Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of Religion

Throughout the past years there have been attempts by various religious followers to put forward a proof of God's, this included not only Christian philosophers but also the Jewish and Muslim philosophers, which has led to the development of a catalog of arguments. All the philosophies developed have faced a number of controversies leading to their revision and refinement over the years and also development of new ones. These arguments are categorized as The Cosmological Argument, The Ontological Argument, Pascal's Wager, The Teleological Argument, The Argument from Religious Experience, and The Moral Argument.

Among the most referred to philosophers are Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm. The former has a cosmological argument about God's existence while the latter has an ontological argument over the same. A cosmological argument is the argument based on the existence of the universe in relation to the existence of a being that brought about its existence and maintains it whereas the ontological argument tries to prove the existence of God using exclusively abstract reasoning.

The arguments

Anselm's ontological argument takes a hypothesis and proves that it is an acceptable thus false. He uses a hypothesis that God does not exist and it is this that is supposed to conflict the concept that God is "that than which no greater can be perceived

." He argues that if God is that than which no greater can be conceived then nothing greater than God can be imagined. In case God does not exist then something greater than God can be imagined such as a God that does not exist. Anselm therefore concludes his argument using a five-point argument which says: God is that than which no greater can be conceived; this therefore means that there is nothing greater than God that can be imagined; therefore there is nothing imaginable that can be greater than God; but if God does not exist then there is something imaginable that is greater than God; therefore God exists (Williams, 2007).

On the other hand, Aquinas' cosmological argument is built up around a distinction between that which necessarily exists and that which is contingent that is to say a distinction between things that must exist in all possible worlds and a thing that may go out of existence. Using this he sets up a contrary position and then proves it wrong by first accepting that all things are contingent. He disapproves the idea of contingent things by arguing that if that was the case then nothing would be in existence at the moment. He therefore supports the idea of necessary existence and states that there is a hierarchy in which case each lower necessary existent thing depends on the higher to infinity but says this needs to be explained (McDermott, 1993). He concludes that God is the self-explaining necessary being as understood by humans and goes further to define God as "The self-explaining necessary existence upon which all things are contingent in all possible worlds

On a closer look at these two philosophies, it can be argued that Anselm's philosophy is more convincing than Aquinas' philosophy since it is based on logical truth and puts forward understandable concepts. From his argument, Anselm puts forward his conception of God and then follows it by a simple logical truth by arguing that if God is the greatest conceivable being then there is obviously no other conceivable being. He goes further to support this by comparing an existent God and a non-existent God, and since humans cannot imagine any being greater than God then God is existent which is logically true and understandable. When this argument is compared to that of Aquinas which is based on necessary existence is stronger since it does not recognize that God is a greater being and compares God's qualities to that of human beings. A philosopher named Hume also argued that all things may be contingent with no need for necessary existence, and a further argument has also been brought about by the Aquinas' philosophy giving more indications that it is not a conclusive argument.

According to Aquinas' argument the existence of God is dependent on the existence of the universe thus if the universe ceases to exist then God also ceases to exist but according to Anselm the existence of God depends on the imagination of a greater being by humans and since no time will come when human beings will imagine of a greater being than God then God will remain to exist eternally. Considering the belief of human beings on the existence of God that God is omnipresent and existed before the creation and will exist even after, the Anselm's philosophy serves as a perfect proof of God's existence as well as God's nature, the most high.

There are other philosophers who have also presented their arguments with regard to God's existence such as Gaunilo of Marmoutiers and Immanuel Kant. Gaunilo criticized Anselm's ontological argument by stating that if this argument is sound then its logic can be used to prove the existence of any faultless thing and goes ahead to show that there is something wrong with the ontological argument without specifying what it is