If there is no first cause than there is no beginning to the order. Therefore, there must be a first cause to all the things that we see going on today. Overall, God is the first cause. Cosmological arguments work in general by showing that everything has to start with a first cause. It proves that there is something that causes everything and there is an order to it all. These arguments show that there is something causing something else to happen. An example of a cosmological argument would be the sun and the moon. The sun rises in the morning and the moon goes down in the morning and at night the sun goes down and the moon comes out. This is an example of a cosmological argument because how does the sun and the moon know what to do. There has to be something telling it what to do. There has to be a first cause and God is the first cause. Another example would be the moons gravity and the tide. The tide is an effect of the moon’s gravity and the moon’s gravity is the cause of the ride. It is the essential cause of the tide. Some people agree with this argument and some people don’t. Everyone has criticisms about something. My criticism on Aquinas theory is that how does he really know that God is the first cause? From reading the theory and what he says, it sounds like an assumption to me. He says everything has to have a first cause and the first cause was God. How does he know that the first cause was really God though? What he stated does not prove that God was really the first cause of everything. To me, his argument is not factual at all. He just needed to demonstrate ways that God exis...