What is the difference between Thomas Aquinas's proofs of God's existence and scientific proof?

Question

I forget the difference but sometimes the two are confused. Can you give it in laymen's terms? I am only an armchair philosopher. And if you know why there is such contraversy with TA, I would also like to know. I think it is quite natural to understand there is a God, and that his is the only one.

t_rex:

Your statement :"His first premise 'Now, nothing can be brought from potentiality to actual existence except through something actually existing' is not too difficult to understand. He believed God was not actually created. So that something as uncreated, is beyond the statement itself. All being is derived from Divine Being and that Being need not be brought from potentiality.

Answer 1

farien3 has the gist of TA, but I disaggree on this point;

//Aquinas, like all other humans, is not capable of imagining eternity//

Imagining eternity, or infinity is all we are capable of, with mortal, or finite minds. However, the mere notion of eternity is actually proof that infinity exists because we as finite creatures cannot possibly create even the notion of infinity.

The effect can never be greater than the cause. TA is trying to show that concepts like 'omni', and 'super' are alien to man.

People get lost in the existential bull___ that claims that if you can imagine it, it must be.

//The main issue however, is that simply because WE can't imagine eternity, doesn't mean that things are not eternal.//

contra-positive; we can imagine it, and it is.

Answer 2

Aquinas offered 5 'proofs' of gods existence. Unfortunately, with some close reading it quickly becomes apparent that they are all rewordings of the same basic premise: Everything has to have had an original cause, because it is impossible for it not to have had one.

Aquinas, like all other humans, is not capable of imagining eternity. He feels that everything has a beginning because it HAD to have a beginning. Why? Because if there was no beginning, then time just proceeds forever in both directions and that simply isn't imaginable.

The main issue however, is that simply because WE can't imagine eternity, doesn't mean that things are not eternal. There doesn't HAVE to have been a beginning to all things just because we can't imagine anything else. That inability to imagine eternity is OUR flaw, not the flaw of the concept.

Answer 3

Aquinas' "proofs" are more philosophy than science.

His first premise "Now, nothing can be brought from potentiality to actual existence except through something actually existing" easily proves itself to be false. If nothing can be brought to existence except through something already IN existence, then even his god must also have been created by something already in existence, and that thing created as well by something previously existing....

Answer 4

Scientific proofs are only valid in the physical world. Spirits cannot be quantified in that way. So scienific proof is not only impossible, it is moot.

TA depends for his proofs on the human ability to understand the implications of Creation. Unfortunately, people don't HAVE to look if they don't want to.

Answer 5

Aquinas's "proofs" were nothing of the sort. They were circular, dare I say, logic. They wouldn't withstand scrutiny in a high school debate club.

Answer 6

Logic can be completely consistent and still be wrong. If you start from false premises you will get a wrong answer. His proofs are simple and easy to refute with evidence.

Answer 7

Eiliat hit the nail directly on the head.