well greetings class welcome to this lecture on Thomas Aquinas on faith and reason so who is Thomas Aquinas this uh 13th century thinker that I've had you read prior to this lecture well in the Medieval Era he is an important thinker from the 13th century at the time of his writing he's an Italian monk known for two works that are probably his most important ones not the only things that he's written or contributed to but two of these being his Summa Contra Gentiles which is his treaties really on philosophy or for the most part of philosophy and assume a theologian which is his attempt at a what we'd call a Systematic Theology I suppose and what we get from Aquinas and the reason why he's so incredibly important they're one reason at least why he's so incredibly important in thinking about um even our course question what does it mean to be human um is because of the era in which he is he's an Aristotelian thinker uh as Augustine and Anselm as we have already seen take a lot of the ideas and the vocabulary and something of the lenses of of Plato's way of thinking about the world and synthesizing that with their religious faith Aquinas does the same but with Aristotle and many scholars will talk about this indeed you can do a search engine uh in on the internet and look up Aquinas and Aristotle and finds all kinds of stuff and of course Scholars debate and and there's really good discussion about the extent to which Aquinas himself really sort of uses Aristotle or or maybe even a sloppier way that's very controversial way to put it is that is that Aquinas christianizes Aristotle or Aristotle Isis Christianity if you want to put it that way we're not going to get into that but I think what's really important and what's really helpful is to think about how that the particular kind of uh practice of Aristotle I mean what is he concerned with how does he see the world versus Plato Plato sees the world that we experience as one of just mere experience but true reality Ultimate Reality transcends it's the world of the forms it's it's the world of the definitions as we put it of what things are that exists apart from our mere experience because after all right what we see touch taste here in smell can deceive us um and so it's it's what exists otherworldly that is the reality remember for Aristotle it's what we experience that is really the best that we can do uh to some extent so he's much more practical Aristotle is much more pragmatic in some ways Aquinas uh picks up on this and he picks up on this in thinking about really what it means to be a rational human being who does have experiences who does have human reason and is able to exercise that human reason but at the same time as he himself does he has Faith he has religious Faith specifically for him it's Christian faith and so the question arises then as it really arises for us too how do you hold those two things together now what's interesting is that I think for a lot of uh era of of humanity and and that which we have seen so far in our course whether it be from Torah whether it be from Gilgamesh whether it be from uh Luke's writings whether it be from uh Virgil's writings uh the the polytheism of the Roman Empire Era if we want to put it that way um people are not seeing those kinds of things in tension of course it makes sense to exercise human reason as Plato and Aristotle have put it but at the same time it also makes sense to them simultaneously to have belief in Gods like for the greco-romans right and the gods of of water and air and fire and sun and the moon right all these various gods that are deities of the various elements of the world that they experience so it makes sense to have all these religious beliefs and exercise human reason all at the same time these things are not at odds with one another so why is it thought then that these things are at odds with one another I think for Aquinas it becomes a question as uh civilization and strictly put Western Civilization becomes much more scientifically oriented and that might be a bit of a anachronism because we really don't have the scientific method until a few hundred years later as we come out of the Renaissance into the era that we call the enlightenment where the Scientific Revolution takes hold where people start thinking about what it means to have methodologies that I can use as an individual knower and use in order to get my own knowledge about the objective World outside of me when we get into that era which let's be honest is sort of metaphorically on steroids in our era um it seems to be all too commonplace that faith and reason themselves cannot really be complementary they cannot really be coherent reason is what I do when I am using something like the scientific method to understand the world that I actually live in right this real physical Material World I can do science on it if I want to put it that way I can engage in rigorous analysis of it but on the other side of that coin it's often thought that well but Faith however is a sort of belief that you have in something that you don't have any evidence for you don't have any reasons for or good reasons for let's say so it's often thought these days that these things are opposites that to have faith in something is completely different and maybe even illegitimate intellectually speaking it might even be intellectually irresponsible to have faith in something rather reason is what matters human reason is what matters well I suppose these kinds of questions are being raised even in aquinas's Era and no doubt we can see why coming out of Anselm's argument on cells meditation his prayer his exercise of trying to understand on the basis of his faith trying to understand what exactly God is leads him to that conclusion that God exists simply by using human reason to announce to do an analysis of what the concept of God is but he does that on the basis of the God that he already believes in so he's already coming at this from the perspective of Faith itself many point will point back to Ensemble and say but that's illegitimate right he's he's he's he's reasoning circularly there he's um he's merely uh just trying to analyze something that he has already made an intellectual commitment about instead of starting from independent reasons to some conclusion so that's why this is controversial so obviously these kinds of questions are coming up but what Aquinas argues here in these bits of these selections that I picked to talk about in this lecture holds that faith and reason themselves are really not at odds with one another that indeed they are complementary to one another and maybe one of the reasons why that's the case and this is something that I'll mention here in a little bit is because at the end of the day there's always something that you have to believe in in order to have any understanding of even if it's something as simple as the world that you experience outside of your head you might say well I can prove that that world is out there oh okay maybe you can but you have to appeal to that world out there in order to prove that it's out there so at the end of the day you are assuming it to some extent well anyway I