The Westside Fellowship

There are many arguments that could be made for the exsistence of God we have chosen two of the most classic to post here on our site for your consideration.  

Aquinas' Five Ways

St. Thomas Aquinas (c1225-1274) is arguably the most important Catholic theologian in history. In his major work Summa Theologica, widely considered as the highest achievement of medieval systematic theology, Aquinas presented his five proofs of God's existence known as the Quinque Viae (Latin for "Five Ways"). We will give a brief rundown of all five arguments.

• Thomas' first way involves the evidence of motion. The fact, to Thomas, that every moving thing needs a mover shows that God, the Unmoved Mover, exists.
• The second way involves the notion of efficient cause. For the series of causes and effects, that we see in the world, to make sense it must have a beginning. God, the First Cause, therefore exists.
• The third way notes that every existing thing does not owe its existence to itself. However, if all things are contingent, there could not have been anything as at one time all these could be non-existent. To account for all existence, there must be a Necessary Being, God.
• The fourth way shows that there exist gradations in things, for example more noble and less noble, more true or less true. The existence of such gradations implies the existence of an Absolute Being as a datum for all these relative gradation.
• The fifth way argues that the behavior of things in the world implies a Grand Designer or architect, God.

Thus Aquinas' five ways defined God as the Unmoved Mover, the First Cause, the Necessary Being, the Absolute Being and the Grand Designer.

William Paley's Watch Analogy

In his book Natural Theology (1802) William Paley (1743-1805) presents an argument for the existence of God based on perceived design in the world. He begins by stating that if one walks across a field and sees a stone it would be absurd to ask how the stone got there. Firstly one does not usually ask questions like that about stones but also it could be that the stone had been there for all time and so no conclusive answer could be sought. However, if during your walk in the field you came across a watch it would be reasonable to ask how it got there. Now the reason why the assumptions made about the stone do not apply to the watch is because the watch exhibits the appearance of design as it has a variety of different parts all working together to produce motion whereby the time can be told (it should be noted that the analogy of the watch here was poignant at the time as the pocket watch had only just recently been invented). 

The inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

Using this analogy Paley then argues that the world exhibits complexity and so on this basis makes the assumption that there must be a designer of the world who is God.