Custom «Gods Existence» Essay Paper Sample

Is there evidence that God does exists? Whether God exists or not is a metaphysical question. The possibility of proving whether God exists has fascinated a number of believers and thinkers over a long period of time. This paper will critically analyze Findlay’s assertion ‘Can God's existence be disproved?’ and give a dialectal background to explicate this observation and give an argument if there is god’s existence then is it Incorporeal.

Findlay’s Argument for God’s Existence

Findlay’s argument for the existence of God is that a religious object possesses unsurpassable superiority which is God whose existence is certain. By being ‘certain’ it means that he cannot be ‘psychologically inconceivable’ because then atheism could be true. Then we need to explain being ‘certain’ as being ‘logically inconceivable’ then God’s existence is certain and that His non-existence is logically inconceivable, unless God is a necessary existing being (like us humans). According to Findlay, there are no necessary existing beings then it follows that God does not exist. But he then maintains that, in effect, that by definition God is a necessary existing being, but again there are no such beings. Then this ontological “disproof of the existence of God” then fails. This is because the claim that there are no necessary beings cannot be supported. Then the claim that there are necessary existing beings without and supposing that God is among them, cannot be supported.   Clearly, Findlay ontological disproof of the existence of God is just but an extension of Hume and Kant’s treatment of ontological argument. The model is done in such a way to reveal the modern theistic modal paradox to help resolve the paradox, an interpretation of a possibility is thus presented  by Hartshorne who justifies of the premise asserting that there is a possibility of the existence of God, from other proofs. Findlay then sums all this concisely, “It is usual nowadays to think of Kant as some sort of incipient positivist, always verging towards a belief in the total non-significance of ideas lacking all empiri­cal illustration" [F1:3] (Findlay, J.N). This can be represented as shown below;

• A thing is a God only if it is an adequate object of religious attitudes
• If a thing is adequate, then it exists
• But it is not possible that anything exists
• Therefore it is not possible that a thing is God

Findlay thus tries to put forth an argument against the existence of God. He asserts that the claim that God exists is inherent in religious attitudes and that objects exist accidentally. Findlay’s argument can be easily transposed into possible world’s story.  For Findlay to make such a claim, it means that omniscience and omnipotence characters are by accident which is just but a symatural imperial observation. There is a possibility that it does exist a possible world which is unsurpassable greatness is exemplified (Baggaley).

God is Incorporeal

John 4:24 has the doctrine of the incorporeal nature of God; that God is spirit and has no body. God is not a composition of body and spirit. A philosophical proof from St. Thomas Aquinas is that;

• No body is in motion unless put in that state.
• The cosmological argument for God’s existence proves that God is the first cause and the unmoved mover
• Supposing God has a corporeal body that is able to move

Then

• The third argument is absurd because it conflicts with the second argument, since the second argument has been proved, then argument 3 must be false
• Therefore, God has no body

The secondary argument from above is that God exists in complete actuality and has no potentiality in his being, corporeality requires parts and since God has no potentiality, it then follows that he cannot be corporeal.  

Theistic existentialism affirms for the existence of God. Theistic existentialists believe that there is a meaning to coping in the world by believing and having faith in it. The believe that God exists only rests with faith and not reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Ontological proof for the existence of God stem from two philosophers, St Anselm's and Descartes. In his Proslogion, St. Anselm used intuition and reasoning alone to examine the existence of God. In the Proslogion, he asserts that God’s existence is more of meditation than proof. Anselm’s argument is that;

• “God is the thought object than which no thought object can be thought to be greater, then
• God is only in thought and does not exist, but certainly
• Any thought of object is thought to exist in reality and can be thought to be greater than any thought object that is only in intellect, and it cannot be doubted that
• God can be thought to exist in reality, therefore
• Some thought object can be thought to be greater than the thought object than which no thought object can be thought to be greater i.e. a contradiction. This means the supposition that God is in the intellect is to be dropped and therefore God has to exist in reality.”(Klima, Gyula).  

Hartshorne’s theory of divine relativity argues that God’s relation to human experience is a process of the feeling of feeling. A prominent American scholar, he developed the classical idea and produced a proof for the existence of God. This was a development of Anselm’s Ontological argument on God’s existence. Hartshorne believed that any one argument for God’s existence is inconclusive but different pieces can be woven together to make a convincing and interpretative expression of the world. Professor Viney liked the idea of Hartshorne’s theory and presented a further critical analysis of the theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Conclusion

Ontological arguments are those arguments that conclude that God exists e.g. by by reason alone. God does exist. They are a praori and analytic arguing for the existence of God. The first such argument was put forth by St. Anselm of Canterbury in his proslogion. Many people have proposed ontological arguments, Findlay argues that the concept of God is inconsistent. Despite all these argument, there is some inconsistence and none are satisfactory disproof of the ontological arguments.