According to him, there must be as much reality or perfection in the cause of anything as in the effect. Moreover, he believed that the notion of God represents something so ideal that he could not have been the cause of this idea. I believe that Descartes arguments are not really such convincing because of the following reasons which I would like to point out. We may all come to this point and consider that we all exist; however, it’s not completely true because Descartes had an idea of the perfect being in his mind, but I surely don't have such an idea. Now what am I to believe?
It was originally called fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). ‘For I do not seek to understand that I believe, but I believe in order to understand’ – Proslogion 1. Anselm defined god as ‘that than which no greater can be conceived’. This is a priori accepted (no evidence). He then goes on to say that it is always greater to exist in reality (in re) than just in the mind (in intellectu).
The argument from religious experience seems to state that we can experience God and therefore God must exist, for surely what we experience must be real. William James, American psychologist and philosopher, worked to expand on and validate this topic. James defined religious experience as ‘The feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatsoever they may consider divine.’ He then identified the four types of mystical experiences: ineffable, noetic, transient, passive. An ineffable experience is one that cannot easily be articulated. It is too big a thing for words and therefore not necessarily understood by those who have not experienced it.
He therefore comes to the conclusion that there must be a first mover that was not put in motion by something else, and states that this unmoved mover is understood to be God. God is therefore purely in an actual state. The second argument is very similar to the first one which is why they are so often grouped together. Aquinas states that nothing causes itself, and that all efficient causes follow an order however this cannot go on to infinity as there would be no first efficient cause. He therefore concludes that a first uncaused cause is necessary and this cause we know as God.
However some philosophers such as Richard Dawkins have challenged such arguments. Dawkins stated that if God is to be omniscient, whether possessing self-knowledge or not, then He must know what shall happen. Even if there is a variety of possibilities you could choose from God would still know every single one, so no matter which one you choose God will already have known that specific
PHL 11 | The Five Ways | How does Thomas Aquinas 'prove' the existence of God? | | Rebeca Martinez 5/6/2013 | | Can we know anything about God? Of course, through the gift of faith we know that God exists. But is that merely a blind faith unsupported by reason? Obviously, our reason cannot of itself provide us with complete knowledge of God, if it could we would ourselves would be God.
Although, these three arguments all agree in the way that they use unfound assumptions to prove what has yet to be proven; they do disagree on the studies of how to prove what really is God. The ontological argument believes that God is a “being”. The cosmological argument believes that God is “the universe”. Then there is the design argument which needs evidence to prove that there is a God. The Ontological argument seeks to prove that God does exist by proving, that He cannot not exist.
The Muslims who initiated the kalam cosmological argument believe that it is obvious that God is the cause for the universe and so they do not look for evidence instead they believe God simply is the answer. Furthermore, why shouldn’t the cause be Gods hands? William Craig would agree with this viewpoint as he says “It is so intuitively obvious that I think scarcely anyone could sincerely believe it to be false” suggesting that any cause other than God is false. The cosmological argument is a posterior argument this means that the argument is based on experience and is based upon the observation that every event has a cause. Everyone who exists sees the existence of the world and simultaneously sees the existence of a cause.
Essay 1 Faith and Reason “Reason, aided by Christian faith, reveals truths about the universe and about humans that could never have been reached by reason alone. Conversely, Christian faith needs reason in order to communicate its beliefs clearly, to arrange those beliefs in a more systematic form, to guard it from straying into fanaticism or error, and to provide answers to reasonable objections to those beliefs”(1-2). Many argue that faith and reason are two very different things, when in all reality they both need each other and as Albl states they are actually “inseparable”. I am Catholic myself and I have always learned that authentic Christian faith does not limit human liberty and reason. Instead, faith supports reason and perfection; and reason, illuminated by faith, finds strength to raise itself to the knowledge of God.
This thing starting the motion or change could be equated to God when comparing the domino analogy to Aquinas’ argument. Aquinas’ second way of arguing for the existence of God is causation. He argues that everything must be caused by something as nothing can cause itself (this would mean that it existed before it began, which is impossible). This must therefore mean that there is a first cause, a force that was the initial cause, not depending on anything else to come into existence, to be caused, implying that it caused itself. This means that there must be a