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St Thomas Aquinas

changing and started the universe, time and all matter and concepts of existence. In my view, this Being is what we understand to be God.St. Thomas Aquinas recognized that there were some people who doubted the existence of God because, to them, logic did not allow for or explain God’s existence. His first two ways are two proofs based on logic and observation of nature in proving God’s existence to those who could not accept or believe God on faith alone. Aquinas’ first way is based on motion. He calls it the most obvious way. This first argument, the Argument from Motion, tries to prove the existence of God as the first mover which is unmoved. Now, it is certain as a matter of sense-observation that some things in this world are in motion. Whatever is in motion, Aquinas states, is moved by something else. Aquinas then defines one type of motion as the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality, and says that nothing can make this movement except by something that is already in actuality in the same respect as the first object is in potentiality. For example, something which is actually hot, like fire, makes something which is potentially hot, like wood, to be actually hot. In this way the fire moves and alters the wood. Now, it is not possible for the same thing to be, at the same time and same respect, in actuality and in potentiality.For instance, what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot, though it may simultaneously be potentially cold. So, it is impossible that in the same respect and same manner anything should be both mover and moved. In this, Aquinas means that nothing can move itself. Therefore, if something is in motion, it must have been put in motion by something else, which must have been put in motion by yet another thing, and so on. However, this cannot go on to infinity because there would never have been a first mover and, consequently, no subsequent movers. After ...

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