Pints With Aquinas - 151: Aquinas' 2nd argument for God's existence

Episode Date: March 21, 2019

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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name's Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him anything, what would it be? Today you're gonna ask him about Aquinas' – not his, we're talking to him – his second way for God's existence. So, buckle up. Alright, welcome back to Pints with Aquinas, the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. I am in South Carolina today. I just gave a talk at a school here on pornography to 700 teens. It went really well and there's three reasons I'm super pumped today. teens. Went really well. And there's two reasons, three reasons I'm super pumped today. Number one, I have been looking for the King James Version of the Bible with the Deuterocanonical books, and I've never been able to find it. I mean, I've searched high and low on Google,

and I've never found it. Well, today I was in the priest's office at the high school, and I noticed the Holy Bible with the apocrypha. It says, Authorized King James Version. It turns out that this priest was an Anglican priest before converting to Catholicism, and he had this on his bookshelf, and I just about fell over. I said, I've been looking for this everywhere. So I said, do you mind if I just take a photo of the inner page, so I know who published it, and I'd love to get a copy. And he said, you know what, let me just give it to you. And I said, no, no, no, no, that's not why I was saying it, you know. But yeah, his name was Father Jonathan Duncan, who is an occasional listener to Pints with Aquinas. So Father Duncan, if you're listening, again, I really can't thank you enough. It's a beautiful book, and I'm so thrilled to have it. The second reason I am thrilled is this. Listen.

I don't usually drink beer, but last night I was given this beautiful Belgian beer from a local brewer. 13 Stripes Brewery in Southern Graal present Southern Saint, and it's this dude smoking a pipe. It looks super cool. So anyway, I'm going to try it right now. They even gave me a really cool beer glass. So, oh, that's nice and caramel color. All right. Cheers. Or as we say in Australia, up your bum. I don't know why we say that. It's clearly inappropriate, but cheers. say in Australia, up your bum. I don't know why we say that. It's clearly inappropriate,

but cheers. Let's just say cheers. That's good. Oh, that's really good. It's called what is it? Sarm of Citrus, barrel-aged Belgian triple. I think that's how you say it. 13 Stripes Brewery in Southern Grower presents Southern Saints. So thank you very much. Thank you very much for the gift. So I'm going to be drinking a beer with you today as we talk to Thomas Aquinas. Now, we're going to get into the second way, which a lot of people don't understand. And today, hopefully, I will help you with that. But I told you there were three reasons I'm excited. Here's the third reason. A while back, there was something that came out called the Catholic Card Game. Are you familiar with it? The Catholic Card Game?

Let's see, Kickstarter. They did it on Kickstarter. It was really successful. The same creators who did that asked if they could do a Pints with Aquinas thing. I guess special edition. I said, sure. Well, I then got in touch with Matt, who's the creator of it. And I said, hey, are you ever going to do another thing? He said, yeah,

if I have another project, I'd love to do it. I said, well, I've written summaries of Aquinas' five ways. Do you want them? Now, I know some of you have read my book, Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. This is totally new. This has not been published anywhere. So I said to him, you're cool and young and hip and having in with the young folks. What if you publish the book and you can keep... I don't want to make a cent from the book. So just so everybody knows, I'm always asking for money on Patreon. There's no money that I'm getting from this at all. But there are 10 days to go. This is a beautiful, hardbound book with a full-colored painting of Thomas Aquinas. It's an original. It's gorgeous.

I had somebody paint it. And there you'll have Aquinas' five ways and then my summaries of them. It's really cool. Matt's looking for $10,000. Right now, he's raised $4,079 with 148 backers. We have 10 days to go. Make this book a reality by clicking the link at the top of the show notes. And that'll link you right here.

