Proofs for God’s Existence Essay

graven images costence erect be proven in a multitude of ways. However, several antecedent caveats are in order. First, by God, we mean the traditional Christian archetype of an tot every(prenominal)y-powerful and wise creator. Second, the project of proving anything is logic or experience is nearly impossible. Even the best laid logical plans and the most iron clothe arguments drive out be torn to pieces by a skilled logician. much(prenominal)(prenominal) a state does non invalidate the confirmations in question, just simply that the language of the discipline is such that any logical design can be manipulated and refuted by 1 who ardently desires it be refuted.What is being dealt with here(predicate) is that faith in the God of the Christians is non an irrational, blind faith, exactly single that is eminently agreementable and defensible on metaphysical, logical and scientific grounds. 1. The proof of Aristotle, used by Thomas Aquinas later, is the hylomorphic proof and is very of import to medieval thoughts about God and the nature of his universe of discoursely concern. The theory centers around the musical note between first, dust and outcome which, second, corresponds to action and passion, or act and potency.The bring of an object is it in act, or developing towards its natural telos, or end. The matter is passive, that which has non being, that which still carrys to be developed. save the nature of accreditedity is such that as ace rises in knowledge, the human body dominates over the matter. Mathematics, for example, is almost sheerly fake, with lone(prenominal) a minuscule amount of stuff stuff. But what is the stem of such things? Only the institution of pure form, and hence, pure act, that is, God.God is pure act, pure perfection with no more need for development. It is the form of Forms that renders still knowledge possible. The matter within its formal shell is not nly passive, but accidental, in that it is save the generator of sensations, colors, etcetera But such things cannot live on without a substratum (thither is no red, without it being a red something), and hence, form is the object of knowledge, not the matter, or the accident of the object. But knowledge only sees form, never matter.Matter might present form in the guise of a sensate object, but logical and mathematics does not grow this way, these are separated from matter. Hence, the more universal the knowledge, the less matter. Hence, the ultimately form of knowledge is Pure form, hence God (Owens, 1980 20-25). 2. Similarly, the proof of St. Augustine from the point of cipher of unchanging truth. Any such unchanging truth mustinessiness earn a effort. The truths of mathematics or logic never change unheeding of time or place, and hence, there must be an entity in existence who could accept brought such a introduction into being.Such an entity must never change or alter its being in any way, and hence, must be perfect (the only need for change is to improve, if no need for change, then(prenominal) there is no need for improvement). Therefore, God exists (Augustine, 1996 19). 3. In toll of scientific proof, there is the entire question of natural law. The world is held in concert by a series of laws that never seem to change. They are well- request and can be seen throughout nature, from its macro to its micro level.The sensate helping of nature, logic altogethery, is anterior to the laws that allow it to exist. Hence, the laws of nature had to restrain come first, and are the form within which the sensate billet of nature functions. Hence, an entity must exist that is unfastened of creating natural laws within which all created being can function in a regular and logical manner. Only God can be the cause of such things (Copleston, . 2006, 518). 4. The Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyev uses the critique of nominalism to prove the existence of God in his Lectures on Godmanhood .First, the idea of empiricism is faulty since no real individuals exist (only God has this quality, but this is putting the cart before the horse). The objects seen in daily experience are themselves not particulars, but universals, ultimately reducible to pulses of energy. Force is the ultimate reality of being in terms of metaphysics. Hence, the falsifiable approach to the world is arbitrary, since the particulars we take for granted are in event huge and complex collections of force and energy that appear to the senses as colors, sounds, textures, etc.Hence, energy is the source of being, and hence, retain the ontological status as universals. But this can not be sufficient, since the universal nature of forces must be accounted for. And this accounting can only be an entity powerful enough to view as first created these forces that ultimately would register in human senses as objects, plainly solid and singular, but in truth, complex and made up of universals (and in fact, representing universals in themselves).But this ultimately spiritual reality must have an equally spiritual cause, that is God. In other words, as the empirical qualities of objects exist only in the mind, the ultimate reality of the world is to be ready in universals, and hence, the world of spirit. But all spiritual objects must have a cause that is equally creative and powerful (Solovyev, 1948 60-63). 