Arguments for the existence of God

Ontological Argument in Proving the Existence of God? For centuries, the existence of God has been questioned and argued by many different philosophers. One of the “big three” arguments is the Ontological Argument, an argument that could be said to be valid, as it has a good structure, but the soundness is questionable. The argument was founded by St Anselm (1033-1109) on the basis of two things: firstly, that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” , which means that God is…

The existence of God has been a topic that has been widely debated and discussed by various philosophers throughout past centuries. Even though it is nearly impossible to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that God definitely exists, His presence is still felt through the evidence of his work. The fact that God is not something made up of matter and not someone we are able to see with our own eyes makes it easy for people to be skeptical of his existence. But to simply dismiss His existence because…

Descartes’ arguments for the existence of God Descartes applies the ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think therefore I am’) argument from the second meditation to prove another foundational truth, which is the existence of God. He uses his personal Christian belief and definition of God to build upon this proposition and tries to prove that something besides him exists by contemplating his idea of God. This essay will explain and assess Descartes’ aetiological and cause of existence arguments for the…

cosmological argument, in it’s simplest terms, can be broken up into a few understood points that make it what some to believe the answer to God’s existence. The same form of argument that the cosmological argument possesses can actually be applied to discrediting the existence of God. The origin of time and the relationship between an infinite set of causes and effects and if it has a creator both work together in forming good points against the credibility of the cosmological argument made for…

believe the existence of God is self-evident. When something such as God is self-evident to us as humanity the thing does not need to be proven. However, we as humans do not simply just know the facts of the universe (basis for self-evidence) we only know the facts we have slowly discovered through the sciences. Aquinas contrasts “self-evident to us” with “self-evident in itself.” As explained if the universe was self-evident to us, we would not need to try to prove the existence of God we…

Anselm’s argument is very different in how he goes about it. He creates an argument which has the form of a reductio ad absurdum, which means it states a hypothesis, proves that it has absurd or unacceptable implications, and then concludes that the hypothesis is false. In this case Anselm’s hypothesis is that God does not exist and proves it to be false proving that God does in fact exist. His argument rests upon the conception of God as “that than which no greater can be conceived”. This…

In the Third Meditation, Descartes provides an argument for the existence of God that has been a great source of discussion and debate since. With the Meditations, Descartes attempted to deconstruct and destroy all of his beliefs and all foundations of knowledge in order to accomplish two aims: to provide a sound basis for scientific method and to prove the compatibility between science and religion. With the Meditations, Descartes was determined to figure out what he knew with certainty and did…

The Existence of God This argument about the existence of God, better known as the cosmological argument, begins with the late philosopher Aristotle. Similar to a modern day natural scientist, he believed that we could ascertain more about the world and the very fundamental nature of things within our world just by observing and recording. In many ways Aristotle resemble a modern day artist, a person who goes through life experiencing and watching all different types of energy that’s around,…

evaluate two popular arguments regarding the existence of God, A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God by Robin Collins and The Inductive Argument from Evil Against the Existence of God by William Rowe; then I will discuss how the conclusions are not compatible with one another due to the conflicting structure of the conclusions as well as how one cannot accept both conclusions without compromising one of the arguments. First I will explain the basis of Collins’ argument, which is one of…

attribute that can be applied to God in order to describe his essence. The attribute of perfection differs in meaning when applied to human beings because human beings are creations of God. For example, what human beings call perfect it may be due to the individual’s personal preference. This can be illustrated in calling a painting or a piece of music perfect. This poses a problem because every human being may have a different definition of what is perfect. God is the true source and…