So tonight we're going to talk about Aquinas' proof for the existence of God based on motion.

So it's an important question for believers, the question of, is the faith you have that God exists rational?

Are there, is there good evidence for it? Can you give reasons for it?

For people who are still not sure whether they

think God exists or not, the question maybe even more pressing, what can we look around

and deduce from our world about whether God exists or not? So my goal in this presentation

is to introduce you to a little bit about what Aquinas means by the claim that God's existence can be proven, and also to take you through the steps of one of his well-known, or most well-known proofs through the existence of God, and the proof that he describes himself as the most manifest way for proving God's existence.

So I'm not sure how familiar most of you are with Thomas Aquinas.

So Aquinas lived from 1224 to 1275, and he was a Dominican priest and a professor at the University

of Paris, which is actually one of the oldest

universities in the world from the 13th century.

So we taught at the University of Paris, and his thought still remains important for us today.

At the end of the 19th century, Pope Leo the 13th actually commended all Catholics to study the thought of

Aquinas and especially philosophers and theologians to return to his thought.

So it's interesting that Aquinas' Five Ways are his most well-known piece of writing

because they occupy just a few pages in Asuma. Point us as five ways for proving

the existence of God are probably as most well-known piece of writing. They're assigned around

the country in undergraduate inter-to-philosophy courses. Professional philosophers have written

probably thousands of pages defending the proofs and critiquing them and going back and forth about them.

But the proofs themselves are just a few pages of, as you can see, which is a much larger work.

And to properly understand the proofs, we've got to read them in the context of the broader work that they're a part of,

and we also have to look at the historical context for the proofs as well.

...