Five Ways to Prove God Exists (Aquinas 101)
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- Опубликовано: 26 сен 2024
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“Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” (Romans 1:20)
The writings of ancient pagan philosophers confirmed the biblical teaching that it is possible for human beings to know the existence of God without having ever read the Bible. For this reason, Aquinas taught that human beings have a natural knowledge of God, that we can know the existence of God by using our reason. We may not directly see Him, but from what we do see and experience of the natural world, we can infer that something must be behind it all. Something is responsible for the greatness, the beauty, and the order of the world; and this is what all men call God.
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The Five Ways (Aquinas 101) - Fr. James Brent, O.P.
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If you're enjoying this video, we think you'll love our new SERIES on this topic! ruclips.net/video/pLWPfwl_Kj4/видео.html
thx! Meanwhile: Q - Exactly, WHICH God exists?
ODIN? THOR? SHIVA? HADES? MARS? SET, etc?
@@PirateRadioPodcasts יהוה
Lying on RUclips is easy.
For millennia, connotations of the word "God" have become so deteriorated. The terms Consciousness / Mind / Intelligence seem more relevant for these types of discussions. It seems that the concept of God is not experimentally testable. However, evidence for the effects of Consciousness / Mind / Intelligence are scientifically demonstrable.
The illogical, irrational, and unreasonable position of claiming that there is No Universal Mind / Consciousness / Intelligence (i.e. Atheism): The fallacy is the assumption that something is true (i.e. Universal Mind / Consciousness / Intelligence does not exist) unless proven otherwise. The Claimant making a negative claim (i.e. Universal Mind / Consciousness / Intelligence does not exist) cannot logically, rationally, and reasonably prove nonexistence. Because, for a Claimant to know that X does not exist would require the Claimant to possess 100% knowledge of all things with 100% certainty and 100% accuracy (i.e. omniscience).
Even mainstream secular scientists claim that approx. 95% of the Universe is still unknown (i.e. Dark Energy and Dark Matter). Of the remaining 5% of the Universe, only 0.0035% exists within the visible light spectrum which the human eye is capable of observing. Moreover, of all that is made of atoms and capable of being observed in this "Material" universe, 99.999999999% is actually empty space (i.e. "Non-material"). Therefore, there is much, much more that humanity does not know about the Universe and Reality than it does know. Based on just this information, the position of claiming to be Atheist is shown to be illogical, irrational and unreasonable.
*_“… Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”_* Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), founder of modern physics (Theory of Relativity inter alia) and 1921 Nobel prize winner
*_“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind (i.e. Observer). This mind is the matrix of all matter.”_* Max Plank (the Father of Quantum Physics)
Modern scientific discoveries in Genetics (i.e. biology) have shown that functional / coded / digital Information (i.e. DNA code) is at the core of All Biological Systems. Without functional / coded / digital information, there is No biology. The only known source (i.e. cause) in the universe that has been Observed (i.e. Scientific Method) in nature to be capable of producing functional / coded / digital information, such as that found even in the most primitive biological systems, is mind / consciousness / intelligence.
The fact that DNA / genes (biological coded information) exists at all shows that a Consciousness-'Intelligence-Mind' is involved in the initial introduction and subsequent propagation of living systems. Un-directed random material natural processes have never been observed in nature or experimentally demonstrated to be capable of producing Functional / Coded / Digital information such as that required for biological systems, even at the most primitive levels of biological life.
*_"Language: All Digital communications require a formal language, which in this context consists of all the information that the sender and receiver of the digital communication must both possess, in advance, in order for the communication to be successful."_* (Wikipedia: Digital Data) Inherent in DNA is language. Language is scientifically proven to be the product of only Mind/ Consciousness / Intelligence.
Laws of the Universe exist Independent of anyone's personal beliefs in the existence of the Laws of the Universe. Just as man-made laws govern society globally, Universal Laws govern the entire Universe. Un-directed random material natural processes have never been observed in nature or experimentally demonstrated to be capable of producing any form of laws. As scientifically confirmed, non-material laws are the product of only Mind / Consciousness / Intelligence.
The “World’s Most Notorious Atheist” and World’s Icon and Champion Advocate for Atheism for over 50 years, Antony Flew, finally concluded, *_“I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source. Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than a half century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from MODERN SCIENCE.”_*
if only the one true christian God, somehow split in 3, but hey, he is God, he can do anything, right? anyways, he could come down, again, and just straighten everything out... or is he afraid of being double crossed?
As someone raised Catholic and moved away from the Church and faith, I found myself wondering/wandering in other spiritual directions. Upon reflection, I found myself with a “hole in my heart” seeking something which I didn’t understand. At first, I dismissed it as just my upbringings and “brainwashing”. I wandered into Yoga and some New Age ideas. These had inklings of spiritual Truths which satiated my heart on a surface level, but I found myself moving on. Much like the prodigal son, I am finding myself on the road back home- back to the Church. There are still plenty of doubts, but people/channels/The Church Fathers are places in which I’m finding knowledge and more importantly, wisdom. Thank you for sharing the brilliance of St. Thomas. I will continue to watch and (hopefully) grow closer towards God.
Thanks so much for sharing this! We hope our work helps you to know and love God more! God bless you.
May the Holy Ghost guide you, brother and make you come back home to the Catholic Church.
You just LITERALLY explained EXACTLY what I’m going through! It’s like I wrote that comment lol .. good luck on your journey!!
It sounds like you had this emotionally charged home and filled it with things of desire over what is true.
Is satiating desire really more valuable than truth to you?
@@NinaZemlock Why follow a path of blind faith over one of intellectual honesty and objective truth?
This brings St. Josephine Bahkita to mind. She was an African child who was brought into slavery, in the 19th century, following the killing of her parents. She had never heard of the Christian God. Though she would look up at the sun and the moon, and say, who ever made those has got to be very powerful! As she grew into a young women, she was bought by an Italian man who brought her back to Italy to care for his young daughter. At that time, she stayed at the convent with the nuns, who introduced her to the Christian God, for the first time. She ended up joining those Sisters...and amazingly went on to become a Saint! One would have thought she would have been consumed by anger and hate, following the abuse she suffered at the hands of her captors..but she wasn't! It's a beautiful story of love! 🌹
Who gives a fuck about a dumb slave
Slavery is evil. Period. Her captors and enslavers will pay for their evil. God does not ignore injustice.
@@gfujigo
Slavery is evil...what your missing is that God allowed it..to bring a good out of it.
St. Bakhita was very loving. She touched everyone she came into contact with.
In the end...evil did not win!
THERE ARE 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns just like ours. Even if a superbeing existed, no way could he create that immense universe. AND there’s no reason he would care about our sun more than all the others. We are just a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos
.
You have a truly beautiful perspective.
However, please mindful of what you share, what you have shared opens moral wounds.
I struggle to imagine many a slaves' resignation to their fate as "a story of love".
Yours faithfully,
A displaced immigrant who's family was torn apart by men of faith and "educated" by the Jesuits.
I believe in God in hopes that one day we may meet and I may ask, is it truly just to impose existence on the unwilling?
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your course and channel. I’m studying for an exam on medieval theology and I’m so grateful for these videos, both informative and peaceful! They help me to understand better the books I’m studying!
To whom did Aquinas wrote the 5 ways of knowing God??
THERE ARE 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns just like ours. Even if a superbeing existed, no way could he create that immense universe. AND there’s no reason he would care about our sun more than all the others. We are just a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos
.
@@electrictroy2010 I think you are contradicting yourself, by saying that a superbeing is limited, i.e. not a superbeing.
@electrictroy2010 if you had 1 trillion dollars in bills made up of 1 billion dollar bills would you say the same thing?
@@electrictroy2010 certainly someone as smart as you knows that gods are supposed to be supernatural, and what "supernatural" means.
The intelligence behind the creation is God. His power is not perceived by human beings but is there all the time. God is intelligence and almighty power, He permeates all things.
"His power is not perceived by human beings but is there all the time"
To say this as a human beeing is just as logic as to claim:
"Im sniffing the fart, that nobody let go"
I have seen a number of descriptions of the Five Ways, all of which were fairly impenetrable to me. This is the first which explains it in a graspable form. Thank you, Father James.
You're welcome! Glad you found it helpful.
Watch The Rome Boys Show as we discuss St. Thomas Aquinas in our Hangin’ With The Saints Series! m.ruclips.net/video/0D1nQ7obr8Y/видео.html
List starts at 6:20
Thank you.
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To the Thomistic Institute: This list of videos appears to be an indirect reply to my long comment published 9 days ago for which I have not received a reply from the Thomistic Institute. If this is the case, I find your attitude poor and indecent. It is like a student asking a question and the teacher sending the student to the textbook. This is bad practice. Once again I am stating that you cannot prove the existence of God and that Christianity is about faith and not proofs of the existence of God as you are trying to do deceiving us. Our faith does not need this kind of interference. God does not fall in the domain of science and no proof exists to confirm his existence. Once again I am letting you know that I expect a reply from you and a revision of the title of your video that reduces God to five proofs. Are there proofs of God in the Bible? What did Thomas Aquinas actually wrote regarding your claim of proofs for the existence of God?
Only fools are on a mission to prove the existence of God. The Thomistic Institute has decided to ignore my comments about their video confirming what the people who run it really are.
Infinity ♾️ is a closed loop because the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. God is the first and the last. The beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega. God is the singularity responsible for the Big Bang and according to the many laws of conservation that singularity had to be equal to or greater than all of the mass, energy, and information/intelligence in the universe past, present, and future combined and since things are neither created or destroyed only transferred or transformed this means God became the universe. God is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient. God is everything everywhere.
cmsw.mit.edu/angles/2015/is-the-universe-actually-a-giant-quantum-computer/
www.t-systems.com/de/en/newsroom/best-practice/01-2019-realtime/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer
Jesus is the only created being by God which is what is meant by only begotten son of God. Through Jesus all things were made.
