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Doctrine of God
Marcos Blanco
First Way: The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality.
Third Way: The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence---which is absurd.
Fourth Way: The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But more and less are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii.
(4) If God did exist in reality, then He would be greater than He is. [from (1) and (2)]
(5) It is conceivable that there is a being greater than God is. [(3) and (4)] (6) It is conceivable that there be a being greater than the being than which nothing
greater can be conceived. [(5) by the definition of God]
But surely (6) is absurd and self-contradictory; how could we conceive of a being greater than the being than which none greater can be conceived? So we may conclude that
(7) It is false that God exists in the understanding but not in reality.
It follows that if God exists in the understanding, He also exists in reality; but clearly enough He does exist in the understanding, as even the fool will testify; therefore, He exists in reality as well.
http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/0203/01w/readings/plantinga.html
(2) This contingent being has a cause of or explanation for its existence.
(3) The cause of or explanation for its existence is something other than the contingent being itself. (4) What causes or explains the existence of this contingent being must either be solely other contingent beings or include a non-contingent (necessary) being. (5) Contingent beings alone cannot provide an adequate causal account or explanation for the existence of a contingent being. (6) Therefore, what causes or explains the existence of this contingent being must include a non-contingent (necessary) being.
(7) Therefore, a necessary being (a being such that if it exists cannot not-exist) exists.
(b) God is the sort of being that it is possible to experience or encounter directly. (c) People claim to have experienced God directly. (d) Therefore, God exists.
Design arguments are routinely classed as analogical arguments various parallels between human artifacts and certain natural entities being taken as supporting parallel conclusions concerning operative causation in each case. The standardly ascribed schema is roughly thus: (a) Entity e within nature (or the cosmos, or nature itself) is like specified human artifact a (e.g., a machine) in relevant respects R. (b) a has R precisely because it is a product of deliberate design by intelligent human agency. (c) Like effects typically have like causes (or like explanations, like existence requirements, etc.) (d) Therefore, it is (highly) probable that e has R precisely because it too is a product of deliberate design by intelligent, relevantly humanlike agency.
These are the facts, Cleanthes says. Next comes his argument from analogy: Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble, and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed.
Hume presents five counterarguments against the design argument through his character Philo. Here the three more relevant:
universe? If the cause of the universe is the mind of some sort of intelligent designer, Hume said, then why cant we ask who or what caused that mind? What licenses design arguers to stop the regress once they get to the designer? Doesnt the order exhibited in minds require explanation as much as the order that we see in the universe? For all we can tell from the Design Argument alone, the designer of the universe might well have had a maker.
Humes critique of the Design Argument 3. The existence of evil in the world makes the
Design Argument unable to prove a morally perfect designer: Similarly, Hume argued that if one practices pure natural theology and reaches conclusions about the designer only on the basis of the Design Argument, the existence of evil and suffering in the world ruins the Design Argument as an argument for the existence of a morally good designer. The evidence for design plus the evil that we see do not together suggest the existence of an all-powerful and morally good designer. For if the designer were omnipotent, it would have the power to create a world devoid of useless and undeserved suffering; and if it were morally perfect, it would surely want to create such a world. Why then is there so much suffering?
Arguments Against the Theistic Proofs 2. Unpersuasive: Perhaps for the previous reason, it is
often pointed out that the theistic proofs are unpersuasive: few people are converted to belief in God because of one of the theistic proofs. Bertrand Russell, for example, tells the following story about his days as a Cambridge undergraduate: I remember the precise moment, one day in 1894, as I was walking along Trinity Lane, when I saw in a flash (or thought I saw) that the ontological argument in valid. I had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco; on my way back, I suddenly threw it up in the air, and exclaimed as I caught it: Great Scott, the ontological argument is sound. Of course, Russells impression of the soundness of the ontological argument did not stick, and for the rest of his life was a confirmed atheist or at least agnostic.
3. Irrelevant to religious faith and practice: Theologians, religious people, and some philosophers play down or even scoff at the proofs as totally irrelevant to religious faith and practice. Believers do not need the proofswhy try to demonstrate something you already know? And the proofs, it is said, are cold, formal, and philosophical; they do no call for faith or commitment, nor do they meet the spiritual needs. 4. Just a philosophical God: The God of the theistic proofs, it is said, is a mere philosophical abstraction (a necessary being, the Greatest Conceivable Being, the Prime Mover, etc.) rather than the living God of the Bible.
For decades, theologians, most famously, Karl Barth, have been contending that Anselms argument was prepared for those that already have faith in God and simply need to discover the intelligibility of their belief. Although arguments along these lines have helped to dispel the longstanding myth that Anselms proof is pretheological, they do not seem to fully elaborate what exactly is involved in making faith intelligible and how Anselms argument facilitates efforts to do this.
NATURAL THEOLOGY
Theistic proofs are used in the context of that is called natural theology. What is natural theology? John Macquarries definition accurately captures the consensus: there is a knowledge of God accessible to all rational beings without recourse to any special or supposedly supernatural revelation.
Natural theology is the attempt to reach sound conclusions about the existence and nature of God (among other things) based on human reasoning alone. Natural theology uses such human cognitive faculties as experience, memory, introspection, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning (such as probabilistic and analogical reasoning), and inference to best explanation.
NATURAL THEOLOGY
Natural theology is traditionally associated
with Catholic tradition, and was given official endorsement by the First Vatican Council, which affirmed that God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason from the works of creation. Concilium Vaticanum I, Constitutio dogmatica Dei Filius, chap. 2, De revelatione, available in Enchiridion Symholorum (Freiburg: Herder. 1965) 588, no. 3004.
St. Augustine, in describing how he was taught as a catechumen in the Church, writes:
From this time on, however, I gave my preference to the Catholic faith. I thought it more modest and not in the least misleading to be told by the Church to believe what could not be demonstratedwhether that was because a demonstration existed but could not be understood by all or whether the matter was not one open to rational proofYou [God] persuaded me that the defect lay not with those who believed your books, which you have established with such great authority amongst almost all nations, but with those who did not believe them. Confessions VI.7.
The distinction between holding something by faith and holding it by reason, as well as the distinction between the two types of theology that each way produces, can be traced through some major figures of the Middle Ages. Two examples follow. First, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480524) presented an elaborate account of Gods existence, attributes, and providence. Although a Christian, Boethius brings together in his Consolation of Philosophy the best of various ancient philosophical currents about God. Without any appeal to the authority of Christian Scripture, Boethius elaborated his account of God as eternal, provident, good, and so forth.
Second, Pseudo-Dionysius (late 5th century) also raised the distinction between knowing things from the authority of Scripture and knowing them from rational arguments: Theological tradition has a dual aspect, the ineffable and mysterious on the one hand, the open and more evident on the other. The one resorts to symbolism and involves initiation. The other is philosophic and employs the method of demonstration. Epistola IX (Luibheid, 1987) Here we have the distinction between the two ways of approaching God explicitly identified as two aspects of theology. Augustine, Boethius, and Pseudo-Dionysius (to name but a few) thus make possible a more refined distinction between two types of aspects to theology. On the one hand, there is a program of inquiry that aims to understand what one accepts in faith as divine revelation from above. On the other hand, there is a program of inquiry that proceeds without appeal to revelation and aims to obtain some knowledge of God from below.