5. de de de Spinozas concept of God is slightly different from the Christian view, but not entirely dissimilar.Spinoza argues for a single entity, meat, that is the ultimate basis for all sensate objects. Substance is God, the ultimate basis (avoiding the word cause here) for all change and movement. Logically, there is only one ultimate Substance since there is no real reason for positing and more than one entity that, itself, can carry through all change, but is not available to the senses. Spinozas Substance is not something that can be apprehended by senses, but only by the m ind, and hence, is a spiritual being.While many writers have humiliated their backs trying to hold that nature is God for Spinoza, there is no reason to hold this God is what is behind nature and is the ultimate basis for all being. Spinoza is not a pantheist, as nearly all commentators hold. Spinoza held that all change needs a basis, something that does not change. That which we see as changing is the modes of existence, the sensate objects in space and time (or mind and body). totally of these sensate things can be reduced to that which is extended and that which is mental, ultimately one thing seen from two different points of view.But these two are alone two available modes for human comprehension of an infinite object that never changes, but is at the root of change, its basis, and that is Substance, or God, an infinite being who lies at the root of all change and the laws that govern change. It itself, does not change, but contains infinite attributes that only appear inc ompletely to human beings under two attributes only. Spinoza does not hold that there needs to be a cause of all things, but he does hold that there needs to be a basis of all things, that this is God (Della Rocca, 2008, 42-48)6. The last proof or vision of God is to be found in Apostolos Makrakis, the little know 19th century Greek metaphysician. He was a Christian rationalist who held that Descartes butchered his own method. Makrakis holds that one can begin with Descartes ontological doubt. But the shoemakers last to this doubt, cogito ergo sum, is an arbitrary end point. When I engage in methodological doubt, I come up with several conclusions first, the sceptic exists, second, that the doubter is not the cause of his own existence, and third, that God exists unavoidably.All of this derives from the single act of experience it is the true unpacking of the cogito. Since if the cogito is true, than the other propositions are equally true at the alike(p) time, known intuitive ly. Since the cogito is not self-created, then the outside world and God must exist necessarily in the homogeneous act of cognition as the original cogito. If one must strip away the outside world in order to reach the cogito, than the outside world is real, since in removing it, one reaches the truth of existence. The outside world cannot be a phantom then, if the doubter is not self-created.Something needed to have created and sustained the doubter, and this is as certain as the cogito itself. But since that outside world itself is not self-created (in other words, that the outside world does not know itself through itself, but through another), than God necessarily exists, and again, as true as the cogito itself. Hence, the cogito really says I exist, the outside world exists, God exists, all at the same time all in the same act of cognition since the cogito itself implies it (Makrakis, 1956, 42-43).Again, none of these proofs are final, but the same can be said for all logic an d science. But these do who that reason assents to the existence of God as infinite and all powerful. Spinozas approach is the most interesting, since it is compatible with mechanistic science, but holds that such science necessarily needs a basis for action, and this is Substance. The argument 3 above is also very difficult to refute, since one cannot hold to an ordered universe without holding to natural law, and if that, than the cause of natural law itself.If that is denied, then one is in the unenviable position of trying to argue that the material objects of nature can and did exist without a law to govern their actions. Hence, growing is impossible. Natural laws (and a lawgiver) had to be before the actual sensate part of creation. But this, in an odd way, is very similar to the argument of Spinoza. It seems that science itself cannot function without recognizing natural law and its a priori existence with reward to the objects of science themselves.BibliographyOwens, Josep h (1980) Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God. SUNY Press Augustine (1996) On The Free Choice of the Will Readings in Medieval philosophy. Ed. Andrew Schoedinger. Oxford. 3-24 Copleston, Frederick (2006) History of Philosophy Medieval Philosophy. Continuum International. Solovyev, Vladimir (1948) Lectures on Godmanhood. Lindisfarne Press (this is sometimes called Lectures on Divine Humanity) Della Rocca, Michael (2008) Spinoza. Taylor and Francis Makrakis, Apostolos (1956) The point of Life. in Foundations of Philosophy. Chicago, OCES. 1-104