Gods existence
Gods existenceAlmost everyone at some particular point in his or her life has
challenged the existence of God. This may happen for a number of
reasons. For example he or she might have been at a point in
their life when their faith alone was just not enough for them to
believe. Humans have a natural instinct to find reasons for
events that can’t be explained. For some, the existence of God
may help give them the answers they are looking for.
Philosophers spend a great deal of their time trying to prove or
to disprove the existence of God. One philosopher that
confronted God’s existence was Anselm.
Anselm was the Archbishop of Canterbury and was a very
influential philosopher between Augustine and Aquinas. He
proposed his argument for God’s existence. His ontological
argument is based on the thought of God as the highest being.
Anselm’s argument is different from other philosophers
simply because of it’s premise. He saw a need for a precise
logical philosophy as a way for making faith mature, not as a
substitute for faith. Because Anselm already believed in God, he
was only looking for rational support for this belief. Therefore
Anselm’s method of proving God’s existence is called “Faith
seeking understanding.” He proclaims “I do not seek to
understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order
that I may understand” (Stumpf, 372-372). Anselm had to believe
in God in order to support his own rational for God’s existence.
To help prove his belief, Anslem he uses his mind. He
claims, “Now we believe that You are something than which nothing
greater can be thought.” He then questions, “Does this
something, than which nothing greater can be thought, really
exist?” (Stumpf 373). Anselm also sites Psalm 13:1 which reads,
“The fool has said in his heart: There is no God.” When a fool
hears the question, “Does this something than which nothing
greater can be thought really exist,” he understands what he is
hearing. The fool follows what this question because it is in
his intellect.
Next Anselm shows how something can exist in the intellect
even before the intellectual knows that it exist. He tries to
explain this statement by giving an example of a painter
contemplating what he is going to paint next. At this point the
painter has in his intellect an understanding of what he will
paint but not an understanding that the portrait prevails.
Because of this the fool can comprehend “something than which
nothing greater can be thought” even though he doesn’t know that
it exists.
After showing that even the fool agrees with the idea of God
existing in the mind, Anselm moves toward implementing the idea
that God exists outside of the mind. Anyone can think of
something greater than a being which exists...
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