St. Thomas Aquinas' arguments for the existence of God.

[This is a reprise of the past meetup, due to continued interest]

We will discuss St. Thomas Aquinas' discussion of the existence of God from his "Summa theologica" (which basically means "theology summariazed") Part 1, Question 2.
This is an early section from a much longer work which starts with questions like "why do we even need theology at all, rather than just science?" and "isn't God just a matter of faith rather than reason?". The work also goes on to deal with questions like "what's the Trinity?", "what did people do all day before they sinned?", and "what happens to unbaptized children?". So this 6 page section doesn't try to be a full treatment of this subject; rather it just looks at the bare bones of "proofs" of the God of monotheism without any religious details. Aquinas opposes St. Anselm who thinks you can prove God *a priori*. In my view Aquinas thinks that it's a matter of empirical science, not unlike the evidence for the Big Bang and Abiogenesis.

Even though I (Adam Voight) am a Christian, I do not think the fourth and fifth proofs work. However I have come up with a new version that i think improves on them and is consistent with modern evolutionary theory and emergence.

Here's a pdf, and here's a podcast of the text, here's a podcast of a discussion, and here's the entire Summa theologica.