Essay Ontological Argument For The Existence Of God

My purpose in this essay is to explain and analyze the Divine Command Theory. Divine Command Theory states that morality is ultimately based on the commands of God. I disagree with this theory because how do we know what concepts of God are true and what other concepts are false? There are so many religions making their own claims and interpretations that they believe are true. Therefore, how do we know then what God approves or disapproves of?

Secondly, the lack of complete understanding of a God that is greater than any other is the basis of Anselm’s argument. In other words, one needs not understand how it is that no other greater God exists, because it is not possible to do that. It is the concept of understanding that such a being exists that is important. As long as it is possible to have such a state, then the definition given by Anselm is

The idea of suspension of disbelief is that you don’t use any kind of rationalization to explain the impossible, so what if you could explain religious belief with logic? Can you rationalize faith, although by definition it is not rational? According to John Cottingham, who is an English philosopher, argues there is absolutely nothing to rationalize since religion is “all about one's feeling of absolute dependence and commitment” ("Religious Faith [...]”). In an interview, he says: “It is problematic if you think the only model for reasonable belief is a scientifically based on impartial assessment from evidence.

This contradicts the assumption that God is the creator of all norms. (Based on Darwall 's Philosphical Ethics p. 42-44). 2) God created us, therefore we must follow his commands out of gratitude. Again, we face the problem that there appears to be a norm that exists independently from his command: that you should show gratitude, which seems inconsistent. (Darwall 's Philosophical Ethics p. 44).

Assuming the deeds of God are evident in the world, all they would demonstrate is the existence of the concept of God, but they could say nothing about the particular character of God; they could not establish God in the sense of a proper noun {should I have already introduced this concept}. By definition though, there is an absolute relationship between the works of God and the concept of God, and so Kierkegaard explores whether through this means we can at least establish proof for the concept of

In Proslogium St. Anselm presents his argument for the existence of God, an argument that has thus far withstood the test of time and many criticisms, one of which I will discuss here. Anselm works his way from the “fool’s” assumption that God does not exist, or at least does not exist in reality, through his premises that existence is greater than understanding alone and that a being with God’s properties and existence can be conceived of, to the conclusion that because God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived and God can exist in understanding, God must exist in reality. Gaunilo, a fellow monk, gives his criticism of Anselm’s argument in the form of a reductio ad absurdum argument. Gaunilo attempts to show Anselm’s argument to be false by taking a parody of Anselm’s argument to an extreme and absurd conclusion, that being the existence of the Perfect Island from the same reasoning as the existence of God. I then present a reply that I believe to be in accordance with something Anselm might have responded to Gaunilo with.

The Ontological Argument is defined as the argument that God, being described as the most great or perfect, must exist, since a God who exists is greater than a God who does not (Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100250688). It belongs to the Philosophy of Religions and not Theology; there is a difference between Philosophy of Religion and Theology, even though they both take God and religion as their subject. Theology starts with assuming that God exists and aids in figuring out what follows or it sometimes solves philosophical problems that might arise from the belief in God. Theology is slightly more strict and they have limits to their premises, one of those limits is not believing in God. Another

However, I cannot completely agree with either point of view concerning God’s power. According to Hick’s theory God is, was, and always will be all powerful, but the Process-Relational Theory suggests that God though a very powerful being, He is not all powerful. Both suggest that evil exists either because of God’s awesome power or due to the lack of that power. As a Christian it is easy to agree with John Hick’s arguments that God is all knowing and all good but can the belief that God is all powerful hold its own in a world full of evil. If he is all good why would he not use his bounty of power to rid the world of evil?

This tries to prove God’s existence by saying that all natural things were created for a purpose by an intelligent designer; this is much like Paley’s Teleological Argument. This argument does not work because it does not prove that the intelligent designer of natural things must be God. Overall, Aquinas’s argument fails to fulfil its only purpose: prove that God exists. If an argument cannot prove that God is all knowing, all good, and all powerful, then it does not prove the existence of a god at all. Another main reason why this argument and many other arguments for God’s existence does not work is because of the problem of evil.

Does the Ontological Argument successfully show that God exists? Anselm 's ontological argument is a philosophical argument which aims to prove God 's existence. The ontological argument is an argument for God’s existence based on reason alone. According to this argument, there is no need to go out looking for physical evidence of God’s existence; we can work out that he exists just by thinking about it.

An Ontological argument is an argument that concludes with accepting the existence of God, from evidence, which is supposed to originate from a source, other than, that of your senses or observation of the world. In other words you come to the conclusion from reason alone. They are formed from nothing but analytical, and necessary premises, to arrive at the conclusion that God exists. A cosmological argument uses a general outline of arguments that makes a conclusion from clear obvious facts about the world, to the existence of an all-knowing being, that is God. Among these original facts, are certain beings, or events in the world that are causally dependent or reliant on the premise, that the universe is depending in that it could have been other than what it is, or why there is something rather than nothing.

Answers to Document B, Eric Farrow: 1. God is the creator of the universe and all things. Because He created time, He is unchanging. He is the same today, yesterday, 4000 years ago, and 4000 years into the future. God is not surprised by history or human actions.