According to him, there must be as much reality or perfection in the cause of anything as in the effect. Moreover, he believed that the notion of God represents something so ideal that he could not have been the cause of this idea. I believe that Descartes arguments are not really such convincing because of the following reasons which I would like to point out. We may all come to this point and consider that we all exist; however, it’s not completely true because Descartes had an idea of the perfect being in his mind, but I surely don't have such an idea. Now what am I to believe?
He then goes on to say that it is always greater to exist in reality (in re) than just in the mind (in intellectu). The last part logically concludes that if there is no greater being than God, then God must exist in both the mind and reality. If God was to only exist in in our thoughts and not in reality then we would be able to think of a greater being, e.g. the prime minister because he exists in both reality and our minds. But because it’s impossible to conceive a greater being that God he must exist in both reality and our minds.
If God breaks this, then he is not being omnibenevolent (all good), which is another of his attributes. However lust is far from morally right, so God cannot experience it. Leading on from that, since God is confined to being morally perfect, he has no choice whether he is or not, he can’t be omnipotent. Another aspect of this argument is can God fear? We are either scared of the unknown (e.g death) or something more powerful than ourselves (e.g lions).
He also says there are a chain of causes and effects leading back to the beginning of the Universe. He did not believe in infinite regress, and so, for him, there had to be a first cause, and that first cause has to be God. Aquinas’ Cosmological argument has many positive points which could be used to prove the existence of God, and his argument is both logical and convincing. However, I believe there are some major flaws within it, and I hope to use these flaws to show that Aquinas’ Cosmological argument does not prove the existence of a God. The first point to Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological argument is about Motion.
He states that for the fool to say that there ‘is no God’ the fool has to have an idea of what God is in their minds. Anselm puts forward that the definition that in the mind of God is the ‘greatest possible being’ therefore making him the greatest possible being that can be conceived. He then points out that it is greater to exist in reality than in the mind alone. An example of this is Santa clause; people are able to discuss the idea of him and give a description of what he does but just because we are able to discuss him it does not mean he exists. To Anselm the most important factors is being able to exist in reality as well as in the mind this therefore makes it greater than just being an idea of the mind.
So when we say ’God is good’, we need to know that we are using ’good’ in that sentence. In univocal terms this would be claiming that God is good in some way that humans are, Aquinas rejected this as he believed God to be perfect. Because of this, imperfect humans can’t be good in the same way that God is. In equivocal terms, this would mean that God is good in a totally different way to humans, Aquinas rejected that too. He argued that if people speak equivocally about God, then it cannot profess to know anything about him as it is saying that the language we use to describe humans or the experienced world around us, doesn’t apply to God.
One could argue that the logical positivists were unsuccessful in arguing that religious language is meaningless because the verification principle has many weaknesses. For example Strong verification is not possible to talk meaningfully about history as no self- observation can confirm historical events. Swinburne stated that strong verification excludes all types of universal statements as there may be a random event that occurs that may mean that this cannot be verified. However, A.J Ayer developed a solution for this which is the weak verification principle. This form of the principle allows for statements to have meaning if the means to which a statement can be verified are known.
Second, he asks the following question, if God created evil and goodness, why can he simply make evil disappear? In a conclusion taken from the Euthyphro dilemma, this question demonstrates a limitation in God’s power, which is indicating a mayor flaw in the Divine Command Theory. Because the Divine Command Theory is based on faith, Mortimer, the main proponent of this theory, could find difficult to respond to John Arthur’s arguments. In other words, faith does not have a scientific explanation which makes it hard to be understood by some individuals. But one of Mortimer’s strongest arguments could be that the DCT is the only theory that explains and distinguishes between right and wrong in a simple and clear
defining God as maximal perfection, there literally cannot be anything greater than God as God is the greatest thing that can possibly exist. If the ontological argument proves that God exists, then it basically does so without question regardless of what someone would wish to call such a being of maximal perfection. This then leads to the point that if someone was rational why should they be reluctant to call such a being ‘God’ or even why God wouldn’t be the greatest possible being there is. When defining God as the greatest possible being, it does raise a few questions and arguments when stating such a strong statement. One of these is it has been significantly more of a challenge to demonstrate that God is not possible.
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.