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Reassessing Aquinas’s Second Way: The Relevance of Efficient Causality in Philosophy and Contemporary Science

Abstract: Are there historical arguments for God’s existence that remain relevant to the STEMM community? Discover how thirteenth-century philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas’s “Five Ways” offers powerful logical arguments that point to the existence of God and are compatible with current scientific thought. In this paper, philosopher B. Kyle Keltz briefly explains one of Aquinas’s arguments for God’s existence (the second way) and notions of causality assumed within the argument. Keltz emphasizes where science ends and metaphysics begins throughout the argument and seeks to dispel common misconceptions regarding the second way. Before concluding, Keltz contrasts Aquinas’s thought with physicist Lawrence Krauss’s idea that the universe could have arisen from nothing.