A viral YouTube video titled “Aquinas and the Cosmological Arguments” (750,000+ views) claims that Thomas Aquinas’ arguments for God have been decisively refuted. But have they? Bishop Barron responds to the video and shows that when properly understood, Thomas’ arguments are as strong today as ever before. A listener asks whether death is natural.
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Topics Discussed
- 0:05 – Introduction, Bishop Barron describes the Facebook headquarters
- 5:30 – Why have multiple proofs for God’s existence? If a singular argument is truly a proof, should not one be sufficient?
- 8:44 – Where did Thomas Aquinas come up with these arguments?
- 12:50 – Do Aquinas’s observations from nature hurt his argument given the fact that modern science has proven some of his examples to be inaccurate?
- 15:33 – What’s wrong with using dominos to illustrate Aquinas’s argument from motion?
- 26:50 – What’s the difference between a hierarchal and a temporal causal series? And why is this so important for understanding Aquinas?
- 31:35 – Did the philosopher David Hume defeat Aquinas’s arguments?
- 34:24 – Question from listener: Is death natural?
Bonus Resources
- Books
- Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master by Bishop Barron
- Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide by Edward Feser
- Five Proofs of the Existence of God by Edward Feser
- The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism by Edward Feser
- Aquinas: An Introduction to the Life and Work of the Great Medieval Thinker by F. C. Copleston
- To Light a Fire on the Earth: Proclaiming Christ in a Secular Age by Bishop Barron