1 Corinthians 8:5-6
5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.
Jesus will return after Jerusalem gets nuked by the abomination which causes desolation mentioned in Matthew 24.
Prophets are angels.
Revelation 22
6 The angel said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God who inspires the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place.”
7 “Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll.”
8 I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. 9 But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets and with all who keep the words of this scroll. Worship God!”
10 Then he told me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll, because the time is near. 11 Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy.”
The Earth is Hell in the future. It gets hit by an asteroid and pushed toward the sun. Isaiah 13:13, 2 Peter 3, and Revelation 9.
After death is defeated Jesus returns the kingdom back to God. 1 Corinthians 15 This is the beginning of the kingdom of God.
Then and asteroid will strike the Earth Revelation 9. It will open up the bottomless pit and knock the Earth out of its orbit toward the sun. The Earth is Hell is the future. The only escape is in the New Jerusalem. It will take the best of humanity and the glory of the nations to a new Earth. This is the beginning of the kingdom of heaven. Peter was given authority over who goes and stays by Jesus. Protestants are antichrist according to 1 John 2:18-19 ...for they went out from us showing that they were not of us, for if they were of us they would have stayed with us...
When you die you sleep until the day of resurrection.
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for [a]a thousand years. 5 But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.
Hell is what Earth literally is in the future. Death will be defeated first. In Revelation 9 a falling star also known as an asteroid will penetrate the crust of the dark side of the Earth pushing it out of its Goldilocks orbit toward the sun. The Earth will eventually burn up with all of humanity brought back to immortal life. The finest of mankind and the glory of the nations will go into the New Jerusalem which is approximately 1500 miles x 1500 miles x 1500 miles and it will go to a New Earth.
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be [d]burned up. 11 Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? 13 Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
21 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.
@@archangel_metatron OH, what a lecture! Does it come from Google?
@@Aaqe wouldn't that be nice. Unfortunately, too many believe something other than the truth.
I love that Thomas Aquinas assures all the faithful that God exists as well as provides a way to know this ourselves.
Faith: belief beyond reasonable doubt
@@handhdhd6522 atheism - a belief
@@Tzimiskes3506 how is atheism a belief if you don’t believe in anything??
@@handhdhd6522 believe the oxford dictionary...
@@Tzimiskes3506 a - absence, theism - belief of god, atheism - absence of belief if god
"He did not affirm that the existence of God was undeniable"
Then this entire video is a waste of time. By definition, God is almost impossible to falsify. Which is to say, we can't prove it wrong so we can't prove it right.
I think it was Carlyle that made the point that divine inspiration or a miracle is only evidence of God to the original recipient, to everyone else it is heresay.
Edit: No, I think that was Thomas Paine.
Fr the majority of the comments on here are a big circle jerk
Would you consider the point about "divine inspiration", whoever may have said it, to be in favor of the existence of God or does it promote non-belief?
@@xenphoton5833 Well, it's Thomas Paine so... non-belief.
Right.....
Depends on how your define God
There’s only one way to know of a god’s existence, and that demonstrable evidence must come from god himself in person in a peer reviewed setting for all to experience. Books, feelings or personal experience don’t count.
but if it does , then people will basically have no choice ...
@@planteruines5619 No choice of what? To believe without evidence (faith) is the mentality of a child believing in santa, and anyone who believes otherwise is an idiot. Heaven based religions survive only because gullibility and credulity. Try again.
@@outs78 faith is not based upon affirmation but question that were answered , anyway some people just will never acknowledge His existence, and no proofs will suffice , maybe you need to ask , after all , what does it costs you ?
@@planteruines5619 I was born and raised in that shit. faith is voluntary ignorance (play pretend). There is nothing you can say that I didn’t already use when I was a nondenominational christian. Only the indoctrinated (abused) and stupid rely on faith in an unproven spiritual world. now go lose somewhere else.
@@planteruines5619
If any deity proved its existence to me, I would chose to NOT worship it, especially the alleged Abrahamic deity.
I know, the fear of the Lord is everything and good. Thank you good Man for stressing this point which is clear.
ruclips.net/video/tqOi8JViVes/видео.html
the most comprehensive explanation I''ve ever heard in 31 years.
Glad to hear it! Thanks for watching. God bless you.
If this is the most comprehensive explanation you’ve heard in 31 years it just shows how little evidence there is of god’s existence. The video contains no real proof quoting the Bible as a source.
This entire video is a giant argument from ignorance fallacy.
Basically, I couldn’t think of a better explanation for some phenomenon, so therefore God must have done it.
This is irrational and leads you to wrong conclusions.
@@Dr.HowieFeltersnatch How is the video a giant argument from ignorance? Is gravity an argument from our ignorance of how objects move? We can't think of a better explanation of how objects move so therefore it must be gravity. We don't even see gravity, we only see the effect of this phenomena. Einstein taught us to model it as space time being curved around masses. Yet, we don't see what is making it the case that space time reacts to masses by curving around them instead of doing something else. Are our cosmological theories and proposed entities (such as the inflaton field, etc.) simply an argument from our ignorance of the large scale structure of space and time?
Also, what do you mean by the word "God"?
This video makes sense. When you observe an effect, you infer a cause and you determine the nature of the cause based on the effect being observed. This is foundational scientific thinking. Here, this same thinking is being applied to all of physical reality and the attributes we observe. Theistic conclusions are actually quite modest. Here the conclusion is that there is a non-contingent cause of all reality capable of instantiating order, physical objects, laws, etc. This is so basic and rational a conclusion it's almost a tautology. What's wrong with this line of reasoning?
@@crongusclips7836 How is there “little evidence” when all of physical reality is the evidence?
The other day I was driving down the road and saw smoke, yet I could not see the cause. Thus we can logically infer the existence of fire giants. How could you have smoke without fire giants? Therefor the most logical response is to worship Odin in order to entreat him to protect us from the fire giants.
Yeah, smoke analogy is kinda weak. Without former experience with fire and without ability to see how fire produces smoke, we wouldn't have a slight idea what cause it.
And I could add one idea to thoughts dumpster. You can produce smoke without fire, via chem reactions.
but Odin has nothing to do with old pagan philosophers
Your ignorance is breathtaking. Nobody mentioned fire giants. Look up the dictionary reference for the word “inference”. Most people on seeing smoke will presume that the smoke is coming from something that is on fire, they infer from the smoke that fire is the probable cause of the smoke, after all it would not be a common saying that “there is no smoke without fire” if that were not usually the case. Of course something else, other than fire, could be the cause of the smoke. Now the driver of the car can only assume that the smoke is caused by the fire unless he investigates further, in which case, if he examines the source of the smoke he will be able to tell for sure one way or the other. Order, design and purposefulness in nature infer a creator, they do not prove his existence that will require further investigation, which will itself require openness, instead of a closed mind and a little humility, both of which you apparently lack.
@@richardscotland1 Read the Poetic and Prose Eddas. They mention fire giants with smoke billowing out from them.
Therefor when we see smoke but can't see the source it is logical to infer that the smoke originates from fire giants.
I'm sorry that in your arrogance you wish to deny the existence of fire giants and thus the existence of Odin, but it is said that in the days of Ragnarok there will be those that in their fear deny what they see in front of them. I understand how easy it is to let fear control you, but I hope that you will let go of your fear and see the truth.
Thank you for easily explaining the fallacy of the Aquinas argument for the existence of God with this simple comparison.
Q - WHICH God exists? ODIN? THOR? SHIVA? HADES? MARS? SET, etc?
The True One True GOD the one who created this World. Odin thor or whatever is an instrument for confusing others to believe that there is other god, just as satan wants
All of them at some point in time. But don't forget about The Goddesses, ASHURA, ISIS, APHRODITE, HERA, etc.
Wow. Fr.Brent makes it so simple. Thanks, Father...God bless TI
Praised be the Lord for the wisdom infused in Aquinas. The argument of the Uncaused Cause was enough to break the despisable Humean view of causation and Descartes empirism, heavy weights during my conversion.
"For an accidental category 'cause' can't exist in a 'non-being', i.e., nothing."
Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!
Can you guess why it is the ARGUMENT for the uncaused cause and not the EVIDENCE for the uncaused cause?
Btw, the argument doesn't get you to that cause being a sentient deity. It could be natural.
As for a god, that argument does not get you to the god of the Bible.
@@cnault3244 One can see you're not very bright. I assume the "evidence" you mention would be an empiric one, right? Funny how if you argue that knowledge can only be empiric (as in "the rest are merely arguments") you incur in a paradox, as that affirmation is aprioristic (and therefore not empiric).
Logic is irrefutable, cringe "science" man.
@@arthurcuesta6041 "One can see you're not very bright."
One can see you know you don't have any good arguments or evidence, which is why you resort to a childish ad hominem attack.
" I assume the "evidence" you mention"
Why do you feel the need to put the word evidence in quotation marks? It's like you are implying there is evidence and something which is not evidence so it must be designated by typing it as "evidence".
"would be an empiric one, right?"
To be evidence it would have to be something which can be examined and verified.
" Funny how if you argue that knowledge can only be empiric (as in "the rest are merely arguments")"
You seem confused. At no point did I state the arguments used are not knowledge.
I pointed out that the arguments are not evidence. If they were, they would be presented as evidence rather than arguments.
Are you a Christian? If so, why would you care about these arguments? These arguments don't get you to the god of the Bible or to Christ.
@@cnault3244 Ad hominem only happens if I justify my argument by means of the offense, like "you're wrong because you're not very bright". Calling you dumb and then proceeding to refute you isn't ad hominem. You should know what sentences mean before using them.
Because empiric evidence is only one kind of evidence, which you would know had you studied epistemology.
