Wheat 1

Joseph Wheat

Nicolas Garrera

Philosophy 3701

16 February 2010

A Critique of Aquinas’ Argument for God, and Russell’s Contention

Sec. 1

The debate over the existence of God has raged for centuries amongst both believers and

non-believers alike. Each has sought avidly for vindication: a simple yet elegant proof for

personal validity. Presented here, the argument as proposed by Aquinas, concerning that most

original and primary of movers (no greater or personal than Aristotle’s). What will not be

discussed is the analytical nature of this argument, but only the principles of its inherent

metaphysical content. How does God exist, and why? If so, what is her relation to the world?

Certainly, these are things that anyone may observe, but it is not necessary that they are

quantified or categorized by tables. All that is needed and necessary (being?) is the human

experience.

Sec. 2

God, the concept, appears to haunt the minds of thinkers, past and present. For Aquinas,

this concept was irrefutable: stark reality, undeniably entwined with the fate of all in existence.

Did God exist, however? Does she? Is this concept of the term “God,” a reality which contains

both doubt and certainty for many different individuals, provable, reasonable?

Aquinas was convinced that he could give an actual proof for the existence of God, and

thus he set down several axiomatic arguments to do so. The one that I am addressing is of course

very old (older than Aquinas). It dates back to the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Aquinas saw
 Wheat 2

something different, however. Aquinas realized a fully personal and Biblical God, where there

seemed to be only cold logic and no admittance of faith. (Perhaps faith was merely sub-textual,

and implied by nature.)

Nevertheless, Aquinas’ argument is as follows: 1) Phenomena can be reduced to natural

and voluntary principles, primarily; 2) Of these principles, the natural one of motion, is the most

eminent to the person’s senses; 3) All things in motion require a prior mover, etc.; 4) Motion is

the transition of potentiality to actuality; 5) A thing cannot be both mover and moved; 6) An

infinite regression is impossible; and, finally, 7) Therefore, a first mover must have set the world

in motion, i.e. God.

A flawless argument: it flows like mercury through sand (or maybe molten metal through

water). The gist is that everything moves, each thing requires something else to move, you can’t

have an infinite regression of movers, therefore there must be a thing which is itself unmoved but

able to move things outside itself: pure and simple logic.

Sec. 3

Bertrand Russell does not follow Aquinas’ vein of logic, however. In a debate between

himself and Fr. F. C. Copleston, broadcast by the BBC in 1948, he made it abundantly clear that

such an argument cannot stand. If a person is to understand that phenomena, cause and effect, on

her level of being, are such that effect must always follow cause, it does not follow that she

should expect such a principle to follow for the sum of all things, i.e. this universe. Copleston

would disagree, along with Aquinas. The things in this reality are all contingent upon each other,

except for the Necessary Being, which is itself the source of the existence of all other things.

Consider it “God,” or the “Necessary Being,” and touch it: a bit lifeless, isn’t it? The sub-text

here seems to be faith, which cannot be accounted for with any logic (or at least any that Aquinas
 Wheat 3

or Copleston are not sane enough to resort to). Russell lacks such faith, however, and the logic to

acquiesce to Copleston’s argument. What he lacks in such faith and logic, he amends for with a

logic of his own: a logic which undermines Copleston’s argument. In giving the example of such

phenomena as the motion of subatomic particles on the quantum scale, it would seem he has

Copleston stumped. The priest is not quickly deterred. He comes at the scientist with a new

proposal: science simply has no adequate formulation, other than the current atomic theory, and

Heisenberg must be uncertain with his principle. This is not the principle of the natural or the

voluntary, but the principle of “speculative scientists.” Of course, no person can truly observe

such things. No one can certainly observe atoms, but that doesn’t keep chemists from

“speculating” on their reactions with each other. This goes outside the metaphysical, however.

Contingency, it turns out, doesn’t really belong to all things in existence. Existence

doesn’t seem to be an arbitrary quality of a thing, either. Copleston would like to think this about

God: that somehow the very nature of what God is, constitutes her existence. Persons certainly

know of nothing which exhibits this behavior, save God. I don’t know of anything that does.

Russell can conceive phenomena which do not follow this causal chain. I can conceive of

Russell, and therefore I can conceive what Russell thinks. Or is it that merely by conceiving of

Russell, I do not conceive of his conception? Must I access his conception outside of his

conception? The conception “Russell,” and Russell’s conception, being distinct entities, I cannot

assume that by conceiving of one, I conceive the other. How does Aquinas conceive of cause and

effect for objects, and then conceive of cause and effect for universes? Are universes not objects?

Objects are certainly contained within universes, but do they fully constitute the universe itself?

The universe is a transcendent identity, which comes to possess the sum of all experiences and

non-experiences within this reality. All that exists is the universe, but the universe is not all that
 Wheat 4

exists. The universe transcends itself, orchestrates the objects of its domain/dimension, into what

the person calls “the universe.” It is the principle of what grants uniformity to the chaos of this

“universe of things.” Outside the human dimension, the universe simply is, but within our

conception of it, the universe because this transcendent principle.

Sec. 4

I’ve been superfluous with my exposition, but the gist is that Aquinas’ mode of logic fails

to understand the much more intricate nature of the universe, while Russell’s attempts a much

deeper one. Aquinas narrows his view to only the person’s limited experience, whereas Russell

expands his perspective to include things which persons do not regularly experience. Perhaps,

the religious do this in a way, just differently. Regardless, Aquinas treads where he should not,

out into the corporeal realm of physics. He may offer what appears to be a purely metaphysical

understanding of the world, but it turns out to be instead a gross misinterpretation of natural

phenomena.

Aquinas’ universe may exist within the metaphysical, just as the concept of God lingers

there misanthropically. It does not, however, find any physical manifestation beyond the

mundane occurrences of the person’s immediate life. This transition of potentiality to actuality,

this mover unmoved, this necessary being, all suggest a world which doesn’t necessarily

contradict the totality of persons’ experiences. Such an understanding does come to contradict

the universe outside of those experiences, and persons’, as well as God’s, relations to it.

______________________________________________________________________________

AQUINAS, Thomas, ed. PEGIS, Anton C., Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas

(Indianapolis: Random House, Inc., 1973)

“A Debate on the Argument from Contingency” (Third Program of the BBC, 1948)