Go to kickstarter.com and just type in Frad if you don't know any other way to do it. But this is really cool. So if you just give $15 or more, Matt will send you a hardcover copy of the book. Anywhere in the world, by the way. That's pretty cool. So go check it out. The way Kickstarter works, for those of you who don't know, is if we don't meet our goal, the book will not happen. It won't exist. So go and pledge whatever you want. I mean,

you pledge more, you get more things that Matt gives you in return. And let's say you pledge $50, right, for this book. If we don't get enough backers, you don't get charged. So go to Kickstarter right now, Click that link at the top of the show notes and please pledge. I want to make this book a reality. Part of my goal here at Pints with Aquinas is to help people understand Aquinas, which is why I met this book. And again, I'm not making a cent from this book. This is not just about trying to make money. This is about trying to give, I hope, a good book into the hands of a lot of folks who might not otherwise read Aquinas.

So again, please click that link. Please back up. We only have 10 days to go. And we're $4,079 in, so we're not even halfway yet, but we really believe we can do it with your support. So please click that link and support Matt. And you'll also get that book. If you give more, you get different things. All right, so check that out. So today, what I thought I would do, since I've been talking about the book, let me just have a sip of my beer here. By the way, the reason I'm in a hotel room, if it sounds weird right now, does it sound weird? If it sounds weird, it's because I'm in a hotel room in South Carolina. The reason I've brought my professional mic with me is I'm going to be on the Andrew Claven show

in about half hour. So that should be fun. Also, Ben Shapiro has asked me to come on his show, which is pretty cool if you're familiar with him. He had to reschedule, so I was a little offended, but that's okay. Hopefully he'll have me on soon. So pray for that. Reach out to him. Tell him to do that because it looks like it's going to happen. All right. So what I want to do is read to you the second way. We're going to look at Aquinas' direct text from the Summa Theologiae. Then I will share with you my commentary on it by reading it. This is the second chapter in this book that we want to get launched on Kickstarter. Again, it hasn't been published anywhere else. It's on no blogs. It's in no other book. Here we go. Here's what Aquinas says. This is from the Prima Paz. What is it? Question two, article three, I believe. Aquinas says this, the second way, all right, of God's existence. Now, all of Aquinas' ways are cosmological. What does that mean? It means it begins from a recognition of certain facts in the natural world and then leads to a creator. So in that sense, they're all cosmological. So Aquinas didn't

think that God's existence was self-evident like Anselm thought. He thought we could look at the world though and that by observing it, it could convince us that there is a creator God as I sip from my beer. So this is pretty packed. I mean, this is one paragraph from Aquinas, and then I'll break it down for you. He says, the second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense, we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known, neither is it indeed possible, in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several or only one. Now, to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an

ultimate effect nor any intermediate efficient causes, all of which is plainly false. Therefore, it's necessary to admit a first efficient cause to which everyone gives the name God. All right. That's what Aquinas says. Let me just move my computer here so I can read a little bit more easily. I don't have my kind of studio set up at home. Woo! All right.

So that's what the big man had to say. What does it mean? Well, let's go through it. Let me just kind of read to you here what Aquinas means. And I'm going to drink my beer as well. So I know it's the great fast, but I haven't given up alcohol for land. Oh, baby. Good people drinking good beer. Hunter S. Thompson. That's the quote on the Tumblr. All right. Good. Here's what he

means. All right. So God is not just the cause of the universe in the sense that he caused it to come into existence. God is also the only thing keeping the universe in existence from moment to moment. Just as when the musician stops playing, the music no longer exists, so too if God were to stop sustaining the universe, it too would cease to exist. But how do we know this? First, we start with the observation that anything that exists has a cause for its existence. Anything at least that begins to exist, we should say, has a cause for its existence. Whether it's a star in the sky or a dog running on the side of the road or even something tiny like a molecule or an atom, we can always ask, why does this thing exist? This means not just how, that is by what agency,

did it come into existence, but how, by what agency, does it still exist right now? So take an example from art. A marble statue exists because an artist brought it into existence, but it exists after the artist has finished the project. The statue no longer depends upon him for existence. Rather, the pieces of marble exhibit forces on each other to make them stay together in the form of a statue. such as if the statue was hit by a big sturdy object, right? Like a wrecking ball. Then the cause for the statue's continued existence disintegrates and the statue ceases to exist. Even here though, we still lack a complete account for how it is that the statue came to be and is. So consider the forces which bind the marble. Why do they exist? How is it that they behave as they do?

