This all men speak of as God. The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like.
Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result.
Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
Privacy Policy. Aquinas argued that we need a scale to measure the value of things as bigger or smaller, greater or lesser, and better as opposed to worse. To have a measurement system, we need something of the highest perfection, goodness, and truth to measure by and from which to obtain those qualities, which is God. The Argument from Final Cause: The last argument is of completion or the teleological argument. Aquinas observed that everything in nature moved according to predictable ways and towards predictable ends.
For example, acorns always move towards becoming oak trees, even if they don't succeed. Aquinas thought God must be directing beings to their final goal since something intelligent needed to do so. Other philosophers such as Anselm and Aristotle influenced Aquinas 's arguments. He wrote these five defenses as a response to Anselm's Ontological Argument, a singular proof of God, which Aquinas did not find convincing.
Aristotle's philosophy of looking for truth in the material world, view of time and motion, and cosmology inspired the methods and concepts that Aquinas used to prove God's existence.
In a critique of Aquinas 's arguments, philosophers such as David Hume and Emanuel Kant found the first three self-defeating. For example, in the first argument, the concept of an Unmoved Mover undermines the argument's premise. Philosophers are prompted to question why God is the exception to a fundamental law of the universe, and if God made everything, who made God.
Hume inquired why it's impossible for the universe to be an infinite series of causes and effects in motion. He used examples like finding the largest prime number to illustrate how infinite series exist. Kant further explained the flaw of the second argument by stating there is no way to know that the final causes are reached.
Thomas Aquinas 's legacy rests in his Sainthood and position as a celebrated doctor of the church for his work during a time of radical discovery. Aquinas observed and questioned the natural world, which we can also do in asking how others assume the world works.
Aquinas shows that we can accept a conclusion without agreeing with its reasoning, or agree in part with the premise or reasoning but reject the conclusion. For example, followers of various religions agree that God exists but have opposing ideas on how that impacts their life choices. The second way states that, though we can see that things are caused, it is not possible for something to be the cause of itself because this would mean that it existed prior to its own existence, which is a contradiction.
If something is caused, then the cause must also have a cause. This cannot be an infinitely long chain, so there must be a cause which is not itself caused by anything further; a first cause.
The causes need not be sequential events. Aquinas argues that the first cause is first in a hierarchy, rather than sequentially. The first cause, or God, is a principal cause, rather than a derivative cause. The third way says that we see things that are possible to be and possible not to be, or perishable things.
However, it everything were contingent and, and so, capable of going out of existence, then, given infinite time, this possibility would be realized, and everything would cease to exist by now. But since things clearly do exist right now, there must be something that is imperishable. According to Aquinas, this necessary being is what we understand to be God.
According to the fourth way, things in our world vary in degrees of goodness, truth, nobility, etc. There are sick animals and healthy animals. There are well-drawn triangles and poorly drawn ones. Judging something as being "more" or "less" implies some standard against which it is being judged, so there must be something which is goodness itself, and this is what we understand to be God, according to Aquinas.
This behavior must be set by something else, and that thing must be intelligent. Aquinas believes that this is what we understand to be God. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Dominican friar and theologian who formalized the "Five Ways" intended to demonstrate God's existence. Aquinas claims that God is an unchanging source of change, and that for change to exist, there must be an unchanging source of change.
There is no real reason that change must come from something that remains unchanged itself. It is possible to change something, and then be changed yourself. Aquinas also claims that God must have always existed and will always exist. If God has always existed, where did he come from and how did he get there? Why is it necessary for the original creator to have always existed? Is it not possible that something could have existed, created something, and then stopped existing?
For example, you were created by your parents, but they will stop existing eventually, just as you will stop existing eventually. Perhaps the original ultimate force in the universe, AKA God can grow and change over time, just as the universe itself grows and changes over time.
And perhaps the Universe will end one day only to give rise to the next universe and start the cycle over. If God never changes, neither will the universe, as the universe and God are one in the same. If nothing ever changes, then there is no purpose for the universe to exist.
Aquinas was wrong in assuming that God must necessarily be some external force outside of the universe. Even if Aquinas was correct and there is some outside creator, there is no proof that this God is ultimately intelligent or perfect. If he were, everything he created should then be perfect. And since nothing in existence is perfect, then God cannot be perfect either.
Assuming that God must be perfect and supremely intelligent is no different than a small child looking up to his parents and thinking that they are perfect and essentially God-like.
