Hey, this is the partially examined life. Episode 378, part two. We've been discussing

the theological bits of Thomas Aquinas from his selected philosophical writings, mostly

the suma theologica, we have been discussing

arguments for the existence of God.

We definitely want to get to eternity and time.

And do we have words for God in this next hour?

So we were through the first one of his five way, of his five arguments for the existence

of God, page 200 in text.

So in the second one is causality, right? So we need an uncaused cause to get causation off

the ground. That's my elevator summary of that. I don't think there's anything more

sophisticated in that argument than that idea.

Otherwise, we have an infinite series.

It always comes down to this problem of the infinite series thing, which we've discussed. And then the next one for modality, we need to persist.

I'm just going to say these just for comparisons sake, not to rush us, but just we need a persistent,

necessary, and self-necessating being

to explain contingent perishables, right? Contingency in this world. For the property one,

we need like the most superlative property, the most actualized property, be the cause of properties

as we know them in their imperfect form and things in this world. So you get the

general idea. You can do, you can play this causality game with any of these different categories.

You can do it with change. You can do it with necessity and possibility. You can do it with properties.

And then the last one is in a kind of different category because that's teleology,

intelligent design argument.

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