P3: It is possible to have an experience of God. C: Therefore God must exist. This shows the inductive nature of the argument as well as the synthetic experiences it is based on. As Swinburne's proof of god through religious experience shows, there is a logical thought process that can systematically prove the existence of god if these premises are agreed upon. Some philosophers such as Ayer argue that experience cannot provide a stable base for the indication of reality because it is the interpretation of the experience that we are hearing for the experiencer, therefore we can never have concrete evidence that that is how the experience occurred.
It is also deductive, so the conclusion is the only possible one that could be deduced give the premises. Therefore, it is theoretically strong. Anselm proposed in the Proslogian that the existence of God was true for him by the virtue of faith and logical necessity. He proposed a reductio ad absurdum argument that aimed to demonstrate he impossibility of denying God’s existence. His first form of the argument runs as follows: (P1) God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived (P2) If God exists in the mind alone (in intellect) then a greater being can be conceived (in re) (P3) God to be the greatest being, has to existing the mind and in reality, otherwise another being would be greater than God.
And then philosophers such as R.M Hare, Paul Tilich and Aquinas, arguing that Religious Language is meaningful, however I will be arguing both sides of the arguments, coming to a conclusion against the statement. A.J Ayer famously came up with the Verification Principle which states that any statement must be verified against valid evidence. He made a statement saying ‘A statement which cannot be conclusively verified cannot be verified at all. It is simply devoid of any meaning’. And so Metaphysical claims such as ‘God is omnibenevolent’ are meaningless, the Statements they did find acceptable were analytic statements, which are true by definition and those which are synthetic, which is confirmed through the senses.
Descartes' argument in the Meditations is circular. Discuss. In trying to prove the existence of God, Descartes will, of course, have to rely on what he can clearly and distinctly perceive, because this is the only way he can know anything. However, Descartes also needs to prove that God exists for us to know what we clearly and distinctly perceive. 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.
Furthermore experience is one of, if not the, principle way of gaining knowledge and forming ideas. It helps people form concepts and especially form ideas that would not otherwise be formed. Rene Descartes argued that some ideas were innate and he attempted to prove this with a deductive argument in which if all the premises are true then the conclusion must be true. Through this he convinced himself that God was real and seeing as only God could have implanted the idea of God into him that it must be innate. This is a counter to Locke’s argument but I feel it is a poor one as the premises are not certainly true they are based on falsehoods especially ones about God being the perfect being; that just depends what you believe.
He is almost certainly sure that no God exists, but says that he would change this view if he were confronted with empirical evidence that suggested otherwise. However, Dawkins’s declaration that he is not a fundamentalist could be questioned by examining other parts of his book. Dawkins seems to focus more on the evidence that religion lacks opposed to the evidence that his evidence-based worldview contains. He also holds Darwinism in a very high esteem. One might say that Dawkins’s view of Darwinism is a strict set of basic ideas and principles, embodying the definition of fundamentalism.
Similarly, information that is heard repeatedly is sometimes believed to be truth. Knowledge gained by tenacity is things that people consider to be the truth regardless of compelling evidence to the contrary (Jackson, 2009). Rational knowledge is gained when people use logical reasoning to arrive at truth (Jackson, 2009). Logically sound ideas are applied in a precise manner, but ideas that are logically sound are not necessarily accurate. Rational knowledge is often derived from syllogisms.
It does not prove God’s existence; it argues that there must be a necessary being which created the universe. This is consistent with some views of God, however, it is far from an all-encompassing explanation. The argument is not considered to be the end-all-be-all defense for the existence of God. However, it is a good
Anselm was attempting to prove that god existed “a priori,” or through reason alone. He argued that not everyone needed a personal experience with God to believe in him – God’s existence was a logical conclusion if you thought the argument through. Specifically Anselm aimed his argument at “The Fool.” This does not refer to any
There is said to be no compelling rational argument to be found either against or for the existence of God, but James believed there to be some sort of God for everyone because he studied the effects of people involved in religion and people who were not. He referred to them as “healthy minded” and “morbid minded,” these are people who are either positive about life or negative about their life. James claimed that we judge the truth of religious ideas by what he referred to as, “immediate luminousness,” or philosophical reasonableness and moral helpfulness as the only available criteria. He said that religious faith is important and meaningful on pragmatic grounds: Its presence or absence makes a clearly observable, practical, and concrete difference in our lives