Essay About St Thomas Aquinas And Contingent Beings

Cosmological Argument
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Cosmological Argument
Since the dawn of man people began to think and break down how things work and the mechanics of them. Between solving everyday problems to complex ideals one question that man has yet to tackle is the question of Gods existence. Many people had many ideas on how they came about and why things are here and who put them there. One major philosopher, St Thomas Aquinas “The Great Catholic Thinker”, thought of 5 “ways” that we can know God’s existence. His first argument was that “…there are things in the world in motion and that whatever is in motion must have been put in motion by another thing in motion,” and that “this cannot go on to infinity, because there would be no first mover.” Hence St Thomas argues that in order to eliminate the infinite chain of motions, there must be a first mover and source of all motion, this being God. This shows that there must be a “something”, “God”, or what you may call it that started us off. St Thomas’s second argument was very similar to the first. It argues that, “In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of it; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. “By this he means that anything, or event cannot change itself, but can only change something else. Since there is a string of causes in which the string cannot be infinite, then all causes must point themselves to the first cause thus proving Gods existence. The third way is contingent and necessary objects. This way defines two types of objects in the universe: contingent beings and necessary beings. A contingent being is an object that cannot exist without a necessary being causing its existence. Aquinas believed that the existence of contingent beings would ultimately require a being which must exist for all of the contingent beings to exist. This being, called a necessary being, is what we call God. So in short the argument breaks down as this contingent beings are caused — not every being can be contingent — there must exist a being which is necessary to cause contingent beings — this necessary being is God. St Thomas had 2 more ideas the 4th dealt with the argument from Degrees and Perfection. St. Thomas formulated this Way from an observation about the qualities of things. One example may say that of two marble sculptures one is more beautiful than the other. So for these two objects, one has a greater degree of beauty than