St. Thomas Aquinas' celebrated five ways to the existence of God look to features of the cosmos as a whole that call out for explanation, which could not be explained by the formal functional principles of sublunary beings: why there is any change here below rather than none at all (the first way), why there is something rather than nothing (the second and third ways), why there is perfection in varying degrees (the fourth way), why everything is ordered to an end the best way (the fifth way). The arguments conclude to an ultimate explainer, which must have or be whatever formal functional principle or power it takes to explain the phenomena. Feser in his article, "Existential Inertia and the Five Ways", develops and defends the suggestion that the traditional proofs represented by the Five Ways are best read as defenses of the Doctrine of Divine Conservation (DDC). The Doctrine of Divine Conservation (DDC) holds that the things that God has created could not
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