Reason and the Existence of God Denys Turner University of Cambridge Contents Preface Acknowledgements Part I The ‘shape’ of reason 1 2 3 4 5 6 Clarifications and issues Negative theology and natural theology The darkness of God and the light of Christ Intellect Reason and rhetoric The ‘shape’ of reason page ix xvii 3 26 48 75 89 108 Part II Univocity‚ ‘difference’ and ‘onto-theology’ 7 8 9 Univocity and inference: Duns Scotus God‚ grammar‚ and difference Existence and God 125 149
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One of the most interesting arguments for the Existence of God comes from Anselm and the Ontological argument. According to the Ontological argument‚ there is no reason to go out and look for physical evidence of God’s existence. The ontological argument is based completely on reason and comes from the concept of a “being than which no greater can be conceived.” Anselm suggested that if such a “being” does not truly exist then a greater being can be conceived. But how does this make any sense? Nothing
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Rene Descartes and God’s Existence Rene Descartes was a French philosopher‚ mathematician and a scientist in the seventeenth century. As a man of science‚ Descartes wanted to make discoveries in science as factual as mathematics. With Descartes’s faith‚ he did not eliminate God from philosophy. Descartes‚ “The Father of Modern Philosophy”‚ was a Catholic who wrote the Meditations on First Philosophy. “The Meditations is characterized by Descartes’s use of methodic doubt‚ a systematic procedure
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a good thing bet to believe that God does exist because if you believe that he exists and he does you get rewarded the presence of heaven and even if he’s not but you still truly believed he existed you will not be punished for believing in his existence. Being rational means perpetrating to the truth that all one’s judgments‚ worth‚ intentions‚ wishes‚ and actions must be based on‚ obtained from‚ appointed and proved by thinking. A problem is that it isn’t one hundred percent true that if a person
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The cosmological argument argues the existence of God since there had to be a creator of all things in nature that depend on something else for their existence. McCloskey’s idea is that the existence of the universe is not enough to confirm the existence of God. An argument that can be used against this statement is the non-temporal form of the cosmological argument. In the book “Philosophy of
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The debate of whether God exists or does not has been going on from the time of the ancient philosophers such as St. Aquinas and St. Anselm‚ who both supported the existence of God‚ whereas‚ many years later there were those who tried to disprove the arguments presented. Some of these disbelievers include Immanuel Kant‚ Friedrich Nietzsche and David Hume‚ all whom argue that God does not indeed exist. Although God is considered dead and nonexistent by many‚ he does indeed exist because something
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Evil comes in many forms‚ and likewise‚ for philosophers‚ possess many problems especially the existence of God. The problem of evil is also referred to as the problem of suffering. First‚ there is what is called the logical problem of evil. Like all rational people‚ theists can’t help but acknowledge that the world is filled with evil. Here we are understanding evil as being all forms of bad stuff. It is everything in the vast spectrum of badness from small thefts to plagues and everything in between
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as simple being and non-being. Aristotle’s account of the subjects as compounds of matter and form and privation‚ will remedy Parmenides misunderstanding of change as an absolute. In this essay I will discuss both philosopher’s arguments for the existence of change. In Parmenides poem‚ On Nature‚ he reaches the startling conclusion that change does not exist. In a world which constantly adapts or changes this conclusion is hardly plausible. The definition of change is a coming to be or something’s
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The existence of God and problem with evil Today the news is filled with coverage on various natural catastrophes and other related causalities that people face daily. Anyone can look into their lives or even their neighbors and see the presence of misfortune that surrounds our world. This problem has brought up the issue of God’s existence in religious philosophical discussions. For centuries‚ many have tried to dismiss the existence of God on the basis of the existence of evil. Let’s
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the existence of God and the attributes that are associated with him. However‚ David Hume would refute these claims saying‚ through his dialogues that we cannot know the attributes or even for that matter the existence. During this paper I will analyze Descartes and Paley’s arguments in comparison with David Hume’s arguments that
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