For Anselm, God cannot not exist. Descartes supported Anselm in his book ‘meditations’ and developed Anselm’s argument particularly in terms of necessary being. He based his argument for God’s existence on the idea that God is a ‘supremely perfect being’. Descartes believed that we can conclude that God exists, because existence is a predicate of a perfect being; therefore God must exist to avoid being self contradictory.
Aquinas argued that the definition of God cannot be comprehended by humans. As humans are finite, and God is infinite, it is impossible for humans to make an accurate definition of God. Another issue with the ontological argument is its problems with proving existence just from a description. David Hume claimed that it was impossible to derive existence from a definition. Hume was an empiricist, and therefore believes that for something to exist, there must be evidence that can be accessed by the senses.
An argument against this however is the cause of God. Experience shows that nothing can be the cause of itself. The first cause argument also states that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It also defines God as the uncaused first cause because he is the only being capable of existing without a cause. The second premise of the Kalam is that the universe began to exist.
Aquinas also presented an objection to Anselm’s ontological argument. He argued that the ontological argument is invalid as we cannot define God ‘for the human mind does not have an intuition of the essence of God’. Aquinas rejects that there can be
To them, if there is a good side to the world and a bad side to the world, then there must be two gods to keep track of it all. Gnostic believers even present “evidence” defending their position through information found in the secret books of the gnostic gospels (29). Though this argument seems sound, orthodox Christianity is the more popular belief on this subject because the Gnostics were considered ignorantly dualistic; God clearly sent his word through the Bible stating that he is the one and only God that ever was and ever will
They also believe that there is no force greater than man and the man is the creator of the world. They do not believe in faith and blessings; naturalists believe that things happen because we as individuals make them happen for ourselves. Naturalists are also known as atheists. Supernaturalists on the other hand are the complete opposite of naturalists and believe that all things are created by God. The supernaturalists believe that “the material world is a derivative realm created by God” (Entwistle, 2010, p.98).
I feel that this argument fails to prove the existence of God. There is no real proof that God created the universe or people based on the teleological argument, although it is a valid argument, I just do not think that it is plausible that God created the earth. There are many other theories that give more evidence and better proof that counter the teleological argument. Works
Meanwhile, McCloskey believes that the only conclusion we can reach is that something caused the universe to exist. From reading his article, I feel that he does not formulate a valid argument as to how the power exists or how it created the universe. He goes onto to describe any creator that could exist is either a powerful being or a muddler and is not a god, but an evil spirit or a being that had very disastrous consequences due to their limitations ( McCloskey, pg.64). McCloskey closes his argument of the cosmological argument by stating that belief in either is not a source of strength or security ( McCloskey,
Assess the claim that the universe provides no evidence for the existence of an omnipotent god’ 35 marks It is often claimed by philosophers that the universe provides no evidence for the existence of an omnipotent god due to the fact there are flaws in this argument. Firstly, the idea of god being omnipotent, simply means that god would be ‘all-powerful to do anything that is possibly logical to do’, which is an idea explored by Aquinas. This idea would solve problems created by Dawkins who suggested the idea that god being omnipotent is incoherent. Yet by suggesting that god is all powerful in things that is logical would mean that he would not do illogical such as change the past of change what humans believe is fact such as 2+2=4. Therefore both Aquinas and Dawkins would suggest that the God could in fact be an omnipotent being as it is still logical for him to be so.
Most scientists argue that "God" is not a scientifically proven cause, whereas Aristotle would argue that God is ‘a remote and unchanging being who allows his world to be changeable so that it can gradually move towards the perfection which he already enjoys.’ A further fault with this would be the principle that the universe can’t explain its own existence, Why is it here at all? Why is it like this? Why isn’t it different? Why something rather than nothing?. Critics such as Dawkins and Russell say the universe is here today due to ‘brute fact’ whereas Swinburne would argue highly with that and say ‘God is simpler than anything we could imagine and gives an explanation for the system’.