Class Synopsis

In class on Wednesday we briefly talked about medieval philosophy and the proof of God’s existence. We learned about the three main arguments: cosmological, based on the existence of the world, design, based on the theological order of the world, and ontological, based on the concept of God. On Friday we got to the meat of each argument. Starting off with cosmological, we learned about the ancient cosmological philosophers arguments. The first argument made was by Plato and Aristotle describing everything that exists must have a cause. This argument led to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which consists of three parts: Whatever has a beginning must have a cause, the universe came to exist and, therefore, the universe must have been caused to exist. An Arabic philosopher, Avicenna, argues everything must have a reason or cause, but if it does not then it exists out of necessity, if not, it is a contingent being, but there cannot be an infinite amount of reasons for the contingent beings. The Anslem cosmological argument states everything must exist through something. Aquinas’s argument explains God is the cause of existence, meaning there cannot be infinite causes; something must be first in order for there to be a cause of the present. There are many questions that go along with a cosmological argument, but as human being we need to know why and God is said to be the cause to ensure our happiness.

Cosmological arguments help us understand why the world exists; yet a design argument describes why the world has certain features. The theological approach states everything in the world has a purpose, while regularity states if something is irregular think of a miracle. I thought it was really interesting in class when we talked about Cicero looking up at the stars, and thinking those stars are put in their certain spots on purpose; they are not randomized. Because Aquinas believes God is the cause of existence he argues, “Nature ruled by and ‘intellect’ which gives order to nature.” This leads to the Aristotelian causes: material, efficient, formal and final. There are also many questions critiquing design arguments: the thought of multiple Gods, God being too anthropomorphic, order being only a product of human life, and more.

The last argument we talked about was ontological; explaining the meaning of God makes God an absolutely necessary being. According to Anslem of Canterbury the word God signifies, “Something which nothing greater can be thought.” God is the idea that entails reality, if no one can conceive a thought greater than there must be a God. We ended class talking about Gaunilo’s objection to ontological arguments through his Perfect Island criticism. Benedictine Monk contended that just because we have an idea of something does not mean that there is anything in reality that corresponds to it. Human being have many notions of unreal objects. In class we related his criticism to the definition of a cat. This definition may be the best definition in the world; however, there is no proof that the cat exists.