St. Thomas Aquinas s Five Ways And William Paley s...

I will be writing about St. Thomas Aquinas’s â€Å"Five ways† and William Paley’s â€Å"Teleological argument†. I will be looking into the difference between the two philosophers who both believe in God but have two different approaches on how they can both prove that God does exist. I would like to look deeper into the difference between the two and to see whose theory of Gods existence is more logical with the least arguments. I will be looking at two of Aquinas’s laws two and five, Aquinas says we experience causality Nothing is the cause of itself causes are other than their effects. There cannot be an infinite regress of caused causes. If there were an infinite regress, the effects we experience here now would not exist. Therefore, there must be some first cause and this we call God. There is also the law of argument by design, we naturally work towards a goal, we also lack the knowing of the outcome, but we reach our goal by being pointed in the direction, therefore there is an intelligent being pointing us in the direction and that would be proof of â€Å"God†. As for Paley’s theory he believes that nature must have a designer and that the designer is God, he believed we all have a purpose and everything that we do has purpose. Paley says that with our abilities to create artifacts that resemble the universe then there has to be a creator of the universe and everything that is in it. Either nature or some of its parts have design like properties they show evidence of beingShow MoreRelatedQuestions On The And The Doctrine Of God2357 Words   |  10 Pageslogical proof? Arguments in the affirmative abound. Let us examine one in particular, that of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Five Ways. As we do this, we will consider Sà ¸ren Kierkegaard’s claim that any logical proof of God’s existence assumes God already exists, that God is necessary for reality to exist (Swenson). Let us establish the logical proof offered by Aquinas and then determine whether we could reach the same conclusions assuming God does not exist, and employ Occ am’s razor. The Way of Motion a)Read MoreChapter 1 THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF REASONING 25116 Words   |  21 PagesChapter 1 THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF REASONING ARGUMENTS Reasoning is the activity of making inferences. This is when you attempt to justify or prove one statement by appealing to another statement/s. To prove or justify a statement means to give a good reason for believing it.1 The statement that you are trying to justify is called the conclusion whereas the justifying statements are called premises. All reasoning has a conclusion (implied or explicit) and at least one (and typically more than one)