Aquinas’s Arguments Regarding the Existence of God

Saint Thomas Aquinas(1224-1274) sets off his theist arguments with a simple and evident
opening survey and adds various other premises which tie the initial proposition’s exposition
to the conclusion that God exists while acknowledging that the initial survey cannot alone
construct this conclusion, therefore, understanding that supplementary premises make the
connection between the opening survey and the conclusion that God exists. In his arguments,
Aquinas uses the term God to refer to a being that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good
(all-PKG for future reference). Although this definition is not the only type of perception of
God, it is best to follow the traditional and simplified versions of all the philosophical content
of this lecture to comprehend efficiently before forming familiarity with more complex
concepts.
His first two are the argument from motion and the argument from causality. Both essentially
have the same design although the latter’s a more generalized version of the formal. Mainly,
the argument of motion goes like this; there’re entities in motion in nature. These entities’
motions always stem from the actions of other entities. Influences must lead up to their
results. The chain of influence-result cannot be endless. A supreme entity outside of nature
must’ve caused the first motion of an entity in nature, thus God exists. Switching the
concepts of entities that move to the incidents that occur in the previous argument would give
us the argument of causality because incidents cannot occur as a result of itself, influencing
factors must occur before the results and when you go up that chain of incidents, the first
entity that made the first incident occur is God. The premise which argues that the chain of
influence-result going back into the past from the present cannot be boundless also implies
that the rest of the chain going forward into the future from the present has an end.
There’re two criticisms for these two arguments. Firstly, the existence of an entity outside of
nature that might’ve caused the first movement of an entity in nature doesn’t necessarily
prove that the said entity’s the all-PKG God as we defined. Therefore, the conclusion of these
two arguments cannot be derived from the last premise. The second issue is the argument’s
assumption that all incidents are caused by the same origin. The premise ‘’All incidents have
an origin from outside nature.’’ doesn’t conclude that every incident has the same origin but
rather implies that there’s at least one origin. This misinterpretation’s called The Birthday
Fallacy because using the same false logic would be to assume that everyone who has a
birthday has the same date as their birthday. The third opposition to Aquinas is that the chain
of influence-result can be boundless. Every incident going back to the past from the present
can influence something within nature therefore the line goes on forever. Aquinas opposes
this by arguing that the lack of a first influence would exterminate the continuation of later
incidents. But this opposition is proven false because the ongoing need for previous influence
does not require the existence of a first natural influence. Just like the chain of incidents can
go on forever into the future, there is no point in thinking it cannot go on forever to the past.
The last counter-argument is as it goes; Granted that the history of the world’s limited, it
doesn’t mean that there has to be an explanation to the first incident that occurred or other
incidents for that matter. Although, it makes more sense to search for a possible explanation
and not conclude one than not searching for conclusions.
The third is the argument from contingency. Contingent things like the galaxies, all species,
and art crafts depend their existence on something and are not at all needed for the world to
exist. Necessary things, however, would exist under any circumstance and don’t depend on
anything to exist. The collection of things need not be exactly like that thus are contingent.
Therefore, there are many possible ways the world can be. However, the necessary thing
must exist in all possible worlds by definition. Aquinas argues that every contingent thing
stops existing and if all things were contingent, then there’d be a time in which nothing
exists. It’d have to be in the past and since nothingness cannot produce anything, it would go
on infinitely but obviously, things exist in the world right now. In conclusion, there must be a
necessary being, namely God. Reductio ad absurdum arguments are a style which proves the
inaccuracy of a premise by stating the absurdity of its outcome. For instance, the ‘’Humans