There's no confusion, you purposely made a distinction between these two as if they had different epistemological values. Well made and logic-proof arguments are evidence, even the Greeks knew that.
Yes, I am Christian. And although these arguments don't direct me to Christ, atheist lies do turn others from Him. It is necessary to refute and crush lies, wherever they appear.
@@arthurcuesta6041 Having stated you are a Christian, you should stop wasting time on Aquinas' arguments, which do not get you to the god of the bible or to Christ.
Being a Christian, you must believe the Bible story of Christ's resurrection. What evidence do you have to prove that story?
A very brief summary of the line of reasoning which leads us to God: we know there are dependent things all around us - things which do not have to exist, and which therefore do not exist solely by themselves, but are dependent on causes. Fire, trees, people, planets, molecules, atoms, stars, and so on. Naturally, there must be a cause or explanation for why and how all dependent things exist. Even if there were an infinity of dependent causes, one producing another, this would still not be an explanation for why the totality of dependent things exist - why do all of these things and causes exist, rather than nothing, or some other totality of things? How can any totality - even if infinite in number - of dependent things manage to exist in the first place? The only explanation is if there is a Foundation of things which is itself independent, self-sufficient, necessary, unconditioned, which could not even in principle have failed to be. A Foundation which is the ultimate cause and ground of the existence of all dependent, conditioned things.
Why is this Necessary, Unconditioned, Absolute Foundation of reality called God? Here are a few brief reasons. First, the Foundation is all-powerful, because it is the ultimate cause of all possible dependent things. Every existing thing and reality ultimately derives from this Foundation. Secondly, the Foundation, besides being necessarily-existing, self-sufficient, unconditioned, eternal, all-powerful, etc., is also very plausibly personal and intelligent, since A) all powers and realities ultimately derive from the Foundation, which means the Foundation has all powers and all its configurations, including intelligence, and B) the order and harmony of dependent reality, which has regular natural laws instead of chaos, and life, consciousness, complexity, and so on, makes it very plausible that the Foundation/First Cause is intelligent.
Much more could be said, but I'll leave this here as a brief summary.
You might chat through this with Pat Flynn. He has recently come up with a sketch that sounds very similar in its essential contours.
Do you hold a deist or theist position? Is this prime mover that you accept an unknowable creator (deist), or a personal god from a particular ancient holy text(theist)? If a particular god, how is the prime mover argument, as this argument is known, proof of your specific god instead of another? If one prime mover exists, then could not additional ones exist? How can you differentiate a universe caused by one original entity vs a universe caused by multiple entities working together?
Alex McD 1- I'm a theist, but also a Catholic Christian. Proving the existence of an intelligent Creator doesn't automatically get us to Christianity, of course, for that other arguments would be required. The video (and my comment) are only about God, in a broad theistic sense;
2- I believe there can be only one creator, on the basis of further arguments. One which I find very powerful is Avicenna's tawhid proof of oneness, which Aquinas also uses: we have established the existence of a Necessary Being. Why couldn't there be more than one? Because if there were two Necessary first causes, say, NB1 and NB2, they would have to have some differentiae which makes them two distinct beings instead of one. They share a common nature - that of being a necessarily-existing thing -, which we might call N. But then NB1 is N+A and NB2 is N+B. A and B are the purported differences between NB1 and NB2. The problem is that there would be no explanation whatsoever for these properties - why does NB1 have A and NB2 has B? It cannot stem from N, since both of them share N, so if A or B were essential properties of N both necessary beings would have them, and so wouldn't be distinct. But if A and B are not essential, then they are contingent - but in this case, there's nothing that could produce the properties for NB1 and NB2, since that would make NB1 and 2 dependent upon whatever gives them their distinct properties, and as necessary beings and first causes they cannot be dependent. This is not a problem for contingent entities such as us, since we get our contingent properties from causes - I have my height because of the specific powers in the genes of my parents, etc... With a Necessary Being, all properties must be essential. They must always have them, independently, solely by their own nature. But we've already seen that this cannot be the case, since Nb1 and 2 share the same essence N, so all their essential properties would have to be the same. But then Nb1 and 2 cannot have any distinct properties. If they can't have any distinct properties, they can't be different, and if they can't be different, they're One and not two. So there can be at most one necessary being, Q.E.D.
This argument can be very demanding logically, so be careful not to get confused. There are also other arguments for preferring only one necessary first cause instead of two, such as Ockham's razor, Gellmann's argument, etc.
I suggest you watch Robert Koons's "why the first cause is God" video on Capturing Christianity here on RUclips; he discusses several arguments including in favor of uniqueness.
@@mordec1016 I'm afraid that argument has never been very convincing. Why must all traits of a necessary being be necessary? Couldn't two necessary beings differ in their capacity to support dependent entities? They could differ in location, having access to dimensions of movement we cannot perceive. They could differ in moral compass, being benevolent, or malevolent, or amoral. And we are discussing an entity that would be beyond our comprehension of it existed, so it may well have differentiating traits we can't imagine.
Mordec 101 also, your own argument precludes the god of the Bible. If a necessary entity has only traits defined by N, then they are unable to change in any capacity since N cannot change. But the god of the Bible changes over time, from book to book and even within stories. He is repeatedly surprised by the actions of his creations, which means gaining knowledge, which is a change. What he considers immoral or an abomination changes over time. His own personality changes dramatically from old to new testament. And most dramatically, he changed from an evident god physically manifesting all over the place to a hidden god that doesn't measurably interact with the world in any way that is different from the laws of nature. These are changes in traits, which means these traits aren't necessary, which means the god of the Bible cannot be one with the necessary being that you defined into existence.
Romans 1 was the final nail in the coffin made of doubt that made me an atheist. The thing that completely convinced me the writers of the bible had no idea of what they were talking about.
Thomas Aquinas was a most interesting man. His teachings should be more prevalent.
To whom did Aquinas wrote the 5 ways of knowing God??
I like Aquino's advice for sadness: cry, have fun, drink wine, take a warm bath and go to bed early
The Bible says in John 3:16-36 that whoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life, the Bible also says in Romans 10:9 that those who declare with their mouth that Jesus Christ is their God, Lord, and Savior they shall be saved. Revelation 1:8 says that Jesus is the alpha and the omega. Luke and revelation is the ending times, and Jesus is returning back. So are you going to submit your life to him or no? Narrow is the path that leads to the gates of heaven, but only few people find it. The gates that is the path to destruction is where many people find it! Jesus loves you SO MUCH! That he died on the cross, and was resurrected from the dead 3 days later to give us eternal life.
@@sasutchi5695 It was for theology students in the 13th century but yeah I mean anyone can read it now.
It’s a scientific impossibility that something came from nothing. A book has an author, and a building an architect. Creation is proof of God. It would be scientifically impossible for there not to be a God.
PS: There’s a Jesus as well. Humankind needs a Savior. Just look at us, look at the world. Trust me. I need a Savior.
I am Mexican. I was raised catholic. I lost my way in my teens and became an atheist. I am now 34 and there is a strong conviction in my heart that sometimes I feel, and I wonder if it’s too late for me for God to accept me back 😢
It will never be too late, he's been waiting for you to comeback, and a good father never gets tired of waiting for his children 😺
Impossible. The Church is waiting! You have an infinitely rich identity as a Catholic and from a long line of Catholics no less. Try the Traditional Latin Mass. It puts everything in its proper order through an unimagineable beauty. God bless you.
when you take one step toward God, he runs to you. it’s never to late brother
Read chapter 15 of the Gospel of Saint Luke. The Lord does not forget those who return, nor think less of them.
Thank you @Thomistic Institute, I enjoyed this. Just beginning module 3 of 101, getting my teeth into the weighty stuff at last, having been studying how to think. Great course.
Luke 11:28
But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
1 Corinthians 14:33
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
1 Corinthians 14:34
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
1 Corinthians 14:35
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Luke 6:38
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
THERE ARE 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns just like ours. Even if a superbeing existed, no way could he create that immense universe. AND there’s no reason he would care about our sun more than all the others. We are just a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos
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If i thought that i would be exposed to this kind of wisdom i would surely join the Catholic Church. Ive studied eastern wisdom for years and what i believe as a result is evidently what St Thomas taught. Thank you.
Subscribed.
I dabbled in new age spirituality, nonduality etc and listened to "enlightened" gurus... got absolutely nowhere with all of their "nondual" nonsense about equanimity and "the watching conciousness". 5 minutes of going back to my childhood religion did more for me than 5 years of new-agey-Buddhist-Hindu-enlightened-impervious-to-pain-yogis.
@@shastasilverchairsg that is why there is more than one path to the Devine. Thomas Aquinas acknowledges the same verdict. My path is obviously different than yours.
Buddhism brought me to the first clear ideas of life. But it's always the same. Only the highest forms of philosophy will bring you to enlightenment, that's why Thomas adored Aristoteles and ancient Greek philosophers. Of course we must understand these notions WITH christ but it's never a matter of imposing one idea unto another but only a continuous flow of historical thoughts.
@@markrudis4419 There may be more than one path to God, since there is a path from each of us to God (attracting each of us to Himself). But no path is true if it avoids Jesus Christ. At some point, either God became (also) Man (2nd Person of the Triune God) so that all of us, potentially, could be saved or - as many believe - that didn't happen or, if it did, somehow it was pointless because there are other ways to reach salvation. True Salvation comes from Jesus Christ, true God and true Man. Jesus Christ came to die for us on the Cross, but that doesn't mean "anything goes" since He warned "if you're not with me, you're against me".
Thank you very much for sharing! I just suscribed and I will stay alert of every video! God bless you
God bless you too!
Your sore throat analogy is perfect. Because just because we have a sore throat, doesn't mean we know what causes a sore throat. And all the reasons we came up with before science actually figured stuff up were not even close to the truth. Also note that illnesses were often thought to have supernatural causes, until science figured the natural one, as is always the case.
