God has Ontological Existence - Term Paper Example

God has Ontological Existence The religious philosophers, over the centuries have tried to establish the existence of God and have come up with numerous arguments .Major arguments about His existence are Cosmological, Ontological, Teleological and the Moral Law Argument. The Cosmological Argument comes from the Greek word ‘cosmos’, which means the world. The Cosmological argument states that the universe could not have existed by its own, there must have been some cause that would have made the universe and that cause is God.

The Teleological argument is from the word ‘teleo’ that means design or purpose. As the universe evidences great complexity of design, the great designer, the God must have designed it. The Moral law argument proposes that the moral Law and Order in this world is alive and exists because of God who has bestowed human beings with this understanding of morality. According to the Ontological Argument, the God is the greatest being, imaginable, one of the aspects of greatness and perfection is his existence or in other words as God can be conceived that means he exists.

Twelfth century theologian and philosopher Anslem developed this argument about God’s existence. This argument proves about the existence of God through abstract reasoning. Descartes in his Meditation 3 proposes about the Ontological existence of God .His Meditation 3 questions about the existence of God and his analysis is devoid of any scientific proof and religious arguments. The proof of His existence comes from the thought or the mind and as humans are thinking beings, it proves of His existence.

Descartes writes, “It is certain that. I find the idea of God in me, that is to say, the idea of a supremely perfect being… an actual and eternal existence belongs to his nature… existence can no more be separated from the essence of God.. than the idea of a mountain can be separated from the idea of a valley; so that there is no less contradiction in conceiving a God, a supremely perfect being, who lacks some particular perfection, than in conceiving a mountain without a valley.” That is, the essence of God is to be a perfect being, His Existence is perfection and therefore, God exists.

Descrates doctrine is based on two main tenants. Theory of innate ideas and, the doctrine of clear and distinct perception. The first theory supports the first premise that definition of God as perfect. The second Theory supports the validity of this idea. It is clear that the idea of existence cannot be excluded from the idea of God, the Supreme Being. He gives evidence of His existence through simple mathematical truth, that is, “. But when I considered any matter in arithmetic and geometry, .., as, for example, that two and three added together make five,….

did I not view them with at least sufficient clearness to warrant me in affirming their truth …. often as this preconceived opinion of the sovereign power of a God presents itself to my mind, he wishes it … I am so persuaded of their truth..…” In the same context, Descartes validates the basic truth that the nature of God and its essence are inseparable. “Of my thoughts some are, as it were, images of things, and to these alone properly belongs the name IDEA; as when I think [represent to my mind] a man, a chimera, the sky, an angel or God.

Others, again, have certain other forms; ….the object of my thought, but I also embrace in thought something more than the representation of the object…the idea by which I conceive a God [sovereign], eternal, infinite, [immutable], all-knowing, all-powerful, and the creator of all things that are out of himself, this, I say, has certainly in it more objective reality than those ideas by which finite substances are represented”. These ideas, when considered in respect to the object they represent, correspond to the objective reality and therefore our idea of God as infinite being is objective reality.

Descartes argues innate logical principle, something cannot come of nothing, “ it is manifest by the natural light that there must at least be as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect; for whence can the effect draw its reality if not from its cause ? And how could the cause communicate to it this reality unless possessed it in itself? Thus, for example, the stone that is not yet in existence, cannot commence to be, unless it be produced by that which possesses in itself, formally or eminently, all that enters into its composition,..; and heat can only be produced in a subject that was before devoid of it, by a cause that is of an order, [degree or kind], at least as perfect as heat; and so of the others.

” Thus, Descartes idea is very much ontological and not cosmological because cosmological argument searches for the cause for the existence of God. If everything needs a cause then what caused God? God is perfect, unconceivable and all-powerful entity therefore is far away from any cause. Work Cited Descartes Meditation; John Veitch Translation of 1901. Web.5th April.2011.