Revisiting Aquinas’s Fifth Way: The Enduring Relevance of Teleological Arguments in Philosophy and 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 God’s existence 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 fifth way) and notions of causality assumed within the argument. Keltz emphasizes where science ends and metaphysics begins throughout the argument and also illustrates how the fifth way is different from modern design arguments. Before concluding, Keltz contrasts Aquinas’s thought with physicist Lawrence Krauss’s and cosmologists Delia Perlov and Alex Vilenken’s ideas that the laws of nature are all that’s needed to explain the existence of teleology in the universe.