Even though I'm protestant theologically I did appreciate this exposition of Aquina' s 5 points. Thank you.
Excellent! You're welcome.
My theological position is contained within the Westminster Confession of Faith and I protest against heretical teaching or rather earnestly contend for the faith. See Jude 3.
Albert! I don't worship the Jews. I pray for their salvation.
@Doge di Amalfi We will all have to give an account of our sins. You're either saved or unsaved.
@@DirtyHairy01 "With words like these you make the patients incurable, rather than curable." --St. Peter Canisius.
If a Protestant admits that Jesus instituted the Holy Sacrifice (Eucharistic Sacrament) so that He would make Himself available to His followers, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity; if a Protestant admits that the Holy Virgin is the Co-Redemptrix, if a Protestant admits that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ i.e. One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, I salute that Protestant. I'd also argue that there are heresies aplenty to fight, even nowadays (courtesy of our Judas-loving Pope and numerous homosexuality-inspired members of the clergy), but that they are best fought by following in the steps of Christ, not Luther (who ended up literally hating Christ and adoring s8n), see ruclips.net/video/PaVfyIfi3O4/видео.html.
Alright, guys, I didn't came here to dunk on your faith or anything. Just getting this out of the way: I don't really care if you believe in a god, multiple gods, or none at all, since most gods are defined in a way that the question of their existence cannot be definitively and soundly answered. But trying to prove theism with logic? Boy, am I gonna dig into that one. Another thing to note, taking "proof" in quotation marks below may sound condescending, but it's not me who chose those names for statements that are not proofs, but arguments at best, and sometimes simply assertions.
So "proof" number zero (?), upon which all others are based, goes as follows. "Some perceptible effects have imperceptible causes. Our world is perceptible and I perceive it as beautiful, great and orderly, therefore there must be an imperceptible cause behind it." Except the conclusion of such a statement does not logically follow from its premises. Something being beautiful, great and orderly does not necessitate that there be an imperceptible cause behind it; Leonardo da Vinci's paintings and designs are beautiful, great and orderly, yet the cause behind them was very much a perceptible human being. And even if accepted as a sound argument, it wouldn't prove theism, especially specifically Christian theism. One could try to steelman this argument by expanding it to the watchmaker analogy, as in "watches are complex, and are created by a much more complex sentient creator; natural world is extremely complex, therefore it must be created by a sentient creator that much more complex", but that's a false analogy (things sharing one property (complexity) doesn't mean they necessarily share another (having a sentient creator)). We know watches are created by sentient beings not because of their complexity, but because we have abundant evidence of that being the case, and none to the contrary. And this analogy too, would not prove theism even if accepted as sound.
"Proof" 1 (and 2!) is the old and beaten "unmoved mover" assertion, which is usually presented as an actual argument, but here, it's just an assertion, so refuting it is as easy as swinging the Hitchens' razor: "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence". Again, I'm going to steelman this to an actual argument, which usually goes like this: "Everything that is in motion has a cause; the chain of causality cannot continue indefinitely; therefore, there must be an unmoved mover". The problem with this argument is that it suffers from Special Pleading by not giving adequate justification for exemption of the "unmoved mover" from the rule set by premise 1. And guess what? Even if accepted, it wouldn't prove theism.
"Proof" 3 is just a matter-of-fact statement that's put in a context that makes it look like it's supposed to prove theism when it spectacularly fails to. No adequate criteria is given for things "not needing to exist". Also, yes, inasmuch as we can observe, everything that exists has a cause for its existence, but all your work on actually proving the presence of any god in the equation is still ahead of you.
"Proof" 4 is fallacious in a number of ways. First one I don't recall the name for, but let's call it false extrapolation. Observing things with different degrees of perfection is not sufficient evidence for there necessarily existing a perfect being. But even if this part of the argument was accepted as sound, there's still a non-sequitur: some being being perfect does not necessarily make it a source of all other being. And even if THAT was accepted as sound, then there's another problem: it still fails to prove theism, the argument is only made for a perfect being, not a god.
"Proof" 5 basically goes like this: "Things without intelligence cannot work towards an end unless a higher intelligence is guiding them; Bees have no intelligence, but work towards an end regardless; therefore there must be a higher intelligence directing them." This suffers from the term "intelligence" being used in different senses in premises 1 and 2, constituting the equivocation fallacy. In premise 1, "intelligence" is meant as "a level of cognitive ability sufficient to advance toward a given objective" while in premise 2, "intelligence" means "a level of cognitive ability comparable to that of higher animals such as mammals or humans". However, if you use consistent definitions, it suddenly turns out that bees DO have enough natural cognitive ability to go about their life cycles, which makes premise 2 fall apart. But even if this argument was accepted as sound, it would not prove theism, only some kind of "supreme mind" that guides all things. Who said it's necessarily a god? Maybe it's some kind of super-AI from a distant star system? Also, this argument completely ignores evolution by natural selection as a fully humanly understood process that has no intelligence in any sense to speak of whatsoever, yet is very successful in its goal of creating beings that are most fit for their immediate environments, making premise 1 a false premise.
This presentation of ways to try to prove the existence of god is one of the best videos to help promote the atheist mindset.
How so? Please do tell. I can prove that God exists by many means. Simply by life experiences.
@@vectorx777 prove: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means".
@@UnconventionalReasoning whoa boy brace yourself, I have a lot buddy. Well for starters God's name is engraved in our hearts and every human who has ever lived knows this deep down they know who God is. The bible says this and when you are your lowest of lows you will remember that his eternal holy name is JEHOVAH. Here is your proof bud. So I grew up in a religious Cult called the Jehovahs Witnesses. Later I found that this religion is false and they do not recognize Jesus as God in the flesh. While I was young I grew up to be respectful and kind and learned the bible and how to pray but I never really understood why we had to pray or sing to God. So I would pray and pray and sing and nothing would happen. I would pray and keep praying and still nothing would happen. So around the age of 15 I started to feel like God wasn't listening so I became resentful and eventually hateful towards God. I then started listening to heavy metal and that's where the Devil took over, I found out later on God was with me the whole time but I was too blind to see. After discovering heavy metal I began listening to heavier and more evil stuff. My mind became rotten and I began to rebel and thought I was a God. I began to read into the occult and quickly was thrust into a world of darkness.
Here's the thing God doesn't answer right away but guess who does.
The devil welcomed me with open arms ready to deceive me. I immediately started seeing signs that pointed to the devil. Numbers, names, symbols you begun to become obsessed with the occult. Keep in mind I was raised to know who God and Satan are so I knew what I was getting myself into. Anytime I would do something for the devil or anything bad I could feel almost as if my soul could feel the wrong doing. Every time I called on a demon or a fallen angel you could feel air a presence that is friendly at first but after years these creatures reveal their true colors and forms. Again I knew who I was in contact with. The thing that really terrified me though is when I first read the Lesser Key of Solomon "The Lemegaton" I saw that the most powerful name even over all the Archangels who constrain all of the demons of hell his name is JEHOVAH. There it was in an occult book. I saw that the devils recognize this as the absolute truth then I was screwed. I know what you will probably say "demons and magic don't exist and the lesser key of Solomon is bogus". Then why have secret societies and sects have used teachings from the fallen ones since the beginning of man. Those same societies are made up of the richest most powerful men on the planet which control and influence everything we consume. This fact cannot be denied by anyone. The elites "secret societies" know who God is. They refer to him as the grand architect of the universe.
I used to meditate and do deep trance work and was very good at it. Through these medications often I would be attacked by the very spirits I was calling upon. And anyone who says that's not real is just delusional cause that's like not believing someone who broke their arm in the past. You KNOW as a human when you are being spiritually attacked, it's in your spirit.
I know now that God was warning me of my destruction if I kept down this path. On a couple of occasions my Satanic pendants that I wore just fell off of my neck and when I looked for them they were completely gone. Disappeared nowhere in sight. I was questioning if the devils were abandoning me too, given I had driven every human being in my life away at the time. So I had nobody.
I felt like God was trying to get a hold of me through my experiences with these demons showing me that there was still hope. Then he showed me a vision of the heaven where I would go, he also showed me the hell would go to as well. Trust me when I tell you once in hell the devils torment you with the thing that you fear most.
At this point I didn't know what to do so I was trying lsd and mushrooms here and there, Salvia also. Had some pretty crazy visions but the last time I tripped I took lsd and decided to drink half a bottle of rum while I was at it. At first it was all cool, I was watching tippy videos on RUclips and one popped up where the guy started talking about angels and demons and then he started talking to me through the screen saying my name. I don't remember what exactly but I remember him pointing right at me and saying my name specifically. I then got freaked out and shut the TV off.
I went to the bathroom and remember looking in the mirror and reminded that I've heard people say you shouldn't stare at yourself in the mirror when you are tripping. There is a reason for this. Me being a Satanist at the time I already knew I had a demon in me and when I called it forth in the mirror I saw it Staring right back at me. Right into my very soul. I could feel the hate, not just hate for me but for all of mankind. I could feel the ancient hatred that it carried for us. I could see the shape of its face with mine too almost like a machine that will cloak itself in the movies, How you can kinda see the transparency of the cloak the demons face was like that. It had horns and a horrible evil smile like he gets to eat me which is exactly how I started to feel.
I immediately started thinking no, no this can't be happening I then fell to the floor because I felt like I was falling into an endless pit, mind you this is happening in the spirit now. I could feel my soul falling into hell and it pulling me like a magnet down. You know this is the spirit because it feels 1000 times more real than the physical. You can feel God wrath on you but you also feel the devils wrath now. The worst part of the realization is that you know at that point that you rejected God and that you served the devil your whole life and that you are going to hell. I literally felt and heard the devil coming for me so I did the only thing I could think of.
