Why is proof of god necessary

But this is incoherent, one might charge. Even if the emanationist successfully replies to this first problem for the view, there is a second, and perhaps more serious objection to the view. We can put the concern this way following Davidson To cause something to exist is to cause its essence or, in the terminology of Plantinga , its nature to be exemplified.

Suppose God creates a certain table which has as a part of its essence being red. Then God causes the property being red to be exemplified by the table when he creates it. Consider the property being omnipotent.

The property being exemplified by God is contained in its essence. So, God causes the property being exemplified by God to be exemplified by being omnipotent in causing being omnipotent to exist. However, on this occasion it is not. This sort of argument will work for other properties like being omniscient or having divine cognitive activity although the causal circle may be more difficult to establish with the former, and the implausibility of self-exemplification may be more difficult to establish with the latter.

The property being necessarily exemplified is contained in the essence of this property. So, when God causes his haecceity to exist, he causes the property being necessarily exemplified to be exemplified by his haecceity. Just as God causes being red to be exemplified by the table when he causes it to exist, God causes being God to be exemplified necessarily.

However, one might well think this incoherent. Indeed, it seems this is the divine causing his own existence: God is pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. The theistic emanationist needs to address these sorts of concerns about bootstrapping, and it is not clear how that could be done. One proponent of this view is Welty He says. I maintain that [abstract objects] are constitutively dependent on God, for they are constituted by the divine ideas, which inhere in the divine mind and have no existence outside it…[Abstract objects] are necessarily existing, uncreated divine ideas that are distinct from God and dependent on God.

Why might someone adopt theistic mentalism? One could make the following sort of case. Thoughts e. Propositions are capable of representing the world as being a particular way. Why do we need both of these sorts of intentional entities?

We can simply identify propositions and thoughts, and we get a simpler ontology. Of course, there is a problem here. If the thoughts we speak of here are human thoughts, there are continuum-many true propositions, and finitely many human thoughts. Also, there are propositions true in worlds where there are no human thoughts. God, we may grant, exists necessarily. And God has sufficiently many mental states to stand in for true propositions see Plantinga , If we identify propositions with divine thoughts, we have enough of them in all possible situations.

And one has one fewer kind of thing if one admits only thoughts divine and otherwise rather than thoughts and propositions. The most straightforward reason is that thoughts are a different kind of entity from propositions. The former are concrete, and the latter abstract. They are the sorts of things that can be affirmed, doubted, believed, and questioned. They can be true and false, necessary and possible. It is said by some that they are sets of possible worlds; and by others that they are composite entities, made up of properties and relations, and perhaps concrete individuals.

We also should ask about other necessarily existing abstracta. What sorts of mental entities are they? Do they relate to one another, as concrete mental tokens, in the right sort of way such that they mirror the ways that Platonic states of affairs, propositions, properties, relations, and numbers relate to each other? What these considerations suggest is that theistic mentalism may actually be a sort of nominalism about abstract objects, in the way that Plantinga ch.

At best, we have concrete things that play the roles of necessarily existing abstract objects. And the theistic mentalist has a great deal more work in specifying concrete divine mental particulars such that we have all the requisite role-players among the various sorts of necessarily existing abstract objects.

It is presumably not enough to say that propositions are divine thoughts and leave it at that. Let us return to the initial motivation for theistic mentalism: There are two sorts of intentional objects propositions and thoughts , and it would be a simpler metaphysic to identify tokens of the two sorts.

To assess this, we must ask if the tokens of the two sorts are enough like each other to be identified. Furthermore, if we are able to explain the intentionality of one of these sorts of entities by its relation to the other, it will seem less mysterious that we have two classes of intentional entities. So, the reason why my thought is a thought that grass is green is because it has the propositional content that grass is green.

The proposition that grass is green has its intentionality intrinsically. Theistic mentalism with divine simplicity is the view that necessarily existing abstracta are identical with divine mental states, and that God is simple. Because God is simple, each abstract object is identical with God and thus each other. This is a view held most famously by Augustine and Aquinas. In addition, the person who accepts divine simplicity alongside her divine mentalism also will face criticisms of divine simplicity.

