Thomas Aquinas was a medieval saint and empiricist who was reputed to have levitated and had visions

of the Virgin Mary. Empiricist adheres the concept of empiricism that states; we new to experience
things first before we consider knowledge. Aquinas helps us with the problem on how we can reconcile
religion and science and faith with reason. Thomas Aquinas was born to a noble family in Italy in 1225.
As a young* man, he went to study at the University of Naples and there came into contact with a
source of knowledge which was just then being rediscovered the texts of ancient Greeks and Roman
authors. He then became academic at the University of Paris and an exceptionally prolific writer
producing over 90 works in a little over two decades— Summa Treologica, Summa Contra Gentiles, The
ways of God: For meditation & prayer. He focused on God, Ethics & Christ. Aquinas stated "The study of
Philosophy is not doing in order to follow what men have thought, but rather to know how truth herself
stands". Denial of Innate ideas* means that we must first sense experience on a particular thing; only
then can a person's passive interest become aware of it and be considered as knowledge

Existence of God is what Anselm of Canterbury did. He claimed, in the 11th century, to have come up
with deductive proof of God's existence through what we know as the ontological argument: 200 years
later, Thomas Aquinas encountered Anselm's argument. Aquinas did believe in God. It was just was as a
philosopher, he felt that it was important to have evidence for your beliefs. So he set out s arguments*
that would prove God's existence

Aquinas developed a theological system that synthesized Western Christian theology with the
philosophy of the ancient Greek thinker Aristotle, particularly as it had been interpreted by Aristotle’s
later Islamic commentators. In his Summa Theologica, which he intended as a primer for theology
students, Aquinas devised five arguments for the existence of God, known as the Five Ways that
subsequently proved highly influential. These five ways of Aquinas were considered as an attempt to
discern divine truth in the order of the natural world.

Aquinas’s first three arguments—the motion, causation, contingency and degree of perfection (raise din
ung tatlong words)—are types of what is called the cosmological argument for divine existence. Each
begins with a general truth about natural phenomena and proceeds to the existence of an ultimate
creative source of the universe. In each case, Aquinas identifies this source with God.

Aquinas’s first demonstration of God’s existence is the argument from motion. He drew from Aristotle’s
observation that each thing in the universe that moves is moved by something else. Aristotle reasoned
that the series of movers must have begun with a first or prime mover that had not itself been moved or
acted upon by any other agent. Aristotle sometimes called this prime mover “God.”

Things were moved by us, humans, however in able for us to move things, we need an unmoved
mover to move us, which is, whom we called God.

Second is the argument from causation, builds upon Aristotle’s notion of an efficient cause, the entity or
event responsible for a change in a particular thing. Because every efficient cause must itself have an
efficient cause and because there cannot be an infinite chain of efficient causes, there must be an
immutable first cause of all the changes that occur in the world, and this first cause is God. Empirical
Knowledge Depends on “Causality” (Cause and Effect). When we know something empirically, our belief
is linked by a chain of cause and effect to the thing we know.

As a child we often become careless with our surroundings, a perfect example of this definition is
when we walked inattentively then tripped because you did not notice the rock. Because of the
painful experience that tripping gave you when you are still a child, you learn how to be attentive and
cautious when you are walking.

Third is the argument from contingency, which he advances by distinguishing between possible and
necessary beings. Possible beings are those that are capable of existing and not existing. If a being is
capable of not existing, then there is a time at which every being does not exist. But then there would be
nothing in existence now, because no being can come into existence except through a being that already
exists. Therefore, there must be at least one necessary being—a being that is not capable of not existing.
Furthermore, every necessary being is either necessary in itself or caused to be necessary by another
necessary being. But just as there cannot be an infinite chain of efficient causes, so there cannot be an
infinite chain of necessary beings whose necessity is caused by another necessary being. Rather, there
must be a being that is necessary, and this being is God.

At the beginning of the World, human beings do not exist. The bible stated that God created human
beings so that someone could take good care of the World he had created. With this knowledge, we,
human beings, thank God the creator for without him we will not exist.

Fourth argument is from degree. All things exhibit greater or lesser degrees of perfection. There must
therefore exist a supreme perfection that all imperfect beings approach yet fall short of. In Aquinas’s
system, God is that paramount perfection.

Human beings had their own basis of beauty. We try to look for someone who fits our standards then
imitate them in order to achieve beauty.

Aquinas’s fifth and final way to demonstrate God’s existence is an argument from design. According to
Aquinas, the universe as a whole is like a machine; machines have intelligent designers; like effects have
like causes; therefore, the universe as a whole has an intelligent designer, which is God.

The design of the mug were created for a purpose that an individual may avoid getting hurt from the
hot temperature of the liquid inside the mug.