don't want to get too much in the Weeds about that but that's what we're doing here that's what we're thinking about faith and reason and how Aquinas sort of helps us understand this issue a little bit better well what I want to do here is go through a few points that he makes in the Summa Contra Gentiles and then we'll finish up with a few points he makes in his Summa theologia so notice in this controgen T lace he talks about how that there are things that can be known about God and that these things fall into two categories and this is where he makes his distinction between or what I think is his distinction that he's making between reason and faith first of all there are those things which are beyond our reasoning ability things that human reason itself cannot come up with let's say or that it cannot access on its own without help and the kind of help that he has here in mind but this first point would be divine revelation would be scripture would be the Holy Bible something like that one example from that would be something like the concept of Trinity that is taught in Christianity that God is is one substance but is exercise or is understood in that substance is having three persons or being three persons I guess I should say so that's the sort of thing that by mere human reason right I can't come up with there's something that has to be given to me to teach me that or tell me that and that's what he has in mind there with that first point but secondly he says however there are those things to which even my bare human reason can attain that is by by human reason alone I can figure this out well what are kinds of things like that well one example he gives is God's existence now that's what's interesting here and that's what another thing that's controversial about this and he'll go on and we'll finish up this lecture talking about his very famous cosmological argument for God's existence but he thinks that even bear human reason can obtain that knowledge but it can come to a place where it uh affirms God's existence so for him what is this distinction what then well on one or the point number one the Trinity for example would be something that we come to know by Faith by faith in some text or some scripture that has been given to us right um whatever whatever that is and then secondly that would be the kind of thing that we know or come to know by reason so some things we know by faith some things we know by reason and for him that's just a simple taxonomy those are just two different ways in which we come to have knowledge and for him knowledge just is knowledge either you know something or you don't these are just two ways of doing that so he asks a follow-up a follow-up question can bear human reason then get us an understanding of God's substance because if we can know that God exists can we know more about what God is by mere human reason it doesn't answer that was will not fully we can't fully know what God's substance is and that's an interesting way to put this but I think it helps to remember that for many of these ancient thinkers and especially the medieval thinkers they're thinking in terms of what reality itself is and that it makes sense to talk about things in reality as having some kind of substance to it it has some type of of not necessarily a material reality but some type of structure that gives it substance it's easy to point to examples in the universe right I'm holding a cup of coffee right now for instance and I can say yeah this this coffee has substance and actually it's it's liquid substance is what it is and that makes sense because we deal with liquid substances all the time well the Assumption here is that God also has a kind of substance even though it's hard to say exactly what it is because we we don't sense it we don't touch it and taste it like we do the coffee in my mug and that's aquinas's answer to this right much of our knowledge comes about by sense that is my sense perceptions like I'm having with this coffee here but God's a substance cannot be sent so we can't know what fully he thinks however our understanding is thereby led to some knowledge of God and and really it's limited by a mere human reason he thinks that what mere human reason alone without the aid of any other kind of Revelation by God or by somebody else as to what God is doesn't actually give us a full answer so existence is all we can get at when it comes to understanding who and what God is so already we see right he's taking sort of on selms kind of uh explanation or his analysis his um his trajectory of trying to understand what it what it means to know whether or not God exists and can anything more be said about that how do we answer our our course question here what does it mean to be human well between Augusta non-some and now Aquinas it's really to have a this major question of you know who and what is God right if there is a God right this is something they're wrestling with in the Medieval era so the next question why would it then be a problem if all knowledge about God could only be achieved by human reason so Aquinas thinks that we can actually know something about God um by human reason namely that God exists but and there's other things that we need help with or we need Revelation in order to tell us about God but what would be the problem if we didn't have the Revelation and all that we had was mere human reason alone well first of all he thinks that only a few people could have it don't know exactly what he means by that he doesn't elaborate too much but uh and this might be not a fair analogy but I'll go ahead and make it anywhere or at least an illness a way to illustrate this it might be something akin to sort of what Plato has in mind or had in mind with the with the with a just Republic you know that there are only really a few who are really smart people that can figure this sort of stuff out and that might be the idea here Aristotle affirm something like that also we didn't talk about this but he thinks that there's also a a group of those that are able to live the contemplative life they're the ones that sort of sit around and and can think very deep and heady thoughts and he calls that really the best life that one can live if one can get there right even Beyond what it means to be you diamond or to be ethical um and exercising the virtues and achieving the chief good um but it's a very small amount of people that could do that so but that might be more of what what Aquinas has in mind there only a few people could have that so that wouldn't be that helpful and notice secondly it would take a very long time to get it not only because of the prior knowledge one would need in order to get the higher knowledge you got to start somewhere after all right but also because such serious serious study requires maturity and that puts us in mind of what Aristotle said about studying ethics remember he said that not everybody's really suited to do that to think abstract and think deeply about what the nature of morality is and how it's to be practiced and how it's to be cashed out in your Society because you need to be a mature kind of person in order to do that Aquinas