Paley believed that no one else would have been intelligent enough to create the order and complexity of the universe. Aquinas also argues the point that the order and purpose of the world proves that there must be a designer behind it. He believed that God was the answer to the unexplainable and that all natural bodies act for an end. An example for
Taking Aristotle’s prime mover that exists outside of space and time and therefore cannot have any matter and so can’t run does this mean that we are better than God by being able to do something he cannot. Therefore God isn’t omnipotent. Even in the presence of such difficulties Rene Descartes holds the view that God can do everything; following the definition that omnipotence is a kind of
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.
Since nothing can move of its own accord, and nothing can change itself, there had to be something else which has no cause and had the ability to initiate the Universe. Aquinas said that this entity without a cause and the power to create a Universe had to be an ‘Unmoved Mover/ Prime Mover’. He surmised that this Prime Mover had to be God. This argument has some positive points, in the fact that the natural occurrence of movement plus change have been brought into it, which makes the argument seem valid and plausible. However,
Premise one, is that an empirical fact (a source of knowledge acquired by observation) exists, this premise proves itself true, in that almost all knowledge is acquired through observation. Premise two states that something cannot be the cause of itself, meaning that something cannot make itself exist; just as trees exist because a seed was planted or a rock is created from a volcano. Premise three tells us that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes for something, this means that through reasoning there is an explanation for the cause. Based on these premises, our conclusion that God exists makes sense. Saint Thomas’s argument for the existence of god is a valid one; this is because there are no false premises.
These arguments never get to any particular God. They have all established that the existence can be described by itself; none of this even implies a deity, or a universal consciousness. When you start by rejecting the presumption of a God, all the arguments fall flat on their face. What these three arguments are, are thesis trying to defend the indefensible. 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.
Explain how Descartes developed Anselm’s argument that God’s existence is necessary Firstly, if we briefly look at Anselm and his ontological argument, which appears to be a priori proof of God’s existence. Anselm writes, “we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived”, this meaning that we all have the belief that there is a perfect being, a being which cannot be improved upon. Anselm uses God as this being. In the first form of Anselm’s argument, he says that if God wasn’t real, if he only existed in the mind (as an idea), then a greater being could be imagined to exist both in the mind and in reality. That being would be greater than God.
But because it’s impossible to conceive a greater being that God he must exist in both reality and our minds. In Anselm’s view only a fool can therefore doubt the existence of God, because the ‘fool’ has the idea of God in their mind to doubt him,
in order to be valid it has to be deductive in order to be sound it has to be valid. premises must be true in our world with no changes for the argument. if the premises can be made true and the conclusion is true it's valid soundness is a further feature of validity. jackson reading- the mind is above the physical.it has to be experienced 1. Darwins dangerous idea was that he asked the question who created life, and his response was that no one did which in it's nature denies the supernatural explanation of the universe.
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.