Proof Through Governance

We're covering St. Thomas Aquinas's 5 proofs for the existence of God. Here's the fifth: Gradation.

Ever wonder why the Earth is the perfect distance from the sun and has the right balance of gases to maintain an atmosphere that supports life? This balance is very delicate, just like the balance between plant use of carbon dioxide/releasing oxygen and animals' use of oxygen/expelling carbon dioxide. The planets rotate at fixed rates that can be mathematically calculated. Such fundamental laws of physics and biology must be true or life simply would not exist. St. Thomas believed these facts point to a higher intelligence - a being who made these laws; they couldn't just randomly occur.

Beneath its seeming chaos, nature is very ordered. Human DNA, for example, is very orderly and consistent, seeming to indicate a higher intelligence. Life on earth is not the work of chance, but met a set plan. St. Thomas said that the Great Governor of nature is God.

So Aquinas's 5 Proofs are: Motion (something set the universe into action), Causality (something caused the universe to come into existence), Necessity (something is necessary to keep unecessary objects in existence), Gradation (something occupies the highest level of being), and Governance (something caused the universe to work in a way that created sentient life on Earth).

These five proofs probably won't convert an athiest, but it might make them think. Aquinas's goal was to prove that science does not contradict God's existence, and that the idea of a Supreme Being is consistent with nature.