The Teleological Argument For The Existence Of God

The question of God’s existence has been pondered by humans for centuries. There are an infinite number of different opinions, arguments, and ideas favoring for or against the idea of God. Personally, I strongly believe in God not only due to my religious affiliation, but also because of my own opinions, ideas, and experience. To begin with, the complexity of Earth and the life that has formed upon it cannot be based just on luck or chance. I believe that ultimately God, as a power, rather than a mystical being is the one created and controls the universe. Although the God and his authority are not entirely comprehensible by humans, it’s our faith as worshiper that eventually lead us to a greater understanding.

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.

The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God The ontological argument is an a priori argument. The arguments attempt to prove God's existence from the meaning of the word God. The ontological argument was introduced by Anselm of Canterbury in his book Proslogion. Anselm's classical argument was based on two principals and the two most involved in this is St Anselm of Canterbury as previously mentioned and Rene Descartes.

Many philosophers have posed the question: How can I prove that God exists? Thomas Aquinas attempted to prove the existence of God in a rational way through his Cosmological argument. Aquinas argued that every event as we observe it has a cause and a casual chain cannot be infinite. Therefore, a first cause is necessary and this cause is God. Aquinas’ argument is unsuccessful because it assumes that God is a necessary being, fails to prove that the world is not an infinite chain of events, and undermines the basis of his argument by saying that God is infinite.

Law is a system of rules that are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior. (Robertson, Crimes against humanity, 90).Laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or by judges through binding precedent, normally in common jurisdictions.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God The cosmological argument seeks to prove the existence of God by looking at the universe. It is an A posteriori proof based on experience and the observation of the world not logic so the outcome is probable or possible not definite. The argument is in three forms; motion, causation and being. These are also the first three ways in the five ways presented by Aquinas through which he believed the existence of God could be shown.

Existence of God as a perfect being who has created the world has always been the subject of continuous debate for the scholar people and philosophers. During the history many different arguments have been proposed for the existence of God. Some of these arguments are based on science, some based on history and some based on philosophy. Two of the most important philosophical arguments in this matter are the ontological argument and cosmological argument. Each of these arguments tried to proof existence of God in different way.

The argument for the existence of God that I found most compelling was the argument from design, also known as the “theological argument.” The reason that I resonated with this argument so well is that it could be used by both sides of the debate for the existence of God. Supporters of this argument claim that due to the design of everything in the natural world and how well all things interact with one another, this clearly points that there is a creator that made these things meld so well together, this creator being God. Non-believers argue that the existence of our world is a mere stroke of luck that was created through random chance. They further argue that although the possibility that a world such as ours would come into existence is astronomically slim, due to the universe begin infinite and never-ending, this outcome is much more likely to occur.

They look for rational proofs of God’s existence. Three well known rational arguments for the existence of God are Ontological, Cosmological, Teleological. The Ontological argument says that the idea of God is justice for his existence. The Cosmological argument requires reason and experience to prove God, and that you can’t have something created from nothing. The Teleological theory argues the existence of God from the idea of intelligent design.

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This phrase means that the being about which we are talking, is more perfect in all aspects than anyone else. That being is the perfection at which one can reach maximum. As we understand an every property and every functionality of every object in the world, we can think about the perfection of that property of that object. So there should be the maximum limit to every property of that particular object. As every object we can see in our surrounding has some faults, that every object in our surrounding is not perfect in every single aspect, so as considering maximum possibility of the existence of God, ultimately there can be a single object, which is perfect in all aspects and to that being or object we can call as ‘God’.

Countless philosophers since the beginning of recorded history have pondered the question of whether God exists. One such philosopher, Saint Thomas Aquinas, put forth his own theory on the existence of God. In his text “Whether God Exists”, he stated that through his five arguments he could prove God’s existence. His five arguments are from motion, from first efficient cause, from possibility and necessity, from gradation, and from design.

In St. Thomas Aquinas’s “The Existence of God,” his third way to prove God exists is out of “Possibility and Necessity.” Aquinas says that if something can fail to exist, there must have been a time at which it did fail to exist (Perry, Bratman, Fisher, 43). Aquinas says to assume that every being is contingent. If every being was contingent, then there was a time that it not exist. Therefore, there would be a time when no beings existed. So, at that time, there would be no being to bring the currently existing beings into existence. This means that we cannot assume that every being is contingent, or there would be nothing. So, not every being can fail to exist; there must be a being who exists of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from another being, but rather causes them. This being is what men call God

The most prominent of these arguments for/against the existence of god can be separated into four types. Firstly, the ‘cosmological arguments’ which explain the existence of the universe in reference to a being on whom all else depends for it’s existence (Routledge, 2000, p.758). Secondly, there are the ‘teleological arguments’ also known as the ‘arguments from design’, that posit an intelligent creator/designer of the physical world. Third, the ‘ontological arguments’ which concentrate on the idea of a perfect being that it is illogical to deny that such a being exists (Routledge, 2000, p.758). Last are ‘moral arguments’ for the existence of god, which argue that- if God does not exist, objective moral values don’t