The universe and nature can exist without needing an external creator. Of course, it isn't necessary for there to be an intelligent creator for the universe and the natural world to exist. It could have happened by chance. The argument that everything in nature is too complex to be chance doesn't hold up. For example, when life first appeared on Earth, there could have been any number of types of creatures that started to evolve, but only the ones that were viable lived on to continue to evolve.
Perhaps there are lifeforms that can't survive in oxygen. Lifeforms simply adapt to their surroundings and only the ones that can survive do. The First Cause Argument, the second way of Thomas Aquinas, has been shown the direction of the first, they are both invalid as proofs of God's existence. Aquinas: The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to be corrupted, and consequently, it is possible for them to be or not to be.
But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which can not-be, at some time is not. Therefore, if everything can not-be, then at one time there was nothing in existence. Now if these were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exists begins to exists only through something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it is impossible for anything to have begun to exist; thus even now nothing would be in existence - which is absurd.
Therefore not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not.
Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has already been proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but admit the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
It is noted that the conclusion of the Cosmological Argument [c] is that there exists a being who owes its existence only to itself and nothing else. But it should be remembered that one of the basic premise of the argument is that there is no being that owes its existence to itself. This openly contradicts the final conclusion, which states that God is the being that owes its existence to itself.
Thus the third way commits an elementary logical fallacy. There has been attempts to modify the premise to say that no finite being owes its existence too itself and that since God, being infinite does owes his existence to himself. But this is basically saying that no being owes its existence to itself, except God, thus committing the fallacy of petitio principii; for the conclusion is already assumed in one of its premises. In the case where "necessary" is used in a logical sense, the proposition "God exists" can only mean that God's existence cannot be denied without contradiction.
All this boils down to the assertion that "God exists" by definition. But we are now back to the Ontological Argument which we have shown to be invalid. And that we have shown to be fallacious.
First Hume pointed out that the term "necessary existence" does not have a logical conviction of purely logical or mathematical arguments: It is pretended that the Deity is a necessary existent being; and this necessity of his existence is attempted to explained by asserting that if we knew his whose essence or nature we should perceive to be impossible for him not to exist as for twice two not to be four.
But it is evident that this can never happen, while our faculties remain the same as at present. It will still be possible for us, at any time, to conceive the non-existence of what we formally conceived to exist; nor can the mind lie under the necessity of supposing any object to remain always in being, in the same manner as we lie under a necessity of always conceiving twice two to be four.
The words, therefore "necessary existence", have no meaning, or which is the same thing, none of which is consistent. For surely, even today, no one have the audacity to say that we know all about the universe to say otherwise: But further, why may no material universe be the necessarily existent being, according to this pretended explication of necessity?
We dare not affirm that we know all the qualities of matter; and for aught we can determine, it may contain some qualities which, were dare known, would make its non-existence appear as great a contradiction as twice two is five.
I find only one argument employed to prove that the material world is not the necessarily existent being; and this argument is derived from the contingency both in the matter and the form of the world. Such an annihilation or alteration, therefore, is not impossible. As they are altogether unknown and inconceivable, they can never be proved incompatible with it. We can now sum up the various problems with the Third Way: the argument, in its basic form is circular, as it assumes the conclusion in one of its premises; the term "necessary being" if it is to be used in a empirical sense boils down to the Second Way, which was already shown to be fallacious, if it is used in the logical sense it reduces to the Ontological Argument, another argument already dismissed as unsound; and finally even if we must admit a necessary existent entity why shouldn't it be the universe itself?.
All in all the Cosmological Arguments fail to demonstrate the existence of God. Back to the top The Fourth Way: God, the Absolute Being In the fourth way, God is defined as the Absolute Being which is used as a yardstick for the measurement of all qualities: The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like.
But more or less are predicated of different things according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest, and consequently, something which is most being, for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus, as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things, as is said in the same book.
Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God. In the first place while it may be admitted that some kind of yardstick need to be applied before we can talk in terms of "more" or "less", but there is absolutely no reason why this yardstick must be absolute.
This is especially true in the light of our knowledge today. Values such as "good", "true" and "noble" actually have their assessment change across different cultures and different historical periods. For instance polygamy is considered a crime in western societies, hence is "bad" or "ignoble". Yet in Muslim countries, polygamy is not prohibited and in fact in certain circumstances, where the many menfolk are killed in war, for instance, it is actively encouraged.
In ancient Confucianism, polygamy is nowhere prohibited.
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