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
Anselm wrote the book ‘Prologion’ in which is his ontological argument, he suggests one main way in which the existence of God can be ‘demonstrated’ to people. Anselm starts off by contemplating the Psalm 14:1 which says “There is no God” this is what made him create an argument for the possible existence of a God. Anselm has two closely related ontological arguments in his first argument he suggests that something that exists both in the mind and in reality is the greatest possible being as it is greater than something which resides in only the mind or only reality. He said that God must be the greatest possible being able to reside in both the mind and reality but to be the greatest being he must exist in both therefore he does. Anselm’s argument is a rebuttal to any ‘fool’ that says there is no God and this was Anselm’s starting point.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Anselm displays his argument in two parts, the first part being based on a deductive argument; if the premise is true then the conclusion is also true, it claims that existence is greater than non-existence. The second part of the argument claims that necessity is greater than contingency. From this Anselm came to the conclusion that God must exist In Proslogion 2, Anselm claims that existence is greater than non-existence. According to Anselm “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived” God is greater than any being a human can imagine, there is nothing that can be greater than God. Following that, Anselm gave an example of a painter and his painting, this example went on to prove that existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind, if the painter imagines the painting in his mind, it will not be as great as the painting that will exist in reality when he paints it.
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.