Is There Good Evidence for or Against the Existence of God?

1. The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God is based on the principle of cause and effect. What this basically means is that the universe was the effect of a cause, which was God. One of the oldest and most well known advocates of the Cosmological Argument was Thomas Aquinas who outlines his argument for the existence of God in his article entitled The Five Ways. The first way in his argument is deals with motion. Aquinas says that in order for something to be in motion something had to move it because it is impossible for something to move without the presence of some sort of outside force upon it. Therefore the world around us, nature, and our very existence could not have been put into motion without the influence of the

Some of the three major arguments for the existence of God are cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments. Cosmological argument is the reasoning that the being of the universe is powerful proof for the existence of a God who made it. There are two main forms of cosmological argument, the modal and temporal. Modal cosmological argument, also known as the argument from contingency, recommends that because the world may not have existed, we then need some clarification of why it does exist. When there is more than one likelihood, something has to decide which of the possibilities is understood clearly. Therefore the world is contingent, because there has to be a logical reason for its existence. This form of argument also claims that the only type of existence that doesn’t need any clarification is a being that does not failed to exist such as God. Temporal cosmological argument, also known as the Kalam argument, contends that all evidence are that there is a point in life at which the world began to exist, and that this starting must either have been caused or uncaused. The cosmological argument used by Aquinas declares that since nothing originates from nothing. Therefore the world must have been brought into reality by something outside it, which can be called "God".

god. The fifth and final argument argues that because we give things with no purpose or “lack of knowledge” a purpose, there is a god for there must have been a thing which directed a being with the intelligence to utilize a thing with none and this direction being given by god. Aquinas then ends his claim with a rebuttal to his previous objections he list in the beginning of the article. Here he uses a more direct approach of supporting his claim. The argument of “why is there evil if there is a god?”, is shot down by the philosopher in a romantic way. Aquinas goes on to rebuttal that god in fact does not allow evil and all evil will eventually produce good simply because god does not allow evil. He finishes the article with a last rebuttal of the causation of nature. He claims that because the causation for this is unreachable it must be traced back to god. Aquinas structures his arguments using the socratic method, giving broad claims that many would support forcing them to then except his conclusions for his five arguments for if you were to disagree then you would then be contradicting

The arguments made by Aquinas at first seem to be powerful. However, when examining and taking a closer look the arguments don’t seem to be as

     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.

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.”

The Cosmological Argument attempts to prove that God exists by showing that there cannot be an infinite number of regressions of causes to things that exist. It states that there must be a final uncaused-cause of all things. This uncaused-cause is asserted to be God. Arguments like this are thought up to recognize why we and the universe exist.

Therefore, it is more believable that the universe had a beginning and a personal creator. The third of Aquinas' ways is the argument of contingency. The world consists of contingent items- items that have a property are items referred to as 'being.' These items are generated and perish; they have a beginning and an end.

Frederick Copleston was a priest, and historian of philosophy who supported Aquinas’ rejection of infinite regress. Copleston reformulated the argument by concentrating on contingency, which he discussed in depth during a radio debate with Bertrand Russell in 1947. Copleston, like Aquinas, argued that there are things in the universe which are contingent, for example, us – we would not have existed if our parents had not met. All things in the world are similar to this, nothing in the world is self-explanatory, and everything depends on something else for its existence. Therefore, we are forced to search for an external explanation. The explanation must lead us to a cause which is self explanatory, i.e. one which contains within itself, the reason for its own existence – a necessary being. The conclusion must be God. Copleston argues that if we don’t accept the existence of an ‘unmoved mover’, like Aquinas suggested, there is no explanation for the universe at all. Copleston believes the universe is gratuitous without a first cause, because without an explanation, nothing has meaning – “Everything is gratuitous. This garden, this city, and myself; when you suddenly realise it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift… that’s nausea”.

But there is a distinction drawn between the universe and God is that the universe has a beginning in time. Everything that has a beginning in time, the kalam cosmological argument claims, has a cause of its existence. The uncaused existence of God, who does not have a beginning in time, is consistent with it ’s claim.

Choose any 3 of the 5 ways and, in your own words, thoroughly explain the premises of the argument. Then explain how these proofs are consistent with Aquinas’ epistemology. One of the arguments that will be discussed in this paper is the Argument for Motion and Change. According to the Summa Theologiae, there is no possible way that God could exist on this Earth because he, first and foremost, would not have created all the evil that is present in this world and, second, everything that exists in the world originates from concepts and ideas, but not necessarily from God.

St. Thomas' first proof is based on the argument of motion. By our natural senses, we know that the earth and the universe are always in motion. However for Aquinas, the term motion did not just mean physical motion but also change as in change from potential to actuality. He reasoned that all change is the result of a cause and as such nothing can move or change itself. He also noted that the sequence of motion cannot be traced back infinitely and so there must be a first mover who is unmovable and that being is God.

The philosophical arguments presented in this document are not of religious text, nor scientific observation or established fact. Rather the premise of this God proof is bring together and share the various theories on which other God proofs have established foundations. I have heard it quoted that “Philosophy goes where hard science can 't, or won 't. Philosophers have a license to.” Therefore, with this in mind, I attest that it is more than problematic to construct an argument authenticating the unequivocal proof of the existence God. If nothing else this may be food for thought.

I will be writing about St. Thomas Aquinas’s “Five ways” and William Paley’s “Teleological argument”. I will be looking into the difference between the two philosophers who both believe in God but have two different approaches on how they can both prove that God does exist. I would like to look deeper into the difference between the two and to see whose theory of Gods existence is more logical with the least arguments. I will be looking at two of Aquinas’s laws two and five,

According to Newton’s law F = ma, an object will remain in motion until acted onto by a outside force. This law portrays the flaw in Aquinas’s argument of motion as it is not able to prove that an object needs to be acted upon another object for motion. A counter example which can be presented against the stand which I have taken would be any inanimate object such as a phone can only be moved if encountering a secondary force. But, in larger terms, this does not hold, as the universe example is still not valid for Aquinas’s law of motion. The second argument described by Aquinas is similar to the first argument but deals with causality. Aquinas described this argument in terms of events where one event is caused by another. A perfect example of this is the birth of a human being is caused by a relationship between two individuals; one event causes another. My belief is that the second argument of causality formulates a weakness of not being able to explain the proposition from the conclusion. The second way states that there is an entity that causes the first event, which is God, but Sober says it does guarantee that God exists. I believe God to exhibit the properties of omnipotence, omniscience and