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What is God? Who is God? Why do some people conclude that a God

exists? Saint Thomas Aquinas goes from the fact that there must be a first

efficient cause to the conclusion that God is that cause. Why must Aquinas

make the extraordinary jump from there being a cause, to assuming that this

cause must be God? Would it not be just as plausible to make matter the first

cause? Matter is the substance that any physical object is composed of.

Matter is closed and finite, with no beginning or end. The best explanation to

the existence of God, is that God does not exist as a first efficient cause. The

argument for God, as presented by Aquinas, is to show that the existence of

the world and everything in it can only be explained if there is a God who is

the first cause. The argument states that it is impossible for any being to be

the efficient cause of itself because then it would have to bring itself into

being, and to bring itself into being, it would have to exist before it existed. If

a being exists, it is because some being prior to it, was it's cause. Therefore,

if no first cause exists, neither will any other being exist. Therefore, there is a

first efficient cause--God. This argument assumes that a first cause is needed

to explain the existence of anything. Aquinas also assumes this first cause to

be God. How can anyone rationally conclude that there is a God from the

simple statement that a first cause is necessary? Therefore, a first cause does

not prove God, it only assumes that there is a God, at best. Could one not

put matter in the place of God in Aquinas' argument and still assume there is

a first efficient cause? The theory that matter "is", is just as...