Saturday, September 22, 2007

A logical look (part one)
I have to admit, religion has always been hard for me. I tend to be a very logical person. It is hard for me to read of the stories from the Bible and believe they could actually take place, they just aren't....logical!! Luckily for me there is the Catholic Church. I am always amazed by the proof and history the Catholic church has to back up their beliefs. They don't just accept things because that is what they are told, they research, and prove it. I recently started taking RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults).
Though I am a cradle Catholic I have never been confirmed so I have decided it is time. At our last meeting we were given an excerpt from The Belief Of Catholics by Ronald Knox, in it he discusses five proofs of God that St Thomas Aquinas spoke of. It is kind of long and I am to ADD to sit here and discuss it all in one post :o). So I am going to go over each proof in separate posts.
"1. In all motion, or rather as we should say, in all change you can separate two elements, active and passive, that which is changed and that which changes it. But, in our experience, the agent in such change is not self-determined, but determined in its turn to a higher agent. Can this process go on ad infinitum? No, for an infinite series of agents, none of them self-determined, would not give us the finality which thought demands; there must be, at the beginning of the series, however long, an Agent who is self-determined, who is the ultimate Agent in the whole cycle of changes that proceeds him."
So basically, if you have a line of domino's; the domino's will just sit still in the line until someone puts them in motion. This law applies to all objects. Nothing moves that isn't put into motion by something or someone. So for us to exist, for this earth, for this solar system, for everything we know of to be in motion, there has to be an Agent that pushed the first domino.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is going to be an interesting series for me, being a former Catholic. Even so, I am not familiar with most Catholic writings and official doctrine. I'll be following along with you!

Do they go beyond the first domino to say that God is in control as the dominoes fall?

Christina said...

The domino analogy, wasn't in the book, I was trying to break it down and make it a little easier to understand. I do believe that God is definetly in control along the way. :o)

Christina said...

And just to add to that, though St Thomas Aquinas is Catholic, these "laws" can really be applied to any religion that believes in a supreme being. :o)