The Proof of God's Existence

St. Thomas Aquinas' Quinque Viae

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.

Credit is given to St. Thomas for his dedication to the furtherance of the Kingdom of God.