The Doctrine Of The Faith

Descartes wonders what else that he can know by using this same logic, but first must establish the idea of God and that God is not deceiving him. He reasons that God exists because he as a mortal could not create the idea of such a powerful being, and only a being as powerful as God could have caused an idea of a God that is perfect. Descartes goes on to reason that because God is perfect, then God would not deceive him about anything. It’s not that Descartes is being deceived, but rather his lack of knowledge or understanding about the matters at hand is causing the problem he is facing.

Descartes begins by distinguishing the “real and positive idea of God” from the opposite “negative idea of nothingness,” placing himself in the middle of this spectrum (99). He is finite and imperfect but, as God's creation, his nature contains nothing which itself facilitates mistakes. Since he exists between God and nothingness, however, he also “participate[s] in nothingness or non-being” (99-100). Errors of judgement, then, must stem from “nothingness,” the absolute absence of all perfection. Mistakes are not “things” resulting from an error-making faculty dependent on God, but instead lackings of a limited, fallible faculty of judgement. This answer, Descartes admits, does not fully address the problem, since a lacking is not a “pure negation” and implies that something which ought to be present is missing. Could God have failed to grant some perfection that we should possess? Descartes contrasts his own “weak and limited” nature with God's “immense, incomprehensible and infinite” nature, deeming that God's reasoning is beyond the scope of his understanding and that, feasibly, a world with errors is best when examined in its entirety

The traditional God in the Judeo-Christian tradition is known to be as an “Omni-God” possessing particular divine attributes such as omniscient, which means he knows everything he is also omnipotent, or all powerful. God has also been said to be also he is omnipresence which means he exists in all places and present everywhere, however there are many philosophical arguments on whether if any of that is actually true or if there is a God at all. This paper argues that it is not possible to know whether the traditional God exists or not. While there have been philosophers such as Aquinas, Anselm, Paley and Kierkegaard who are for god and present strong argument, likewise philosopher like Nietzsche and arguments like the problem of evil both make valid point on why God isn’t real.

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.”

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

This argument gives the concept that God is pure actuality, if God is indeed pure actuality then there is no potential for God to be any different from what he already is.

As with almost all of Descartes inquiries the roots of his second argument for the existence of God begin with his desire to build a foundation of knowledge that he can clearly and distinctly perceive. At the beginning of the third meditation Descartes once again recollects the things that he knows with certainty. The problem arises when he attempts to clearly and distinctly understand truths of arithmetic and geometry. Descartes has enough evidence to believe these things, but one major doubt is still present; the possibility of God being a deceiver. Descartes worry is that all the knowledge that he possesses through intuition could potentially be false if God merely chooses to deceive him. So in order to have a clear and distinct perception of arithmetic truths (and other such intuitive truths) Descartes delves into the question of God’s existence (and whether this God could be a deceiver or not).

Lucretius wrote On the Nature of Things to disprove the idea that God is in control, he writes “From which alone all things created are, and how accomplished by no tool of Gods” ( ). His argument is that God did not create things; therefore, he did not create life. The general idea of his time, 60 BCE, was that God was a divine creator. To go against this brought turmoil to the religious world.

Medieval philosophers developed very precise notions of God and the attributes that he has, many of which are even now well-known among believers. For example, God is all-powerful all-knowing and all-good Other commonly discussed attributes of God are that he is eternal, that he is present everywhere and that he has foreknowledge of future events. While these traditional attributes of God offer a clear picture of the kind of being that he is, many of them present special conceptual problems, particularly when we try to make them compatible them with potentially conflicting facts about the world.

Besides, it does not necessarily exist, but merely just something one can think of, then if that was the case, isn’t it likely to be something still greater than that a thing which would be just like it? In addition, in this particular instance, would it not be conceivable to be something one able to see or exist in real life which contradicted the initial assumption. we are supposed to think of something that was at the limit of greatness, which nothing greater can be conceived, but then we thought something still greater than some of the thing that actually existed. In my view, one must reject the assumption of the thing which nothing greater can be conceived which also necessarily exists, not just something in the mind, but also exist in reality. That’s pretty much the entire argument he was trying to make.

This concept of God’s existence is also led with the idea that God is a necessary being, a being that is not dependent of something greater in order to exist. If God relied on another being, like how a children rely on parents to conceive them, then this being called God is not God because it would be imperfect. Therefore, there must be another to call God that meets all the requirements for perfection. One of the first popular objections was created by Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. The premise and conclusion to Gaunilo’s argument is identical to Anselm’s argument except with the replacement of the word “God” with “the Lost island” and the word “being” with “island”. As simple as that, though Gaunilo’s argument is completely absurd, Gaunilo’s reductio ad absurdum also proves to be as deductively valid as Anselm’s argument. However, this “Lost Island” could in no way exist. The absurdity and validity of “the lost island” quickly brought up questions as to how Anselm’s Argument cannot be absurd. Anselm’s argument was not proven invalid until Immanuel Kant, a german philosopher during the 18th century, proposed an objection that would be the decisive blow to the Ontological argument (Immanuel Kant. Wiki). Kant’s

There is an argumental problem of whether God can make a rock too big for God to move if God can do anything. This is an example of the paradox of omnipotence. When thinking about this problem there are only two reasonable answers. They are yes it is possible and no it is not possible. One that agreed and claimed yes is philosopher Rene Descartes. Descartes thoughts that God was able to move a rock too big and can do everything. While the one that disagreed with the claim was philosopher Thomas Aquina. Aquina thought that it was impossible that God can move a rock that was too big, and God can’t able to make everything. With these claims, one philosopher was involved revising the definition of omnipotence. This philosopher was Rene Descartes.

In this paper, we will discuss only 5 of these attributes: omnipotence, immutability, impassibility, timelessness and omniscience. Gregory Boyd summarizes these 5 attributes in his book Is God to Blame? (pp 42-43)

Although both of Maimonides arguments of negative theology focus on the way Gods supremacy is limited by language, each argument analyzes different aspects of these language limitations. According to the second argument predicative language creates limitations in regards to God’s transcendence, by grouping God under the same category as other objects. A predicate is used in a sentence as a way to organize numerous objects or items under a single category, thus when we use predicative language to describe God we are insulting the supremacy of God by connecting him to another object. For example if we say that God exists or that God is one and we also say that the world exists or the world is one we are putting God and the world under a single

Although this statement does reflect that God is a creator, it also states that God is eternal, infinite, immutable, and omnipotent. Someone can't assume that because you are a creator you are also eternal, infinite, immutable, and omnipotent. Is that to say if you can create life you are also eternal, infinite, immutable, and omnipotent. Furthermore an argument can be made that if something cannot come from nothing, then what or who made God? Descartes tries to answer this question by saying that God created himself, but wouldn't this in fact prove that spontaneous generation can happen leading to the fact that something can come from nothing thus negating the existence of God.