Arguments For The Existence Of God

In the bible, it says that “Fools say in their hearts, "There is no God” (Psalms 14:1). Anselm's reflection to this has become known as the Ontological Argument. Anselm defines God by saying God is that “which nothing greater can be conceived.” One way to interpret this phrase is to define “God” as maximal perfection, i.e. the greatest possible being. Anselm justifies his argument by using the idea of a painter. When a painter first knows of what it is he or she wants to accomplish, they have it in their understanding but does not yet understand it to exist. They don’t understand it to exist because they have yet to construct their painting. He is trying to say that there is a difference between saying that something actually exists in my mind and saying that I believe that something actually exists. when you hear the word square, you picture a square, or when you hear the word circle, you picture a circle. Anselm argued when humans hear the word God, they think Supreme Being. When I hear the word “God,” I recognize a God that I know from my personal experiences, but I also know that this God of mine is also working through the lives of everyone, not just mine. He has an intimate oneness with all of us, even if we don’t recognize or know it. I don’t think the God I know of is worried about whether people are religious or not. I think this God is interested in exploring experience, through us.

In the article, “The Five Ways,” from Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas argues whether God exists, which

This argument for God’s existence was developed by the twelfth century theologian and philosopher, Anselm. It is based on Anselm’s declaration that God is “that which nothing greater can be conceived.”

that we could have eternal life. Without God, there would be no world because he is the creator of everything. God is omniscient or all – knowing. He is the Alpha and the Omega and knows the beginning from the end. God is sovereign which expresses the fact that nothing is beyond his ultimate interest, control, and authority. God is full of goodness which can be expressed through holiness and love. God’s holiness emphasizes his absolute righteousness, and his love which will not abandon us in times of need.

exists and his idea of what a perfect being is, such as God, then God exists.

Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica represents one of the most famous attempts to prove God's existence. Aquinas wrote at a time in which people began to develop skepticism concerning the existence of God. In this regard, it is instructive to position Aquinas

Anselm believed in a perfect being theology, and support for premise one resides within Anselm's Principle of God's Necessary Perfection (Marenbon 121). A being 'that which nothing greater can be conceived' is by definition the greatest being, or most perfect being, possible. He uses the idea that 'that which nothing greater can be conceived' exists in someone's mind as a starting point, and seeks to build upon this foundation to show that God necessarily exists in reality as well. If it could not be conceived in one's understanding, then as far as this argument is concerned, it couldn't be shown to exist in reality as well.

As a theologian and philosopher, Saint Anselm strove to prove the existence of God in reality. The bulk of his argument is found in Chapter II of Proslogium.

The third argument Aquinas makes is that of possibility and necessity. This argument holds that everything in this world has possibility to be and not to be. If there is the possibility that everything at one time or another cannot be, then at one time there was nothing, because everything that could have been, wasn 't^(et if there was nothing at one time, then there was nothing that could be^and so there would still be nothing. Therefore, there had to be something that existed to cause all the possibilities

He thus argues that the universe must be directed by an external intelligent being, and that is God. Through his fifth way, Aquinas clearly demonstrates design qua regularity and thus, the existence of

Anselm understood god and beings, not necessarily from a logical or materialistic point of view but from the revelation he received from his devotion to God. He thought that all things living were perfect within themselves and that was proof enough for a God. He rationalizes that if we imagine two identical objects one exists and the other did not, then the one which exist is more perfect (Roca and Schuh 150). He concludes that existence makes something perfect.

However, nothing can be imagined greater or more perfect than God. So therefore Anselm believes, God must exist in every possible world.

Man is the very proof that God exists. Because man is imbued with a thinking mind that realizes that he gets all his powers, best of all his thinking mind, from his idea of God, then it is impossible for man not to realize that what he perceives of God clearly and distinctly in his mind is a reality, and that reality is the existence of God, a perfect being who can never deceive because by His perfect Being, God is free of defects. God, as a perfect being, is incapable of fraud and deception, two things that are caused by defects. God's existence is manifested in the way man is able to use his thinking powers to accept his limitations, and at the same time realize that someone greater than man has endowed man with the powers to think and discern clearly and distinctly the idea of a Supreme Being.

In the Prologion, Anselm argues that God exists, otherwise known as the ontological argument. Anselm believes that “there is no doubt that something than which a greater cannot be thought exists both in the understanding and in reality (Anselm, Proslogion, 7).” In other words, we cannot imagine something that is able to be greater than God; it would be a contradiction to think being greater than the greatest possible being that can be thought of. A number of philosophers do not agree with Anselm’s argument, such as Gaunilo, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant. However, despite these arguments against him, Anselm’s argument is still valid.

I begin with the constructs of Anselm. The ontological, or a priori, argument was first expressed in 1070 by Anselm. He argued that because we have a notion of an all-perfect being "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" – It must be God. Anselm regarded God as a being one who enjoys all conceivable perfection. Yet if God "existed" only as an idea in our awareness, then God would be less perfect than if He in fact existed. Therefore God had to be greater than what our finite minds have ability to conceive so as not to contradict the definition of God.