What is God? Who is God? Why do some people conclude that a God exists?
Saint Thomas Aquinas goes from the fact that there must be a first efficient cause
to the conclusion that God is that cause. Why must Aquinas make the
extraordinary jump from there being a cause, to assuming that this cause must be
God? Would it not be just as plausible to make matter the first cause? Matter is
the substance that any physical object is composed of. Matter is closed and finite,
with no beginning or end. The best explanation to the existence of God, is that
God does not exist as a first efficient cause.
The argument for God, as presented by Aquinas, is to show that the
existence of the world and everything in it can only be explained if there is a God
who is the first cause. The argument states that it is impossible for any being to be
the efficient cause of itself because then it would have to bring itself into being,
and to bring itself into being, it would have to exist before it existed.
Italy
St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), the eponym of T...
Thomas Aquinas depicted in stained glassIf a being
exists, it is because some being prior to it, was it's cause. Therefore, if no first
cause exists, neither will any other being exist. Therefore, there is a first efficient
cause--God.
This argument assumes that a first cause is needed to explain the existence
of anything. Aquinas also assumes this first cause to be God. How can anyone
rationally conclude that there is a God from the simple statement that a first cause
is necessary? Therefore, a first cause does not prove God, it only assumes that
there is a God, at best. Could one not put matter in the place of God in Aquinas'
argument and still assume...