so having gotten some important preliminaries out of the way let's now look at the creative constructive portion of one of these articles of thomas aquinas these five ways of talking about god who god is what god does are sometimes inaccurately referred to as thomas aquinas's five proofs for the existence of god but these are not proofs in the sense of how you might prove something in a science laboratory you can't do that with god it's it's a completely different thing and aquinas didn't intend these as proofs for god these are intended as ways of talking about rationally getting to some place in our observation of things as they are in the universe to a point beyond which we cannot go any further back or any further forward and recognizing in that place what we call god that's probably a good way to encapsulate these five ways into discussion of god the first way is referred to as the way from change or the reference of an unmoved mover so i suggest that you pause the presentation for a bit and read this yourself slide it slowly see how much you can understand and then when you're ready to go on hit play and i will be offering some commentary on this and we'll do it that way for each of the five ways so in this first way this first method of talking about god aquinas is observing reality as it is noticing that things in the world around us change because something makes something else change and he uses these examples for example fire can make something change because it can make something hot that was not hot before fire can turn wood into fire and then into ash it's an acknowledgement that even if i did my own little experiment here and i would have to sort of throw something off of my desk i'd say well what caused the change for that pencil to be on the ground well that was me that did it and then i could go back and say well what caused me to think of doing that well i wanted to use it for an example and a powerpoint for class well then what i go back i go back i go back and go back i go back and i could probably if i knew enough and my mind were big enough i could figure out a whole change of causality going all the way back all the way back all the way back all the way back but at some point i can't go back any farther something must be the first thing to cause change hennis thomas says that thing that is not changed by anything else this is what we understand of his god it's going back going back going back going back going back to the first thing that sets everything in motion that's one way into describing god the second way causation the second way is based on the nature of causation in the observable world causes are found to be ordered in a series we never observed nor ever could something causing itself for this would mean it preceded itself and this is not possible such a series of causes must however stop somewhere or in it an earlier member causes an indeterminate and then excuse me intermediate and the intermediate elast whether the intermediate be one or many now if you can eliminate a cause you can also eliminate its effects so that you cannot have a last cause or an intermediate one unless you have a first given therefore no stop in the series of causes and hence no first cause there would be no intermediate causes either and no last effect and this would be an open mistake one is therefore forced to suppose some first cause to which everyone gives the name god so this is very similar to to way number one way number one is all about change things shifting in form this one is a bit more general it's what's responsible for bringing something about so maybe one way of looking at this is so what what caused me to be well my mother and my father got together and they had me okay so i my mother and my father are causes of my existence well okay so but if my mother and father didn't exist then i wouldn't exist okay so i'll go back so what caused my mother and father to exist well my father had a mother and father and my mother had a mother and father kind of similar they caused my parents to exist okay well but what caused my grandparents i go back and go back and go back and at some point i can't go back any farther that is the point at which i get to the first cause or the uncaused cause the cause that that has no nothing to cause it and that is what we call god contingency why don't you read this on your own hit pause and when you're ready to move on i'll hit play and i'll have some commentary to make the word contingency is used in medieval philosophy to usually refer to something that relies on something else for it to exist or something has dignity or existence in itself but if it weren't for the other thing bigger than it or prior to it or more important than it or more powerful than it it wouldn't exist so i can say for example um that i i have being right i i i have been i exist i'm a human being so but we already know from from looking at the constitutive elements of the human person and guardian spez that my life here on earth is going to end at some point human life has a beginning a middle and the end on the earth at least but for right now i am i i'm not a an odd 20th century philosopher who believes that everything is just in the imagination of something else no i really i exist i'm pretty sure i exist but because i know that it's i that i i presume if i'm living in the world view of i have a beginning a middle and an end if i presume that there was a point at which i did not exist and there's a point after which i may not exist then my being is not being in and of itself my being is contingent i must derive i must borrow the fact of my being from someone or something else one interesting point here as we're talking about being with a lowercase b is that to thomas aquinas into the medieval theologians it would be wrong to refer to god as the supreme being capital s capital b because that would imply if god is a being or being that or to say the supreme being means okay well there's only one being that's supreme but it's still a being that it's comparable to the kinds of beings that you and i are that would imply that there's a kind of hierarchy a pyramid of beings and that god is at the very very top of that but that's not god to thomas aquinas that's in fact that's not god in christian theology to thomas aquinas in christian theology god is not the supreme being god is being with a capital b itself god is what is god exists because god cannot not exist god is to use the language here god is what exists without being dependent on anything else to exist not being contingent not being caused by anything else so he's the uncaused cause not being changed or in a process of change like anything else so the unmoved mover you and i are beings we exist we're beings with a cap with a lowercase excuse me b god is being capital b being itself so if we're talking universally and we're talking about what is what always has been what always will be not in a personal sense but just in this pure existential sense that's god that's what thomas refers to as god now true in christian theology at least then there are more specifications that are made about that yes christian theology believes that god becomes incarnate in jesus christ that there's that god chooses not just to be but to create a universe to be in a relationship with um in hebrew scriptures and christian interpretation hebrew scriptures that god chooses a special people to be the special recipients of his love for his covenant israel so there are certainly things that take place beyond god's just being but if you go back far enough if you look widely enough high enough god is simply being with a capital b itself the fourth way is the way by degree and the gradation observed in all things some things are found to be more good more true more noble and so on and other things less but such comparative terms describe varying degrees of approximation to a superlative superlative in grammar is the thing that is the most of something for example things are hotter and hotter the nearer they approach what is hot test hotest is the superlative something therefore is the truest and the best and the most noble of things and hence the most fully in being for aristotle says that the truest things are the things most fully in being now when many things possess some property in common the one most fully possessing it causes it the others fire to use aristotle's example the hottest of all things causes all other things to be hot there is something therefore which causes in all things their being their goodness and whatever other perfection they have and this is what we call god finally god as the final cause the teleological way and remember final does not mean necessarily the end and the point of time final means the ultimate purpose of something the fifth way is based on the guidance guideness of nature an ordered-ness of actions to an end is observed in all bodies obeying natural laws even when they lack awareness for their behavior hardly ever varies and will practically always turn out well which so so they truly tend to a goal and do not merely hit it by accident nothing however that lacks awareness tends to a goal except under the direction of someone with awareness and with understanding the arrow for example requires an archer everything in nature therefore is directed to its goal by someone with intelligence and this we call god so if the arguments from change and causation in particular are things that project back in a series of events it's the beginning of a series of events in a sense into the beginning of time i guess this the fifth way projects ahead to the ultimate purpose of something but it's a little trick in medieval philosophy and theology that even seeing things in light of their end their purpose the end exists in the beginning meaning if some intention isn't made at the start of the whole process to get to a goal the goal being the end then nothing happens the beginning of something is actually embodied in embraced and folded into its end