I called on the mighty name of Jehovah and the son Jesus and instantly I was brought out of that spiritual hell and was back lying on my living room floor. I was shivering and still scared. God saved me but I was still left to wallow in my darkness for a couple days. I began my long journey back to God after that.
I honestly believe whole heartedly that God was with me the whole time cause there were definitely time where I would get stopped from going too far into Satanism. I thank God now for allowing me to go through all of that because now I know how the enemy works through and through. I believe now that God put me here to warn people of the evil of the left hand path whatever it may be called. Satanism, voodoo, new age, crystal work, divination, tarot reading its all the same and it's very dangerous.
I have other proofs too but I've typed enough for now. God bless.
I wrote a painstakingly long reply to your question to prove God exists and youtube deleted my comment. I wish to explain to you vit my efforts are in vain. Curse youtube for deleting my comment. Peace and blessings to you my friend.
@@vectorx777 I sympathize, youtube has deleted some of my long comments as well. I would have enjoyed responding to yours.
While I'm not a Catholic I will always hold Thomas Aquinas in high regard.
He was a truly great man
St Thomas Aquinas considered it virtuous to burn heretics, and favoured the option of burning them alive. All manner of activities constituted heresy. It was heretical to eat meat on Friday, to read the bible, to know Greek, to criticise a cleric, to refuse to pay Church taxes, or to deny that money lending was sinful.
Many yrs. ago in my early twenties I started to lose belief in the existence of GOD. One day I begun to question the human body and its functions and complexities. I questioned nature in the same way. Then I questioned the universe in all it's orderly fashion. When I questioned these things it was from that day forward that I knew that there had to be a GOD. Over the yrs. I realized that our very existence proved that there was a creator. I learned that you cannot throw lots of small sized stones on the floor and that they will fall in place to form a circle with two stones in the place of eyes, one in the place of a nose a those in the place of a mouth. If one was to see this face made from stones they would know that someone who was there put all those stones in place to make that face.
The argument of incredulity is the most easily dismissed.
@@dominicpardo4783 Many humans love to live in sin; so they would rather choose not to believe in GOD so that they do not have to acknowledge that their sins are wrong
@@liliencalvel6151
A. Define sin.
B. I'm agnostic. Because I've never been presented with sufficient evidence that any god exists.
@@dominicpardo4783 I nor anyone can help you with that. Nor will I waste my time. Nothing beyond what is in this video or in the comment that I first wrote is going to convince you of anything. If those are not sufficient evidence for you that there is, than I am afraid that nothing will ever convince you. I will just say that you came into existence from thin air. It is much easier to get you to accept that. I will not go into telling you that one day GOD will judge you because you don't believe in him. Hope for your sake that he is not real. I would not place my bets on that hope. Goodbye.
@@dominicpardo4783 I wish you well in life Dominic. Hope that you find answers to your questions
Hi T.I. Very good video. I did philos. 101 about 50 years ago and still enjoy tinkering with thinking.
6/ Three proofs of God from freewill premise.
Thomas Aquinas didn't develop a "proof of God from freewill", despite freewill being a unique characteristic of life. Non-life (rocks) can only follow deterministic laws and cannot make choices, only life has the possibility of freewill. I assume freewill exists because the difference between non-life and life is stark and undeniable. This leaves "hard determinist" materialism in a quandary.
1/ If life is solely material life, then before life began, life and freewill must have been determined to begin to exist. However "a freewill that is determined to begin to exist" is a contradiction, because by definition, determinism cannot choose to change itself into freewill. The quandary is resolved by accepting that originally life was non-materialistic, which proves God.
2/ Carbon forms four covalent bonds and is the defining element in organic chemistry. Materialists claim carbon with its four "choices" is in a limited sense "alive", but if this is true it means life is built into the physical universe pan-theistically, which also proves God.
3/ Without freewill, consciousness has no function and would not have evolved beyond the simple "stimulus-response" reflex of an amoeba. Even in an evolutionary universe, there's a necessary link between freewill and God.
Freewill is atheism's "Achilles heel", explaining why atheistic materialists vehemently reject freewill, and must argue the absurdity that there's no philosophical difference between non-living matter and living matter.
Thomas Aquinas' "proof from first cause" indicates he was locked into the apostle Paul's concept of deterministic predestination, which was official Church dogma. This probably explains why he didn't develop a proof of God from freewill. Like many other great mediaeval thinkers, his work was subject to strict ecclesiastic approval.
Thanks for your good work. Cheers, from soft determinist, P.R.
My dad was an Orthodox Christian priest but he taught 7th and 8th grade religion at a catholic grade school along with English and Social Studies. The first day of 7th grade religion class was the 5 ways of Thomas Aquinas. There was also one by Anselm., and Ontological argument, and there was also an argument called the ladder of perfection. Maybe that was Aquinas's argument of degrees.
As a natural born agnostic, I cannot rule out the existence of whatever this may be. What I do not understand, is WHY this should have anything at all to do with our human-invented religions. Especially the Abrahamic ones.
I really needed this. Really needed it. Thank you so much. It is such a work of mercy just going to the trouble of preparing, filming and circulating this video. God bless you.
THERE ARE 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns just like ours. Even if a superbeing existed, no way could he create that immense universe. AND there’s no reason he would care about our sun more than all the others. We are just a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos
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@@electrictroy2010 Lmao dude spends most of his day angry at Christian's. Christ keeps winning.
@@electrictroy2010 cringe
A quantum loop sounds more plausible to me than a god, it’s certainly more explainable than: “it simply just exists”.
Go TI! Bless you and this content. Biggest fan!! Happy New Year and I am benefiting so much from your hard work and it enables me to pass it on! My career is in addressing and helping people who’s lives depend on getting through the issue of “ How can I believe in God?” In a very real way. Specifically those suffering with opiate and alcohol addictions where belief in a high power is non negotiable for a beginning point within the process of recovery. These videos bring up in a general way a place where you can start someone on seeing the world both philosophically and with reason! Bless you and thank you for all you do!
Ian, we're delighted to hear. That's super encouraging. All the best in your work! God bless you.
Natural knowledge of God? You have got to be kidding. That is a total meaningless statement. This is saying black is black because it is black. Nonsense. Black is black because natural language proclaims it black. Blackness exists only because we say it is. It actually does not exist. Blackness only exists in relation to whiteness or blueness. We just all agree it exists. God would only exist if there is evidence that he exists. Hell, We don't even agree on his gender! One can just as easily say Santa Claus exists. One can say Stalin or Castro are God because we know they existed but they eventually died. So they are not God. Nothing is God. Wouldn't that also be true?
where did the universe come from? nothing? seems logical to me.
This video shows how my thinking has evolved over time, when I was a teenager I rejected the church's teachings because I didn't like just being told that gd exist's with out a reason, as I aged and read many secular books, I started to faintly think there must be someone directing everything, now I believe there is a god, but I still have questions as to how it relates to the Catholic church's view of the trinity, so like this explanation says, it's a work in progress, for the time being it has been enough to make me a practicing Catholic, even do I still have many questions or things I need to understand...thanks for the video and I will subscribe to the podcast's
Our pleasure! Keep plugging!
@fynes leigh Have you watched this video (ruclips.net/video/cekWa_YdauA/видео.html)? It's a basic exposition of Aristotle and St. Thomas's teaching on the matter . . . coming at it from a bit of a different angle. I'll get to your other comment here shortly. Cheers!
@fynes leigh Yikes, okay, this link should work: ruclips.net/video/cekWa_YdauA/видео.html
The Most Holy Trinity is out of the domain of knowledge of the philosophy, even if it had inspired philosopher and theologians. Trinity belongs to the domain of the Christian faith. Philosophy has demonstrated the existence and the uniqueness of God, but it never ha demonstrated its being of three divine persons. And that it is strange because the Trinity is God Himself: to say we can't rationally demonstrate God of three divine person would mean to say He could be reasonably made differently, of one single person like the philosophy normally thinks Him to be. But concerning the Logos, His not to be capable to be derived from nature as a Triune God would be a great deception, needy to be solved.
@@MarcovonAntoni-jb6bh I think Bishop Barron gave a good framework:
Philosophical framework - ruclips.net/video/BMuA0kn1GCs/видео.html
Theological framework - ruclips.net/video/IArnmmwQoDo/видео.html
Five way To prove god in a nuttshell :
Look at the trees
Believe the bible
Use your brain
Use bad analogy
Jump to conclusion
Ok i got it...
Forgot to ignore the Old Testament and all the killing and “how it was ok because it was a different time”
@@quentinblack256 First degree murder is always ok if done for a good cause
@@quentinblack256 God is HOLY and must punish evil, the OT emphasizes Justice, the NT emphasizes Mercy, but both contain Justice, Mercy and Humility
@@justinnelson1565 ok hitler.
@@quentinblack256 hitler did not have the right to take life because he did not create it. God is Good and knows what is Good and is the Giver and Taker of Life. God has the right to take life.
Thankyou very much for sharing about the life of St Thomas of Aquinas. Such a great Theologian abd a saint. Praise the Lord.
Luke 11:28
But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
1 Corinthians 14:33
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
1 Corinthians 14:34
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
1 Corinthians 14:35
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Luke 6:38
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
THERE ARE 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns just like ours. Even if a superbeing existed, no way could he create that immense universe. AND there’s no reason he would care about our sun more than all the others. We are just a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos
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Explanation of the 5 ways begins at 6:21. They are only "sketched" and appear to be very similar. However, proof #5 seemed extremely powerful.
Thank you for this video. I was looking for a deeper explanation, but the truth is I'll just have to read the Suma for myself.
Thanks for the comment, Ted. Yes, this video is more of a prologue and a sketch than an in-depth exploration of each theme. We do hope to do some videos that take a closer look at the five ways, though, so stay tuned!
