✝ Why you SHOULD believe in God ✝

Pascal's Wager: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nslXRgLrMTk


St. Thomas Aquinas:

✝ The First Way: Argument from Motion ✝

☩ Our senses prove that some things are in motion.
☩ Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion.
☩ Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion.
☩ Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual
and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another).
☩ Therefore nothing can move itself.
☩ Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else.
☩ The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum.
☩ Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone
understands to be God.

✝ The Second Way: Argument from Efficient Causes ✝

☩ We perceive a series of efficient causes of things in the world.
☩ Nothing exists prior to itself.
☩ Therefore nothing [in the world of things we perceive] is the efficient cause of itself.
☩ If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results (the effect).
☩ Therefore if the first thing in a series does not exist, nothing in the series exists.
☩ If the series of efficient causes extends ad infinitum into the past, for then there would be no
things existing now.
☩ That is plainly false (i.e., there are things existing now that came about through efficient causes).
☩ Therefore efficient causes do not extend ad infinitum into the past.
☩ Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of
God.

✝ The Third Way: Argument from Possibility and Necessity (Reductio argument) ✝

☩ We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, that come into being and go out of
being i.e., contingent beings.
☩ Assume that every being is a contingent being.
☩ For each contingent being, there is a time it does not exist.
☩ Therefore it is impossible for these always to exist.
☩ Therefore there could have been a time when no things existed.
☩ Therefore at that time there would have been nothing to bring the currently existing contingent
beings into existence.
☩ Therefore, nothing would be in existence now.
☩ We have reached an absurd result from assuming that every being is a contingent being.
☩ Therefore not every being is a contingent being.
☩ Therefore some being exists of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from
another being, but rather causes them. This all men speak of as God.

✝ The Fourth Way: Argument from Gradation of Being ✝

☩ There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better or worse than others.
☩ Predications of degree require reference to the “uttermost” case (e.g., a thing is said to be hotter
according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest).
☩ The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus.
☩ Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being,
goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

✝ The Fifth Way: Argument from Design ✝

☩ We see that natural bodies work toward some goal, and do not do so by chance.
☩ Most natural things lack knowledge.
☩ But as an arrow reaches its target because it is directed by an archer, what lacks intelligence
achieves goals by being directed by something intelligence.
☩ Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and
this being we call God.

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✝ Why you SHOULD believe in God ✝

Pascal's Wager: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nslXRgLrMTk