Fight For A Place In The First

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Fight For A Place in the First Efficient Cause

Who and what is God? Why do some people adamantly conclude that a God exists? St. Aquinas goes from believing that there must be an efficient first cause to the conclusion that God is that cause. Why must Aquinas make such an extraordinary jump from there being a cause, to assuming that this cause must be God? In a scientific point of view, wouldn’t it be just as plausible to make matter the first cause? After all, according to the Law of Conservation of Matter, matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Matter is the substance that any physical object is composed of. Matter is closed and finite, with no beginning nor end. The best explanation to the existence of God through St. Aquinas’s argument is that God does not exist as the first efficient cause.

The argument for God, as presented by St. Aquinas, attempts to show that the existence of the world and everything within it can only be explained if there is a God who is the first efficient cause. The argument states that it is impossible for any being to be the efficient cause of itself because then it would have to bring itself into being, and to bring itself into being, it would have to exist before it existed. If a being exists, it is because some being before it caused it to exist. Therefore, if no first cause exists, neither will any other being exist. Therefore, there must be an efficient first cause -- God.
St. Aquinas’s argument assumes that a first cause is needed to explain the existence of anything. St. Aquinas also assumes this first cause to be God. How can anyone rationally conclude that there is a God from the simple statement that a first cause is necessary for the existence of anything? A first cause does not prove God, it only assumes that there is a God, at best. Could one not put matter in the place of God in St. Aquinas’s argument and still assume there is a first efficient cause? The theory that matter “is”, is just as plausible as the theory that God “is”. Matter is closed and finite in extent, with no beginning nor end.

Putting matter in the place of God in the end of the argument given by St. Aquinas is just as plausible.

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