aquinas essay

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Philosophy
Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225; he was renowned for his writing, his most famous one being the summa theologiae which he began writing in 1256, unfortunately though he passed away before completing it. The summa theologiae basically summed up his views on theology, the first part demonstrates his rationality of belief in existence of God, and he wanted to prove this by giving five ways why we should believe in him, backed up by good philosophical evidence, now called aquinas’ five ways. The first 3 ways are more relevant to the cosmological argument; these are motion, cause and contingency.

The first way is motion, motion is a very valid point, everything that happens in this world is a process of motion and everything that is in motion has the potential to change, for example, when a cup of tea is hot, it is potentially cold. And things move when potential motion becomes actually motion, but only actual motion can convert potential motion into actual motion, therefor nothing can move itself and each thing in motion is moved by something else for example, if domino’s are lined up you need something to push the first one for the rest to fall. Therefor there must have been a first mover, put in motion by nobody else and this is understood by humans to be God who we describe as the unmoved mover. The second way is cause; we perceive a series of events that happen within the world as a cause of God or nature, no matter how good or bad. But what can be the cause of something if you’re the only one, the only answer to this is God. We all know who caused us to be born, our mothers and fathers, but if the first thing in a series doesn’t exist then nothing in the series can exist. So there must have been a first cause, scientists could say it was the big bang but what caused the big bang? The only answer to that also is God who is described as the uncaused causer.

The third way is contingency, with the
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