Aquinas' Arguments for the Existence of God Essay

Yet if there was nothing at one time, then there was nothing that could be, and

Descartes’s mission in the meditations was to doubt everything and that what remained from his doubting could be considered the truth. This lead Descartes to argue for the existence of God. For the purpose of this paper, I will first discuss Descartes’s argument for the existence of God. I will then take issue with Descartes’s argument first with his view on formal reality and varying levels of reality, then with his argument that only God can cause the idea of God. I will then conclude with

Three Arguments for the Existence of God Many people debate about God’s existence. There are three arguments Christians use to prove God exists. These three arguments are the cause and effect, the design, and the moral arguments. Each argument shows a different piece of evidence for the existence of God. The Bible also gives evidence of God’s existence.

     Aquinas’ third way argument states that there has to be something that must exist, which is most likely God. He starts his argument by saying not everything must exist, because things are born and die every single day. By stating this we can jump to the conclusion that if everything need not exist then there would have been a time where there was nothing. But, he goes on, if there was a time when there was nothing, then nothing would exist even today, because something cannot come from nothing. However, our observations tell us that something does exist, therefore there is something that must exist, and Aquinas says that something is God.

Scientific reasoning has brought humanity to incredibly high levels of sophistication in all realms of knowledge. For Saint Thomas Aquinas, his passion involved the scientific reasoning of God. The existence, simplicity and will of God are simply a few topics which Aquinas explores in the Summa Theologica. Through arguments entailing these particular topics, Aquinas forms an argument that God has the ability of knowing and willing this particular world of contingent beings. The contrasting nature of necessary beings and contingent beings is at the heart of this debate.

After reading Article 1, Aquinas for Armchair Theologians by Timothy M. Renick most can automatically acquire that Thomas Aquinas was a very influential thinker amongst others when explaining his theological views. His religious views may have differed from others during his time, however, it did influence and encourage others on the different topics of God vs. Satan, and why God has not all the answers, and powers when making sure every human being should not face evil. Aquinas believed that Christians needed to view their basic beliefs in another way to make sense of their own faith when questioning all that God did for each individual. The real question to all this, which a lot of people even question today is “Why is their evil in the World?”

Sir Thomas Aquinas and William Paley present two arguments for the existence of God. Aquinas defines God as omnibenevolent (all good) for his argument, and he continues in “The Five Ways” to present arguments to prove God’s existence (Rosen et al. 11). Paley, on the other hand, primarily defines God as a designer worthy of our admiration for his work (Rosen et al. 27). During class discussion, defining God involved three major qualities: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Both Aquinas and Paley are attempting to prove the existence of the (Christian) God associated with these qualities. Although Aquinas’s “Cosmological Argument” and Paley’s “Argument from Design” have different premises, both have a similar logical gap in their

Descartes employs what is known as an ontological argument to prove the existence of God. Saint Anselm who lived during the 11th century first formulated this type of argument. Since then it has proved popular with many philosophers including Rene` Descartes. Even though ontological arguments have lost popularity with modern philosophers there has been some recent attempts to revive them. Descartes formulation is regarded as being one of the best because it is straight forward and relatively easy to follow. It is also useful when trying to understand Descartes to keep in mind that he talks about two types of existence. There is the normal everyday existence we experience and a special type of existence which he calls, necessary

In this paper, I offer a reconstruction of Descartes argument for God’s existence in the Third Meditation. Descartes tries to prove the existence of God with an argument that proceeds from the clear and distinct idea of an infinite being to the existence of himself. He believes that his clear and distinct idea of an infinite being with infinite “objective reality” leads to the occurrence of the “Special Causal Principle”. I will start by discussing and analyzing Descartes clear and distinct idea of an infinite being and how it the classification of ideas and the difference between formal and objective reality Special Causal Principle. Finally, I will examine the reasons Descartes offers for his belief in Gods existence and I will indicate the drawbacks within the proof. It will be concluded that Descartes arguments are inadequate and don’t clearly prove the existence of God.

The existence of God has been a question since the idea of God was conceived. Descartes tries to prove Gods existence, to disprove his Evil demon theory, and to show that there is without a doubt something external to ones own existence. He is looking for a definite certainty, a foundation for which he can base all of his beliefs and know for a fact that they are true.

The existence of God has always been an arguable topic. Descartes’ however, believed that he had proof of God’s existence through an intense analysis of the mind. Throughout this paper I will discuss what he has provided as proof and some of the complications that arise throughout his argument.

Does God exist? That question has been asked by people for centuries. Christians, Jews, and Muslims would all say that God exists. They would claim that He is the creator of all things and is of a higher being than man is. Others would claim either that God does not exist or that God is not what the Christians, Jews, and Muslims say He is. Both Anselm and Aquinas address this question: Anselm in his "Proslogion" and Aquinas in his "Summa Theologica." The opinions of Anselm and Aquinas as to the nature of God are the same, although Anselm lacks the proof to back up his claims.

Question:     Briefly summarize Aquinas’ Fifth Way of proving the existence of God. What counter-argument does Hume cite in answer to this argument from Design? What is John Hick’s answer to Hume’s argument from Evil? Is he right?

In this paper I will be discussing the concept of the paradox, examples from Zeno and McTaggart, and how modern science has potential solved the paradox put forth by McTaggart. Both of these paradoxes have a enormous repercussion on how objective fact about the world can be understood. I claim that McTaggart’s theory of time can be solved by modern physics as Einstein’s theory of relativity makes time a relative factor in how time is understood.

St. Thomas Aquinas is a famous philosopher from the medieval period who believed there was a god. One of Aquinas significant works in philosophy was his argument that God exists. In Aquinas' argument, or also known as Summa Theologica, he uses five arguments to support the claim that God exist and four of them are cosmological argument. Cosmological arguments are arguments that try to reason that god exists because of the universe or cosmos leads to the conclusion that god exists. His first argument is the Argument From Motion. In the argument of motion Aquinas observed that we live in a world and universe that things are continuously moving, and he also noticed that to make something move something has to move or start it moving. To Aquinas this means that everything that is moving must have been moved by something or someone and there had to be a time when the thing wasn't moving. The mover for the beginning of everything in Aquinas' argument is God. The second argument is the Argument From Causation which is very similar to the Argument From Motion. Aquinas thoughts were that everything that is caused had to be caused by something else. Nothing can cause it's self so there must be an thing that is uncaused and to Aquinas that thing is God because it can't go back forever. The Third argument is The Argument From Contingency. Contingency is a future or thing that could have not existed and Aquinas believe that the world can't always be contingent because then it could have