Today we talked about Anselm and Aquinas. Both of them discussed the idea of God and ways to go about proving his existence. One thoery by Anselm stated that the fact that we even have an idea of God should prove that there is a God. We didn't necessarily like this explanation. It is too inconclusive.
We all had our own ideas and explanations (or no explanation) about God. For some it was based on experience, others the lack of their own experience. We talked about just how hard it actually wrap your mind around who or what God really is. Kendall gave us a quote that said, "My head tells me that I'll never understand God, but my heart tells me that I'm not meant to." We also discussed that God is different things to different people. Some view him as a person who guides their lives and watches over them, while other people may view him as a source of energy from which things started. This kind of ties into what Aquinas says about God being the uncaused cause. Everything has a beginning, and using God as the starting point allows people to avoid tracing origins back into infinite regress.
First, I feel as though I should say that the quote came from Dan Brown in his book Angels and Demons, which you should all read because it is fantastic and better than the movie. Anyway, I think we covered the concept of God pretty well in today's class so questions for Thursday:
ReplyDelete"Don't accept anything as true if there is the slightest possibility that it isn't." What method of thought is this?
How was Descartes able to conclude that the world must be more or less as we experience it?
I apologize for missing class on tuesday. I wasn't feeling well after my first couple classes so I came home after.
ReplyDeleteAs for God, it is hard to wrap you head around the idea. Especially when you take into context the shear volume of Gods there are believed to be. You have God, Jesus, Zeus, Muhammad, Budda, and even in some cultures the elements are the gods. Some believe in one god, some believe in many. Are these all just seperate names for one being? Or could they all be different? Are they just symbols used as answers for what we can never know? Or are they really the creator(s)?
According the Descartes, having doubt about them means we have to reject the thought. However, he seems to contridict himself by saying just by having the idea of God, then God must exist. This leads me to my question:
How can just the idea of God be enough to prove God exists if we are suppose to dismiss any idea we can doubt?
Its a hard concept to digest, but I'm anxious to here what everyone else thinks.
As for my factual question:
What famous quote is Descartes famous for?
Answer: "I think, therefore I am"