Arguments

addition, Anselm of Canterbury presented the first ontological argument for God’s existence. The ontological argument attempts to show that God’s existence can be deduced from the definition or the very concept of God. He explains that the fact that our idea of a greatest possible being imaginable is God implies that God exists. While there are many other philosophers who argue for the existence of God, there are just as many arguments denying His existence. Atheism is the rejection or lack in…

are known as “Agnostic” who have the belief that the existence of God is unknown and unknowable. As there is no physical evidence of the existence of God references that I will make will be based off of “The Design Argument” by Neil Manson, as well as a common objection to said argument and a way to refute that said counter to the subject, because I strongly believe that God does in fact exist…

The Ontological argument, written by philosopher St. Anselm of Canterbury in his book the Proslogion in the eleventh century, is a metaphysical argument for the existence of God in reality. In this essay I will discuss the validity of this argument. In this text Anselm states that the concept of God has the necessary and sufficient condition of being maximally perfect- ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’- and that, since existing in reality is greater than existing only conceptually,…

dream argument. The argument concludes that we cannot trust the senses because we cannot distinguish between being awake and sleeping. The first premise states, that if we want to trust the senses, then we must be able to distinguish being awake from dreaming. The second premise states we cannot distinguish being…

In “The Argument from Design,” William Paley argues in favor of the existence of God by drawing comparisons between a watch and the universe. David Hume debates the existence of God using three characters in “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.” This essay examines “The Argument from Design” by William Paley on the existence of God. This essay defends Paley’s argument that the universe was intricately designed against Hume’s dissimilarity and imperfection objections. David Hume wrote his…

Among the many arguments for intelligent design, Behe’s argument of irreduciblecomplexityisbyfaroneofthemostfascinatingones. Whilemany may consider Darwin’s theory of evolution to be the catch-all argument that irrefutably demolishes any and all argument for intelligent design, Behe manages not only to propose a design theory compatible with it, but also to use it to further empower his argument. Ultimately, Behe’s irreducible complexity argument lacks the support needed to differentiate itself…

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…

Paley’s Watchmaker Argument St. Thomas Aquinas’ Fifth Way The Anthropic Principle (including Richard Swinburne’s Anthropic Coincidences) Graham Priests Version Against the statement to be evaluated: Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution David Hume’s Criticisms Richard Dawkins Introduction For my E.P.Q, I decided to base it on a question which has enamored the world for the entirety of its existence. “Does God exist?”. I will be specifically looking into the Design argument, which is an…

We have arrived to our third stop, the complex, busy and hectic city, EWP Outcome #3! The third outcome aims "to produce complex, analytic, persuasive arguments that matter in academic contexts." I believe that the first and second major paper demonstrate my ability to derive a complex claim in order to make a compelling argument. 1. The argument is appropriately complex, based in a claim that emerges from and explores a line of inquiry. In the first major paper, I have produced a complex…

Over a millennium after Aristotle wrote his unmoved mover argument. The Catholic philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas reintroduced the idea as part of his five proofs for the existence of God. Aquinas’s first way is derived from motion. Following the same premise as Aristotle, Aquinas argues that a first mover, existing in a state of perfect actuality, must exist to move things from potential to actual states. Absence of this first mover would result in an infinite regress; therefore, the…