thinks that falls in line here as well and the third Point The Human Condition is such that owing to the infirmity of our judgment and the perturbing force of imagination there is some admixture of error in most of the investigations of human reason and his third Point here is very legitimate isn't it we know that human reason itself is not perfect and that's what he's pretty much saying in here that many of our judgments that we make by our reason alone are mixed with error that there are problems not every vaccine not every medical diagnosis lives up to what it's said that it lives up to right I mean some people uh die of unfortunate side effects to treatments um science is great medical science is great but it's not perfect it doesn't perfectly get perfect conclusions and that's the point he has here right all kinds of human reason is that way I can learn how to do a math problem and I can learn how to do it well and yet when it comes to to figuring out some problem itself I might do it wrongly right why because well my my human reason is prone to error so if all that we could know about God for Aquinas is such that it would have to be done by human reason alone that would be a problem but he also affirms however that no matter what whether you get knowledge about God through special Revelation or divine revelation or whether you get it by human reason if it's true it's true so for him he sees this notion of Truth as this really all-encompassing notion it's this all-encompassing concept that is that true statements true propositions have that truth value of true when indeed they are true when indeed they reflect what is real about the world when they're conveying what is generally the case and and accurately at describing explaining what is true about the world that we live in whatever that might be well he goes on now in the Summa theologia since some truths exceed the ability of human reason it was necessary that they'd be revealed then by divine revelation so because human reason he thinks can only get us so far in understanding and knowing about God divine revelation is needed and of course what he has in mind here with divine revelation would be what would be understood as as the Bible both Old and New Testaments right because that's the perspective from which he's coming from and he goes on then the science of God which for him is theology depends on the philosophical Sciences only in order to make its teaching clearer making use of them as the Lesser and as handmaidens so even though divine revelation he thinks is needed to really know something about God even then it needs the vocabulary it needs the conceptual toolkit let's say of the philosophical Sciences of Plato of Aristotle of the stoics of platinus of everybody else to sort of give the vocabulary to give the lenses to give the Paradigm from making sense about these theological points and also has another Sciences or as other scientists do not argue and proof of their principles but argue from their principles to demonstrate other truths so this Doctrine does not argue in proof of its principles which are the articles of Faith but from them it goes on to prove something else what does he mean there then so if we're doing this sort of understanding like Anselm is doing or this exercise like on someone's doing and trying to and trying to answer this question right what does it mean to be human and what does it mean to struggle with this question about if there is a God and what God is and who God is and what God is like and what what can be said truly about this being if anything can be said truly about this being here uh interestingly enough what Aquinas seems to be doing is actually affirming the grounds upon which Anselm made his particular uh journey and his particular discovery that is that at some point in the argumentation for something and really it's he's sort of holding this out although the context is theology but he's he sort of sort of holds us out universally we could say that there are some things that upon which you have to assume in other words you're not arguing for the principles upon which you're arguing right the principles being your starting points the places where you begin in order to do your bit of reasoning in order to to make your argument rather there's some things that are literally articles of Faith things that you just simply have to believe are the case in order to rest your argument on whether that's your belief that God exists like onsem does and then you extend that out and your understanding of it or even something as simple as doing empirical science with the example I used earlier it may simply be the case and a lot of people argue that it is the case that even in doing empirical science with no sort of religious aspect to it whatsoever you still have to have faith that you're living in a world and that you have access to that world outside of your head if I was to do a science experiment let's say on the grass that's outside the window here in my office and I pull a blade of that grass up and I'm going to try to prove what it is that makes this blade of grass green well here's here's an article of faith that I have to believe I have to believe that that that's actually grass and that it's actually green and that I'm not in some sort of Matrix somewhere that I'm not merely in some sort of of simulation software that is tricking my brain into thinking that that I'm a subject in an objective world I have to assume that there's actually an objective World outside of my head I have to believe that I have to have faith that that's the case and I might say well okay I have to have faith that there's a world out there but in but I can prove that there's a world out there I can point to that world but notice what I just did I'm actually appealing to that world in order to prove that it's there I'm appealing to this blade of grass and saying here you see here it is I'm appealing to it in order to prove that it exists and that it's green but what that means is that I'm actually not giving an argument I'm not proving that this grass exists on the basis of independent Reasons I'm having to already assume that it's there in order to conclude that it's there so it's both the premise and conclusion of my argument so to say so at the end of the day I have to believe I have to assume that it's there and I'm not saying that people ought not to believe or assume that it's there I'm just trying to illustrate aquinas's Point here that when it comes to these kinds of things right you don't argue for the principles the axons axioms the first principles upon which you base your reasoning your investigations your discoveries about the world some things you just have to accept you have to assume they have to be presuppositions to the rest of the um a bit of reasoning or the rest of the argument that you are developing here well he goes on and asks this question can God's existence then be reasoned because after all Anselm did a bit of this didn't he but but for him it wasn't proving that God exists rather it was simply assuming that God exists and then proving what can be said about that right that using Augustine's famous