“One way to know God’s existence is by taking it on faith based on what the Bible says”… close RUclips, go to your local library, find a dictionary, and look up the word irony
4:55. "something is responsible". there is a scientific explanation for the world, that is all we need
There are explanations of how things behave but not of what they really are, or how things came to be, why there is something rather than nothing. We dont know what consciousness, black holes, dark matter, quantum stuff either and gravity is hazy.
@@fredriksvard2603 Exactly
in my experience God teaches and guides me inch by inch in this journey so that I could follow him…
Such a wonderous video thank you! Beautifully delivered/explained! Praise be to God ,for all you Priests for all your energy in putting it all together,to enlighten n help us to know God.
You're welcome! God bless you.
THERE ARE 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns just like ours. Even if a superbeing existed, no way could he create that immense universe. AND there’s no reason he would care about our sun more than all the others. We are just a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos
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It can't be proven empirically, metaphysically, or theologically.
That's why it's called "faith".
We can use circumstantial evidence and inferences, but there is no direct proof.
Many people have made impressive attempts, but it cannot be done.
If you proof that God exists then all teachins of Christ about heaving faith in God are insignificant and unnecessary.
@@tadeuszzsuedat5710 Well, you wouldn't need to prove just one thing. You first need to prove there is at least one God, then narrow it down to the correct number of god(s), and finally prove the nature of the god(s).
This video does none of these.
Faith does not exclude proof. Faith and reason work together. They are not mutually exclusive.
This is such a wonderful explanation, Thank you. Liked and subscribed.
You're welcome! Thanks for watching. God bless you!
Aquinas was a great precursor to modern atheism!
Thanks Father
You're welcome!
@@ThomisticInstitute To be considered proof tho doesn’t there have to be some kind of scientific evidence involved?
Thank you for posting this video Fr. Brent.
Watching it was like walking into a church. Hearing the truth spoken, particularly about Truth itself is like eating a piece of the sacred bread reserved for the Holy of Holies. Only it tastes more like divine pie. Thinking on Divine things like feeling the warmth of the burning bush (was it warm if it didn’t consume?).
I can’t study metaphysics without being drawn into the presence of God; even when just watching your videos. I blame it on my guardian angel. I think he just keeps “poking me with his elbow” whenever the subject of our beloved comes up; well, God Himself, and anything He has done, will do, or is currently doing.
Everything must have a creator, except the creator? Sounds like special pleading. Better to just settle for, "We believe there is a God because we want to," (not because it is rational).
What a way to strawman the argument. If you actually read the syllogistic form of the argument you will clearly see that no inference is made that EVERYTHING must have a creator. I encourage you to respond to my comment and cite from Aquinas’s arguments where the word everything is used.
Very interesting to learn this Thomistic approach to our belief in God. Is it true that the Holy Spirit infuses us with the gift of faith in God when we are baptized? And, this gift of faith can be blocked when we commit a mortal sin and do not repent of it? I ask this because I cannot remember a time when I did not believe in God. And, to think if it were not for the Sacrament of Confession, I might not have this gift of faith anymore. I thank God every day for this gift, and also, thank my parents who cooperated with God to have me baptized as a very young baby. What greater gift could God and my parents have given me, except for the gift of life itself? Praise God!
I don't know....maybe if there were **six** ways to prove that God exists I would be convinced......
@@jannguerrero If there were 5 arguments for atheism, would you be convinced? How about 6? No? What about 7?
@@jannguerrero I think the problem of evil kind of crushes the biblical idea of god.
Also Occums razor.
Or the fact that there is no empirical evidence of god.
I can get you three ways and a half eaten butterfingers how about that?
@@jannguerrero I am sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the biblical god doesn’t exist. I can not say for sure beyond a reasonable doubt that something like a deistic god doesn’t exist.
Occam’s razor eliminates the need for positing a god since existence could come about naturally.
What do you mean by “began to exist”?
@@jannguerrero My basis for moral objections are subjective since there is no such thing as objective morality.
God doesn’t explain anything though. It only adds more questions. In the Bible god supposedly created the universe from nothing. That doesn’t explain what happened at all. Now I’m just the question where did god come from, how did he make the universe, why etc etc. there’s no need to apply agency to the universe.
Nature is itself a proof of the existence of God as the divine laws of nature with unknown source of complexity of the intelligent design
Nope! It's all been explained naturally &, surprisingly, wasn't all poofed into existence 6700 years ago & to then subsequently come off a boat 4500 years ago after your geographically & culturally ordained flavour of god got the programming wrong in the first iteration!
Great video!!!
Thanks!
Spread the word!
Isn't it easier to just believe?
Short answer? Yes.
I have to listen more than once to grasp what is said as I am older(age 70). Older, not intellectually challenged. I find my experience helps add depth to these presentations.
Well done! :)
You're adorable!
Luke 11:28
But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
1 Corinthians 14:33
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
1 Corinthians 14:34
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
1 Corinthians 14:35
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Luke 6:38
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
1. order of motion in nature
2. cause and effect
3. contingent beings
4. degrees or perfection
5. things without intelligence act for the sake of ends
Great Video. I'm hoping that The Thomas institute expands to other Christian Theologians and Apologists beyond just Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas is not the only Theologian out there to study.
May God grant you many years Fr. James Brent.
So basically, St.Thomas Aquinas, just used the God of Gaps as a proof to the existence of the God, ain't he?
He also defined god into existence like a prestup. That is pretty silly.
I have heard people now days say that the 5 causes are wrong or out of date. They like to pont to things like "matter can't be created or destroyed" if that even applies or is true.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I wished I could have started studying this when I was younger
What a fantastic service and indispensable work of spiritual mercy this is. Thank you so much, and thanks be to God for the Dominicans.
I was taught these 5 reasons at my Catholic high school!
These ways are wonderful! I'm new to the teachings of Aquinas. I had never heard these ways. Quite lovely, I must say. Thank you for creating a video that outlines this and sharing it with the world.
If someone lay their faith in something like this, I feel sorry for that person. So wrong in so many ways.
I feel sorry for you and your lack of understanding.
@@warrenemmanuel3749 Praise Jeebus.
Your “proofs” are only assumptions. The first thing your rule of causality does is break the rule of causality in order to explain the existence of god. Basically you’re saying “I can’t explain something so…..god. It’s called The God Of The Gaps argument and it has been disproven many times.
It's doesn't really seem you grasped what was said in the video.
Aquinas just took some very ancient philosophical questions (which can be mostly traced back to Aristotle, Boethius and islamic philosophy) to "prove" that God was a fitting answer to all this seemingly unsolvable matters.
What do you mean by "your proof are just assumptions"? You might say that you philosophically disagree with Aquinas and perhaps you might think (e.g.) that causality can be explained without the existence of God, or perhaps even that causality isn't a real thing at all, but you cannot disprove Aquinas by saying he committed some intellectual carelessness.
If you think that causality, contingent beings, final causes and grades of being are an actual thing in the natural world you should be able to provide a better explanation than the one provided by Aquinas (which is God), or, alternatively, if you don't think they are actual things and they do not constitute a relevant problem at all you should provide some logical or epistemological proof that they're not. Everything else is just intellectual crap.
@@giusepino50 Aquinas' first way is causation. He asserts that God must be the cause of this universe. Except there are two problems with that. One he doesn't get to just assert God into the place of the first cause. If we ruled out natural causes and we had reason to even investigate into the supernatural you might have a point. However we would have to still rule out all the other possible supernatural causes: fairies, flying spaghetti monster, God, etc. Second just because causality is a principle in our universe, does not mean that anything outside follows this principle. So yes, Aquinas did just assert God into the equation. Also no, we don't have to provide an alternative explanation, the burden is not on us. We can just give the most honest answer at this point "we don't know."
@@xxSilliestGooseAquinas does not assert that God is the cause of the universe.
Aquinas asserts that, in order for causation to be consistent (to be logically sound, so to speak), we have to admit that there was, at some point in time, a cause which was not caused by anything other than itself: a self-caused object which is the source of the original causal chain, from which all the other chains are derived. Aquinas calls this object God.
You wanna call it a fairy or a spaghetti monster? It's up to you, but Aquinas reasoning is untouched by these linguistic considerations. If you want to disprove Aquinas you have to provide a logical counter-argument to his own.
Is really your position: "we don't know"? Then Aquinas' argument is wrong, at the expense of logic's validity and certainty, which would render what we infer through logical analysis false, uncertain, and fundamentally flawed. Logic and metaphysics are at steak in Aquinas' arguments, not belief, that's why they're so compelling. And they come from Aristotle, not from some god-fearing negligent church fellow.
Finally: "just because causality is a principle in our universe, does not mean that anything outside follows this principle". Really? I would love to hear how that would be the case.
@@giusepino50 Really? His five ways are literally meant to be evidence of God. You're missing the point, the while "we have to admit that there was, at some point in time, a cause which was not caused by anything other than itself" is a bold assertion right there. How do you know it was an object that created itself, or just an object as oppose to many, or a chain of causality happening in overlapping intervals? In my original comment I was granting that his first way was true for sake of argument. So even if you grant everything about the argument, it still doesn't lead you to God, because it hasn't even begun to investigate everything in the natural world and ruled it out. And hasn't given us any reason to believe the cause is supernatural. So his argument for causation doesn't lead us any closer to god. I also don't understand why it couldn't be a cyclical chain of causes.
When you say call it flying spaghetti monster, whatever you want. It appears you realize his causality argument doesn't lead you any closer to God. For all we know it could be fairies or anything mythical. His arguments are distinct arguments meant to show proof of God (also considering he was a priest and fryer.)
To assume that the characteristics of a part apply to the whole is a fallacy of composition. An example is "This tire is made of rubber, therefore the vehicle of which it is a part is also made of rubber."
