Descartes
Essay title: Descartes
Does God exist? Theology, cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments are all have ways to prove the existence of God. With all of these great arguments how can one deny that there is a God. There is a God and with these reasons I will prove that.
There are two types of theology discussed in chapter nine of Kessler _Voices of Wisdom,_ revealed and natural theology. Revealed theology comes from such sources as the Bible and according to St. Thomas Aquinas gives us the knowledge for our salvation. Natural theology supports my argument on a level that someone who does not believe in God can understand better. This kind of theology defines God_s nature and provides for his existence. St. Thomas tells us that natural theology does not give us saving knowledge, because even if you know God exists does not mean you have salvation. St. Thomas gave the example that even devils know God exists. All of my arguments provided are philosophical theology or natural theology.
For my first basis for the existence of God I will use the a posteriori, ontological arguments. Ontological arguments are a priori, which show that God exists without appealing to a sense experience. These ontological arguments argue about what God is to where he is from.
St. Anselm, the creator of the ontological argument, based his theory on that we cannot think of anything greater than God. Therefor God must exist, why you might ask? If the greatest thing that we can conceive does not exist than we can still conceive the greatest thing that does exist, and that would be God.
Descartes views God in a similar way to St. Anselm. Descartes sees God as the perfect being while St. Anselm describes God as _that than which nothing greater can be thought._ In Descartes _the Argument from Perfection_ he reasons that if existence is one of the perfections and God has all the perfections, then God must exist. Along with these arguments others in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic communities have similar views.
Cosmological arguments are a posteriori, these tend to lean toward proving the existence of God through a sense experience. Cosmological arguments come in many varieties, such as the existence of the universe to God as its creator, cause, or explanation. Cosmological arguments were started at the time the questions of the universe were first asked.
The existence of motion to the existence of a first mover as the cause of movement, was argued by Aristotle. This first mover he called God. The reason for this was that nothing caused God to move yet God was responsible for the motion of all other things. This argument is based on presumptions in other cosmological arguments. The first was that something could not cause itself, second something cannot come from nothing, last there could not possibly be an infinite amount of cause and effects.
St. Thomas_ view was of God is an infinite, all-good, all-knowing, all powerful, perfect being who created the universe and now has sole command over it. This view is known as theism. St. Thomas states that a first cause must be in order to have cause and effect now. For if we take away the first cause there would be no effect following there for the universe would have never been created which is impossible because we can prove the universe does exist. He also argues that there are things in the universe that have the possibility of existing and not existing, we have seen things that have existed and than destroyed, thus proving that there is the ability of being and not being. There was a time when nothing was in existence in the universe, if this is accurate then nothing would be here now, because anything that is not in existence cannot come to be without the help of something in existence. If once there was nothing than nothing could be in