dictum but maybe made more famous by enselman to some extent that um I believe these things first of all so that I can understand them better so how does Aquinas fit into all of that well he says consider first that some things are self-evident in themselves or that something can be self-evident in itself whether or not anyone else knows it and some things are self-evident to all right because we know it so here's simply what he's making a distinction about are between those things where if we were to come up with a proposition about them and say that you know X Y and Z exist um that would be true indeed these things are evident within themselves even if we don't have access to know that that's the case right they're true even though we are we are not able to verify the truth however some things are indeed the case and we can know it right so they're self-evident to us now one example of something that he gives is this um even conceptual statement here that God exists that in and of itself that is self-evident he thinks it's true and you might even say that thinking about how ansem thought about this that even that statement would have to necessarily be true God exists given the definition of God and given that one of the aspects of God and what it means to be a great is conceivable being is existence so this statement that God exists would necessarily have to be true so it is self-evident in itself whether or not anyone else recognizes that but then the question is raised can this statement God exists however become evident to others and Aquinas says well yes it can and he thinks it can be done so by demonstrating this in other words coming up with an argument whereas the argument itself that tries to prove this will use things that are more known to us things that are a bit more tangible to us and how we think about the structure of reality itself and how we think about the structure of the world namely as Aquinas puts it by the world's effects or by simple effects that are the case that we experience all the time for instance I'm drinking this coffee I'm going to have a sip right now please forgive me oh and that was really nice and this coffee itself is an effect of something it's probably actually an effect of a lot of things as an effect of people growing it and harvesting it and shipping it roasting it grounding it and then an effect of me Brewing it here just a few minutes ago so that I have this coffee in its final form it's just obvious to me that this is an effect of all kinds of causes that have been prior to this final effect of of the finished product and me being able to enjoy that so for quantity she thinks there are all kinds of things that we can know about God in thinking about and focusing on all the things that we experience as effects of something else of something prior and that's the way in which he's going to try to demonstrate his particular argument for God's existence so then he raises this question but isn't Anselm's attempt good enough and what was on silm's attempt to try to understand what God is by believing that God is defined in a certain way and then sort of uh following the logic let's say understanding what the implications are of that definition of God as the greatest conceivable being well Aquinas doesn't really like Anselm's attempt he doesn't think it's really that good not because he disagrees with the definition of God is the greatest conceivable being it's actually if you look at other of aquinas's works you get a sense that he actually would definitely agree with that personally but he doesn't think it's persuasive and that's the problem it's not that in and of itself it's a bad argument but unless well I should put this way unless you think that one important virtue that makes an argument good is if it's persuasive then for Aquinas it definitely fails that attempt why because not everyone who hears the word god understands it to signify something than which nothing greater can be thought in other words for Aquinas not everybody defines God as the greatest conceivable being so that being the case it's not a very persuasive argument if indeed arguments are supposed to persuade people more than merely um come to True conclusions so what's a better way to do this well the way that Aquinas thinks one ought to do this and what he's going to model for us here and what's called the five ways uh what have been called the five waves of arguing for God's existence is through a kind of what we call aposteri Ori demonstration um literally meaning uh uh what is outside of us or what what is sort of after the cause let's say what it what is uh what comes after um the sort of cause and effect thing that that takes place for the most part we generally will think about a posteriori as referring to those kinds of things that we can actually experience in the world whereas the opposite of that which I will not test you on but I will just tell you this because it's fun is the opryori um the kind of knowledge you have before actually experiencing anything having to do with that in the world of experience of our five senses let's say so for instance um people can have a priori knowledge that two plus two equals four without anything in your experience actually suggesting that to you it's almost like its own sort of mental category um or even actually that's even a better example think about the notion of a category we use categories all the time don't we we know what a category is it's an abstract conceptual tool that we use in order to organize information um but you will never find a category out in the world will you they don't hide under rocks um you don't throw a hook out in the ocean and pull one up by using bait to try to get one do you now so how do you even know it's a category a real thing well yeah it's a real thing because we're using them all the time but how do you know that categories exist um it may just simply be that we're already sort of programmed or we already have the software I'll use those as metaphors here the software built into our minds in order to to know what categories are to use them so that would be an example of a priori knowledge and no doubt for Anselm he thinks that the belief that God exists would be a kind of Opera knowledge is something that sort of already programmed in the human person but Aquinas doesn't want to do that kind of reasoning he doesn't want to do the Opera kind of reasoning here to argue for God's existence like Anselm does he wants to do aposteriori for him let's prove God exists by pointing to things that we actually experience in the world and then we'll sort of reverse engineer from that back to God so this Opera story way as he puts it this is to argue from what is prior relatively only to us such that when an effect is better known to us than its cause from the effect we proceed to the knowledge of the cause so we look at something we realize that it's an effect of something else and so we sort of reverse engineer that we go back through the chain of causation in order to make a conclusion about what ultimately makes the most sense in terms of what the cause of that is so to read the rest of this quote then