Recognising this reaffirms that God is more than we can ever imagine – he is ineffable, can never be described so we cannot say what they are not. Strengths of via negativa are that it allows things to be said about God without implying that the finite (humans) can grasp the infinite (God), it also asserts the claims of revelation, that God is good and then recognises goodness to be a human word and so must be negated by saying too that God is not good to
On one hand you have the philosophers who believe you can speak and write about God, because God is reality. On the other hand, are the Logical Positivists who claim that statements about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything that is real. There are a number of philosophers who claimed to have proven conclusively that religious language is meaningful, for example Aquinas’ theory of analogy. An analogy is an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand and forming relations through attributes or relations that are similar. Aquinas rejected univocal and equivocal language when talking about God.
Anselm (1033–1109) had opposed an Ontological Argument that one understands God as a being and cannot conceive anything greater because God cannot be understood not to exist. On the other hand, another philosopher named Gaunilo objected Anselm’s Ontological Argument by suggesting that the same style of argument can be used to prove the existence of other entities, such as the idea of a greatest possible island. Although this may be the case, Anselm never got the opportunity to plead his case against Gaunilo’s objection. However, there are numerous biblical evidence to help support Anselm’s argument. Anselm’s Ontological Argument states that one understands that God, as a being, cannot be conceived a greater.
McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God. He is reminding atheists the reasons they believe that there is no God. He feels atheism is superior to theism; however; I find that his opinions only strengthen my belief that there is a God. Proof, as he states, carries no weight for a theist. He is half correct in his statement as a theist does not believe in the proofs individually, but finds enough evidence in them to form the belief that God does exist; He is the creator of the universe, and He is morally perfect.
Although, these three arguments all agree in the way that they use unfound assumptions to prove what has yet to be proven; they do disagree on the studies of how to prove what really is God. The ontological argument believes that God is a “being”. The cosmological argument believes that God is “the universe”. Then there is the design argument which needs evidence to prove that there is a God. The Ontological argument seeks to prove that God does exist by proving, that He cannot not exist.
They treated claims made about God as cognitive, meaning that the assertions made are meant to be taken as facts or universal truth claims rather than non-cognitive meaning on a personal level for believers. They believed that language was only meaningful if it was analytically or synthetically verified. Analytic statements are a priori (based on logic) and synthetic statements are a posteriori (based on empirical evidence). They created a test called verification principle to see if religious language was meaningful; Statements can only be meaningful if it can be demonstrated. One could argue that the logical positivists were unsuccessful in arguing that religious language is meaningless because the verification principle has many weaknesses.
‘The universe needs no explanation.’ Discuss. (10 marks) Christian philosopher St Thomas Aquinas would have disagreed with this statement as he was the one that put the cosmological argument forward which questions the universe and how it came into existence. Aquinas would have maintained his view as he believes that everything that is in motion has been caused by something else and he believes that this something else is God. He also claims that God is the first cause as he is the one that caused the universe to come into existence and continues to keep it in motion. He would continue to disagree with this statement because he claimed that because everything in the universe is contingent, it must mean that the universe as a whole must have a cause behind it.
Yet Berkeley, in Datta’s view, seems to employ the very notion he so adamantly denied in his endeavor to prove the existence of God. This paper will examine two criticisms that Datta lodges against Berkeley’s Arguments for God’s existence: 1) Berkeley’s illegitimate use of the notion of abstraction, and 2) Berkeley’s erroneous description of spirit as purely active. Datta approaches Berkeley from the perspective of Eastern philosophical thought and feels that Berkeley’s errors inevitably lead to either solipsism or to a single, universal cosmic spirit. Berkeley’s use of abstraction Berkeley does not address the issue of God’s existence in a formal way until late in The Principles of Human Knowledge (PHK) and the issues he does address prior to discussing God build upon one another to set the stage for his proof of God’s existence. Berkeley begins PHK with an introduction demonstrating the impossibility of abstracting the concept of matter from our ideas of objects, and indeed rejecting any form of abstraction.
Presented below will be both a brief explanation of the argument and a criticism that has been raised against the argument. The Ontological Argument was first formulated by Anslem. He begins with a reference to Psalm 14:1 (the fool hath said in his heart “there is no God”) and then presents the argument to the fool. What Anslem attempts to do with his argument is define God into existence with the use His revealed nature (ontology). Anslem starts by pointing out that God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being (something than which nothing greater can be thought) which is agreed and understood by both believers and non-believers.
The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God [Your Name] [Course] [Instructor] August 1, 2011 The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God The ontological argument is based on logic and reason and not observance of the physical world. “Deductive arguments or ‘ontological proofs’ offered for or against the existence of God claim that belief in God is either necessary or absurd from the very nature of things. If one starts with the right premises and definitions, one is led by the inexorable processes of logic toward a necessary conclusion. The problem, of course, is that the premises and definitions that theists and non-theists want to use are rarely indubitable, and like the contexts required for interpreting inductive evidence, these premises and definitions inevitably involve assumptions about God or the world which are already in line with the conclusion one wishes to draw.” (Crutcher, 2010). Onotological Argument for the Existence of God Fails St. Anselm was the first to present an ontological proof of the existence of God.