Hi folks! I’ve been thinking about St Thomas Aquinas and his 5 ways to demonstrate the existence of God (see http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm). I’ve come up with an updated version.

I will show the existence of a Timeless, Non-Material, Powerful, Intelligent, Benevolent First Cause. That is equivalent to God by my definition.

First we have to logically justify the existence of a first cause. We can do so in 6 ways:

1. Can’t get something from nothing so something must have existed ‘always’. IE if there was ever a state of nothingness, it would persist to today, so something has permanent existence. It’s not possible to exist permanently in time, so the ‘something’ must be a timeless first cause.

2. Time stretching back forever forms an infinite regress, which is impossible; an infinite regress has no start so none of it can exist. Even if we have another time, say ‘time2’ and have that create time, we are still in an infinite regress (time3, time4, etc…). So the only way out of this infinite regress is to have a timeless first cause that starts everything else off.

3. There was a start of time (see http://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/taking-your-advise). So a timeless first cause must exist that created time

4. The Big Bang theory suggests that spacetime began 13 billion years ago. This would require a timeless first cause (beyond spacetime)

5. The first cause determines the second, the second the third, and so on. In a universe with no first cause, nothing would be determined, so nothing could exist

6. The universe is fine-tuned for life. Must be a fine tuner. But the fine tuner’s environment must also be fine-tuned for life. Implies another fine-tuner. This infinite regress must terminate with a timeless fine tuner who is synonymous with the first cause.

Having established there was a first cause, we can move onto establishing the attributes of the first cause:

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