and from every effect the existence of its proper cause can be demonstrated so long as its effects are better known to us because since every effect since every effect depends upon its cause if the effect exists then the cause itself must pre-exist and that would be a very basic principle that I think most of us would say that yeah I mean if something is like this coffee if I'm enjoying this it's an effect of all kinds of other things but at the same time move my cursor over here at the same time right that would force us to conclude that there are causes to that it would be irrational to say otherwise wouldn't it so how is Aquinas going to use this then to argue for God's existence well let's look at what's called the five ways in some sense um well let me put it this way these are five separate arguments that Aquinas gives and these are very famous you can find all kinds of things on the internet about them even probably better videos than what I'm providing you here even some animated ones that explain this and if you have time hey I would encourage you to do that there's a lot of good stuff um out there that explains this stuff well and it maybe explains it a little bit differently than I do which might be more helpful to get a different perspective on that but these particular arguments are five specific ones and yet they're all very similar they all kind of have the same they're making the same point um in the same kind of format it's the same basic principle here where we're considering the effects which is the world that we experience itself and then trying to do the logic to figure out then what the cause of that is or what makes the most sense rational sense and saying that the cause of that is well the first of these What's called the five ways or five ways of arguing for God's existence from Thomas Aquinas the first of these is what we'll call the argument from motion and what he has in mind here in terms of motion has to do with sort of the the generation of beings Right Moving from from being a potential being to an actual being and then no longer I suppose in two existence because things corrupt and die and so on and so forth spoiler alert right you're probably going to die some days I hate that you had to hear that from me right now but uh anyway um I lost track okay the argument from motion so but we can talk about this in terms of like the motion that we're used to things moving like physically literally moving right down the sidewalk or down the road or uh those mobs in the middle of summer that move across your ceiling right we know we talk we know what we mean when we talk about motion here all right so here's the argument from motion this first point Aquinas says we have all seen something move and we'll just use the letter T here to stand in for for whatever that is T can be whatever thing you have in mind maybe the moth that moves across the ceiling and we all understood that something made it move well what made that moth move I I don't know I suppose its own programming in a way that gets it to affect its will to will to move in a certain way to go you know towards the light and away from the darkness as well as the oxygen that it needs in order to metabolize energy and the nutrition and food it needs in order to do that right so there's all kinds of outside things that are coming in um to contribute to its being able to move in that way as well as not being able or not being restricted by anything in that particular context right it's it's able to move freely in open air I notice this third point it's not possible for anything to move itself because nothing can be its own mover and you're thinking well but but that moth can move itself and I and I know what you mean by that I mean even I can move myself and so let's talk about me now as an example yes I can move myself in the sense that I can will you know that I uh cancel this lecture that I'm doing right now and just go down the street get some coffee and do something else sure but I'm not completely dependent upon myself for that because I need oxygen to do that so I need I'm dependent upon all kinds of other factors I need to have the energy to do that I need to not be restricted in my movements in order to be able to do that and that's that's the idea here I can't completely move myself I'm still dependent on other kinds of things therefore whatever moves must be moved by another and so that's pretty true um I might make the decision to move and I might get my body to move but I'm dependent upon all kinds of other factors right that moves me to do that that gets me to do that that allows me to do that well here's what Aquinas says this cannot go on in a into Infinity because that would mean then that there was no ultimate mover that starts the chain of motions in other words it can't be the case that if I cite that which makes me move let's say to be the atmosphere well what allows the atmosphere to move to do it sort of thing and we might say the broader universe and natural laws and all that and we might we might go on and on and on and on into a sort of infinity into what into looking at the chain of dependence from one thing to the next we might say well that's just how the world is what Aquinas says is no that ultimately must terminate in some ultimate thing or else they would absolutely logically be nothing that starts those chain of motions there would be nothing grounding it there would be no ultimate cause that gets everything going therefore he thinks necessarily there must be a first mover and of course him talking about a first mover or a prime mover that is a page right out of Aristotle we haven't looked at that in this course but that's definitely what Aristotle thought that that took the entirety of the universe there is a prime mover that gets everything going there's an ultimate grounds there well Aristotle doesn't Define what that is or identify what that first mover is he just thinks the logic takes us there he's not going to go any further than that Aristotle just stops right there but what Aquinas does is he affirms Aristotle there but then he makes a further inference that for him the best explanation of what that first mover would be is God we might say that this is for him in inference to the best explanation his world view his perspective what he thinks about the world and makes the most sense to call this first mover than God what's notice his second argument here which is very similar to the first it's just more explicit in talking not about movement but now causation itself first of all for Aquinas it's impossible for something to bring itself into existence now I hope that for all of us that would seem pretty obvious right not because simply we know how we know how things do come and go out of existence um if you're a human being for instance Your Existence indeed depended on your biological parents getting together and uh well let's keep this rated G doing you know what what has to be done in order to bring about your existence we'll just put it that way so you're dependent upon them temporarily that is back in time right for bringing you into existence indeed for you to have brought