Thursday, February 26, 2009

St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways

St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican priest, theologian, and philosopher who developed rational arguments for the existence of God. His Five Ways are five arguments that he used to try to prove the existence of God.
Personally, I think that the Fourth Way (The Argument from Degrees and Perfection) is the best out of all of the five. In the Fourth Way, Aquinas argues that there are objects that are greater in quality than others. There is one that has a greater degree of beauty than the next and which is greater than the next, and so on. Therefore, there must be a perfect standard by which all qualities are measured, and so they are contained in God.
To me, this makes much more sense than the other ways because this way doesn't give God a special exception (whereas God is an exception to the rules and claims in the others). In this argument, Aquinas states that there are some things that have a greater degree of beauty than the next. As you go along, you finally get the the perfect standard by which every quality is measured. This perfection must be God because the Entity known as God is, by definition of the Christians, a perfect, almighty force from which all good things come from.
The arguments that i have agaisnt this however, are these two points:
1. Firstly, the view of beauty of one person may be different than that of another person ("Beauty lies within the eyes of the beholder"). Therefore, which perception or view of beauty is the correct one? If they are all correct, how do we know which is a higher degree of quality than the other?
2. Secondly, why is this Judeo-Christian God different than the gods of the pagans (like the Greeks). Why is it that this one is so perfect and special, while the Greek gods were human-like and had flaws? The Greek gods displayed not-so-virtuous actions and emotions, why are all perfections contained only in this God?
Despite these two points, I still think that this argument is the best of all the other ones.

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