Fundamental differences between the Teleological, Ontological, and Cosmological Arguments for God

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Since the beginning of civilization, humans have justified their own existence and nature's properties by the actuality of higher powers. Religion has been used as a promise for the masses, a moral guide, and in most sects, an assurance of an afterlife better than the world in which we live. Today, the vast majority of the world population believes in one god, and while these gods differ in some aspect, they are more alike than different. There are three prominent arguments for the existence of the God of monotheistic religions. Thomas Aquinas popularized the cosmological argument, which says that every being that exists in the world is contingent, or dependent. In order to bring anything into being, there must have been at least one noncontingent, or independent, being, and this being is what we refer to as God. The ontological argument states that God is the greatest conceivable being. Because existing is a better quality than not existing, God must exist. The final argument, the teleological argument, states that nature is a very complex system whose parts work together to perform a certain function. This is known as a teleologically ordered system. In our experience, all teleologically ordered systems have been created by humans. Therefore, the creator (or creators) of nature must have human-like intelligence. These arguments have similarities, but this essay will focus on what makes the teleological argument fundamentally different from the ontological and cosmological arguments for the existence of God. The clearest factor that sets the teleological argument apart from the others is that it is an a posteriori argument. This means that the premises for the argument are known by observations. This approach uses past knowledge and applies it to the present and the future. For example, meteorologists are able to predict weather patterns based on what has

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