5 Proofs

Naduah Ortiz

Professor David O’ Brien

Rel-123

28 September 2014

God’s Existence

Does God exist? An ongoing question which leads to the controversy within people, deep theologian thoughts and confusion. Most people would say that there is no way to prove God is real, especially without physical evidence. Another saying, would be that science can prove everything the bible states God created with evidence to back it up. With that being said, through the continuous controversy of opinion, a Christian may say God’s existence is all in faith or that you have to have a personal experience to fully understand the reasoning behind their personal beliefs. One believer known as St. Thomas Aquinas decided to state and validate his opinion to the non-believers and introduce the five proofs of God’s existence. The five proofs are; the unmoved mover, uncreated creator, contingency or necessity, standard of being, and lastly design (teleology). Each proof explains the existence of God thoroughly and can be demonstrated without science. Through each proof especially Design, Aquinas proves why everything has a purpose and appears the way it is.

The origin of the five proofs came from Aquinas observing other theologian’s ways to prove God was real. Aquinas answer to general assumptions such as the world being found by human reason rather than God, was “A thing can be self-evident in either of two ways; on the one hand, self-evident in itself, though not to us; on the other, self-evident in itself, and to us. A proposition is self-evident because the predicate is included in the essence of the subject, as “Man is an animal”, for animal is contained in the essence of man. If, therefore the essence of the predicate and subject be known to all, the proposition will be self-evident to all; as is clear with regard to the first principles of demonstration, the terms of which are common things that no one is ignorant of, such as being and non-being, whole and part, and such...