yourself into existence would mean that you would have already had to exist so that you could bring yourself into existence that's a big logical problem isn't it it's that's saying that I don't exist until I bring myself into existence but to bring yourself into existence assumes that you already exist it's a logical problem so it's impossible right so nothing can bring itself into existence right coming into existence that's the key here right that's the tricky thing coming into existence then recognizes that there has to be something else that actually does that not new not you yourself so notice this next point also it's impossible that causes go back into Infinity because if there are infinite causes then there is no first ultimate cause again he's repeating himself from this previous argument here but it's the same idea if we go back to the what caused your parents to come into existence or what caused um which is their parent but what caused their parents to come into exist and their parents to come if we were to go back in time and just say that well the only reason that I'm in is in existence is because there's this chain of people that have brought other people into existence and it doesn't really terminate anywhere it just goes back into Infinity well there's no ultimate cause then and for Aquinas if there's no ultimate cause then there is no cause it's just all a big dependency relationship and dependency relationships don't actually give us any explanation they don't give us any grounds as to what actually kicks everything off that which is ultimately responsible for everything else that is an effect of that right again we're talking about looking at effects and determining their causes and what the logic would take us to but if we are fine with that and we say well a chain of causes is fine with no ultimate cause I'm good with that but you can't be good with that he says because if there is no first cause if there is no ultimate grounds that causes the chain then that follows that to now then there are no effects but we know better than that because we have effects you are an effect I'm in effect of some cause thus there has to be some ultimate first cause or hear what he calls inefficient cause and for the Ancients to call something an efficient cause just simply means that which actually does the work of bringing about the effect right that which actually brings about the effects there has to be a first ultimate cause that brings about an effect and for him again it makes the best sense to call this God notice the third way or the third argument this is maybe of the five may be my favorite one actually because it's really kind of interesting and we'll call this the argument from contingency other people will call this the argument from necessary being you can call it that too but and you'll see why but we'll call it the argument from contingency so using our example from the previous argument about you and me for Aquinas most things existence is contingent simply what that means is that the existence that you and I have was contingent upon our first parents let's say but also our existence even right now is contingent on a number of factors um and I'll use example I used on a couple arguments ago like my existence right now is dependent upon my body working properly and that depends on enough oxygen here depends on I suppose my metabolism working correctly to metabolize energy so they have the energy to do what I'm doing now even even simply just to even breathe and have a heartbeat um contingent upon the environment itself being such that I can do that it's it's neither too hot nor too cold I'm neither boiling right right now or turning into a popsicle right so there's all kinds of factors that my existence right now is contingent upon in order for me to exist notice the second point then it is impossible for contingent beings to always exist because they at some time must not exist and that's right right so if we think about my ultimate contingency having to do then with my parents biological parents right doing what what needs to be done in order to create life or Another Life um I'm dependent upon that ultimately I'm contingent upon that at least temporally at least back in time thus what that means is that prior to that I did not exist um the contingent being cannot always exist because it's contingent upon something for its existence whether temporally back in time or even simultaneously right now the factors that allow it to continue to exist so I at some time did not exist and by definition a contingent being is one that at some time right does not exist or must not exist so that makes sense but notice this third point this one might be a little bit abstract and tricky and I'll try to I'll try to make it as clear as I can if everything is contingent you and I and the coffee that I'm drinking and our computers in front of us even the food that we had at some point today that we ate right its existence was contingent upon somebody else preparing it uh in the state before we prepared it ourselves right getting it to us let's say if everything in the world in the universe itself is a contingent being then it is possible for there to have been a time when nothing existed so what does that mean it simply means that if everything is contingent then of all the ways and all the probabilities all the variabilities about how the world could be right you or me or neither you or me or two other people existing rather than me and you um right all the possible ways that all the states of Affairs of the entire universe could be throughout history let's say throughout all of the universe's history if everything is contingent then it's possible for there at least to be to have been a world existing where nothing existed where there would be a universe that has nothing in it let's just put it that way if everything is contingent then at least that's possible now we know that that's not actual the actual world is such where you and I exist and I've got coffee here and we're talking about Aquinas and we're taking this Humanities course which is so stinking awesome I know we're all loving it um but uh so that's the actual world but at least it's possible that there'd be none of that if everything is contingent then it's possible that there's nothing that exists even now however if there was a time then when nothing existed so let's say that that possible world is true if there was a time when nothing existed then nothing could have caused the stuff that exists now and thus nothing would exist now indeed it's possible that there's nothing that exists in the world that could be one of the possible ways that the world turned out to be but we know that if that were the case then there would have been nothing that caused the stuff that exists now nothing would exist now absolutely that would follow from that if it's true that the world is such that everything is contingent and there was a time that nothing existed well then it's possible that nothing would exist now but that's absurd why because stuff does exist does exist now you and I exist now this coffee exists now other people exist now therefore not