have gills’’ premise’s outcome would be that people could breathe underwater and since this
is absurd, the conclusion is that humans do not have gills.
The birthday fallacy is also present in this argument. Because, even though we assume that
all things are contingent, it’s not concludable that there must be a time of nothingness. This’s
because of the possibility that there can always be at least one thing that exists before the
other last thing perishes and so forth. Also, there’s no rational excuse to think that this
hypothetical nothingness would have to occur in the past and not the future.
The fourth argument of Aquinas is the argument from degree. He argues that there’re lower
and higher degrees of perfection for qualities. So, if there can be lower degrees of perfection
for an entity’s quality then that quality’s greatest viable degree must exist in another entity.
So, an entity that has all qualities to the greatest viable degree exists. Therefore, God exists.
Although the starting point of this is an accurate observation, the second premise isn’t
entirely convincing because, in as much as Usain Bolt doesn’t have the greatest viable speed,
it doesn’t imply that someone with the greatest speed quality must exist. Also, even if there
are the existence of the greatest viable qualities, these qualities need not be in a single entity
considering the Birthday Fallacy. Lastly, there is an inconsistency in the sense that if God
possessed all qualities to the greatest extent then God would have to possess both maximum
power and maximum weakness. This is absurd. The failure of these arguments doesn’t
disprove God.
Aquinas’s fifth argument is the argument from design. Some in the group of articles whose
actions occur with a goal possess consciousness while other articles do not. Articles that act
out a goal without consciousness must have a designer who has consciousness. Therefore, he
argues that God exists. The Birthday Fallacy comes into play here again because not all
unconscious articles who act out a goal has to be designed by the same conscious designer.
There can be multiple designers in this sense. There are three categories of articles that are
goal-directed. Humans possess consciousness therefore they set their own goals for their
actions. Artifacts are set to participate in a goal-directed action by conscious articles, namely
humans. Nonhuman beings are the third type of articles that can take action with the goal of
surviving and procreating such as archaea. Aquinas believed in a fourth category that pretty
much included every article in the world but it is currently disregarded by modernity to
assume that objects like glass can have goals for example to survive. There are two types of
design arguments upheld by Aquinas and David Hume( 1711-1776), namely global design
arguments and local design arguments. The former examines a broad property of the universe
such as the purpose of the creation of it whereas the latter handles a particular property such
as the job of human lungs that help us breathe. Both arguments attribute the ultimate
explanation of these properties to God as an intelligent creator.
William Paley is an eighteenth-century theologist who constructed a well-known argument in
favor of God that used abductive inference which is an effort to come to the best predicted
and simple conclusion that starts with a logical inference of an observation. Imagine that you
are on a walk when you spot an impressive watch with complex properties in the sand. There
are two routes you can take to decide how this watch may have come to its existence. Either
you believe that the watch was unintentionally constructed by random actions of the ocean
according to the Random Hypothesis or you believe that an intelligent watchmaker made the
watch according to the Design Hypothesis. The latter hypothesis sounds much more
reasonable to believe. This is because it would convincingly explain the complex properties
of the watch and credit its intelligence whereas if the random acts of the ocean created the
watch then it would be relatively very surprising. This is a local design argument. Paley uses
something called the Surprise Principle. It means that the Design Hypothesis is favored over
the Random Hypothesis due to its relatively massive likelihood and a compelling explanation
for the watch. This is followed by the inference of the watchmaker’s intelligence. Paley
proposes an analogy; The successful adaptation and rhythm of the organism in the world are
much more nuanced and striking. So, which of the previous two arguments would be more
fitting as an explanation for these organisms? If we can argue that the Design Hypothesis has
more likelihood and a compelling case for the watch then we can say the same goes for all
organisms. Thus, God exists.

