The Things of the World - Reason #2

When I was younger, I loved to ask my grandpa about the world and why things were the way they are. I remember sitting around a campfire in the middle of the night and watching the stars. I marveled at them and how bright they were for being millions and millions miles away.

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It is amazing to think of all the things around us. We have stars, trees, lakes, rivers, houses, computers, animals, books, mountains and the list goes on and on. After marveling at all these things for a while, there comes a point where we have to question where all of this stuff came from.

Obviously, things cannot just create themselves or appear out of thin air. That would be ludicrous. Imagine watching a movie with your family and all of a sudden a kangaroo appears on the couch next to you. You wouldn't think, "Oh, the kangaroo just appeared out of nothing." You would think, "Where did this kangaroo come from?!" This idea of asking where things came from is the basis for Aquinas' second proof of the existence of God.

This second proof deals with something called efficient cause. Efficient cause is a thing that brings about the being of another thing. That can be a confusing definition but basically what it means is that a person/object has to bring another person/object into existence. Something has to cause another thing to come into being. It is all about creation.

When most of us were in science classes at school, we were told that, "matter can be neither created or destroyed." This scientific ideal should make us pause and raise questions. If matter can be neither created or destroyed, where did all the matter around us come from? Science and logical thinking tell us that nothing can just appear out of thin air. Nothing can exist prior to itself. So we then we are led to think that nothing in this world is the cause of creating itself; something else had to have caused it. We can go back and try to explain away the efficient causes of everything leading up to the things here on earth, but like the argument of motion, we cannot continue into infinity with these arguments because the the cause of the creation of something must be created itself. Thus, we must conclude that there has to be a first cause, and this cause is what people call God.

I hope that some of you found this post to be helpful in explaining the second proof of God's existence. Comment below if there are any questions.

Your Sister in Christ,
Emily

Doubting Thomas? Here's Proof of God - Reason #1

There is a lot of doubt out there right now about the existence of God. In a culture that highly praises the material, people want physical proof that God exists in order to believe in Him. They claim to believe only in the physical, but not the spiritual, because they believe in science. "Unless science proves it, I won't believe it," is a common refrain among those who doubt God's existence. In some ways, it is hard to blame people for the resistance when so much of our Western culture teaches that something cannot be true unless it can be proved. I think a little known fact about the Catholic church is that it is actually compatible with science. Faith and science aren't opposites; they actually complement each other.  In a way, this even makes sense because if God created the world and everything in it, then of course science - the study of the natural world and how things work - will lead us to God. We do not need to physically see God to know of His existence.

After the Resurrection, Jesus came to the disciples who were closed in a room. He showed them the nail marks and the wound in his side. Thomas was not with the disciples at this time, and when he heard the news, he could not believe that the other disciples had seen Jesus. Nothing could make him believe that Jesus had risen. When Jesus appears to Thomas in John 20:29, he says, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." We do not need proof to know and believe in Jesus. However, the evidence does exist for those who look.

For me personally, I have always believed in God despite never seeing Him. I was convicted because of the witness of faith I had seen in others. My mind works on reason though, so when I discovered that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about five ways of proving that God exists, I was enthralled. Learning about the proofs of existence in Summa Theologica confirmed my beliefs in Him. Today I want to present the first proof that Aquinas gives for God's existence.

St. Thomas Aquinas' first argument for the existence of God deals with motion. If we think about what we know about the solar system, we know that the planets orbit around the sun, and the Earth spins on its axis. There is motion all around in the universe. Newton's first law of motion states that, "An object in motion, stays in motion while an object at rest, stays at rest." We also know that for anything to move, potential motion must turn into actual motion. This basically means that for something to move, something has to cause it to move. Nothing can move itself.

Simple observation shows us that there is motion all around us. So we must ask ourselves, "what caused this motion?" Some people will say that the Big Bang set everything in motion, but this still leaves us with an unanswered question. What caused the Big Bang to be set into motion? No matter how far back a person can make a reason for how everything was set in motion, there will always be the unanswered question of 'what set that in motion?' It is impossible for this sequence of motion to go on forever. As stated before things cannot just move themselves, they have to be first moved. 

Thus, we come to the conclusion that there must be a First Mover - someone or something that is above the laws of science. A being or thing that set everything into motion. We called this being God.

The argument of motion is just one of five different ways in which St. Thomas Aquinas logically derives the existence of God. Throughout the next few days, I will be talking through the other four proofs of God in hopes of showing to some skeptics that there is evidence that God exists and anyone can understand it.

Your Sister in Christ,

Emily

Welcome to the Journey

There comes a point in most people's lives where something just seems to be missing. Our lives are filled from one moment to the next with endless activities like school, work, sports, clubs, family, friends, Netflix and so much more. At the end of the day, it's easy to fall into bed and sleep just to get up to repeat the day over. Through all of these activities though, something deep inside of yearns and longs for something more - something to fill the emptiness and the ache. The only remedy long is Christ.

So before we go any deeper, let me introduce myself. My name is Emily Silverwing, and for those of you who are wondering, yes, this is a pen name. I'm one of God's billions of children on Earth. Currently, I am in the last semester of my senior year in high school, and just three days ago, I decided to attend a Catholic college in Tennessee this year. I guess it's hard to describe who I am, especially when all my family and friends would give you different adjectives describing me. The words empathetic, kind, thoughtful, smart and analytical are the most heard words though from my friends. In my free time - whatever that is! - I enjoy reading, researching, dancing, biking, playing board games and writing.

The most important thing to know about me though is that I am Catholic. Born into a Catholic family and baptized as an infant, I'm what people call a cradle Catholic. My faith has gone through cycles of growth and decay since I was born. I had very strong faith until I hit public high school. I've never stopped believing in the God nor have I stopped celebrating the sacraments; however, my prayer life has struggled. Over the past year or two, my interest in renewing my prayer life and going deeper into my faith has grown and grown. I've made more time to pray and read the Bible, and since then, my curiosity about the faith has skyrocketed. I've been longing to read more books about the saints and the faith and begun to research more and more into why I believe what I believe. Last October, I made a Youth Encounter - a retreat meant to spark a deeper relationship with the Lord. Since that retreat, my desire to pray, know God and learn about the faith has grown to new heights. The retreat was three days, and we were told that every day after the retreat is called our 4th day. This means that every day is a day to live out our faith and what we learned no matter what. If we mess up one day, the next day is a new day to start over.

I believe that one of my talents is my writing. I love words, connecting and spreading ideas to others. In making this blog, it is my hope that one day I will inspire others to grow and learn about the Catholic faith. With this blog, I plan on writing about anything Catholic. This could include things that the Catholic Church teaches and believes, Bible verses, discussions about Catholic books/podcasts/movies, anecdotes from my own life and just a down to earth discussion about what it means to be Catholic and live the faith as a young American adult in today's society. I love to record my thoughts and look back at them to see what I learned and discovered over time. Instead of journaling, I wanted to try blogging so that my journey through my Catholic faith can reach other people. I pray that God will use this blog for His will and that through it, His plan for the world may become more complete. I encourage anyone who comes across this blog to share it with others and comment questions or thoughts about any of my posts.

God bless!

Your Sister in Christ,
Emily