Plantinga is perhaps the locus classicus of contemporary criticism of divine simplicity. He argues that according to divine simplicity, God is identical with his attributes and has all of his attributes essentially. For discussion more sympathetic to divine simplicity, see Mann ; Stump and Kretzmann ; Leftow ; Stump ; Wolterstorff ; and Bergmann and Brower The sorts of difficulties that Plantinga has raised have seemed decisive to many.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to evaluate them, however. But the theistic mentalist who accepts divine simplicity has, prima facie , a great number of difficulties with her view. According to the theistic Platonist, there are at least some necessarily existing abstract objects e.

Peter van Inwagen is a paradigm case of a theistic Platonist. As we saw earlier, van Inwagen argues that if necessarily existing abstract objects were grounded in God, they would be caused to exist by God. He says:. In the end, I can find no sense in the idea that God creates free abstract objects [things like propositions, relations, numbers, properties, etc. Recall that, although I believe that all abstract objects are free, that is not a position that I am concerned to defend in this chapter.

Then he argued, less convincingly, against the existence of a deist God who created the universe and its laws and then stood back and watched it run. Explaining the creation of the universe is trickier, though. Some cosmological models propose that the universe has gone through endless cycles of expansion and contraction. And we need to explore the universe and its history a little more thoroughly before we can make such definitive statements about its origins.

Suppose we do live in a universe that generated its own laws and called itself into being. And maybe this effort will lead to breakthroughs in theology as well. The pivotal role of observers in quantum theory is very curious. Is it possible that the human race has a cosmic purpose after all? Did the universe blossom into an untold number of realities, each containing billions of galaxies and vast oceans of emptiness between them, just to produce a few scattered communities of observers?

Is the ultimate goal of the universe to observe its own splendor? The views expressed are those of the author s and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. Mark Alpert is an internationally bestselling author of science thrillers. Follow him at www. Anselm has argued that there exists a difference between the concept of "unicorn" as it exists intra-mentally and extra-mentally.

If we claim that the "unicorn" is, we are somehow adding to the concept. We are endowing the concept with an additional predicate, i. The point of Anselm's argument is that the predicate of existence can be demonstrated for the concept of "God. Kant does not agree with Anselm's treatment of existence as a predicate. The concept of "unicorn" is not changed in any way if we claim that it is. Nor is the concept damaged if we claim that unicorns are not.

According to Kant," Kant thought that, while the concept of a supreme being was useful, it was only an idea, which in and of itself could not help us in our determining the correctness of the concept. The idea of the GCB exists and the idea of the GCB as an actual being does exist but the reality or actuality of the GCB is not established based on the thoughts alone.

You go home and look at the top of your dresser. You could use some money and as you look there you imagine seeing ten ten dollar bills. You could use some money and as you look there you seeing ten real ten dollar bills. Which of the three is the greatest or best situation? But just thinking about 3 does not actually add any money to your total amount.

But thinking about the GCB as existing in reality and not just in the imagination does not prove that the GCB actually does exist in reality and not just in the imagination. It is just an idea about what exists. See also the Ontological Argument. As this criticism of the Ontological Argument shows, the same arguments used to prove an all-powerful god, could be used to prove an all-powerful devil.

The argument could prove the existence of that being more EVIL than which no other can be conceived just as easily as it supposedly proves the existence of the being that is the greatest conceivable being. Think of a being that is the most evil being that can be conceived. Empiricist Critique. Aquinas, - , once declared the official philosopher of the Catholic Church, built his objection to the ontological argument on epistemological grounds.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It is a branch of philosophy that seeks to answer such questions as: What is knowledge? Aquinas is known as an empiricist.

Empiricists claim that knowledge comes from sense experience. Aquinas wrote: "Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses. Within Thomas' empiricism, we can not reason or infer the existence of God from a studying of the definition of God. We can know God only indirectly, through our experiencing of God as Cause to that which we experience in the natural world.

We can not assail the heavens with our reason; we can only know God as the Necessary Cause of all that we observe. Alvin Plantiga offers a counter argument to the counter arguments that at least establishes the rational acceptability of theism as it appears to support the idea that it is possible that the greatest conceivable being does exist.

Other Philosophers and their Critiques:. New York, Translated by R. London, London: Ward, Lock, Co. Translated by A. Translated by F. Max Muller. P et seq. Hegel , from Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Translated by E. Haldane and F. Dorner from A System of Christian Doctrine. Cave and J. Banks, Edinburgh, Hamilton and E. Edinburgh, Seventh edition. Existence is not something we can know from the mere idea itself. Subscriber Login Email Address.

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