Introduction
Philosophers have formulated theories and arguments to prove the existence of God. Plato brings the idea of the human mind and the ability to explore different ideas with the allegory of the cave. With the ‘Meno’ concepts, he assimilates the ability of humans to uphold virtue and pass it on to people. Anselm came up with the cosmological argument, and
Thomas Aquinas came up with his version. Rene Descartes came up with various proofs and arguments on meditation to show the existence of God. These and many others give humans knowledge of the existence of God.
However, some atheists view the statements about deities or the existence of God as insufficient, mistaken, or outweighed by the arguments against them. Others reject the possibility of there being a God. Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russel have provided arguments against the existence of a creator deity. However much the philosophers use theories to establish the truth, all humans are subjective to the fact, which is objective.
Plato’s Conception of the Existence of God
Possibly, every theory or argument about the existence of God stems from Plato’s concepts. Plato perceives God as the perfect being in existence. The perfection of God is reflected in human existence. However, this does not mean that humans are perfect. Plato states that it is human nature to be imperfect. In his ‘Meno’ concept, he uses the analogy of people giving directions.
One can have complete knowledge of the destination or not. However, what they have in common is the willingness to provide directions. Therefore, there is a being that created humans with virtues and the ability to differentiate between good and evil.
The ‘Meno’ concept focuses on how humans have a common core of humanity. Plato explains that God is the father of all moral goodness. God must be the first cause and a self-moved mover; otherwise, there will be an infinite regress to causes of causes. As discussed in the instances below, Descartes, Aquinas, Anselm, Maimonides, and Wager all have arguments that relate to Plato.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
Plato introduces the allegory of the cave. It helps one understand how to separate an illusion and reality. He creates an imaginative picture of a group of men who have been chained in a cave since birth. Right in front of them is a wall, while behind them is a bonfire. They cannot move in any direction, so they can only face the wall. Due to the fire behind them, they can see shadows cast by objects on the wall. They consider them real entities and name the shadows.
One of the prisoners manages to escape and then walks outside the cave. He sees the actual objects which cast shadows on the wall. The bright sunlight bothers his eyes when he is outside the cave, and he adjusts. When he sees the shadows cast by the sunlight, he begins to think they are real objects. People convince him they are just the reflection of real objects (Rosen et al. 137). When he goes back to convince his fellows that there is an outside world, they get violent, and it takes much effort to convince them to leave the cave.
In this parable, it is possible to see the reflection of God in the ideal objects but not God Himself. Just like the way the prisoners could only see the shadows and not the fire. The perception is that God creates many objects, but humans doubt them and perceive them as something else. For example, many doubt that God is the creator of the moon and the sun (Gage 228). They, therefore, come up with an insufficient scientific explanation for the shadows cast by these objects.
Saint Augustine, the most significant Christian philosopher, describes the presence of God as the light cast by the sun (Gage 231). It is because the presence of the sun can be proved or disapproved from either the creation story or the scientific point of view. The same doubt is seen in the parable where he illustrates the sunlight perceived as a huge fire by the prisoners in the cave.
Saint Augustine says it is impossible to see God but to believe He exists. It is about how the prisoners could see the light yet believe that a fire or the sun is producing it. Some prisoners were comfortable in the cave because they feared facing the bigger world. Believing that there is God requires believing that there is a higher power that connects all the other powers (Gage 230). The power is better than that of human beings because God cannot be inferior to human beings.
Rene Descartes
God is the supreme supernatural creator, sustainer, and ruler of the universe and everything in it. It is preceded by Descartes’ first proof of the existence of God. He forms two axioms, which state that something cannot come from nothing, and what is more perfect cannot arise from what is less perfect (Srivastava 13). For an idea to contain certain realities, it must come from a source that contains more realities than there are in the idea. There must be a cause or a power that contains all the realities reflected in each idea (Rosen et al. 266). The attributes of God are such that He is powerful enough to create relatively perfect ideas as Him; therefore, He is the cause.
In Descartes’ second proof of the existence of God, he states that there is as much power needed to preserve existence in an unavoidable reality as there is in creating a new one. Human beings do not possess the power to sustain their existence (Rosen et al. 267). It takes a greater power; if humans had it, it would be evident. Therefore, it is a power outside human existence that sustains them. Using the analogy that humans are created with specific abilities, one can establish that what or who created them possesses the same (Rosen et al. 267). Therefore, humans possess all the ideas and perfections of God.