@@xxSilliestGoose For Aquinas, God's metaphysically simple.
I assume you know the four causes of Aquinas and Aristotle Epistemology.
I just a beginner, but that's what I think:
x has an efficient cause of its existence (y) at t, in order to x to exist, it needs to have its existence in something else, since if x could exist by itself, he'd need to exist prior to t, and if it existed prior to t, then it wouldn't exist, that's why infinite regression doesn't work since a thing can't have the existence by itself.
So the efficient cause of x is y, the efficient cause of y is z, and the efficient cause of z (the ultimate cause) is C. If C didn't exist, then z wouldn't exist and therefore y wouldn't exist and therefore x would'nt exist since the chain is broken. Since C has to exist, it's pure act, it can't change (immutable) and holds all the chain (a chain per se).
Since everything that can change is potentially changeable, the ultimate cause can't change otherwise it would be changeable and would need a higher cause. Also this part isn't a composite of form and mater, or existence and essence, the essence of C is existence itself.
I may be wrong, but that's what I think.
People generally think that Aquinas' argument is temporal, however it's ontological
Thank you for the excellent exposition on this. I appreciate the work that the Thomistic Institute has put in to make these concepts more clear and accessible. I totally agree with point about false philosophies, specifically how many of the "New Atheists" completely misunderstand/misinterpret the 5 ways (for example Richard Dawkins confusing an essentially ordered series with an accidental one). However I am wondering about whether the institute has engaged with the critiques of Aquinas' 5 ways put forward by serious contemporary analytic atheist philosophers, such as J.L. Mackie, J.H. Sobel and Graham Oppy, all who have provided forceful critiques of Aquinas in their works?
I think that Carl Gustav Jung helped us when he said, "God's existence does not upon our arguments." (Memories, Dreams, and Reflections) Do we think that God will come into existence because we've made the best argument? For me, God is encountered through my personhood. Jesus died on the Cross as a Person, not a theory. The Arguments are merely a way of talking about God. And it seems to me that arguments for God's existence stand on their own. Atheist arguments are merely rebuttals. When God is the subject, they have nothing of their own. They depend upon the theists but the theists don't need the atheists.
FINALLY A SMART GUY PROVING GOD DOES EXIST!
I like your sarcasm😂...
How do you identify whether you’re dealing with a genuine god as opposed to a counterfeit one?
Genuine God can rule over/change/"skip" physical laws of the universe He created (command waves to stop with His Word, raise people from the dead by command, resurrect Himself and so on-what Jesus did).
But you still have freedom of choice to accuse Him of not being genuine despite all the evidence or choose that it is not enough evidence for you because of what you think God should be and do, and what shouldn't (i.e. putting yourself in the position of God/original sin/pride). But to be clear, God has no counterfeit.
If there can be more than one, we are not talking about God.
Marian apparitions should help you decide who is the real God; there are countless Catholic miracles that our world just ... sweeps under the rug. I will never understand that.
All are counterfeit, because they're all fake
I found God.. then signed up for hmforces. Was given the bible. I need nothing but his saving grace. Keep open your heart and mind.
God created us in his image. There is an unseen part of our nature that resembles God. This gives us the ability to recognize him in his creation and in the causes and effects all around us. Just as all animals are able to recognize each other distinct from other animals, and stay together in flocks and herds, humans are able to recognize their Creator distinguished from all creation and flock to Him. This is, of course, subject to all the limitations spoken of in the talk.
Thank you
4:30 is a great example of how we can know of God’s existence even with the veil present.
legitimately one of the worst analogies I have ever heard. This is a logical fallacy, and a false equivalency. No "one" must be behind the world around us first of all, and second, the example he gave is utter nonsense. We can actually test to see if you have an infection in your throat to prove it is really there in order to back up your subjective experience of having a sore throat, you cant do that with god because A) there is no natural way to prove he exists, and B) there is no evidence for his existence other than faith based assertions which we know are not a reliable pathway to the truth.
I would also add that SCIENCE and medicine can literally prove the source of a sore throat. We know that virus exists, not because of faith, but because they are not invisible as the video claims, you can see them clearly under a microscope. We even know exactly what Covid-19 looks like at the cellular level and how to combat it with science, not prayer.
That the most prevalent argument for the existence of god is merely that other things exist falls flat on its face every time. Even the smoke and fire analogy is laughable because we have all seen fire, we can make fire, and it is not invisible merely because it's out of your line of sight. C'mon, man.
Very interesting. As a scientist I use the scientific methods to measure all sorts of Gods works. If God did not exist than most of our world population is misguided to include many of the brightest minds.
What have you found to be “gods work” using the scientific method?
These proofs are historically interesting, but none of them have really stood the test of time and scrutiny, especially after Kant. Of them, the ontological argument is to me by far the most interesting.
And after Darwin and genetics, where it's better understood how things can evolve to look like they were designed without being designed. Design arguments have never been able to explain the flaws in the apparent design
That the laws of Physics are best expressed mathematically points to a Supreme Mathematician. The singularities in our expression of the fundamental laws of Physics demonstrates that we still don't have it totally correct.
That subspaces are a fundamental topic in Linear Algebra gives generalized examples of n-dimensional spaces embedded in m-dimentional spaces, where m > n.
Georg Cantor's work on infinite sets: the Natural Numbers {1, 2, 3, ...}, the Integers { ... -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ...} and the Rationals {p/q} where p & q are integers with q ≠ 0, show that distinct infinite things can have the same size.
Every one of these points is easily refutable by just looking with a critical eye, which is nearly impossible for anyone invested in a religion. 1, while this point is true, it is twisted, there is a force behind everything, but that force does not have to be some intelligent being, a rock needs a force to fall, but it does not have to be human or some other being. 2, cause and effect is pattern recognition, for us to understand causes and effects, we need to observe both the causes and effects, the examples he uses are not valid examples at all, we know there is a fire under the smoke because we have observed fire making smoke, the cause and the effect, with the creation of our universe, we have not seen a cause, only the effect. 3, this point implies we do not know therefore god, the god of the gaps argument. 4, there is no standard for perfection, if there were, there would be no disagreement on subjective matters, for example, peoples tastes in foods, there is no favorite food that will be everyone’s favorite and the perfect food, perfection is subjective and therefore does not exist,. 5, things without much intelligence can and do work for the sake of an end without anything of a higher intelligence directing them, for example, plants, they work to survive and pass on their genes to a new generation, other beings might interact with a plant, but they do not have to direct it for it to survive and pass on its traits
Yup God or intelligence could easily be interchanged with chaos and you would get the same exact results as well
God must be intelligent because the force from which everything proceedes is necessarily the actus purus (pure act, with no potentiality), the definition of perfection. Perfection includes intelligence. The difference between a physical being moving another physical being and God, is that God moves the world by creating it, and he can't be inferior to his own creation.
About the "innate" belief in God, I absolutely love this argument.
Nothing screams of desperation like trying to argue that people who disagree with you secretly agree with you. Please keep using this argument when you talk to people who don't accept your truth claims.
Great explanation i have been searching for a video like this. God bless you. Abraços do Brasil 🇧🇷
Luke 11:28
But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
1 Corinthians 14:33
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
1 Corinthians 14:34
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
1 Corinthians 14:35
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Luke 6:38
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
Actually, studies have shown that bees are much more intelligent than once thought
Plink's rebuttal of this mindless drivel was more insightful.
Yes we need more light from our Christian brothers !
“Can’t just use the Bible to prove the existence of god,” *proceeds to use the Bible as a source*
😂 Hey the bible is a very credible source everything in there has been backed by science
I'm not sure you watched the whole video.
Reason is our conversation with God ❤
When you're next on the phone to him, ask him to end childhood cancer could you?
Hi George. "Come let us reason together, says the Lord". (Is 1:18) Cheers, P.R.
Thank you, Father James, I very much understood, and it helped me in my defense of the faith. I wish there was a video detailing each way, that would be even more helpful!
Thanks for watching, and definitely stay tuned for more! May the Lord bless you!
Blessed be God forever for the Thomist. Love from Singapore.
Greetings to you in Singapore! Thanks for watching and commenting, and may the Lord bless you!
I blame these bad arguments for the rapid decrease in religious beliefs globally.
Glad to see someone else notices hes begging the question
Can you make an argument for why the arguments are "bad"? Also, you do realize St Aquinas is from the 1200s right?
"Proof" is necessary for the Faithless, the unSaved!
Great video. Great course. Thank you
Our pleasure!
Luke 11:28
But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
1 Corinthians 14:33
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
1 Corinthians 14:34
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
1 Corinthians 14:35
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
Luke 6:38
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
Very interesting video. I appreciated the thoughts about looking at our intuitions for evidence of God, and then looking to the natural world to better understand God's nature. There are a couple of questions that arise and the answers kind of recap my journey to atheism. What is the purpose and authority of the Bible? In many instances it directly contradicts the evidence of nature, so which "wins"? In my view, if there is a god then the natural world is his direct product while the bible is a product of the flawed understanding of a few people who lived thousands of years ago, anthologized, transcribed, translated and re-interpreted many times to the current plethora of versions. In my view the evidence of nature wins every time. The trouble is that every time we discover the cause behind a natural phenomenon or change that cause has never turned out to be god. The more closely I examined my vague and amorphic intuitions about a god, and compared them to the evidence, the less I believed that a god actually exists. Those intuitions themselves turn out to have a naturalistic explanation in our evolution as pattern-seeking animals. For those reasons, the 5 Proofs do not convince me at all that there is a god.
Terrific content, and outstanding even whimsical production accents that pair terrific with presentation in a really helpful way - thank you for these mini-seminars!!
You're welcome! Thanks for watching. God bless you.
