But because it’s impossible to conceive a greater being that God he must exist in both reality and our minds. In Anselm’s view only a fool can therefore doubt the existence of God, because the ‘fool’ has the idea of God in their mind to doubt him,
Anselm (1033–1109) had opposed an Ontological Argument that one understands God as a being and cannot conceive anything greater because God cannot be understood not to exist. On the other hand, another philosopher named Gaunilo objected Anselm’s Ontological Argument by suggesting that the same style of argument can be used to prove the existence of other entities, such as the idea of a greatest possible island. Although this may be the case, Anselm never got the opportunity to plead his case against Gaunilo’s objection. However, there are numerous biblical evidence to help support Anselm’s argument. Anselm’s Ontological Argument states that one understands that God, as a being, cannot be conceived a greater.
He also says there are a chain of causes and effects leading back to the beginning of the Universe. He did not believe in infinite regress, and so, for him, there had to be a first cause, and that first cause has to be God. Aquinas’ Cosmological argument has many positive points which could be used to prove the existence of God, and his argument is both logical and convincing. However, I believe there are some major flaws within it, and I hope to use these flaws to show that Aquinas’ Cosmological argument does not prove the existence of a God. The first point to Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological argument is about Motion.
The Ontological argument is set up to prove God exists in reality by justifying it as a priori, which in this instance means that God is understood to exist in reality even though Anselm has not witnessed God himself. He still understands there to be a God. Since Anselm can establish an understanding, he claims he can prove that God does dually exist in both reality and in the understanding. St. Anselm presents the first premise of the Ontological argument as follows, Every being that exists, exists in the understanding or in the reality or both. (Perry, p.78) Based on the foundational beliefs of Rene Descartes, we already know that ‘I think’ and ‘I exist‘.
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.
Only McCloskey knows why he wrote this article with his reasons for not believing as he did write this piece as if he had been appointed to provide why and what their foundational arguments are against theists’ beliefs in God. To say that proofs do not prove the existence of God, is not justifying the evidence. According to Foreman, we must justify the evidence, distinguish the specific actions, how these actions universal judgments concerning right or wrong, and formulate ethical views in the evidence. Just because a proof is stated doesn’t mean it’s valid. We need to investigate and see why it is valid or invalid.
Saint Thomas’s argument for the existence of god is a valid one; this is because there are no false premises. The conclusion that god exists is drawn from the argument made, but not directly. Because none of the premises mention God as a causing factor, the conclusion that he exists requires a sort of mental leap. Aquinas’s argument is a sound one, but the fact remains that there are multiple conclusions that could have been drawn from these premises, and not all of them include God. Even with the problem with the conclusion, all of Saint Aquinas’s premises are true, making the argument a sound
They treated claims made about God as cognitive, meaning that the assertions made are meant to be taken as facts or universal truth claims rather than non-cognitive meaning on a personal level for believers. They believed that language was only meaningful if it was analytically or synthetically verified. Analytic statements are a priori (based on logic) and synthetic statements are a posteriori (based on empirical evidence). They created a test called verification principle to see if religious language was meaningful; Statements can only be meaningful if it can be demonstrated. One could argue that the logical positivists were unsuccessful in arguing that religious language is meaningless because the verification principle has many weaknesses.
He is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then whence commeth the evil. If he is neither able nor willing then why call him god?” This is called the inconsistent triad; if God has all these Omni qualities then why does evil still remain on earth? Augustine’s soul deciding theodicy was the demonstration that God is not responsible for the existence of evil.
On one hand you have the philosophers who believe you can speak and write about God, because God is reality. On the other hand, are the Logical Positivists who claim that statements about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything that is real. There are a number of philosophers who claimed to have proven conclusively that religious language is meaningful, for example Aquinas’ theory of analogy. An analogy is an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand and forming relations through attributes or relations that are similar. Aquinas rejected univocal and equivocal language when talking about God.