A Philosophical Argument For God's Sake

A Philosophical Argument for God's Sake In this paper I will: (i) state the premises and conclusion of St. Thomas Aquinas's “Uncaused Cause” argument, I will argue that the argument is a deductive argument. Merriam-Webster.com's definition of cause is: “something or someone that produces an effect, result, or condition: something or someone that makes something happen or exist”. (www.merriam-webster.com) A deductive argument is an argument in which the premise or premises claim to prove that the conclusion is true. An inductive argument is an argument in which the premise or premises claim to prove that in most cases the conclusion is true. I will argue that the argument is a priori. A Priori knowledge is knowledge that can be obtain based
Thomas Aquinas's argument for the existence of God is a deductive argument. This assessment is based on the nature of the premises in the argument. As discussed during classroom lectures, the argument's premises and conclusion can be translated as evaluate the truth value of the premises and how they support the conclusion. The premises of the argument, can be restructured to say that premise one claimes that “There exists an order of causes. The second premise states that “This order of causes can not go in a circle”. The third premise asserts that “This order cannot go on forever” The fourth premise infers that if the first three premises are true, then that concludes that “There must be a first cause in the order of causes. This cause is what “everyone calls God”. Consequently “There is a first cause in the order of causes, which everyone calls God. Each premise that is supporting the conclusion in the argument is claimed to be true in every instance. There has always been an order of causes based on the very nature of existence. The order of causes cannot go in a circle has always been true. The fact that the order of causes cannot go on forever has always been the case. The fourth premise in the argument is a conditional statement,claiming that, if premises one, two, and three are true, then it is true that the first cause in the order of causes is what is referred to as God. The conclusion of the fourth premise serves as the fourth premise for the argument.
The example of the apple that was discussed in class is a good example of this claim. A person can understand that an apple contains seeds which can grow into an apple tree. The tree can then produce apples, continuing the cycle of causes for the creation of the apple. The fact that this cycle can be thought to go on for a long time, but the cause of the first apple had to start at some point. By this observation, a person can determine on their own that whatever created the first apple or apple seed is greater than what created it, what caused it is what is considered God. One final point about why this cause is considered to be God is that St. Thomas Aquinas also described this force as being better than what created it. St. Thomas Aquinas quotes Aristotle in the text book pointing out that “when many things possess some properties in common, the one most fully possessing is causes it in the others”. What this meant according to St. Thomas Aquinas, “there is something therefore which causes in all other things their being… and this we call