St Thomas Aquinas

God's Existence

• Argued for God's existence with a cosmological argument
• Definitions
  • Effect --> something that has come to exist
  • Efficient cause --> something that brings an effect about (causes it to exist)
  • God --> first, uncaused efficient cause
    • If God is uncaused (not an effect), God must be something that did not begin to exist
    • God has always existed
• Used process of elimination for existence of a first cause
  • Four possibilities
    • Regress has no end, it's infinite
    • Regress has no end, it's circular
    • Regress does have an end, something causes itself
    • Regress does have an end, there's a first cause (that is uncaused)
  • St Thomas Aquinas argues the first three possibilities are not possible therefore, God is the first cause

Argument

• Deductive argument
• Phase 1
  • There are causes and effects in the world
    • Not everything has a cause but every effect has a cause
  • In finite time, it's impossible to get through an infinite number of causes
    • No effect would ever be reached
    • There cannot be infinite causal regresses
• Phase 2
  • Causes must precede its effect
    • There cannot be circular
    • There cannot be self-caused
• Phase 3
  • We cannot have infinite, circular, or self-causation
  • The must be a first uncaused cause
• Phase 4
  • Definition of God --> first, uncaused cause
  • God exists

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