Monday, February 23, 2009

St. Thomas Aquinas' Five ways....i believe.....

From what i have read of St.Thomas' Aquinas' five ways i have to say that a few of them make no sense and the others have ok arguments.
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The first way basically states....
1) Nothing can move itself
2) If every object in motion had a mover, then the first object in motion needed a mover
3) This first mover is the unmoved mover called God
....uhhhh to begin i have to say that i find this argument to be the weakest. In a sense i agree that nothin can move itself. Outside forced such as gravity have a constant affect upon us and our actions. But i do have to say that the whole thing about God being the mover is trash. Im not denying that God isnt in control as being argued here but there isnt any real substantial proof that God exists so using him in this argument is pointless. In this case it would probably be best to leave religion out of science.
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The Second way states......
1) There exist things that are caused (created) by other things
2) Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can create itself)
3) There can not be an endless string of objects causing other objects to exist
4) Therefore there must be an uncaused first cause called god.
............. Out of all the arguments i find this one to make the most sense...at least to me. I agree that there must be some outside force thats creates all that exists. Obviously nothing can make itself....you can argue that something does but eventually you will find that it is a product of something else. Again the whole thing about God is not or may not be true. His existence cannot be proven therefore i believe that one should not assume that he is not the outside force. Rather he should be seen as an option instead of the only answer.

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The third way states.....
1) Contingent beings are caused
2) Not every being can be contingent
3) There must exist a being which is necessary to cause contingent beings
4) This necessary being is god
Again the whole god thing is basically the only thing i dont agree with but other than that this argument seems to make sense to me. It makes sense of the order in the universe and how things are dependent upon each other.
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The fourth way states.....
basically...perception..you will always look at two things and have an opinion of whether or not they are beautiful or ugly and so on. I dont agree with this argument because i dont believe that there is a standard for beauty...what one person sees as the most beautiful thing another may see as a hideous thing. Therefore we will never have just one idea of what perfection is. I also disagree with the idea that God has perfection. He throughout texts has shown that not even he is perfect. And according to the bible and the imperfections shown by God i would have to say if God isnt perfect then that goes to show that nothing is...im not saying that i completely support this idea of god and such but this is how it makes the most sense to me
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The fifth way states.....
the idea of intelligent design...this topic is being revisited here and my opinion has stayed the same. This argument is in my point of view probably one of the weaker ones because it is speaking of god and etc. Im not saying that God does not exist or that he is not the creator but i am saying that there is no proof that he is. People simply have faith in what he has done but they dont have anything to back up these so called truths. He might be the intelligent designer responsible for the creation of the earth and heavens and such but he might not be...there might just be some scientific explanation somewhere that explains how the world was created and how everything has happened up til this point. So by St. Thomas saying that it is all by God i would have to say that he might be right but there is also the possibility that he is not therefore this argument is only half true.

the end :]

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