Each of Aquinas’s three ways established a different role of God. His first way, the unmoved mover, follows this set structure of premises; Everything that moves must haves a something that moves it. He rules out the possibility of infinite regress because he believes you cannot have an infinite chain of events without something which at first caused it. Therefore there must be a prime mover, a first mover to which Aquinas states must be God. Thereby the first role of God established by Aquinas in his first way is that God is the ‘prime mover’.
Analyse the essential ideas in the Ontological Argument The Ontological (meaning ‘concerned with being’) argument is the only a priori argument for the existence of God. This means that it does not rely on the evidence of our senses for its premises or conclusion. It works by logical stages, which is self evidently true or logically necessary. This is one of its major strengths. It is also deductive, so the conclusion is the only possible one that could be deduced give the premises.
The basic premise of the Kálam argument is that something must of caused the universe to begin to exist, this cause must be necessary therefore it is God. The Kálam argument agrees with the term infinite regression, in which is a chain going infinitely back in time with no beginning. St. Thomas Aquinas was a believer of the cosmological argument, Aquinas set out ex nihilo nihil fit, basically meaning nothing comes from nothing, Aquinas believed since nothing can come from nothing, the universe exists so therefore God must of made it. Aquinas’ theory is equivalent to the second way, in which is ‘causation’. The second way states that cause and effect are natural, whatever happens is caused by something, and something cannot cause itself because that would mean
1) Explain how the Cosmological Argument tries to prove that there must be a God. The Cosmological Argument is a posteriori argument (knowledge gained after experience) which attempts to prove that there is a rational basis for the belief in God. This is a strength of the cosmological argument as our experience is proof of the existence of the universe. Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, argued that there must be a first mover who started a chain of events that lead to the movement we observe now. He believed that this mover exists necessarily so does not depend on anything or anyone to exist and can not change nor die.
One of Aquinas’ ways of proving God’s existence; ‘the uncaused causer’, states that every cause in the universe has an effect, the chain of cause and effect must have a terminus to avoid infinite regress. Aquinas rejects infinite regress because it denotes that there cannot be an answer to the question “what is the explanation?” Therefore there must be a necessary being that started the chain, this for Aquinas is God but this is not a satisfactory answer for everyone. Bertrand Russell, somewhat like Aristotle, states that the universe is a “brute fact”, although unlike Aristotle did not see that there needed to be a Prime Mover or Uncaused Cause. Russell made another criticism when he suggested that one cannot go from saying that every event has a cause thus the whole universe has a cause, it is like moving from saying that every human being has a mother to the claim that the human race as a whole has a mother. One cannot move from individual causes to the totality (whole, everything) has a cause.
The issues with this option mainly deal with the definition of a theistic God. If morality is independent of God and God’s commands only exist because the moralities of actions are predetermined, then God is no longer sovereign. If morals are independent of God’s commands then God is not sovereign over morality. This goes against the definition of a theistic God which defines God as the creator and ruler over everything. It also puts limits on God’s power.
Free will means that God does not have any set destiny for us. If God were to create free agents that could only choose good, that would mean that God laid out a destiny of good for all agents. Even though God is omniscient, free will is still possible because while God may know the choices we are going to make, he is not the cause of them. Since God does not choose or cause our destiny, we still have free will. In response to the option in which God creates a world with free agents and no evil, a world with no evil would mean a world with no good, so it would be impossible for God to create a free agents that only choose good, since evil does not exist.
Cosmological Argument The cosmological argument is a posteriori argument because it is a on what can be seen in the world and the universe * The argument is based on the belief that there is a first cause behind the existence of the universe. * The argument was first developed by Plato and Aristotle. * Thomas Aquinas has developed the most popular version of the cosmological argument. He developed his five ways to prove the existence of God in his book Summa Theologica. The first of the three ways form proof for the existence of God and are Change (or motion), Cause and Contingency.
He therefore rejected an infinite universe because he did not believe that it was a satisfactory explanation for its existence. Copleston supported Aquinas’ rejection of infinite regress on the grounds that an infinite chain of contingent beings could only ever consist of contingent beings, which would never be able to bring itself into existence. However, Bertand Russell opposed that the cosmological argument was evidence for the existence of God, he rejected the idea of contingency also, and he argued that a ‘necessary being’ has no meaning. Kant examined the argument of the existence of a supreme being as a first cause of the universe. He argued that cause and effect can only be applied to the world.
Descartes declares he has to determine if there is a God and if he does exist, whether he can be a deceiver. The reason he has to determine the existence of God and what he is, rests in his theories of ideas. This is because we do not know if there is an outside world and we can almost imagine everything, so all depends on God’s existence and if he is a deceiver. “To prove that this non-deceiving God exists, Descartes finds in his mind a few principles he regards as necessary truths which are evident by the “natural light” which is the power or cognitive faculty for clear and distinct perception.” If arguments is presented in logical trains of thought, people could not help but to be swayed and to understand those arguments. Natural light