Aquinas for Dummies - Second Way - Who Made the Cookie??

Have you ever asked your mom, "Where did these cookies come from?" and she says, "I baked them." And then you ask, "Well, where did the dough come from?" And she says, "I mixed it from flour, butter, sugar, and eggs." And then you ask — because you're a very curious kid — "Well, where did the flour come from?" And she says, "From wheat, ground up at a mill." And you keep going: "Where did the wheat come from?" "A farmer grew it." "Where did the farmer come from?"

You could ask "where did that come from" forever, chasing one cause back to another cause, back to another cause.

This is basically the game Thomas Aquinas played about 750 years ago, except instead of cookies, he was asking about EVERYTHING — every single thing that exists.

Nothing Makes Itself

Here's something interesting Aquinas noticed: nothing in the whole world causes itself to exist.

●        A cookie doesn't bake itself. A baker has to make it.

●        A baby chick doesn't hatch itself out of nothing. A mama hen has to lay the egg first.

●        You didn't cause yourself to be born. Your mom and dad did that part.

Everything that exists got made by something else. Nothing just poofs into being all on its own, because — think about it — for something to make itself, it would have to exist BEFORE it existed, just so it could do the making. That's like saying you built your own house before you were born so you'd have somewhere to live when you arrived. It doesn't make sense!

So every single thing that exists needs a "maker" — something else that causes it.

But Who Made the FIRST Maker?

Now here's the tricky part. If every maker needs another maker before it, and that maker needed a maker before THAT... you could go back and back and back forever, like an endless chain of paper dolls, each one cut out by the doll standing before it in line.

But here's the problem: if the chain goes back forever with NO first doll who started cutting on her own, then no one ever actually did the FIRST cutting — which means no dolls would exist at all! You can't have an endless line of "the one before me did it" with nobody ever actually doing it first.

So Aquinas said: there has to be a First Cause — something that causes other things to exist, without needing anything else to cause IT. It doesn't get its "being" from anybody else, because it's simply the source, all on its own.

Even Simpler

1. Everything that exists was caused by something else (cookies need bakers, chicks need hens, you needed parents).

2. Nothing can cause itself, because it would have to exist before it existed.

3. You can't have an endless line of causes with no first cause, or nothing would exist at all.

4. So there must be a First Cause — something that causes everything else, without being caused itself.

That First Cause is God: the reason there's a "why" behind the cookie, the dough, the wheat, the farmer, and you.

Stay tuned for next episode…