Ontological Argument For The Existence Of God – An ontological argument is an a priori argument that attempts to prove the existence of God purely on the basis of reason. The argument sees no reason for attempting to prove the existence of God using empirical approaches. Instead, he tries to prove God’s existence using essence. According to the ontological argument, the existence of God is a necessary property of God in the same way that a triangle contains three sides. For example, Anselm believes that the claim that God does not exist is itself a contradiction because it implies that God is imperfect. Other philosophers who adopt the same line of reasoning as Anselm include Spinoza, Leibniz, Godel, Descartes, and Hegel.

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Ontological Argument For The Existence Of God

The ontological argument adopts the modal technique to reason using the concepts of necessity, possibility, and actuality. The argument assumes that supreme perfection requires existence. He begins by defining God as a supremely perfect being who is omnipotent, omnipresent, and benevolent. From the point of view of ontological theorists, God must exist because existence is perfection and God is perfect.

Al Existence Of God By Jon Emerson

Kant’s objection to the ontological argument stems from his view of the concept that a being that is conceived in the human mind and that exists in the real world is superior to the idea of ​​a being that is merely conceived in the mind. Kant questions the ontological perception of existence as a predicate that necessarily relates to the concept of God in the same way that the three angles of a triangle necessarily belong to a triangle. In contrast, Kant argues that while existence is valid as a predicate in the grammatical sense, it is different from other predicates. Kant views existence as a property, as distinct from all ordinary properties, and claims that existence is only the presupposition of a thing.

Kant’s argument means that when someone claims that God exists, they are not implying that God exists or that he has the property of existence. Conversely, to say that a thing exists is to imply that the thing is typical in the universe. If Kant’s ontological argument that existence is not a property that can be inherently possessed is correct, then we cannot equate an existing God with a non-existent God.

I believe that Kant’s position on the ontological argument (that a God who exists is essentially similar to a God who does not exist) is quite defensible. The existent God is similar to the non-existent God because both are omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. This means that the ontological claim that “the God that exists is greater than the God that does not exist” is fundamentally wrong. More than anything else, the ontological argument succeeds in providing a definition of God as a supremely perfect being.

Since existence is a logical rather than a grammatical predicate, it cannot belong to the concept of God as postulated by ontological theorists. On the contrary, existence is a predicate that only fulfills the definition of the concept of God. That is, existence is not a property like the green property of a leaf that belongs to a leaf. Even if existence is to be seen as a property, it is not a property that affects the essence of the thing that has existence. Therefore, I do not believe that the ontological argument will succeed in proving the existence of God.

Pdf) The Existence Of God And The Essence Of Truth: Anselm’s Ontological Argument In The Light Of Heidegger

The cosmological argument for the existence of God is based on a posteriori considerations drawn from the empirical experience of the universe. Thomas Aquinas formalizes this argument in his ‘Summa Theologica.’ Aquinas outlines five arguments in an attempt to prove the existence of God. Aquinas’ three arguments can be described as cosmological.

The first form of the cosmological argument for the existence of God is referred to as the first cause argument. This argument claims that all things are caused by something else. If we go back through the causal sequence, we are likely to arrive at the first cause from which everything else is caused. Cosmologists claim that God is the supreme cause. It is important to note that the cosmological proof of God’s existence rejects the idea of ​​infinity or infinite regress.

The second form of the ontological argument is based on the concept of contingency. This argument asserts that things can either exist or not exist. This argument implies that there is the possibility of a time when nothing existed, and some external being must have created what exists. Cosmological theorists call this external being God.

The third ontological argument considers the possibility of a mover or an immovable mover. Aquinas states that everything in the world is in constant motion. Since a thing cannot “actually be” and “potentially be” at the same time, everything in a state of motion must have been set in motion by a mover. According to the trend of denying infinite regress, there must be a prime mover to set all motions in motion.

The Ontological Argument For The Existence Of God

The fact that the cosmological argument applies an a posteriori system of reasoning works against as well as the reliability of the position. Since the cosmological argument is a posteriori, it is easily testable with empirical data. For example, we can test an argument by observing changes and processes in phenomena and seeking explanations for the nature of events. This argument seems convincing because it responds to the insatiable human desire to find explanations for natural events.

However, knowledge obtained a posteriori cannot be absolutely trusted. The human desire to explain existence is not a sufficient reason to accept the cosmological argument, because the empirical universe is full of probabilities. What we know about the universe comes from things we perceive today rather than what existed at the time of creation. We cannot trace the sequence of events that took place at the time of creation to relate them to what we experience today.

Science also has the potential to work for or against the cosmological proof of God’s existence. Although science has not been able to explain the events before the Big Bang, modern scientists have proven that there are some items, such as particles generated by the vacuum, that can exist without being caused. This means that God is not the only uncaused thing.

The problem raised by the ontological argument is that even if there is a main cause that caused the Big Bang, there is no absolute way to affirm that the cause of the Big Bang is a theistic God. The assumption that the first cause is a theistic God requires one to take a leap of faith without logical or factual support systems.

Descartes’ Ontological Argument

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato paints a picture of prisoners held in a dark cave. Prisoners are handcuffed around the legs and neck in a way that prevents them from moving. Plato describes the world outside the cave and the wall separating the cave from the outside world. Shadows of people move around outside the cave and are cast on the walls of the cave. Since the prisoners are chained up, they are unable to lift their heads to see real people moving outside the cave and only have access to the shadows. As a result, they believe the shadows are real. When one of the prisoners escapes, he is unable to see anything because he is blinded by the brightness of the sun. As the prisoner remains in the outside world, he realizes that the outside world is the real world and that the things he was used to are just illusions.

The prisoner believes that it is better to live as a slave in the real world than to live as a king in a cave. When the escapee returns to the cave, the other inmates mock him for leaving the cave world because they cannot understand the reality they are yet to experience. Prisoners warn the fugitive of possible death if he tries to release them.

The cave in the allegory signifies people who are so accustomed to what they know from the empirical faculties that they are unaware of any other way of life. Shadows in the allegory represent knowledge gained through sense perception. In his depiction of the game in the cave, Plato suggests that those who are perceived as masters actually have limited knowledge of reality. The escaped prisoner in Plato’s allegory represents the philosopher who has moved away from reliance on sense perception and who seeks knowledge that is beyond the realm of the senses. While the sun represents the truth gained through philosophical inquiry, the intellectual journey of the escaped prisoner represents the path philosophers follow in their search for wisdom and truth. The reactions of the other prisoners show how most people are afraid to seek philosophical truth and prefer to stay in their “safe” worlds.

To explain true knowledge, Plato presents his model of forms. Plato’s forms are fixed

Pdf) Godelian Ontological Arguments

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