Independent Reading- Ultimate Reality-Melisas Faller

Aquinas uses five different ways to show that ultimate reality exists. His first argument is motion is evidence of a higher power. Aquinas believes that in order to have motion there has to be something originally that has to put that one thing in motion. He says that if there was no first mover there would be no other movers. Ultimately, the first mover can be understood as God. Aquinas’s second argument is similar to his first. Instead of using motion he believes that causation is proof of an ultimate reality. Like motion, he says that there has to be an ultimate causer, or something to start the cause. He trusts that there must be a first efficient cause in order to get effect, because without cause there can be no effect. He calls this first cause “God.” Aquinas uses nature and the way it exists for his third supporting argument for an ultimate reality. He states that nature can not cease to exist. He says that in order for there to be nothing in existence initially than nature would cease to exist. For if something exists it has to be able to cease to exist. This implies that there was some sort of ultimate being that originally existed in order for everything else to exist; Aquinas interprets this being as God. For his fourth verification Aquinas looks to things to prove his argument. He says that things can be rated on a scale of having greater and lesser qualities. He believes that human beings, being imperfect and incomplete, must be the lesser of the two “things.” This means that there is a higher power that is more perfect and truer. Aquinas refers to this higher power as God. His fifth and final example concerns nature. He states that things are not intelligent enough to be able to control their own actions for a reason. It is as if they are being governed by a higher power. These natural organisms act simultaneously and in repetition to reveal that there is some sort of ultimate governing power. All of Aquinas’s five points use worldly ideas in order to support his conclusion of the existence of an ultimate reality. He believes that by looking to the world, one is able to prove that there is a God.