Saint Anselm’s Argument Regarding the Existence of God

So far, all the arguments I have presented were posteriori which are propositions that strictly
require the use of senses and experience, or else the arguments such as whether articles are
motion or organisms survive efficiently cannot be rationalized. But this is not the only way,
some propositions such as definitions and mathematical truths are called priori propositions
that can be proven accurate by reasoning alone. Priori truths don’t have to be hereditary, we
may need to learn them. For instance, two plus two equals four and we can verify this
proposition without experience but only if we comprehend the meaning of it. The Ontological
Argument aims to rationalize the argument ‘’God exists.’’ by solely tackling the definition of
God. Definitions don’t necessarily suggest that their subject exists. For example. We can
define extraterrestrials as beings who exist in outer space but it doesn’t conclude anything
about their existence or their quantity. Whereas, the Ontological Argument says that this is
not the case for God and its definition will conclude its existence too. This might sound
probable after I explain how some existence assertions can be priori truths. This is the exact
case for the priori truth that the month of January is before February and after December.
This is both a priori truth and an existence assertion. Therefore, no conflict in the Ontology
Argument can stem from this issue. The argument is constructed by Anselm as it follows;(1)
God is supreme according to the definition. (2) If an entity fails to exist in the real world
while existing in other potential worlds then it is inferior to another entity which can exist in
all potential world in terms of perfection. (3) Therefore, he concludes that God exists.
Gaunilo’s criticism switched God to the concept of a perfect island which is the possible
supreme and concluded that the perfect island must therefore exist in the real world. But he
then explained the priori premise simply cannot provide the existence of the island.
Therefore, Gaunilo stated that both the Island and Ontological Arguments are invalid.
Gaunilo uses reductio by doing this because these two-argument forms are essentially the
same and by proving the invalidity of the Island Argument, he proved the invalidity of the
Ontological Argument.

Pascal’s Argument Regarding the Belief in God

There are two reasons to believe in something or to execute an action. The first is the
prudential reason, this means we accept the concept due to the calculations of our potential
gains or losses in possible realities or we accept it because it is supported by a sufficient
amount of evidence which is called evidential reasoning. Pascal argues that the following
argument is a great prudential reason to have faith. He argues that there are four potential
situations. Firstly, you can believe in God and if you’re right you gain an infinite reward or if
you’re wrong the only loss is a small portion of time that got wasted by religious practice. If
you choose to believe, the potential gain is astronomically more than potential loss and worth
it even if you think God’s existence is unlikely therefore it makes sense to gamble.
A counter-argument to this’s that belief can’t be immediately formed upon decision but
Pascal recognizes that it’s a process that can occur with time and effort. Though, his
argument is only concerned with what’s best for us rather than ways to achieve it. The second
protest to Pascal is about his assumptions about God’s behaviors which are too specific and
fail to cover many diverse religions. Pascal’s argument can’t guarantee how God’ll react to
believers and nonbelievers or if it even matters. Therefore, there’s no compelling reason to
agree to it.

The Argument from Evil

This argument has three forms and is atheistic. First; If God existed, it would be all-PKG. In
that case there would be no evil but there is. So, God doesn’t exist. The evil term has two
divisions; human-made and natural disasters.
Potential objections to this argument are as follows. There is no morality, it’s merely a human
construction and the universe is neutral. Or you could reject that God is all-PKG to justify the
evil in the world. Thirdly, we can use defense and theodicy. Defense would mean to argue
that there is no compelling point that suggests that evil and God can’t coexist whereas
theodicy requires a positive counter-argument. In this case of theodicy, it argues that the
reason evil exists is that some tiny amount of it is needed for soul-building. The question of
why didn’t God just create us with strong souls is answered by giving us a chance to be proud
of our progress and have credit. But this isn’t enough to explain this massive amount of
existing evil.
The second version of the argument is that; If God existed, it would be all-PKG. Then the
total quantity of evil would only be the small quantity that is needed for soul-building. But
there is so much more than the necessary amount in the world. So, God doesn’t' exist. The
objection to this is explained by our free will. Because humans have free will, there're a bit
more than the necessary minimum amount of evil although this explanation is also not
enough to explain the massive amount of existing evil.
The third version argues that the total amount of evil is so much more than the repercussions
of free will and the cost of soul-building. Because these two cannot explain the existence of
nonhuman consequences such as natural disasters therefore, God doesn’t exist.