February 16th class synopsis

In class on February 16^th, we discussed Medieval Philosophies. In medieval times, philosophy was defined as the “handmaiden” to theology. Natural Theology was described as the advancing conclusion about divinity based upon purely rational reflection, which seemed to mean that something divine can be thought about and described in a rational way. So, when people make arguments to prove God’s existence, the arguments must be accepted by all people and not just one side of the fence. Then Dr. Layne described the three main arguments used to prove God’s existence and these arguments were cosmological, ontological, and design. The cosmological argument was based on the existence of the world, the ontological argument was based on the concept of God, and the design argument was based on the teleological order of the world.

Dr. Layne went into more detail about cosmological arguments and people often ask why we believe in God and wonder what started it all. This meant that the universe and its structure seem to demand a cause. Many people believe that God is the cause while others don’t think this is true. This led us to Pascal’s Wager, and Pascal thought it was better to believe than not to believe. So, if you believed in God and lived according to His will then you could go to heaven. However, if for some reason God didn’t exist, you had still lived your life for the good of society and didn’t lose out on anything.

The ancient cosmological philosophers were Plato and Aristotle and they both believed in the Kalam cosmological argument. This argument says that whatever has a beginning of existence must have a cause, and so the universe began to exist, therefore the universe must have been caused to exist. The class also learned about the cosmological arguments of Avicenna. He said that everything must either have a reason or a cause, or not. If something does not, then there is at least one thing which exists of necessity. If something does not exist of necessity, its existence derives from a reason or cause. So this meant that necessary things don’t have a cause.

The last things we talked about were two more philosophers and their medieval cosmological arguments. We discussed Anslem who said that everything either exists through something or nothing, and nothing exists through nothing. Therefore whatever exists must exist through something. He also felt that nothing can be argued through Scripture. The other philosopher that we learned about was Aquinas and he felt that God was the cause of existence, but he was a different cause than parents or builders of buildings. He said that God was an essential cause and a formal cause.