You must first ask yourself, "What is truth?" Then you must seek to answer that question.
Truth is coherent
with what you know (your concepts and ideas) and with what actually exists (reality).
Let me introduce you to a
logical syllogism, if you aren't already familiar with it.
Here's a simple example of a syllogism:
premise #1
All men are mortal
premise #2
Bob is a man
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conclusion
Therefore, Bob is mortal
As you can see, the conclusion follows from the premises; this is called validity.
Syllogisms with three premises are called enthymemes (IN-thuh-meems). Syllogisms with more than three premises are
called sorites (SORE-uh-teez). Even though they have different names, they still hold the same logical characteristics
of a smaller, two-premised syllogism.
These 5 arguments are known as the Quinque Viae, which is Latin for The Five Ways,
which was proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas wrote an extensive amount of texts which can still be purchased
in bookstores and/or online. I'm not going to boggle all of you with seemingly endless paragraphs; I will condense these
ideas into short, simple, logical syllogisms.
The First Way
"The Argument from Motion"
Nothing can move itself.
For any object to move, something must move the object.
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Therefore, If any object moves, then there must be a mover.
St. Thomas called this Unmoved Mover "God." Why?
Because God is eternal, from everlasting to everlasting; God has no beginning and no end. Why doesn't it make sense
to humans? Because we're locked in a dimension called "time."
The Second Way
"Argument from Causation (Creation) and Existence"
There exists things
that were caused or created by other things.
Nothing can be the cause of itself (or create itself).
There can not be an endless
string of things causing other things to exist.
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Therefore,
there must be an uncaused first cause.
St. Thomas is saying that everything has
a beginning, and that beginning is God.
The Third Way
"Argument from Contingent and Necessary Objects"
Contingent
beings are caused (every contingent being depends on another being).
Not every being can be contingent (there must be something
that isn't dependent on anything else.)
There must be a being which is necessary to cause contingent beings.
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Therefore,
this necessary being is God.
The Fourth Way
"Argument from Degrees and Perfection"
Qualities of things differ (everything in the universe
has a different level of quality).
There are many different levels of quality.
There must be a perfect standard by which
all such qualities are measured.
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Therefore,
these perfections are contained in God (perfection personified).
Something in the universe
might be perfect to a degree, but not to a perfect perfection.
The Fifth Way
"Argument from Intelligent Design"
There is an observable universe and order in nature.
Common
sense (also known as judgment, by using the 5 senses) tells us that nature works in such a way.
A person can
conclude that everything was designed by an intelligent designer.
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Therefore,
God is the Intelligent Designer of all physical laws of nature and order in the universe.
