Understanding God
Essay Preview: Understanding God
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To understand that God exists through reason as well as through the way I was taught as a Roman Catholic in that He is just there (faith) was an interesting way to unite philosophical and theological beliefs together. Natural theology which is to pursue the knowledge of God using intelligence instead of supernatural revelation is a good way to describe how God is there. Reading about these three arguments, the Ontological, the Cosmological and the Teleological presented different views on Gods presence in a logical way.
The Ontological argues the existence of God by saying that His being by nature includes the concept of necessary existence. As Anselm, a Christian, explains that a perfect being must exist if we can imagine something other than us is perfect. God must exist because it is in His nature to exist, He is perfection. This showed me why there must be a God because there must be something out there that is perfect, something that exists that has placed this image of perfection in our minds. I say this because of the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, what I may define as beauty may not be what you define as beauty but some where out there true beauty exists and who is to say what that is other than a being that is perfect, some one who is above you and I.
The cosmological argument is based ultimately on the existence of the cosmos and its main point is that for something to move it must first be caused to move by something else. So God is the first mover, putting the wheels in motion so to speak. His actions cause other reactions and they are done through causes or reasons that God has planned out from the beginning or as the mover. These causes, material, efficient, formal, and final were introduced by Aristotle and used by Thomas Aquinas to connect the dots to show how things came to be, yet Aquinas brings it back full circle to God in that there must be a being who directs with an order and purpose. This argument made me see how the lines of scientific and supernatural cross. Being taught that God created everything and everything was created from God in seven days never really explained why He would do so. Then being taught of the “Big Bang theory” made my beliefs of God even hazier, until I read about the need of a first mover or cause, which is God who had a plan and it began with His action and everything that followed was a reaction to His first movement. So if we are here because of His actions then His must exist.
The teleological argument is that the world is too complex and well ordered to have been produced by chance or random change. This argument seems to take something from both arguments in that we are here for a reason or purpose that is above us. As the text used as an example of the watch being found and wondering of its origin you begin to look for a watchmaker. So we must ponder as we look at the cosmos where did it come from was it