Descartes’ determination of God’s infinite perfection is of certain validity as existence, being a perfection, should belong to his nature. But as lambasted by Leibniz, psychological clarity and distinctness cannot prove that there is no contradiction in ens perfectissimum, the conjectural essence of God reduces the definition of perfection to purely nominal, or what Spinoza puts it: an inadequate idea. Spinoza goes on with an a priori proof, it runs: There is only one Substance, it is unlimited and all forms of being in it must be infinitely perfect and there is no inequality in the attributes, no form is superior to any other. If the absolutely infinite being does not exist, the reason of its nonexistence must be internal. But all form of attributes are
Human is born with the natural ability of reasoning whether or not it is a gracious gift from God as claimed. According to natural law, human is capable of deciding whether an action is morally right or wrong. We do not create what is evil and good, rather, we discover what is right or wrong. Besides, humans are morally obliged to use their reasoning capability to discern what the laws are and subsequently acting in conformity with them. Therefore, there is no reason why divine law must be superior than man-made law when human is just as effective and arguably, even more effective.
Ontological argument by St. Anselm in favour of God’s existence: The ontological argument of the existence of the God is entirely based upon the fact of contradicting the non-existence of God. The original statement on which St. Anselm’s ontological argument of God is based upon is that "God is that than which no greater can be conceived." The statement means that there cannot be a being which can be greater than God and there cannot be a being which can be imagined greater than a God as God is treated as an ultimate perfect being that can be imagined. One of the prominent feature that God has is perfection i.e., something can’t be called a God unless it’s completely perfect. Perfection implies that there cannot be something which is greater than perfection or being flawless.
Argument for the existence of god is being proposed in several ways. Some based on science while some are about personal experience and some on philosophical arguments such as ontological arguments, first cause arguments, arguments based on deign, moral arguments. Each of these support conception. Ontological argument say that if you inculcate the idea of god , we can see him . There is a saying that “Nothing comes from Nothing but something comes from something”.
The first step was to doubt everything that could be doubted: his senses, his prior knowledge (a priori), and his knowledge of the world (a posteriori). From this, he deduced that the only truth was that he existed, for no doubting can occur without a doubter. Thus arose the idea of mind, “a substance the whole essence or nature of which is to think”. Descartes then derived the existence of God from the idea of perfection; our idea of perfection must come from a perfect being (i.e. God), for imperfect beings such as ourselves cannot possibly conceive by ourselves the idea of perfection; that there is an idea God proves that God does indeed exist for God is the sum of all perfection.
He attempts to logically prove that God exists by characterizing God in different ways in showing that to understand the existence of God, one must first understand that God exists. However, his argument is disputed by a number of philosophers, among them, Kant and Rowe. Kant believes that existence in reality does not necessarily imply a great-making quality. On the other hand, Rowe’s criticism strives to understand the logical capacity of Anselm’s definition. He claims that existence is a pertinent feature that inevitably makes an object to appear greater than another.
I then present a reply that I believe to be in accordance with something Anselm might have responded to Gaunilo with. This reply includes the explanation that the Perfect Island cannot be compared to God because the Perfect Island, if it were to exist, would be a finite and empirical Island and therefore imperfect by nature but God is infinite and therefore can and is perfect by nature. I will end with the conclusion that, based on St. Anselm’s argument, Gaunilo’s criticism and a possible reply to Gaunilo’s criticism, Anselm’s argument is true but only if
In terms of the second part God commands these actions because they are right, this statement places morality separate from God, there is an independent standard of moral right and wrong that undermine the omnipotence and Omni benevolence of God (Leibniz, 1951). This point is also a response to the objection of the divine command theory, in making morality and God independent we ignore the greatness of God, who as the creator has the right to command and we are obligated to obey His commands (Rachels,
They are simply based on a whole bunch of concepts that we know to be true. This could be said in regards to God’s existence, as well. After all, McCloskey does state that, “most theists do not come to believe in God as a basis for religious believe, but come to religion as a result of other reasons and factors,” (McCloskey, 62). McCloskey believes that the arguments he makes individually cannot make a case for the existence of God. McCloskey argued against the three theistic proofs, cosmological argument, theological argument, and the argument from design.
PH2211 In this essay, I will first break down Anselm’s ontological argument with a powerful criticism, and then defend Anselm’s position. Following that, I will analyze both positions critically and provide my own stand regarding Anselm’s argument. The problem with Anselm’s ontological argument provided by Rowe in his book is the problem of definition. Gaunilo noticed that the definition of God as “a being than which none greater is possible” is infallible, in the sense that, the definition itself would force God into existence whether or not it is true. In order to show how this works, Gaunilo proposed a perfect island where it is “an island than which no greater island is possible”.