Descartes's Argument For The Existence Of God

Anselm’s Rejoinder. The island that Guanilo speaks of, or any other potential substitute for that manner, does not reflect necessary being and is contingent. Only God can be that which nothing greater can be conceived (447). Guanilo’s argument fails to disprove the credibility of the ontological argument because it attempts to replace the concept of God with something that belongs to an entirely distinct category. Anselm’s ontological argument is important because it leaves no gray area concerning spiritual faith.

Similarly, it would also be absurd to say that pretending to believe would cause someone, who previously could not convince themselves to believe, to believe. Therefore, simply choosing to believe in God could not possible lead one to truly believe in God. So, an individual who cites Pascal’s Wager to justify a belief in God does not truly believe in God, and if they do not truly believe in God, they will not stand to gain infinitely if God does exist. This completely removes the only reasonable option from Pascal’s

Critical Analyses of St. Anselm’s argument for the Existence of God and Douglas Gasking’s argument for the Non-Existence of God. Arguments against St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument for the Existence of God St. Anselm begins with a definition of God, argues that an existent God is superior to a non-existent God and concludes that God must exist in reality, for his non-existence would contradict the definition of God itself. The argument does not seem plausible to an unbiased person, even at the very first reading. It seems as if not all aspects of the question under scrutiny have been considered.

In his book “Discourse on Method,” Descartes gives two ontological proofs of God’s existence. The first proof appears earlier in his book when he doubts himself about not being perfect. Descartes is aware that since he has doubts, he is not perfect, because a perfect being would know everything. However, since he has the notion of what perfection is, it means that there must be a perfect being that exists out there that give him the idea of perfection.

Cleanthes’s second objection rests on the rationale that even if everything in Demea’s argument is sound, it is still not enough to conclude the existence of God. Cleanthes grants the fact that Demea’s argument is sound in proving the existence of a necessarily existing being. But who’s to say this necessity is god? Why not the material universe for example? Cleanthes argues that we are clueless in knowing anything about the qualities and mechanics of necessary existence and therefore by no means have the authority in giving priority to God being the necessary cause over something

Even thought, he said God’s existence can’t be proven, yet he still said “God’s existence I mean that I propose to prove that the unknown, which exist is God” (page 421). He is believing in the existence of God, but just like he can’t prove it he decided to name it the unknown, but my question to him would be “why to make him unknown and not real?”. Finally,

Galileo believes in the Bible and that God has supreme authority over the world, but he sees religion and science as two different things. It is not the purpose of the Bible to explain the physical world, it is there to save our souls. He makes three distinguishes: The Bible and Church have all matters of faith. , if any scientific finding if proven to be true but is against the teachings of the Bible, then we have not found the true meaning of the Bible, and anything not proven that is against the Bible must be

On the other hand, the existence of God is in question because there is no way of proving that everything that exists is as a result of his magnificence. “If ‘God exists….. then the defeat of atheism would be analogous to the disclosure of mathematical error”(Hanson

The Cartesian Circle is an objection to Descartes’ proof of God’s existence as it begs the question. In his proof, Descartes starts off with his two premises, his idea of God and the principle, which states that the cause of an idea must have at least as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality, which leads to a conclusion that God exists. Descartes’ conclusion then adds on to say that God is not a deceiver that will then follow to develop the General Rule, which states that if we have a clear and distinct perception of something, we would be certain of it. According to critics, Descartes is able to use the principle as his premise because Descartes relies on the General Rule in order to be certain of it. Using the two premises,

Reformed Epistemology is a school of thought regarding rationality of religious belief. The core of the thought is the idea that belief in god is a properly basic belief; and does not need to be derived from other truths for it to be reasonable. It is important to correctly stress what ‘basic’ truly means, a basic believe is one that is rationally held and yet not derived from other beliefs that one holds The Great Pumpkin Objection was put forward by Alvin Plantinga in 1983 and is the main criticism against Reformed Epistemology. The objection states that if belief in god is properly basic, then why cant anything at all be properly basic, like the belief that the Great Pumpkin returns every Halloween.

The ontological argument is one of the three main arguments for the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. This argument is designed to appeal to rational rather than non-rational reasons for the existence of God. Rational reasoning can be identified through the use of reason, logic, argumentation, and our shared observations of the world, whereas non-rational reasoning is characterized by subjective religious experience. However, the ontological argument does not appeal to the logic consisting of our shared observations of the world because it focuses on the reflection of our own idea of God, therefore validating the cosmological argument to be a priori since none of it’s premises require empirical support. St. Anselm of Canterbury provided a renowned version of the cosmological argument around 1080 AD that establishes the existence of God by reflecting on our idea of Him.

But he notes that this need not convince anyone that there is no reason for believing in God:the theologian can, if he wishes, accept this criticism. He can admit that no rational proof of God’s existence is possible. And he can still retain all that is essential to his position, by holding that God’s existence is known in some other, non-rational way. ”Mackie’s aim is to show that philosophy is not only capable of criticizing arguments for God’s existence, but also showing that God does not exist, thus closing off the position of the theologian

This was just one of the main critiques of this argument. Along with the past two arguments, there is another argument that deals with God’s

In this essay I will be writing about Blaise Pascal, a mathematician and French philosopher whose work became very popular due to his "Wager". Pascal's argument in his essay "The Wager" states that any rational human should believe in God. He states that regardless of whether or not God exists, the option of believing yields the greatest benefit and the least loss out of all the possibilities. In believing in God, one can receive infinite gain which is heaven, if God exist, and would only have finite losses if God does not exist. However, he shares that if one was to bet against god, if one wins or loses, the individual would either gain an insignificant finite if God does not exist, or lose everything if God does exist which would lead to going to Hell.