The Existence of God: Theories of Thomas Aquinas, St. Anselm, and William Paley
The three readings that form the basis of this essay all deal with the existence of a God, something that which nothing greater can be conceived and cannot be conceived not to exist. The three readings include: Thomas Aquinas, St. Anselm, and William Paley.
First let us start with Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican Monk (1225-1274) who is considered by many to be the greatest theologian in Western religion.
Aquanis writes of two opposite theories with reasons for the non- existence of God and then for the existence of God. He starts off with his views for the non-existence of God relating this through two objections. In the first of the two he defines God as infinite goodness and goes on the say that if God truly existed, there would be no evil. Since evil does exist in the world, there must therefore be no God.
I agree with this reasoning, for how could God, a being of infinite goodness create and care for a world of non-perfection and corruption. I have always questioned, as I am sure we all have, how, if there is a God, he could allow such terrible things to occur as they do in today's world: The starving in
Third World Countries, the destructiveness of war, and especially the anguish of losing a loved one.
In the Bible, a book meant to be the word of God, condemns such things as murder, adultery and theft. I find it hard to believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing, infinitely-good being that "created" this world and everything in it would allow any of these things to occur. He would not only condemn them in an ancient book, but abolish them altogether along with any other things evil.
If God is supposed to be the "heavenly father" wouldn't he want and impose onto his children his goodness and weed out all evil?
Aquinas also shows this non-existence through Objective 2 where he writes how it is expecting too much for something that can be accounted for be a few principles has been produced by many. There are other principles that can account for everything we see in our world supposing God did not exist. All things can be reduced to one principle, that of nature and therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
Once more I agree with his rationale of this subject, for it is logical to believe in a simple, visible, measurable concept such as the principle of
When it comes to choosing an argument for the existence of god I believe that Paley’s argument of creation and design is the best for proving that god does exist. In his argument Paley is suggesting that if we were to look at the world around us, we could easily come to the conclusion that it was not created by pure chance but, by a creator (a designer). Paley uses a watch and a rock in order to explain his argument. He mentions how if there was a watch on the floor and we have never seen it before, we would easily come to the conclusion that the watch could not have been made by pure chance but, some kind of intelligent design was put into it. He argues that when we look at the rock we do not so easily see the design, but it does not mean
In conclusion, I suggest that there is a big difference between saying, "God can't do X and be consistent", and, "I don't know how God can do X and be consistent." As common sense suggests, ignorance of a solution does not take away from that solution's existence. Soli Deo gloria.
Leibniz (1686), for example, argued that only physical events could cause physical events and only mental events could cause mental events. Fortunately, he thought, God has arranged physical events and mental events into a pre-established harmony so that given sequences of mental and physical events unfailingly accompany each other ("parallelism"). Co...
he has done. It does not seem logical that if we can`t help ourselves for choosing to do something
Aquinas' Arguments for the Existence of God In Summa Theologica, Question 2, Article 3, Aquinas attempts to prove the existence of God. He begins with two objections, which will not be addressed here, and continues on to state five arguments for the existence of God. I intend to show that Aquinas' first three arguments are unsound from a scientific standpoint, through support of the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe. In the first and second arguments Aquinas begins by stating that some things change and that the changes to these things are caused by things other than themselves. He says that a thing can change only if it has a potentiality for being that into what it changes.
happening to him is not what the “real” God would do. He starts to question why God is letting
There are many causes to hunger in Africa and other developing countries some include; weather conditions, poor agriculture, limited resources, natural disasters, and economy. (Robbins, 2012). The hungry people are not censurable. Hunger isn’t just the issue, the gist of the issue in its self, is economy. Close to one billion people live in deep penury, in the world today. (Robbins, 2012). If you don’t have money then you don’t have food, it is as simple as that. Poverty, food prices, and hunger are inextricably linked (Anderson, 2007). So the real question is; how can poverty be solved to stop hunger? One sixth of the world does not have enough food to be healthy and active. (Robbins, 2002). It takes 30 billion dollars to feed the hungry for a year. (Boren Project, 2013). If every person in the United States gave ten cents, world hunger could be stopped for a whole year. (Boren Project, 2013 and USC, 2014). Eve...
Furthermore, God had no free will in creating the universe, (from Cor. 1 Pr. 32, p.142 as
1) Oxford Readings in Philosophy. The Concept of God. New York: Oxford University press 1987
A fascination of the human race is discovering how the universe, everyone, and everything came into being. Many scientist and theologians have studied this topic for centuries and looking back at some of the earlier arguments will show key insights in proving Gods existence. One of the best sources we have on the subject of Gods existence in the catholic theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas.
“(LPE1) According to Christian theism, God is perfectly good and, thus, wills to prevent evil.
Rene Descartes was born in La Haye in France in March 31, 1596. He was a mathematician, an scientific thinker, and an meta-physician. Descartes was the first major philosopher in the modern era. His views about knowledge, certainty, and relationship between mind and body have been very influential. Being a devout Catholic, Descartes, undeniably believed in God. He believed that the existence of God could be proved via reason. In this paper I will discuss what Descartes provided as a proof for existence of God.
there is a God he should be able to prevent future evil in the world
The presence of a Supreme Being is an idea that is as old as mankind. We see the argument for an omnipotent being replicated throughout time by philosophers, leaders, and moral educators. They each have unique ideals and testimonies that provide evidence of a being with moral perfection. Proof there is belief that there is a Supreme Being or God can be exemplified by looking at the ideals of three past philosophers: St. Anselm and Thomas Aquinas
World Hunger The persistence of hunger in a world of plenty is immoral. In a world of 5 billion people, more than 1 billion are desperately poor and face food insecurity. 800 million are chronically malnourished. Every day, 35,000 children under age five (14 million a year) die of malnutrition and related preventable diseases. Millions more become blind, retarded or suffer other disabilities that impair functioning for lack of vitamins and minerals (micro-nutrients), robbing the human community of valuable gifts and talents. Hunger increases pressures that lead to a growing tide of refugees and migrants. Hunger and poverty are at the base of much political turmoil and armed conflict.