DeTrayce
Sawyers
Section
10
1st
Installment
Philosophy
of Religion
Throughout this class one reoccurring topic of
discussion has seemed to be God. In the beginning of the semester, I did not
want to discuss my personal opinions on the matter. The reason I felt this way
was because the topic of religion is kind of a touchy subject. People get angry
if you disagree with their viewpoints, or they fail to see the other
perspective of the argument. It is just a controversial topic all together and
I did not want to be caught in the middle of it. Since I have made it the topic
of my first installment you can see that I no longer feel that way.
As you know the question of whether God exists has
been around for a very long time. Some people argue that there is not a God
because there is no evidence to support the claim. Others argue that God is
real, but they still have no evidence of proving it. This is common for most
people who believe that God is real. They have faith which is unprovable, but
one philosopher argued that he could prove the existence of God.
Eleventh century French monk, Anselm of Canterbury,
argued that God’s existence is provable. Based on what he understood the nature
of God’s being Anselm argued a deductive argument for the existence of God. His
argument was and ontological argument. An ontological argument is defined as a
philosophical argument for the existence of God that uses ontology. Anselm said,
“God is that which no greater can be conceived.” He thought that God was the
best possible thing that we can imagine. Basically, that meant that God must
exist in our minds, and since he exists in our minds he must exist in reality.
Anselm concluded there were two ways things can exist. They can exist only in
our minds, or they can exist in our minds and in reality.
Anselm made the argument that the only way to make
something better that existed in our mind is for it to be real. Therefore, he
came to the conclusion that God must be real since he is the best possible
thing we can imagine. He believed he had found the way to prove God existed. A
friend of his said that the argument can be used for anything that you most
wanted, but it would not make it real. Anselm argument crumbled when he tried
to explain himself, but ultimately used God as a way to define himself which is
a fallacy. Immanuel Kant tried to tweak Anselm’s argument by noting that
existence is not a predicate.
Since we are still having this debate today on whether
God exists or not we know that Anselm’s argument did not hold up. I want to
leave you with a few questions to think about as well. Is God real? Is there or
will there ever be a way to prove his existence? Is it a waste of time to try
and prove or disprove the existence of God?
Installments I commented
on
You're right, it is a touchy subject that people generally prefer to evade - or else they prefer to push their own views aggressively and intolerantly. Philosophers are drawn to the subject for precisely that reason. It's a paradigm example of a topic in desperate need of illumination and mutual toleration, since we've not outgrown the old ancestral habit of attacking those who think differently than ourselves. If we can learn to negotiate the god question we should be able to negotiate anything.
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