Philosophy

            
             Since the beginning of time, man has been struggling to answer the question, how did we get here? What or who was responsible for the creation of life? It seemed natural to conclude that there must have been a higher power that created the reality known by man. However, how does one prove the existence of such a God? We accept the universe and everything contained within it, but can't seem to agree upon how it got here in the first place. After all, stating that God exists and then actually proving His existence are two different things. Most early philosophers maintained that God most certainly did exist and attempted to use scientific arguments to prove their point. However, perhaps the most quoted philosopher on the absolute existence of God is St. Thomas Aquinas. He was a student of philosophy and was influential in incorporating philosophy into the religious doctrine. .
             Aquinas examined the question of God's existence in great detail in his philosophical works. Aquinas had the typical philosopher mentality by asserting that it cannot be just merely accepted that God exists, since this conflict is not evident. It is a declaration that must be proven. In other words, faith alone is not sufficient enough evidence to conclude that God exists. Aquinas pointed out that what may be conceived in the intellect does not necessarily exists in reality. To make his own case regarding this issue, Aquinas established his five criteria on the existence of God through Summa Theologica, the first three of which became known form the basis of the cosmological argument confirming God's existence. The five ways Aquinas used to confirm the existence of God all stemmed from a first cause argument (Titus and Smith, 242). In other words, life perpetuates itself as one cause prompts the occurrence of an event which becomes the cause for a subsequent event and so on through infinity. However, at some point, there had to be a first cause, which set these wheels into motion, which is the being commonly referred to as God (Titus and Smith, 242).