Nagel's Argument Analysis

There are various philosophical issues that are mere intellectual exercises that have been debated for many years in our history’s past. These issues range in topics from the meaning of life to free will, but the topic about the existence of God is certainly one that many can possibly relate to. The existence of God can be easily recognized from a theist as true and from an atheist as not true. There are people who are agnostic and believe that something exists through the evidence provided. Earnest Nagel is one of the authors within our textbook that has various opinions for and against the existence of God. One the first arguments is that everything must have a cause. A cause 1 must have a cause of cause 2, which obviously must have a cause 3 and it goes on. When these causes are bound to go on, and they indefinitely do, it is considered unintellectual and uncalled for. Nevertheless, there is only one cause and cause 1 is God. But some might question that if one must always have a cause 1 then why not God himself have a cause 1 too. Other questions and answers arise from his argument are that God does not need a cause and he in fact is self-caused, but then some might wonder why can the rest of the world be self-caused. Nagel also has a second proof that God does …show more content…
Naturally, we think of bears as being fierce and hungry. Doing so, we are predicting a certain attribute the exists about the given animal. When one says that a bear does in fact exist, what we are really referring to is the known belief of fierceness and hungry about the bear. He argues “In short, the word “existence” does not signify any attribute, and in any consequence no attribute that belongs to the nature of anything” (Nagel, 248). Nevertheless, after that argument itself, he believes that is doesn’t really follow the assumption that we actually have any clue of what a perfect being actually is, or if one for that matter truly