A look at St. Thomas's Fourth Argument
            
             St. Thomas's fourth argument is based on the fact that there are grades or degrees of intensity in all things. All things that we, as humans, know of can be measured and the levels can be compared to other similar things. For example, we use many words to describe happiness; we might say cheerful, pleased, happy, delighted, blissful, rapturous, or ecstatic. All these words are used to describe the levels of the same emotion, however none of these words describe the emotion as perfect. St. Thomas's argument was such that all things have these levels, but the levels cannot go on to infinity, can they? We must assume that if there are levels of good; there must be it a maximum of good, in other words perfection. Nothing that we know of in science or nature is perfect, but that perfection must exist somewhere. There are beings on Earth, so we must assume that there is a perfect being somewhere; "and this we call god."
            
             Is there a maximum good? There does not seem to be a maximum evil. Since the time of Jesus, people have been expecting him to come back because "things can't get any worse." Every generation has been waiting with baited breath thinking that they were seeing the signs of the Apocalypse. As the years and generations go by, however, things do get worse. Every generation believes that, in their time, morality must be worse than in Sodom.
            
             In the teens there was the Great War; men murdering men must be the worst morality can get. In the twenties flappers were wearing short dresses, drinking, and smoking in public; this must be the worst morality can get, right? In the thirties another European war, men killing men again; can it get any worse? Then we discovered the Holocaust; Mass genocide, can it get any worse than that? In the sixties, the young people were getting high, having sex, and going off to war; it can't get any worse than ...