People who are analytical thinkers is this true?

Question

The Existence of God is proved in Five ways.


http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/aquinasFiveWays_ArgumentAnalysis.htm

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Windom Earle

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Thank you all for time and such insightful answers. It appears that in our politically correct world that God, too is anachronistic. It would be a pleasure to be in contact with all of you e-mail me if this is an option. Thanks Maahes007

Answer 1

Ah, good ol' Thomas Aquinas. At one point, yes analytical thinkers would have thought those true (and at the time they were written, those "proofs" certainly counted at proofs, though by today's standards are a bit dubious). No longer, however.

Just one problem with those proofs is that the conclusion negates its own arguments. Take the Argument from Motion; #5, nothing can move itself vs. #8, the necessity of a prime mover. If #5 is true, it violates #8, and same visa versa.

Furthermore, the proofs lead to an ultimate "doer," as it were, but that doer need not be God specifically. It is, alas, a bandwagon approach logical fallacy (of course, they didn't know what logical fallacies were back then). Even assuming that the Arguement from Motion is 100% in its progression, the fact that everyone "understands" the prime mover to be God does not mean that God is, in fact, the Prime Mover (merely that people understand it to be so; such an understanding can be false or true).

These were rather nice proofs in the middle ages but it doesn't quite hold up nowadays with advances in logic, physics, and so forth. Of course, it would be horribly anachronistic for us to fault Thomas Aquinas for using what were, at the time, perfectly acceptable arguments (or to claim that he misunderstood Newtonian Physics, as one can not "misunderstand" something if that something doesn't first exist in order to offer the potential for misunderstanding). Certainly, no analytical thinker worth the data storage space their thoughts would be saved on would be so anachronistic...

Answer 2

These are not considered proof.


Argument from Motion.
Step #8 is a big time leap in logic. The person never shows or discusses any evidence that shows that a god has put anything in motion.

Argument from Efficient Causes.
Well #2 and #3 lead to one of those questions that christians avoid (What created god?). Also, this has a leap of logic problem in step #7. There is no evidence of a god leading to a first efficient cause. Also, there is a logic error, the bandwagon fallacy. Just because everyone says something does not make it true. Also, not everyone says that god lead to a first efficient cause.

Argument from Possibility and Necessity
Once again this leads to the What created god question. This also has the bandwagon fallacy and a leap in logic. There is no evidence of a god ever doing anything presented.

Argument from Gradation of Being
Another leap in logic. An argument cannot say that something is good and therefore god must have made it and therefore that is evidence of god. Nope, it does not work that way. For it to be proof, you need to show that a god created the something.

Argument from Design
Leap in logic again. Just because something happens does not mean that a god made it happen. Please present evidence of a god doing the work. Not just show the work and say that a god made it.


There are people who claim that humans are nothing more than a biology experiment conducted by aliens. If arguments like the ones presented here were considered proof, then the aliens breeding humans would be just as believable.

Also, what evidence shows that the Egyptian gods did not do all of the work that these arguments discuss? How do you know that it was not Allah or Thor or Jupitor that did all of this? You see, these are not proof of anything because they are just logic fallacies that are crafted to support something that does not have any evidence to support it.

Answer 3

Ah, the arguments fo Aquinas; the arguments of a true genius who lacks sufficient knowledge to fully analyze his position.

All of the arguments here can be dismissed with a high-school understanding of physics. Motion can be caused by the mutual attraction supplied by gravity; it doesn't require something to be pushed.

Not everything requires an antecedent cause; particles come into existence in a vacuum, along with antiparticles; there is a net gain of zero in mass and energy in the universe because these particles are equal and opposite.

It has already been shown that one need not have an intelligence directing things. That is the point behind the study of evolution and abiogenesis.

Really, though Aquinas was brilliant, he simply didn't have the knowledge to adequately address the weakness in his philosophy.

Things don't exist prior to themselves, but particles and antiparticles can come into existence in a vacuum without infringing on the laws of thermodynamics.

Answer 4

No.

First of all, this was written by St. Thomas Aquinas, in a time before our current level of science and technology. He clearly has a poor repertoire of tools to tackle the question of God's existence; not that we today have a good one, but at least we have more science which lets us reproduce the reproducible.

This "proof" is more like justifications thrown out by guests on the Jerry Springer show, making lots of assumptions with nothing much to back them up. He is pointing out happenings and events that occur in nature, and without being able to prove anything concretely, going ahead with the idea that God must've done it since nothing else could have.

Final point, read this excerpt:

"Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God."

Then, look at the image linked below:

http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2007/08/lamb7legsAP_450x328.jpg

I see no goodness nor perfection in the photo other than perhaps if we give it a merciful death and eat it for dinner. It seems exceedingly improbable that a perfect God would allow such imperfection to live, let alone create it in the first place.

Answer 5

1. This relies on a misunderstanding of Newtonian physics. Premise 7 is wrong.

2. This only argues for the existence of an initial cause. The conclusion simply defines God as "that which is the initial cause." That is a redefinition of God, and only can be used to argue for the Deist God.

3. This argument relies on a misunderstanding of modal logic. Line 5 demonstrates a possibility and line 6 takes that possibility as a necessity (which is unjustified).

4. This is flat out wrong. It relies on a misconception that we have an ontological commitment to uninstantiated properties (the "perfections" are empirically uninstantiated). We don't.

5. This simply redefines the laws of physics as God. It's an argument in favor of the pantheist God.

Answer 6

No. The proof of a thing is only in the thing itself. Nearly every statement is presumptuous. He starts from the presumption that he knows there is a god behind everything and then crafts each statement around it. As he moves along the desperation becomes more evident and the logic behind the statements becomes thinner until you get to argument 4 & 5 which are all statements of belief with no logical support at all.

I tell you what. Read each statement then as best as you can ask dispassionately with no presumption "why is that statement true?"

I don't fault Thomas at all for his argument. After all he worked with the information and presumptions he had at the time and made a very good first argument. I do however fault anyone who 700 years later takes the argument as poof. I suspect Thomas himself would slap you for clinging to it now.

Answer 7

Yes I am a self thinker and tinkerer.

Answer 8

This is full of faulty logic and assumptions. It's also very badly written so as to make it difficult to read.

Anyway, let's pretend, for the sake of the argument, that God DOES exist. The Bible asks us to BELIEVE in Him, not PROVE his existence.

Answer 9

All of these are nonsense. I don't have the time to address each of them here though but they all assume what I would say is a false notion of the nature of reality. Basically they each invoke strawman or false dichotomy arguments.

Answer 10

All 5 were dealt with and dismissed more than 200 years ago.