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Natural theology

The Five Ways for God's existence

Five concise demonstrations from motion, efficient causality, contingency, degrees of perfection, and final order.

Leitfrage

Can reason move from features of the world to a first source that all call God?

Warum es wichtig ist

The Five Ways are the best known entry point into Aquinas's natural theology, but they depend on older metaphysical claims about act, potency, causality, and order.

Der argumentative Gang

  1. 1Begin with some evident feature of finite reality: motion, caused being, contingency, gradation, or directed activity.
  2. 2Show that this feature cannot be finally explained by an infinite regress of dependent causes in the relevant order.
  3. 3Conclude to a first source: unmoved mover, first efficient cause, necessary being, maximal source of perfection, or ordering intelligence.