Five Ways

Aquinas’ Five Ways (Download)

The first three of Aquinas’ five ways are cosmological in nature.  The cosmological argument is the argument that the existence of the world or universe is strong evidence for the existence of a God who created it. The existence of the universe, the argument claims, stands in need of explanation, and the only adequate explanation of its existence is that it was created by God. Unlike the ontological argument the cosmological argument is a posteriori, because we observe movement, causation and (some would say) design. The family of five arguments are very similar but still distinct.  It is important that the students can describe them clearly.  The best way to do this is to use the examples that Aquinas used himself (fire and wood, staff and hand ect).  The essence of the argument surrounds the concept of reductio ad absurdum. Many argue that the cosmological argument collapses into the ontological argument because we have to assume that infinity, eternity and necessity are attributes of God (who is greater than that which we can conceive).

Source: IEP

Rejection Of Pascal Wager

St. Thomas Aquinas (c1225-1274) is arguably the most important Catholic theologian in history. In his major work Summa Theologica, widely considered as the highest achievement of medieval systematic theology, Aquinas presented his five proofs of God’s existence known as the Quinque Viae (Latin for “Five Ways”). [1] We will be presenting all the arguments in more detail a little later, at present we will give a brief rundown of all five arguments.

Read full article here: rejectionofpascalswager.net