Page 9 - GALIET ARGUMENTUM DIVINUM: Ergo IV

supreme creator, designer and cause of an orderly and harmonious universe. While Aristotle is the first one to formulate the four natural causes in his Physics (as to causation and not creation of the universe), it is St. Thomas of Aquinas, in his Quinta Via,1 who rigorously tries to demonstrate God’s existence based on the notions of finality and intelligence. Aquinas contends that an intelligent being exists who directs all-natural things and beings to their end because only an intelligent and knowing being is capable of moving non- intelligent beings towards their end. Kurtz, on the other hand, raises two main objections to Aquinas’ Teleological Argument. First, Kurtz argues that, “as the rock has no purpose per se,”2 so does the universe. However, for anyone that knows the soul of a rock, this analogical inference can be misleading. Besides the early western elements of air, fire and water, rock has been one of the essential building blocks of the universe, for before there was something, there was, at least, rock and meteor; then nurturing earth, the mother of every species of beauty 3⁄4 the heart of flora and fauna and metals and minerals. Earth, from the beginning of time has sung the song as one of the primeval elements and continues to dwell as the substratum of a universally intelligent, interdependent eco-system. Therefore,
1 Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Great Books of the Western World. Volume 38. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 1952. Part 1.
2 Kurtz, Paul. The Transcendental Temptation. Chapter XI. Does Go Exist? New York: Prometheus Books, 1991. 284-317.
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