School Work Essay

Preston Huntington
Professor McKay
07MAY13

Third Paper and Final Exam

Question #1

“Nihilist sleeps and in dreams he sees god's face
Realize even disbelief requires a leap of faith
From birth to death, we search for what's yet to be known
We and hope and pray and ask, but we are never shown” - George Petit

St. Thomas Aquinas explores in Question Two: The Existence of God the over arching question of whether God exists. He examines five reasons or arguments as too how God must exist and the ways in which it can be proved. The most interesting of which is argument number three, that is the reductio argument, or rather the argument from possibility and necessity. In his argument, Aquinas establishes a theory that everything in the material universe, or everything which we perceive, has the possibility to be or not to be. Things come into being and then go out of being. We are to assume that every being is a contingent being (of chance), and for every contingent being there is a time that it does not exist. Yet, if that is the case, it is impossible for these beings to have always existed. Aquinas then poses the following question: If the possibility of a thing not existing is true, then there could have been a time in which nothing existed. If nothing were to exist, then there would have been nothing to have brought the current existence into play. This is a disturbing thought. If this is the case then nothing would be in existence now, which is impossible because existence is real and there is obviously something within our perceived reality. These thoughts provoke a rather absurd result making one assume that every being is a being that results from chance. This in turn contradicts itself, therefore not every being is a contingent being, resulting in an ultimatum, a concrete statement to this argument, simply put: Some beings exist because of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from another being, but rather causes that existence. That in a nutshell, God. I chose argument number three because one can relate it to reality simpler than any of his other arguments. Possibility and necessity, in which all things have the possibility to exist, but have the chance to not exist. So what I perceive Aquinas is saying is that theres a possibility you cannot be here. I find a couple difficulties in agreeing with Aquinas in regards to this as a legitimate reasoning behind God’s existence. For example, my mother brought me into this world and it is very possible that she could take me out of it, thus making it possible for me not to exist. Now if a being possibly doesn’t exist, at some point in that beings existence it has to not exist. Yet, if all things could at some point not exist, then at some point nothing existed, which provides a rather real possibility of reality. When looking at the universe, one can easily pose the question, what was before the galaxies formed? The beginning of the universe. Before that? Nothing, there was no being, no existence in the form of anything. It is very natural for someone to say that in order for there to have been something, it must have been created. Therefore in terms of what was before the universe, one could say God. This is Aquinas’ theory. Aquinas then brings necessity into the equation. We have already established a cause and effect equation to existentialism. However one cannot go back forever claiming that things exist because of accidents. Aquinas argues that there has to be something that doesn’t just possibly exist, but exists necessarily. The universe, earth, people, you, me, it all exists and there is no other way it could have

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