Does God Exist 2 free essay sample

Does God Exist? # 8211 ; Aquinas Essay, Research Paper Does God Exist? Since the beginning of clip, adult male has been fighting to reply the inquiry, how did we acquire here? What or who was responsible for the creative activity of life and the universe? It seemed natural to reason that at that place must hold been a higher power that created the world known by adult male. However, how does one turn out the being of such a God? This has been the major preoccupation of theologists and philosophers which began several hundred old ages before Jesus Christ, and has continued to be the topic of het argument of all time since. We readily accept the existence and everything contained within it, but can # 8217 ; t seem to hold upon how it got here in the first topographic point. After all, saying that God exists and so really turn outing His being are two different things, and the latter can turn out to be a instead dashing undertaking. Most early philosophers maintained that God most surely did be and attempted to utilize scientific statements to turn out their point. However, possibly the most quoted philosopher on the absolute being of God is non a scientist, but instead, possibly more suitably, a theologist. St. Thomas Aquinas was a pupil of doctrine and was influential in integrating doctrine into the spiritual philosophy, which provides the foundation for the contemporary Roman Catholic spiritual beliefs. Saint thomass examined the inquiry of God # 8217 ; s being in great item in his philosophical plants, Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles. He wrote, # 8220 ; Get downing with reasonable things, our mind is led to the point of cognizing about God that He exists, and other such features that must be attributed to the First Principle # 8221 ; . Aquinas had the typical philosopher outlook by asseverating that it can non be merely simply accepted that God exists, since this contention is non instantly evident. It is a declaration that must be proven. In other words, religion entirely is non sufficient adequate grounds to reason that God exists. Aquinas pointed out that what may be conceived in the mind does non needfully exists in world ( Grace, 1996 ) . To do his ain instance sing this issue, Aquinas established his five standards on the being of God through Summa Theologica, the first three of which became known signifier the footing of the cosmogonic statement corroborating God # 8217 ; s being. The five ways Aquinas used to corroborate the being of God all stemmed from a first cause statement. In other words, life perpetuates itself as one cause prompts the happening of an event that becomes the cause for a subsequent event and so on through eternity. However, at some point, there had to be a first cause, which set these wheels into gesture, which is the being normally referred to as God. In the First Way, Aquinas established that everything that is finite undergoes alteration, and by following these consecutive alterations, finite adult male is finally led to God. Until this happens, finite objects can non be changed. Aquinas # 8217 ; Second Way is based upon the theory of causality, which is a elaborate account of how the foremost cause is the lone account for continual # 8220 ; cause and consequence # 8221 ; of the existence. Following, Aquinas established the standards of a # 8216 ; necessity # 8217 ; of being. In other words, something can non come from nil. There had to be a transeunt being in topographic point for all being to germinate. He wrote, # 8220 ; We discovery in nature things that are possible to be and non to be # 8230 ; . But it is impossible for these things to ever be, for that which is possible non to be at some clip is non. Therefore, if everything is possible non to be, so at one clip there could hold been nil in existence. # 8221 ; In other words, if there were no being historically, nil would be at the present clip. Since being is non in inquiry today, there must hold been an ageless being that started it all # 8211 ; God. By the 19th century, philosophers were non rather so content to blindly accept the being of God. Certain incredulity began to predominate, and this was reflected in the doctrine of the clip period. Possibly one of the most articulate spokesmen who argued against the being of God was British philosopher David Hume, the laminitis of the # 8217 ; disbelieving school of philosophy. # 8217 ; He openly criticized Aquinas # 8217 ; # 8220 ; foremost do # 8221 ; theory as an uneffective statement, inquiring, # 8220 ; What was the cause of the First Cause? # 8221 ; . He and others pointed out, rather justly, if every happening must hold a cause, what makes anyone conclude that it began with God? There has neer been a valid statement set uping God as the # 8216 ; First Cause # 8217 ; harmonizing to David Hume. Of class, it should possibly be pointed out that oppositions