The Existence of God

Thomas Aquinas was a Christian who lived during the Middle Ages.  He prodcued the causation argument for the existence of God and believed that the universe had a beginning. Things cannot cause themselves to come into existence, so Aquinas argued that the first cause of the universe was God. Something cannot appear out of nothing, so the world must have been created by God as he is the only thing that is un-made or eternal.  God is the uncaused cause.  This can be proved by the domino analogy.  In a line of dominoes, a domino falls over because the previous domino has fallen over, causing the following one to fall over.  Eventually we can trace this back to the original domino that caused all the other dominoes to fall over.  

The Bible and other holy books can be used as sources of evidence to prove a God exists and that he made the world.  They contain written evidence telling us how God made the world, so this must also prove that God exists.

Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament in the Bible. It is also the first book of Torah.

• Day 1 - God made light
• Day 2 - God made the heavens and the sea
• Day 3 - God made the land and the plants
• Day 4 - God made the sun and stars
• Day 5 - God made the birds and the fish
• Day 6 - God made animals and humans
• Day 7 - God rested

However, we cannot trust Genesis as literal fact because it tells us that God made light on the first day, yet we know that natural light comes from the sun, which was created on day four. However, one fact is constant throughout the story: God made the world.  So it proves that God exists.  It doesn't matter that the events don't make logical sense.

THE DESIGN ARGUMENT

Paley was an 18th century English philosopher.  He said that there is evidence of design as the parts of any structure in the universe have been put together for a purpose, eg the eye for sight. Things that are designed need a designer, and this designer is God. A God must exist as the design of the world is so precise and complex.  God is the creative, intelligent designer behind the world.  The world cannot exist by chance of an explosion like the Big Bang as this is too coincidental.  Paley used the analogy of the watch to explain this principle.  He argued that if you stumbled upon a pocket watch and examined all of its intricate inner workings, you wouldn't think that the watch was designed that way by coincidence.  It must have had an intelligent designer.

Aquinas said that things could only be kept in order by an intelligent being.  The planets, the sun and the moon move in a set pattern because God keeps them in place. Newton said that the fact that we have…