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.
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’.
Can the conception of God simply be universally acknowledged and accepted by everyone, everywhere? If there is conception of God, then the idea of God should exist. The initial presentation states, “you who grant understanding to faith, grant that, insofar as you know it is useful for me, I may understand that you exist as we believe you exist, and that you are what we believe you to be.”(Encountering the Real Faith and Philosophical Enquiry; “Anselms Ontological Argument” – St. Anselm, pg. 139). It is always difficult to understand and comprehend for anything to exist realistically.
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.
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
Teleological Even though there were five ways written to prove the existence of god, only three are key to the cosmological argument that was originally thought of by Aristotle who was an ancient Greek philosopher, to deal with the idea of flux (change). The first way that Aquinas suggests is that there is a god and this is because an object can only move when external force is applied, for example a person pushing a tin over, this tin will only move if someone applies force to it, and Aquinas believes that if you follow these forces back far enough you will reach a Prime mover, as he believed that the movements of change cannot go back to infinity so there must be a prime mover, and that prime mover must be god. The second way thought up by Aquinas is the concept of an unmoved causer. This unmoved causer is there to suggest that nothing in this world can cause itself and we were all caused by something and everything around us was caused by something. Whether that being our parents or people that make everyday objects that we see around us.
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.
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
The concept of God as omnipotent means God has the unlimited power to accomplish anything that can be accomplished. The things God does are neither difficult nor easy for God; they are only either done or not done. ...read more. Middle Omnipresence; this theological term means âalways present.â Since God is infinite, His being knows no boundaries. So, clearly He is everywhere.
According to St. Anselm in his ontological argument, he describes God as an idea or concept of which nothing greater can be conceived (Living Issues in Philosophy, page 388). In this he guides thought by arguing “If the most perfect being existed only in thought and not in reality, then it would not really be the most perfect being. One that exists in the mind and in reality would be more perfect.” Anselm concludes his theory with “no one who understands what God is; can conceive that God does not exist. (A. J. Hoober). Existence is a part of perfection.