everything is contingent there must be something that exists necessarily in other words for Aquinas there must be something that in and of itself has existence that is not contingent upon any other Factor well what would that kind of being be that is not contingent well that would be a necessary being a being whose existence is necessary within itself that is not dependent on any other factor for it so what kind of being would that be again Aristotle would just say well a necessary being but Aquinas draws the inference well he says this must be what we mean when we talk about God this would be God notice this fourth argument or this what's called The Fourth Way of arguing for God's existence that of all the things that exist some things are more good more true more noble and some are less so when I think about this particular argument this one is a little bit different but it does have some of the same kinds of themes with the first three ways let's say and let me use an example here let me use the example of apples so of all the apples that exist some are better some are less then what do we mean by that well there are different ways for instance to grade apples and I asked somebody this recently and what they told me was that the highest grade of Apple by the USDA right the highest grade that you could give an apple is the grade called extra fancy and I think that that's how it works is the top best graded apple is one that's extra fancy the next would be fancy and then after that it goes ABC all right so there's these five grades of how apples are graded and of course we know how as college students right our work is graded a b c d and hopefully right never never have to deal with an F although if you do it's not not the end of the world I don't want to stress you out there so we know that there are things that we grade by certain parameters some things are better some things are not so good so I guess an extra fancy apple is going to be one that doesn't have any wormholes probably has the perfect sort of shape to it and color um the one that you know you'll see at a very fancy grocery store where everything is just super super expensive and it's just shining and glistening there right that's that's an extra fancy Apple it's stacked in a row with all other kinds of apples like that that look great and you just sort of pick one or pick two or pick three yourself off the shelf and put them in your little flimsy plastic bag and you go weigh them and pay for them and then walk out the grocery store like that I don't know where I shop I think they must be pretty lower grade they're just kind of already bagged up and they look kind of ugly and they're not all that great but I don't care they're still apples they taste the same even though they don't look as look as great and if I'm using them to make applesauce or apple pie or something like that anyway it really doesn't matter the whole app will how it looks because it's all getting cut up and processed anyway anyway I'm getting off track here thinking about apples but you get the idea here some things are graded better like school work like papers essays and that sort of thing than others so we understand how that works but notice what he says next about this but for this to make sense there must be that which is the maximum of these Perfections so that we may make such judgments about more or less what does he mean by that what he means by that is that we already have to have in mind sort of what the perfect is what the best is what the model or what the standard is regarding something in order then to make an assessment as to what the Lesser grades are or what would be the criteria that would put some object in those lesser grades so we have to start with the perfect Apple such that we identify it as such this is the extra fancy apple and now we have a way to judge apples that are lesser um I'm not going to lie to you right that's even as a as a college instructor that's how I think about how to grade essays in some of my courses especially larger research essays I have in mind really what the best essay is that I can reasonably expect from undergraduate students in their first or second year of college this is this is the perfect best I say this is the standard that I have in mind and rarely I get those every now and then I do right getting an a paper in one of these kinds of courses is a challenge and every now and then you get them but I have that in mind and thus that gives me a sense of then how to grade papers that don't meet that standard if that's an a paper okay well then one that doesn't meet that standard a little bit less so that's the B one a little bit less so is a c right and so on and so forth so in order to even have an understanding of this range of scale in terms of what is good and what is lesser there's this idea of the standard that is at the top of the list right that that makes those determinations I have to start there and then decide what is lesser for Aquinas he takes this idea then and says that from that way of thinking as to what the maximum is as to what the best is of all the Perfections of all these things that for him the maximum is always the cause of that which is lesser and of course he's got a a view of the world here of the cosmos that may not be the most scientifically accurate in our day you know but let's let's be patient with him he didn't have the type of scientific instruments that we we do now to get a better understanding of the world for instance one of the ways in which he illustrates this is by talking about fire itself being the hottest thing that you can experience which in his day it would have been so let's let's give him that right and thus what it means to even engage anything as being warm let's say or hot is going to be in relation to the maximum heat that one can experience which is a fire itself or the or a flame itself nothing for him is hotter than a flame so knowing what that maximum hotness is we can gauge then different levels of warmth or of hotness whatever term you want to use there and he has a sense of that being that which causes then other warm things and it would be in his day of course in our day we can make things warm without fire can't we through all other kinds of means but nonetheless that's the idea that he has in mind here when he says that the maximum always causes that which is lesser I think the best way to put that for us is that as I did earlier that having an idea of what the best is or what the maximum is gives us um a rubric in a sense that of understanding what is lesser and the degree to which something is lesser well regarding good character regarding nobility regarding what is excellent in general the maximum then would have to be God how is it that we can make judgments about good and bad behavior how is it that we can make judgments about good quality work and work that is less so it can only be if we already have an understanding of what the best is of what the highest is how can we talk about people being good people or being bad people or being really crappy people it can only be if we already have an idea of what the perfect is of what the standard