THERE ARE 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns just like ours. Even if a superbeing existed, no way could he create that immense universe. AND there’s no reason he would care about our sun more than all the others. We are just a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos
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This makes more sense to me if I replace the word "god" with the lightheartedly, just as inconceivable and silly, and often referred to "purple spaghetti monster." Sure, that's fairly cliqued, but no more so than the idea of "god."
Idiot.
The fallacy of believers in a god who creates is based on their unproven assumption that ANYTHING in this universe is "created." Instead of simply admitting there is still much we don't know about the universe, including whether it was created , these believers fabricate a "god" to explain the unknown. Then these believers proclaim that to believe the story, one must have "faith." If one has no faith, one is doomed to a hell, a place also made up. Worse, these believers ATTEMPT TO PROVE USING SCIENCE that which you admit cannot be proven in a physical way. Best answer to our existence and the universe we inhabit - WE HUMANS DO NOT KNOW. Not "god created..."
The real issue with these arguments isn’t really what you said. It’s that it’s contingent upon accepting a specific metaphysics as being true. For much of western history, this metaphysical framework was so ingrained that it wasn’t even considered open to question.
THANK YOU. Aquinas hit the nail on the head.
So did Luther. *Zing*
No ill will intended but I took another journey. I had doubts my whole life and never received truly rational answers to honest questions. When I was about 40 I asked god to forgive me if I stepped away from religion and started from scratch. I truly thought I would find the true god/ religion. Instead, in my honest attempt to find god, I realized that in the history of the world, no god has ever been proven to be true. I learned that "faith" means believing in things that can't be proven. Slowly I developed the courage to move away from religion and into a more rational life. Part of my journey was sad because religion was a huge security blanket in my life. I realized that heaven/ hell were most likely fiction and that I had been fooled. However, most of it has been beautiful, peaceful and transcending. I am now good not because I want to go to heaven, but because "its the right thing to do." My critical thinking skills have changed my life for the better in so many ways. I realize that many need and are happier with that kind of security blanket and that's ok. I am forever grateful to my parents, family, friends and education that I am not one of those people. Love to all.
Really? People are just confused?!?!? That has got to be the craziest thing ive heard yet. I believe the only confused people are the ones who believe an invisible magic man lives in the sky who will tortue you forever unless you say hes great at least once a week because he loves you.
Yeah, i know where the confusion is. 😅😂🤣😂😅
It is completely normal, for people who have been indoctrinated to believe in invisible beings with magical powers, to think that those who do not believe in such things must be confused. It even has a name.
*_Psychological projection_*_ is a defense mechanism in which the ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves by attributing them to others. For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target, or a person who is confused will project their own feelings of confusion and inadequacy on other people._
_Projection incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping._
@@vejeke sounds accurate. This means religion breeds ignorance.
This is fascinating content. We need someone like St Thomas now. All forms of religion are full of false teachings and corruption, causing the youth to find solace in temptation. I feel like i did always know God was real. But that belief was driven out of me by the behavior of the religious. I thibk as i have aged ive moved from atheist to agnostic to a deist
Its amazing how Atheists and Agnostics can perfectly understand the arguments Thomas Aquinas so elegantly laid out for us on the Nature and Existence of God, yet instead of viewing the Natural World and concluding God is behind it all, they are perfectly content with calling God "Mother Nature"!!
As if some mindless, stumbling, random force created all this beauty, harmony, and wonderful connectivity we find all around us!!! As always God is ALWAYS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT!!
In one of the examples he provides, the sore throat one, a contemporary of thomas aquinas would have concluded that god was angry at him, while we knoe that the cause is biological. This is god of the gaps 101, and proof that the 5 causes are all about suggestion rather than logic. It is a fascinating author and one i appreciate, but it's far from logical proof of the existence of god
@@arturopriora7224 Your missing all the miraculous if you stumble down the path of reasoning against God using the "God of the gaps arguments!!".
I earned a triple BS in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics and I completed my PhD coursework at Purdue University with a 5.9 / 6.0 GPA.
The really unfortunate part of many people today, and especially Scientists, is they fall prey to the SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM WORLDVIEW. Science is merely a tool to understand the natural order post-Creation and falls terribly short of explaining any if the WHY questions of how the Universe began, how life began, and nearly all of the WHY questions. Using Science to explain those deeper meaning subjects requires the tools of Philosophy or better yet Theism. Einstein himself said the problem with Scientists is they make very poor philosophers!! And yet we have naive, technologically advanced human beings now that think they have a grasp on some of these things.
Dig deeper there is far more than Scientific Materialism and God of the Gaps thinking. If your a convicted Atheist, at least explore the works of the great Philosophers! You'll find some meaning there, that you won't find in Scientific Materialism.
Scientific Materialism leads to Darwinian mental approaches to how humans treat each other, and this thinking lead the Nazis, the Facists, the Maoists, and the Stalinists to the 20th Century of Slaughter. This claimed hundreds of millions of human beings to a horrible death.
In true Christianity you find Christ's message where he boiled down the entire Bible to these two sentences. "Love God with all your heart and all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself!!" Spending a career as a Research Scientist I spent 40 years with Scientists and the only warm, genuine human beings among these were Christians that were Scientists. True Christians are the most wonderful people in the World and only have your best interests at heart. So unlike the World that is trying to exploit you for sex and empty your pocketbook!!
Happy New Year and Blessings on you and your family!!
@@salmonkill7 i completely agree that the christian message of loving you neighbor and all the other core beliefs are beneficial to society and the best around, by far.
That does not mean that there must be a higher being, as other philosophers have said the same thing during human history. Einstein saying that scientist make poor philosophers fails to recognize that scientist do not have to be philosophers, as pastors do not have to be scientists. Also, saying that materialism is what brought the nazis is the same as saying that christianity brought the crusades. Instead of looking at the bad, you should look at the good materialism brought. Every philosophy can be hijacked by extremists, even religious ones. There have been instances in history of both trying crushing the other.
Your career is admirable, and i am truly glad i am talking to such a well educated man, i appreciate this conversation. Nonetheless, i fail to see why can't we approach the scientific reality of nature as it is while approaching ethics and morality with the christian message without always ending with having only one to explain everything. I assume that you don't believe in creation, as a biologist, and in the same way i would never want a doctor that prescribes prayers to cure my illnesses as they did in the Middle Ages.
I spent my whole (although young) life among christians, since i am Italian, and i always found purpose and happiness in relationship with my family, friends..., which is basically the christian message, whouth ever believing in the genesis, in miracles, in saints or in prayers. Does that make me a bad man?
@@arturopriora7224 No it doesn't!!
I can't fault nonbelievers at all, as it's tough to reconsile alot of the information out there and try to make sense of it all!!
Mankind also makes a massive mess out of many of these large Christian institutions. Mankind has alot of evil in them.
Wow, your Italian that is 👌👏👍!!!
I got to travel all over the World giving Scientific research talks and I got to tour most of the European great cities, including ROMA!! I got a little opportunity to tour outside of Roma , but not too far afield. I adore Italians!! Very nice, fun loving people that know how to enjoy food, wine, and good conversations! I often was lucky enough to be seated at Italians tables at Conference dinners and i so enjoyed it!!
I retired after 33 years at my National Laboratory. I am now teaching Science at a Christian high school and I absolutely love teaching!! I push my students very hard but I also teach one World Religions class and we cover all the major Religions and World Views!!
I don't fault non-believers because frankly it's tough to reconsile all the information out there. The Bible, all the other World Religions, the very popular Cosmic Spiritualism, and just the notion that everything sprang from nothingness.
As a scientist I have alot of insight into the incredible balancing of the various forces in nature; gravity, Electricity and Magnetism, Nuclear Strong and Weak Forces. The constants on these forces have a profound effect on just what you get after the BIG BANG creation event. The Bible and Physics are in agreement on the fact there was a Begining. The Big Bang says all matter went from non existence to existence is a minute amount of time, an instant if you will. If the forces were not in our perfect balance we find today we would have only hydrogen or possibly just subatomic particles instead of the 92 elements we find in our Universe. Most of these are in our human bodies!!
The existence of life is another massive mystery. The MILLER UREY experiment of the 1950s did show a few amino acids can be made from a spark and the right amount of basic elements but we have 20 amino acids in our protein alphabet and once made they are all very unstable and will break apart. Basically we have hundreds to thousands of massive protiens in life, and it's just not possible in 4.6 billion years to make even the larger ones. If you select just one protien of intermediate size you can model the probability of it assembling in just the correct sequence of amino acids and the sequencing is critical!! What you find is even under ideal conditions, and even assuming that the peptide bonds form and then don't break apart (they do break apart because sunlight and pH is murder on unprotected protiens!!), you find 4.6 billion years isn't long enough to make even ONE!!
.Then we have all the many complex lipids and DNA and RNA chemistry that is extemely complex!!
It's just not possible to create life even with the DECK STACKED in LIFES favor and I can assure you primordial Earth was very harsh!!
Biologists are now discovering stepper protiens that build scaffolding inside your cells and these nano-robots move things around in cells and they step through your DNA and perform error correction!! It's mind boggling!!
Then there is Christ. Even if your skeptical that the greatest soldiers of the known World botch the guarding of his tomb, how in the World did Christianity catch on if some humans didn't actually see the resurrected Christ? With 12 apostles, all but John were brutally murdered for their witnessing of Christ's life and message. You would have to be NUTS to go to your death for something that was a FAKE. But if you did see the risen Christ, death has no hold on you any longer!!
I have weighed the evidence myself and it's a good bet to be a believer, but maybe I gained my faith as a young person but I've never seen anything in Science or the World yet to cause me to discard my Faith!!
I'm really not a Preacher type, I'm just content in my life and faith and I want the best for everyone!!
On a lighter side, I am going to travel to Greece and Rome this summer!! I get the Summer off and my wife and I want to see some Greek Islands (Santorini for one) and I want my wife to see Roma and Napoli!!
Blessings....