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Thomas Aquinas: Arguments for God’s Existence

Thomas Aquinas: Arguments for God’s Existence. Kinds of Arguments and the Argument from Motion January 14, 2004. Overview. A priori and a posteriori arguments. Why Prove God’s Existence? The Arguments Argument from Change Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency

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Thomas Aquinas: Arguments for God’s Existence

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  1. Thomas Aquinas: Arguments for God’s Existence Kinds of Arguments and the Argument from Motion January 14, 2004

  2. Overview • A priori and aposteriori arguments. • Why Prove God’s Existence? • The Arguments • Argument from Change • Argument from Causation • Argument from Contingency • Argument from Degrees of Excellence • Argument from Harmony

  3. Next Time • Just as it says on the syllabus: • Do SQ 4, p. 49 • Do FFR 3, p. 51

  4. A Priori and A Posteriori Arguments • A Priori Arguments • Premises don’t require any “empirical” information. • Instead, the argument proceeds purely conceptually. • Ex: All bachelors are unmarried men, and no unmarried men have wives. Therefore, no bachelors have wives. • A Posteriori Arguments • Premises do require “empirical” information. • They require particular, contingent information about how the world is, beyond just conceptual information. • Ex: If the streets are wet, then my basement is flooded. But my basement is not flooded, so the streets are not wet.

  5. Why Prove God’s Existence? • There are some reasons for doubting God’s existence. • The Problem of Evil • Occam’s Razor

  6. The Argument from Change • ‘Motion’ is used in its general sense, to mean “change.” • What is the basic idea of this argument?

  7. The First Way Simplified • Things move and change. • Whenever something moves or changes, its motion or change must be caused by some other thing, not by itself or by nothing. • If that other thing is also moving or changing, then its motion or change must be caused by some further thing still. • If the chain of causes of changes stretched back infinitely, it would have no first link to get it started. • So, the chain of causes of changes does not stretch back infinitely. • So, there must be some First, Unmoved Mover, namely God.

  8. What’s All This “Potentiality” Stuff? • It all depends on a lot of medieval philosophy you don’t know. • But, we can fix that a little bit: • A “property” is a feature of something: redness, hotness, blandness, perfection, etc. • To change is to gain a property or to move to a different place on some scale. • Think of properties as contagious: I can’t gain a property without the intervention of something that already has at least as much of it as I wind up with. • This means nothing can cause changes in itself – changes have to come “from the outside.”

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