of Hume have taken the theological # 8220 ; high route, # 8221 ; keeping that it is assumed that in the moral order, everything Begins with God, and this is a procedure that is beyond inquiry. Furthermore, harmonizing to Hume, Aquinas # 8217 ; statement is philosophically flawed because he makes the premise that the features of the parts equal the features of the whole. In other words, merely because some effects in the existence may be attributed to a cause does non intend that the full existence can be traced to one root cause. After all, if God is the cause of the existence, this means that God is a cause onto Himself. Why can # 8217 ; t the creative activity of the universe be explained in similar footings? Staying ever the skeptic, Hume # 8217 ; s argument Michigans short of claiming that God does non be, which would be godlessness. Rather, he regarded his undertaking as projecting sensible uncertainty as to whether or non God exists, which is agnosticism. David Hume farther expounded on his unconventional spiritual doctrine in his 1757 essay, The Natural History of Religion. He suggested that people continued to believe in the being of God because they were conditioned to make so. Hume wrote: Our ascendants in Europe, before the resurgence of letters, believed, as we do at nowadays, that there was one supreme God, the writer of nature, whose power, though in itself unmanageable, was yet frequently exerted by the interjection of his angels and subsidiary curates, who executed his sacred intents. But they besides believed, that all nature was full of other unseeable powers, faeries, hobs, elves, sprits, existences, stronger and mightier than work forces, but much inferior to the heavenly natures, who surround the throne of God. Hume # 8217 ; s deduction is clear: If adult male did non believe in the being of God, he would incur considerable wrath from above. Hume continued by asseverating that literature had much to make with public perceptual experience of God and of His being. Ancient Greek poets bestowed upon their honored Gods homo qualities they knew their compatriots could easy associate to. It was this # 8216 ; nescient # 8217 ; ancient Greek position of God offered by the Grecian poets and Aristotle, upon which the God # 8217 ; s existence theory of Thomas Aquinas was based. Hume asserted that the original religion placed in God # 8217 ; s being grew from the uneducated multitudes that developed the myth of an almighty Perfect Being who was responsible for the creative activity of everything that could non be explained. These people could non explicate such natural phenomenons as lightning or temblors so they attributed them to some higher power. Today there are empirical, scientific accounts for these happenings. The possibility exists that someday scientific discipline will someway be able to turn out or confute the theory that God exists. With both points of position presented, which, if either, is right? Aquinas # 8217 ; statement, an admirable theoretical account of deductive logical thinking, is missing in scientific cogency. Hume argued, possibly right, that this historical description of a natural and moral order merely grew from adult male # 8217 ; s want to populate an ordered being, non from God # 8217 ; s being. Peoples will everlastingly be reasoning around their dinner tabular arraies about the being of God. Many take comfort in the belief that there is one Godhead who still exists in the existence, a perfect being who watches out for His # 8216 ; imperfect # 8217 ; kids. However, the statement that God exists because he was the # 8216 ; First Cause # 8217 ; of everything is excessively simplistic for the sophisticated mind to accept. It may be spiritually soothing to believe in the being of a higher power, but there is no incontrovertible grounds to propose that God was # 8216 ; the cause # 8217 ; of everything, therefore turn outing His being. As we approach the new millenary, incredulity prevails and continues to reign supreme. Grace, R. Jeffrey. A Report on Summa Contra Gentiles Book One: God by Thomas Aquinas [ Online ] . October 1996. Available: hypertext transfer protocol: //www.electriciti.com/~rjgrace/scg.htm. Hume, David. The Natural History of Religion [ Online ] . 1757. Available: hypertext transfer protocol: //www.utm.edu/research/hume/wri/nhr/nhr. Porter, Burton F. ( editor ) . Religion A ; Reason: An Anthology. New York: St. Martin # 8217 ; s Press, Inc. , 1993. Stairs, Allen. The Cosmologic Argument [ Online ] . March 1998. Available: hypertext transfer protocol: //brindedcow.umd.edu/236/aquinas.html. Titus, Harold H. , and Smith, Marilyn S. Living Issues in Philosophy ( Sixth Edition ) . New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1974. Thompson, Karl F. ( editor ) . Thomas Aquinas # 8217 ; Summa Contra Gentiles. Classicss of Western Thought: II. Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.