Rene Descartes claims that proving the existence of God is the only way to ascertain the existence of an external world. Most of the senses given to humans are right and unreliable. He claims that God is perfect, as His existence (Srivastava 14). The essence of God is to be a perfect being. He created the universe and everything in it from His perfection. Descartes says he cannot begin to assume that He created humans as imperfect. His existence is distinct from that of human beings. He is omnipotent, benevolent, and veracious. Therefore, the existence of God is perfect, and there is no way that a perfect God would engage in deception or pass unreliable senses to humans.
Saint Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm identifies God as something that nothing more extraordinary can be thought of. It means that there is no greater power than that of God. He claims that such beings exist, in mind, even that of those who deny their existence (Rosen et al. 9). For them to come up with arguments to oppose the existence of God, they must first acknowledge his existence in their mind so that they can start opposing it.
Anselm states that for such the most powerful being, God, to exist in the mind, he must exist in reality. Therefore, the greatest possible being exists, whose name is God (Rosen et al. 9). Everything that exists in the mind alone is imperfect. It would have been perfect if it existed in reality. Therefore, God’s perfect nature dictates that He exists in reality.
Thomas Aquinas
Plato’s main argument is that God is the leading cause of all causes in the universe. Thomas Aquinas, one of the Philosophers in the History of Catholic Philosophy and Theology, came up with five ways to prove God’s existence, which were directly related to Plato’s concept. He called them the cosmological arguments for divine existence (Rosen et al. 13). Each described the general truth of the phenomena and proceeded to the existence of a supernatural cause behind them. In each case, Aquinas identifies the source as God.
Aquinas uses the motion argument to suggest that each thing in the universe that moves is moved by something else. The movement of an object is caused by the movement of another, which is not in motion (Rosen et al. 13). It all begins with a prime mover, who is not being acted upon by a prime agent. Motion is the reduction of the potentiality of something to its actuality.
For example, it is the potential for firewood to be hot. It needs an agent to act on it so it can be hot. He explains the change of realities caused by a being, which does not change. Therefore, whatever is in motion is put in motion by another (Rosen et al. 13). The first mover is put in motion by no other, which Aquinas understands to be God.
He further argues that an entity or agent is responsible for a change in something else. It is built upon Aristotle’s motion of efficient cause. He argues that there must be a first cause for all the changes that take place in the world. Taking away the cause means taking away the effect. Therefore, if there is no cause, there would not be the changes witnessed in the world today (Gage 231). Therefore, no ultimate or intermediate causes would have an effect on the world. Due to changes in the world, such as a mother begetting a child, it is clear that there is the first cause, which is God.
Aquinas uses the argument of possibility and necessity to explain the existence of God. Some things are possible to be or not to be. Possible beings can exist and not exist (Rosen et al. 14). For instance, human beings cease to exist at a particular time. It means that there was a time when they never existed. It is because they are subject to generation and corruption.
If all beings could exist, it means there was a time when nothing existed, but then, there would be nothing in existence now. It means that there is one necessary being who has existed since the beginning of time (Gage 232). The being is referred to as not capable of not existing. The being is eternal in that He was there at the beginning of time, and he would still be in existence far after. Aquinas describes Him as God.
The argument of perfection also provides proof of the existence of God. Things can be graded as good or bad, true or false, noble, and others (Rosen et al. 15). They are graded compared to something else, which is the maximum element. For example, a person’s behavior can be judged and graded according to basic human characteristics. Fire is the maximum of heat. All these characteristics have an overall being that causes them and every other perfection. A supreme perfection must exist that all imperfect beings approach, yet falls short. According to Aquinas, God is the ultimate perfection.
Governance of the world is another way that Aquinas uses to provide proof of God’s existence. It focuses more on ends, causes, and nature (Rosen et al. 16). It explains that everything has its natural purpose or end. However, some things, such as natural bodies, lack the intelligence to direct themselves toward their natural ends.