They could have been different in strength or behavior. Perhaps it could repel instead of attract, for example. So when we start asking the question why or how is it that this thing exists, we start to see a causal chain form in the explanation. Like we saw in the first way, this causal chain simply cannot be infinite because it would fail to explain why anything causes in the first place. So to give an example, think of a chain holding up a chandelier. The first link only suspends the chandelier because it's held up by the link above it. the chandelier because it's held up by the link above it. So too, each link in the chain only suspends the link below it because a link above it holds it up. Now, if you claim that an infinite series of causes in the universe explains why the universe exists, then that's like saying a

chandelier could hang in the air, unconnected from the ceiling, as long as the chain holding it was infinitely long. The links supporting a chandelier can only act upon the chandelier if something outside the chain holds it up and is not held up by anything else, like the hook on the ceiling with respect to the room. So too, the interrelated causes in our universe can only function as causes provided that something that does not need a cause for its own existence, an uncaused cause, gives to them the very power of cause. You might say, but what's the nature of this uncaused cause? There's a difference between what something is, its essence, and that something is, its existence.

So a unicorn, for instance, has the essence of a horse with a horn, but it doesn't have any existence because it's imaginary. So it has an essence, but it doesn't have existence. A horse has the essence of an animal that gallops and trots, among other things. But unlike a unicorn, it does exist. And yet we recognize that horses don't have to exist. It's conceivable that there could be a world without horses, or it's also conceivable that they could go extinct. So that means there is a difference between the essence of a horse and the existence of a horse. So in everything that is caused,

there is a difference between its essence, what it is, and its existence, that it is, the fact that it is. Now, if that wasn't the case, then everything that could be conceived would thereby exist, which is a bloody terrifying prospect, especially if you've ever read Stephen King or something. Now, an essence cannot cause itself to exist because that would mean bringing itself from potency to act, pulling itself up by its bootstraps. But only something that is actual,

something that is existing, can actualize a potency. It can bring about a potentiality. So whenever something exists, we must look beyond the thing's essence to account for the fact that it is. To use our new terminology, the thing needs something else to, you might say, wed its essence to an active existence and to preserve it in being. So physical forces keep the essence of a statue in existence. Cellular functions in the body keep the essence of being a human being or any living thing in existence. In order to explain the entire chain of caused things, each of which relies upon

something else to cause it, there has to be a first cause whose essence just is existence. If that ultimate cause existed because something else joined its essence to an active existence, then we would ask what caused it to exist, and the regress would continue. Instead, Aquinas recognizes it must be an uncaused cause and source of causality. In fact, such a cause simply is existence and can never fail to exist. This is just what most people call God. So there's a brief explanation of the second way. The reason Aquinas' five ways are more difficult to communicate is because they rely on metaphysical truths that aren't often discussed or taught. But I do think that it's a powerful argument for God's existence the second way. Again, that's just a short excerpt from this book we're trying to launch on Kickstarter.

So click that link at the top and back the project. It's called The Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. It's a beautiful hardcover book, full-colored painting, all of Aquinas' ways plus my commentary on them. And again, I'm not making a cent from this book. all of Aquinas' ways plus my commentary on them. And again, I'm not making a cent from this book. We just want this project to succeed so more and more people can encounter the work of Thomas Aquinas and not be bloody doped into this Richard Dawkins stuff.

