Thomas Aquinas
was a theologian and philosopher who wrote Summa Theologica, which
contains The Five Ways. In his second of the five ways, Aquinas
uses two terms that the average individual may not be familiar
with. The first term is efficient cause, which is the thing whose
activity brings an object into being, or produces the event in
question. The second term is first cause, which refers to something
that causes other things to exist but was not caused to exist
itself (an uncaused cause). In this paper, I will argue that
Aquinas second way is an unsound argument for the
existenceof
God. In Aquinas
argument, he first states that everything has an efficient cause
and that nothing can be the efficient cause of itself. If something
show more content
Judging from
the direction that the conclusion seems to be coming from, it seems
like it would have been more natural to conclude that there is a
first member of the chain, a first cause. If an individual examines
the other premises in this argument, it will become clear that this
potential conclusion is inconsistent and the argument with this
conclusion does not make sense. This is because for something to be
the first member, there cannot be any events that come before it.
But in order for an event to be caused, it has to have events that
come before it (that cause it). There is a contradiction because
the first premise states that every event has a cause, yet the
first member cannot have a cause or event preceding it. In addition
to this, it is important to question Aquinas suggestion that
infinite causal chains do not exist. When Aquinas states that
nothing can be the efficient cause of itself, it is implied that
something had to have caused that thing to come into existence.
Aquinas contradicts himself when he says this because he implies
the concept of an infinite causal chain, yet he explicitly denies
it in one of his premises by stating, Now in efficient causes it
is not possible to go on to infinity (12). This issue of infinite
causal chains is something to be concerned about because it is not
unreasonable to believe that time may be infinite in both
directions. Aquinas makes a questionable claim when
Other samples, services and questions:
When you use PaperHelp, you save one valuable — TIME
You can spend it for more important things than paper writing.