Therefore, there should be an overall power that is more knowledgeable to guide them. The being possesses attributes such as omnipotence, omnipresent, and eternal, which makes it possible to guide the natural bodies to their purpose or end (Gage 230). Therefore, an intelligent being who directs all the other beings to their purpose and their end exists is God.
He argues that God exists in the doing of all. He created the world, but He is not a part of it. As proven by the existence of all these effects, His existence is true. However, He does not share His existence with everything else. He does not belong to a certain group of beings or a genus. Christians refer to Him as a being and give Him personal pronouns. He is neither thing nor of a thing (Srivastava 26). It means He is His existence in that He sustains Himself. However, He is the beginning of all existence. Therefore, he transcends any philosophical category and does not fall into any classification scheme.
The existence of God shows itself through moral laws and morality. It is the judgment according to the extremes of the good and the bad (Rosen et al. 37). Morality overrules everything because the actions of humans are judged by whether they are wrong or right. With morality, not all things are permissible in society (Gage 234). Morality has the last authority, which is above and has control over everything. The moral argument, therefore, states to prove that the father of all morality is God.
The existence of God can be proven by the role of good and evil in the world. God emphasizes peace, love, and tranquility among human beings. If there were no God, all actions would be the same, the good and the bad (Rosen et al. 37). Therefore, there would not be order in the world. Since God created the world, He maintains all the order to prevent chaos amongst all species.
William Paley
William Paley, a British philosopher and priest, created the design arguments that contributed to the proof that God exists. He upholds Plato’s argument that God is the creator and beginner of the universe. He uses the analogy of a watch and a stone. When he pitched his foot on a stone, he imagined the origin of the stone (Rosen et al. 21). He argued that the stone’s existence would have been forever. He pitched his foot on a watch, which he imagined was rather a different artifact; it would be absurd to suppose that it had been there forever (Rosen et al. 21). There are so many explanations that could explain why the watch was found there.
The context of the watch is that it has a designer who, in this case, was out of reach. The designer of the watch makes it according to their likeness. The design of something pertains to an organism’s purpose, complexity, order, and functionality (Rosen et al. 21). Paley points out that the watch’s interior had a complex design, which meant that it was created to perform a specific function. However, if the inner connections of the watch are tampered with, it might fail to work as efficiently as before. Paley argues that one does not need to know the details inside the watch to know that an intelligent maker is involved.
This analogy suggests that the earth and everything in it have an unreachable designer. As the designer knows the watch’s complexity, the creator of the earth can account for everything in it. Since a human designer creates the watch, it is smaller and requires skills that anyone can learn (Rosen et al. 22). The earth is massive and complex, which only means that the creation has to be of an excellent caliber and a higher power than human beings. Since the watches have a purpose, the creator of the earth must have had a purpose for creating them. The degree of the creation of the earth exceeds all computation and human understanding. The creator is called God.
Pascal Wager
The final argument is the Pascal Wager. Pascal’s contributions to probability theory and mathematics are well known. Pascal opposed the idea of proving God’s existence solely through logic. He believes faith, not logic, is the most critical factor (Rosen et al. 68). Understanding the concept of expected utility, which allows us to assess the relative importance of various potential but uncertain outcomes, is required for this argument.
According to the argument, God may or may not exist (Rosen et al. 68). According to Wager, people can choose to believe in God or not. Under this condition, it is up to them to decide the safest decision. For instance, if someone chooses to believe that God exists, they gain infinite happiness (Srivastava 70). If they believe God does not exist, they receive infinite suffering. He bases his arguments on the Bible and faith, giving the people the liberty to choose what to believe.
Conclusion
Many concepts about the existence of God are based on the firm belief that He exists. It is mainly known as theism. Many of these philosophers base their theories on the belief that the existence of God is actual. They try to convince people philosophically or scientifically that God exists. Due to this, people have formulated many philosophical theories from ancient philosophers to support their arguments. Many modern philosophers and critical thinkers have grown to support the existence of God.
Works Cited
Gage, Logan Paul. “Five Proofs of the Existence of God.” Philosophia Christi 21.1 (2019): 228-232.
Rosen, Gideon, et al. The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. 2nd ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
Srivastava, Shikha. “God Existence: Deductive and Inductive Arguments.” Central Asian Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Culture 3.8 2022.