This leads to the famous objection that he uses the existence of God to establish his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas, and that he uses his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas to establish the existence of God: his argument is circular. It seems that Descartes says that firstly “I am certain that God exists only because I am certain of whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive” but secondly
However, this would be absurd, seeing as that nothing greater than God can be conceived in anyway. So a being, which nothing greater can be conceived, God, does in fact exist. According to Joel Fienberg’s text, Reason and Responsibility, an Ontological argument is defined as “an argument for the existence of God stating that the very concept or definition of God automatically entails that God exists; because the special nature of the concept, there is no way that God could fail to exist” (pg. 722). This argument is formulated around the idea that God is a being, which no greater being can be conceived.
St. Anselm’s, Ontological Argument defends the conception of God being a great being. There can be no other being greater than God. This theory implies that only God exists or if not there could be another greater existent being. The greatest is God though. I do believe this.
William Paley’s argument William Paley’s design argument is the idea of purpose or chance. Paley argues for purpose. He believes that the order, beauty and complexity of this world could not be blind chance and therefore must have a purpose. Paley believes that for everything to work so intricately together there must be a divine intelligence ordering it; A creator. He believed this creator to be God.
The ontological argument is further defined as analytic, which means when you look at the word (which in this case is God) and you already know what it means. In Proslogion, St Anselm uses a phrase to define God. This phrase is “that than which a greater cannot be thought”. He uses this phrase because he believes God to be the greatest being ever, and the being which the best at absolutely everything. Also he believes that if you asked someone who doesn’t believe in God what their definition of God was, then it would also be something along the lines of this.
I believe that God is the creator and sustainer of all things, and that we would not even be self aware, let alone aware of right and wrong, if God had not created within us his image, and therefore the ability to make moral distinctions. Without God, I believe that this world cannot explain what morality
The question remains however can the validity of God’s existence be concretely established? All philosophers past and present have addressed this claim. C. Stephen Evans has commented “the case for religious faith will not be based on a single argument functioning as proof, but upon the total evidence available from every region of human experience.” (Nash 1999). This concept of the cumulative argument as proof states that individual unconnected facts may not establish proof but he culmination of the same facts leads to a logical conclusion. This theory uses inductive reasoning rather than the more common deductive reasoning.
Anselm’s Ontological Argument The philosopher Anselm of Canterbury’s ontological argument debates the existence of God to be very much true. Anselm concepts God as a being in which nothing greater can be conceived. He also iterates that this being is too the greatest that one can possibly imagine. Therefore, for God to be the ideal concept of perfection, he must too in fact exist in reality and not just the mind, as in the understanding. An atheist, whom may not believe that God actually exists in reality, surely understands the concept of what God is so he then exists in his understanding.
If God does not exist, though, then something can be imagined that is greater that God, namely a God that does exist. “The hypothesis that God does not exist thus seems to give rise to a logical absurdity: that there both is and is not something that can be imagined that is greater than God. There is, because it’s possible to imagine a God that does exist. There isn’t, because it’s impossible to imagine something greater than the greatest thing imaginable.” Anselm’s second premise embarks on the fact that ‘that thing, like all things, exists in the mind or in the external world, or in both’. Just because something exists in the understanding does not mean that it also exists in reality.
Catholic people think that if you believe in God miracles seem more obvious to you and if you deny and test the existence of God then it will be harder to see the miracles happen. If God really is behind all of the natural laws, he is not restricted by them therefore He is allowed to violate them from time to time. This also contradicts the fact that God is omnibenevolant and defeats the saying that ‘all humans are equal’. There are a lot of problems with using miracles to prove Gods existence, some say that one person’s miracle is not one to another person, we have some sort of scientific explanations to miracles that happened in the bible, so in the future we could have explanations to miracles that