or the or the noble or the best is might even uh he probably Aquinas probably wouldn't like this but he but I could import a little bit of ensem here and say if we already have an idea of what the greatest conceivable being is by which to judge human character against right you have that standard you have that model by which to judge human character um the maximum for him would be God it just would make the most sense it would be this kind of being that we hold up in high regard as being the ultimate and then finally what Aquinas gives is this fifth way which is sorry the argument from design now this is a little bit different from the first four ways but the idea again is the same at least in terms of we are trying to look at effects or trying to think about the effects that we experience all the time and then make a conclusion about their cause well there have been other thinkers throughout history that have used the argument from design and have developed it in different ways I think for instance of William Paley who a few centuries later would talk about you know finding the rock in the field or the watch in the field and then you know it would make most sense to infer that not the rock but the watch would have to have a designer right given our experience of functional complexity and what it means to experience something that indeed has some sort of purpose to it that has been designed that would the best difference to make there would be that somebody with intelligence did this or later on Roger white who in the last 15 20 years wrote a very influential piece several influential pieces about the argument from design and he is a scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge Massachusetts but here we sort of get this not sure if Aquinas is really the first example of an intelligent design argument I need to look that up I'm blanking on that right now but one of which was very influential for others to develop and build upon and here's aquinas's way of developing this argument look at the first point all natural mindless things have a purpose well it seems that's the case anyway right let's just take him at his word that this mug that I'm drinking right now has a purpose of holding hot liquid namely the nectar of Life called coffee that I'm able to enjoy even now right one example think about an arrow that itself um that is purpose that has the purpose of striking a Target whether you're a you're a deer hunter or whether you're just an archery aficionado you have an arrow and the purpose of that arrow is to strike its Target well notice the second point whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards some purpose or end unless it's directed by something with intelligence now that's pretty obvious at least in the case of the arrow right that the arrow itself cannot direct itself to move but it has to be moved it has to be used or utilized by somebody that does have intelligence and by that simply we mean it has at least an intelligence enough to aim that Arrow to use the instrument to release the arrow and to do all of that skillfully to do it well to do it intelligently so that the arrow might get as close to that Target as possible hence what we know is that such things like arrows are like coffee mugs they're designed to achieve their end all right the arrow itself is designed to be aerodynamic it's designed with a point at the end to to pierce or stick into the Target right it has uh feathers it has certain kinds of um uh not wings but I can't think of the other term for it but but something winged-like on the back of the arrow so that it can uh remain stable as it's moving through the air right all of these things have been intentionally done as the in the design of the arrow so that it can Pierce through the air and ultimately then pierce the target itself the arrow is unintelligent but it's been designed by someone who is intelligent in order to do that indeed a lot of things that we experience have been designed to achieve their end by someone who's intelligent my car um it's not very intelligent but it was designed by people who are so that all the aspects of it function well to achieve the end which is to get me from point A to B as I drive a truck so also to haul things when I need to so on and so forth I'm drinking out of this very fancy coffee mug that is designed to be insulated so that it keeps my coffee warmer for longer as well as to have an easy open and shut mechanism that operates easily as well as easy to clean let's say right so all of these all of these aspects of this are designed to achieve their end so what Aquinas thinks then is that that's really just a sample of so much of what's going on in the universe right even rocks have a purpose water has a purpose trees have a purpose everything has a purpose there and all these things are unintelligent on their own therefore an intelligent being exists that directs the natural world to its ends in other words this ultimate cause when it comes to design must exist in order for the things that have purpose to actually achieve that purpose and for Aquinas that being is God well finally I've got this image here and it's an image of three gears and I which the wish that I could show a video to illustrate what I have in mind here so but maybe I can explain it to give you a sense of what I have in mind with all of these arguments I think it's helpful to recognize that for Aquinas when we're talking about cause and effect or when he's talking about cause and effect and he's talking about thinking about the effects of the world and then working yourself back to its causes on one hand we can think of that temporarily and I've already made that comment a few times already we can think of causes that go back in time that are the cause for why things are like they are now but also what he has in mind and I've mentioned this too but I'll illustrate this one more time before closing this lecture he also has in mind causes which have instant simultaneous effects so if you were to think of these three gears moving and if think of one of those maybe the one on the far right being the one that's actually being driven by something say some engine or some motor and what is that doing if that one on the right is moving then it's moving the one on the bottom which is moving the one on the left or top left so really we could say that the one on the right would be the cause that's moving an effect which being the bottom one but it also causing another effect that is the gear on the left so really there would be one ultimate cause here but the cause itself would be simultaneously bringing about instant effects that is the two other gears moving at the same time that's kind of what I think acquire this has in minor this is what I kind of think is a good way of thinking about what Aquinas means when he's talking about cause and effect not always temporarily but even now right there is design there's causation there's motion there's contingency there's gradation right all of that even now anyway I hope you've enjoyed this um give you something else to think about and uh in a metaphorical sense I suppose we will see you next time