Argument map

sense and facts compared to Christian beliefs. The large part of his work focused on arguing against the three major proofs that exist among most individuals in the universe today. Through his argument against theistic proofs that include cosmological argument, the argument from design and the teleological argument, McCloskey stated that it is irrational for any human being to live by faith. He goes on to deduce that the three agreements cannot prove or cannot be the basis to show that God…

Edwards, by not denying the existence of God (even if God is not the first cause), one does not reduce the argument to the non existence of everything. Furthermore, according to Edwards, if an infinite regress is impossible, then it doesn’t mean there were not many different first causes or that the first cause is still in existence. Edwards distinguishes, on behalf of defenders of Aquinas’ argument, between “causes in fieri” and “causes in esse”. A “cause in fieri” is a direct cause of an…

The Teleological Argument for the Existence of God, also known as “Arguments from Design”, states that a designer must exist because the universe and living things exhibit marks of design in their order, consistency, unity, and pattern, and that designer is God. One of the analogies used for this argument is William Paley’s Watch Maker Argument. He gives the scenario: if you were to find a watch in an open field you would automatically assume that it was designed and did not just randomly…

When it comes to the existence of God, there are many arguments. Some say that God does not exist while others try to explain how the universe was created. Saint Thomas Aquinas gives a cosmological view on whether God exists. In his article, Whether God Exists, he provides five arguments to support his view. The first article talks about motion. Just like the Myth of the Cave the prisoners used their senses to survive on a daily basis. Your senses prove that things are in motion. This shows…

St. Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher and theologian, offers a cosmological argument defending the existence of God that can be understood first on the basis of dependent and independent beings. A dependent being is one that has a contingent existence. In other words, it could have failed to exist because its existence is brought about by another being. The reason for a dependent being’s existence resides in something else. An independent being, however, has a necessary existence that could not fail…

Descartes’ argument regarding the claims of the existence of God. There are philosophers who claim Descartes commits to a belief that has no foundation and because his argument is circular it holds no weight. There are also philosophers who defend Descartes and claim that he does not commit himself to a foundationless belief and that what seems circular isn’t actually circular. I will be supporting the latter argument and I will show that Descartes doesn’t consign to a circular argument but…

Proofs for the Existence of God, is a thirteenth century collection of five deductive arguments that, as the name suggests, supposedly prove the existence of God. In these arguments, or proofs, as Aquinas calls them, there is the assumption that there are some things that only God is capable of making happen – such as motion and cause - and ergo, God has to exist for these things to exist. Aquinas' first argument for the existence of God is that of the 'Unmoved Mover', which draws from…

that everything has a chain of cause and effect. That these cause point to a “first efficient cause, which all call God”(72). The third proof for the existence of God is “the natures of the merely possible and necessary”(72). Aquinas’ uses this argument to argue that “not all things are mere accidents, but there must be one necessarily existing being”(73).With this Aquinas seems to be stating that there is a cause and purpose for all things, and that nothing just randomly happened, like some…

The cosmological argument is one theory for the existence of God; it is based upon the existence of a unique being, which is commonly referred to as God. This based upon facts regarding causation, contingency, motion, change and finitude relative to the processes within the universe. In this essay I am going to describe the arguments of Aristotle, one of the founders of this argument and Leibniz, who argues for the principle of sufficient reason; a theory that goes hand in hand with the…

St. Anslem, was a priest during the 11th century he was the first person known to have formed the Ontological argument as we know it; which can be found in the second chapter of his work, The Proslogion. The Ontological argument is not an argument designed to convert the atheist, but to reassure those who have faith or some belief in God, it was meant for the believer seeking understanding, in other words some logic behind their belief. Since only the “fool” knows but does not believe (Psalms…