Verified Document

Prove The Existence Of God Term Paper

¶ … Existence of God This report has the difficult task of trying to prove the existence of God. But there is a silver lining in this challenge -- we have ancient philosophy to help. By using the beliefs, works and philosophies of Saint Anselm and Descartes, this report will have the benefit of using ontological argument to assist in the task. The main idea of the paper is to prove that God exists by trying to use the opinions of the philosophers Saint Anselm and Descartes. Descartes has been credited with one of the most interesting but also one of the least understood arguments in regard to the existence of god. Fascination with his argument comes from the fact that his effort to prove God's existence was a very simple premise. Saint Anselm's goals was to prove the existence of God with logical and philosphical understanding which in modern times has often been interpreted as an attempt to replace 'faith' side of the argument. By digging deeper into each of these philosphies we can interpret if they actually achieved their goals.

An argument used to support the existence of God is called an ontological argument. There are various models of ontological arguments but the majority of them are different versions or interpretations of the Saint Anselm argument. Saint Anselm's ontological argument that supported the existence of God was from the "Proslogion of Saint Anselm." Saint Anselm was the Archbishop of Canterbury around 1030 A.D. Historians have credited the concept of Ontology to Immanuel Kant who was an eighteenth century philosopher in what is now modern day Germany. Ontology is considered a type of metaphysics or a philosophy that studies the nature and cause of things. "Clearly, this distinction between the ontological argument employed to defend the validity of metaphysics and the same argument employed to demonstrate the necessity of theism, is one of profound importance....

Plato centuries before Anselm, and Hegel centuries later, both used the argument in the former sense." (Langmead, 64) In this case Ontology tried to define what was real or not. Saint Anselm's proof therefore was his attempt to demonstrate if God was real or not. Saint Anselm proofs defined his idea of the divine nature, sin, and redemption.
Saint Anselm defined God by first saying that there could be nothing greater than God. Saint Anselm used the argument that all things in existence existed through one thing and that every existing thing exists either through something or through nothing. Since nothing can exist through nothing, every must exists through something. That something was God. "Thus Christian philosophy for Anselm does not mean a dialectical process which begins with everyday, external and common-sense things, whose reality is accepted at their face value by all mankind, and then proceeds to demonstrate certain less evident, or perhaps even entirely unknown, truths. Rather it discovers one experience, our inward experience of God given in and through our self-consciousness, to be supremely revealing and significant among all other experiences, and then goes on to interpret all other experience in terms of it. God is not known through nature but nature is known in God."(Langmead, 59)

From that he generated list of possible divine attributes. In other words, God equates to perfection and is the greatest thing possible. From this supposition, Saint Anselm showed that there are some consequences because of the definition. For example, God is basically omnipotent so can he break basic rules such as can he create a round square. If basic problems exist in this type of reasoning, could God exist therefore? If some assumed functions or powers of God are questioned, should the definition of God be curtailed? In other words, God would be omnipotent but could only do 'almost' anything. Since Saint Anselm was basically proving that God did exist, he worked on the assumption that God was omnipotent and could do all things…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited

Dicker, Georges P. Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993.

Langmead, J.V. The Christian in Philosophy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Existence of God for Years
Words: 2319 Length: 7 Document Type: Essay

God vs Evil Forces There is a major problem in the question of the existence of God as well as the presence of the evil forces. If God is almighty, loving and omnipresent how could there be suffering and evil forces in this world? With all the power God has, He could eliminate each and every evil making the world a peaceful and a beautiful place to live for the people.

Existence of God the Debate
Words: 3004 Length: 10 Document Type: Essay

Therefore, it becomes evident that Commander of these laws is definitely more powerful and more authoritative than the command itself. Moreover, moral commands are such that they have a link with the ultimate authority and these laws have to be obeyed anywhere and everywhere irrespective of what the circumstances are. The authority of these moral rules is superior to all the rules, regulations and authority of the human beings.

Existence of God God's Existence
Words: 3906 Length: 10 Document Type: Essay

If something happens, then it is a belief that somebody caused that thing to happen the way it did, and it is an effect of some kind of action. If then several actions take place one after the other, then the earlier/older happening caused the later event thus, "the first cause is the cause of all things and itself had no cause since it always existed." (Trigilio, and Brighenti

Existence of God the Debate
Words: 1252 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

In most religious texts, "God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and all-good (righteous, loving, benevolent)" (Wolf 2011). According to this view, apart from being the source of all that is good, God has the ability to know and do everything -- including stamping out all evil. However, there still exists so much suffering and evil in the world. Calamities of every nature do occur occasionally leading to death, displacement

God and Creation
Words: 4562 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

God and Creation Has the concept of God well and truly woven itself into the very psyche of the average American citizen? What exactly does the average American think about God? As a matter of fact, each and every American must take some time to sit back and think deeply about these issues, and also pay close attention to the power and influence of God in the history of America. Perhaps

God the Necessary Existence of
Words: 992 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

If it cannot be effectively proven that God does not exist, then God apparently does exist. In fact, the lack of proof for atheism can be used as direct proof in the existence of God. "It is much easier to be persuaded that ontological arguments are no good than it is to say exactly what is wrong with them," (Oppy). The apparent manifest multiplicity of the universe is further proof

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now