I mean, I've done a whole episode on this before where we took apart Dawkins' supposed refutation of the five ways of Thomas Aquinas. I was at a talk last night and after the talk, a man came up to me and said he saw I was an atheist and a deep thinker. I said, what's good is a deep thinker, but we can't just be trotting out unsophisticated arguments for God's existence and arguments against atheism. We do have to become more sophisticated in our apologetics when it comes to theistic apologetics, and I think this book will help you do it. So a huge thank you to all of you who want to back this project. Again, you can go back it. If we don't reach our goal, the book won't happen. You don't pay a cent, but it would be really cool, I think, to get this book out there. So again,

I'll put a link at the top of the show notes here. You can also just go to kickstarter.com and type in frat in the search bar and you'll find it there. It's a beautiful blue book. It's going to have some like gold kind of foil font, The Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. So big thanks. And a big thanks to Matt for being willing to do this. I think this is going to be a great contribution. You guys are the bomb dot diddy. That's not a thing. I'm just Australian and am not cool. But I just want to say a huge thanks to you.

You guys are so great. I just think my supporters and my listeners are the greatest ever. This has been such an awesome journey. I love meeting you whenever I go and I speak at places. Funny story, I was in the emergency room the other day and one of the nurses who came to see me,

I was like in a lot of pain. And she comes in and she was actually a fan of the show and a fan of what I do. And let me tell you, when you feel like your insides wanna be on your outsides, you don't really wanna meet someone who's like, hey, what's up?

I love the stuff you do. Cause you're just like, I wanna die. But she was so fantastic. And so we've kept up a relationship, my wife and I, with her and her husband since then. It's just been so cool. Podcasts are so cool. They just reach into nooks and crannies that you have no idea. So it's been a blessing. Thank you to every one of you who will support that Kickstarter book. I really think we're gonna get the goal. And I also wanna say, if you haven't yet subscribed to The Matt Fradd Show, good, do that because we have brand new episodes

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I think it was two hours and 57 minutes or something. Maybe you don't want to sit in front of YouTube and watch that whole thing, but it was a fascinating discussion. You could definitely listen to the whole thing. So subscribe to the Matt Fradd Show on iTunes as well. All right. I'm going to continue drinking this awesome beer by 13 Stripes Brewery. I'm going to get on the Andrew Klavan Show in 10 minutes. I think it comes out today. I'm going to get on the Andrew Klavan show in 10 minutes. I think it comes out today.

I'm not sure. And then what am I going to do? I might go into town, Greenville, South Carolina, get a good coffee. I've got to talk to parents tonight. I've got another interview tonight. All these interviews that I've been doing are for Strive21. I don't know if you've heard about this or not, but this is another thing I'm doing, strive21.com. It's a 21-day porn detox. I know I'm plugging a lot of stuff right now, so I'm sorry,

but Cardinal Studios, who put this together, are literally putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into this. If you know someone who struggles with porn, or if you do and you want some help, go to strive21.com, strive21.com. I think you'll see the quality is so fantastic, you will doubt that it's Catholic. That's a joke. That's a sad joke. Oh, you know what I'm going to do now? Since we're chatting and I'm drinking beer and I'm super chill chill apparently, I want to share with you three little music clips that my sister put together. They're really cool. So she wrote to me and said, hey, I'd love to do a little musical intro for the Matt Fradd Show.

I said, yeah, put something together. She said, what do you want? I said, maybe something like those 8-bit video game kind of sounds. I love them. So here you go. I'll play three of them for you right now. Here's the first one. Isn't that cool? I like that one. Alright, here's the second one. This is a little more intense. See what you think.

I love that. It just makes me want to jump up and down. And here is the third one. Pretty cool, hey? Let me know what you think. Social media, Patreon, let me know. I'll probably end up choosing one of those for the Matt Fradd Show. We're still working on the new set.

It's pretty much done. We've got a couple more things to do, but it's been super exciting. All right, guys, that's it. Thank you for subscribing to Pints with Aquinas. Please review us on iTunes if you haven't done that already, and you bloody have yourself a good day. All right? Check out that's it. Thank you for subscribing to Pints with Aquinas. Please review us on iTunes if you haven't done that already. And you bloody have yourself a good day. Alright? Check out that Kickstarter thing.

Alright. Whose wolves am I feeding myself to? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive?