Philosophy of Religion with summary of major arguments for the existence of God plus a personal reflection

1. Name: Justine C. Banta
Course: Philosophy of Religion (9:15-10:45 TTh Class)
Instructor: Apolinar Henry T. Fernandez
Date Submitted: October 2, 2014
The Ontological Argument presented by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in his Proslogion is the most celebrated and the most intriguing arguments of all other ontological arguments for it uses the method of reducto ad absurdum or “proof by contradiction” from which he makes an assumption that shows that this leads to a logical contradiction and therefore the assumption must be false. The arguments goes this way; first, God is something-than-which-nothing- greater-can-be-conceived; second, things exists either in mind only or in mind and reality; and third, it is greater to exist in mind and reality than in the mind only. Following the third premise we cannot yet establish that God exist, so we have to make an assumption, God only exist only in the mind (the fool thinks that god only exist in the mind). Now considering the third premise and our assumption, so it is possible to think of a being greater than God therefore God is not something-than-which-greater-can-be-conceived since we can think of something greater but premise one states that God is something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-conceived. These statements now form our proof of contradiction, so the assumption that god only exist in the mind is not valid. So in analysis of the second premise (things exist either in the mind or in mind & reality) the only thing that we can select is that God exist in mind and reality which only means that God Exist.
The celebrated Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas penned the most popular cosmological argument (cosmos means “universe”) in his first three ways of His Five Ways in his classic and magnificent opus the Summa Theologica. The Five Ways demonstrates the rationality of belief in God. The argument runs as follows: One, there are things in the world that are in motion (first way), caused (second way), and contingent (third way). Contingent here means that the existence of things is dependent on something else for they don’t create themselves. Two, these things require something else to be in motion, to cause and to create them. Three, the chain of motion, the sequence of causation and the series of contingency can’t go on for an infinite regress. Ultimately, there must exist an Unmoved Mover, Uncaused Cause, & Uncreated Being. This everyone understands to be God.
One of the most famous expositions of the teleological (teleo means “purpose”) argument is that of William Paley. Paley contended that our world or the universe is so intricate that it must be ingeniously designed by an all- powerful designer. He supported this argument by firstly comparing a watch to the universe. The intricacy of the watch proves that it must have been designed by someone who is intelligent and is capable of making a watch (for such purposeful device could not have happened by mere chance). Since the universe is far more complex than a watch, the universe must have a designer that is exceptionally greater than anyone else. This designer must be all- powerful; thus the designer must be God.
In an another approach to God that is something personal, intuitive, spontaneous, and emotional, Cardinal John Henry Newman presented his incredible masterpiece called “An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent” from which it is also called as the Argument from Conscience. In this argument, Newman contended that the real assent to the being of God is not of which objective or is not of which is just been understood or comprehended by the mind but of which something that is personal, something that is vivid, something that is direct, something that is concrete and something that is experienced that “as if I saw”. Real assent here is understood to be the voice of conscience calling upon us, rewarding us when we do what is right and haunting us every night when we depart. Finally, Newman added that the dictate and the voice of conscience reveals to us of something an imposing and exterior personal Master whose voice echoes in our depths.
For certain people who cannot make judgement on whether to believe or not believe in God because any sorts of proving ways cannot really convinced the certain, Blaise Pascal, the famous mathematician offers his wager of practicality or that is pragmatic. This argument is not intended to attest the existence of God but to convinced people who cannot make up their minds to have faith in God due to the reason of positive rewards that one can gain if God exist. If it is true then that God exist, the one that risks in faith will have an eternal reward, if otherwise, the one that risks in faith will not lose anything but will be benefited by the life he lived. In addition, if it true then that God exist, the one that did not risk in faith will received the eternal punishment, if otherwise, the one that did not risk in faith will not lose and will not gain anything.
A lot of people believe in God not on the basis on what the mind can reason and not on what the conscience dictates but of a certain particular experiences in life that arrests, these arrests are so special that the American Philosopher John Smith termed the moments “try men’s souls”. In this argument, Smith’s approach is phenomenological or the dealings in arriving to the truth is that of based on personal experience rather than the use of existing literatures. In order to understand his point, he sets first the distinction of what is “Holy” and what is “profane”. That the “Holy” set apart from what is ordinary, that the “Holy” is awe-inspiring, powerful, precious, and that the “Holy” can be approached with utmost seriousness. On the other hand, “profane” is ordinary, readily available, manifest and harbours no mysterious depth in life. But this distinctions does not separate the Holy from the profane. Smith ended his argument stating that though there is no necessary connection between the experience of Holy and the idea of God, there is still a point where the two can converge, but this is only possible when one have faith in God.
This last argument by Rudolf Otto is very different and from all other arguments being presented for the existence of a living God because it takes into account God as the “Wholly Other”. When taking into consideration, God must be seen as a non-rational being, a being that is beyond, a being of not our logic, a being, a being that is not of the same matter of what is natural, and a being whose being is so great that his greatness will not and cannot be fully understood by our limited reality. Otto contended that any rational position on the existence of God is a misguided and corrupted understanding of such. That the Wholly Other is beyond sacred and beyond dimension that no one can reduce God to any intellectual categorization. If we want to understand God, we should go back to the experience and destroy all humanistic attributes we labelled about him. In order to describe the Holy one must take into account not the rational approach but of the very essence of experience of encounter of the sacred. The experience of awfulness before God, the experience of majesty before God, the experience of beyond-description energy from God and the experience of an uncomprehended and unexplained mystery of God are the experiences that captures the very essence of experience of encounter of the sacred. God is truly the Wholly Other. With God, as not of our ways, as not of our thoughts and as not of our dimension we feel our smallness and brittleness and we admit our mortality and humanity.

2. Name: Justine C. Banta
Course: Philosophy of Religion (9:15-10:45 TTh Class)
Instructor: Apolinar Henry T. Fernandez
Date Submitted: October 2, 2014
According to Jim Torvey, “Any person with faith has doubts”. This statement alone captures the very summary of all arguments presented. In order to justify the previous phrase as the summary it is essential to mention the idea and the manner of each argument address the addressee. It is also important to distinguish the significance of relation of arguments from the The Ontological Argument, The Cosmological Argument, The Teleological Argument, The Argument from Conscience, The Pragmatic Argument, The Argument from Life’s Crucial Junctures, and The Argument from Religious Experience. The first three arguments of the existence of God claims to be the logical attempts on why we should accept the existence of God. The Ontological Argument is deductive, this means that if we accept the premises of the argument are true then we have to accept its conclusion. This argument is grounded at a priori, they are arguments that try to justify truth based on the understanding the definition of things. The Cosmological Argument as well as The Teleological Argument are inductive, this means that they try to build a case of evidence that might persuade us of their conclusion but they cannot provide firm proof. Both arguments mentioned on the statement prior to this statement are grounded at a posteriori, this means that their truth are established after looking evidence from the world around us. Based on the manner on how the three arguments are presented (logical), we can observed that they are addressed mainly on people (including atheists, agnostics and theists) who believed in the power of philosophy and the greatness of science. The remaining other four arguments claims to be non-logical however sensible (Argument from Conscience and Pragmatic Argument) and yet intersubjective (Argument from Life’s Crucial Junctures and Argument from Religious Experience) on why we should have faith in God. The Argument from Conscience tries to justify the existence of God in terms of something personal (in contrast to impersonal logic) from which the phrase “as if I saw” is the heart of the argument. Based on the manner of justification of the argument, we can observed that it is address mainly to people of the masses whose lives are living witnesses, we can also deduced that it is address also (as an opposition) on people being addressed by the logical first three arguments mentioned. Pragmatic Arguments as cited in Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy have often been employed in support of theistic belief. Theistic pragmatic arguments are not arguments for the proposition that God exists; they are arguments that believing that God exists is rational. Based on this approach (in reference to Pascal’s Wager), it-is-speak-to but not-limited-to those who are still judging whether to believe in God or not. The Argument from Life’s Crucial Juncture’s (in reference to Smith’s The Holy and the Profane) approach is phenomenological, that is, considering experience as a primary datum containing a kind of primary truth which can be arrived at through analysis. In other words, this argument uses (philosophy of experience) the experience of Holy that it’s meaning and value is structured on “crucial junctures of life” in order to justify faith in a way that it can be also used in establishing the idea of God. This argument generally appeals to everyone’s individuality who have recognized and will still recognize the significance of crucial events in life. The Argument from Religious Experience (in reference to Otto’s Idea of the Holy) is way revolutionary than compared to all previous arguments for it rejects the rational conception of the Divine and entails the doctrine of intersubjectivity. It opposes the rational view of God because God himself is not rational which subsequently, the rational approaches are not applicable. It is intersubjective in the sense that the truth is behind your personal relationship with God and it can vary from all other relationships. So in order to understand God, it is contended that we must go back to the experience and destroy all humanistic attributes we have perceived about God. This final non-rational approach speaks to all humanity, telling us that he is the One, Whole, Holy, Other – “WHOLLY OTHER”. In general, if we would be so observant we can notion that all arguments yet imperfect addresses the very heart of doubt, telling us to conquer our doubts, reinforcing us not to fear our doubts and reminding us that the process we have undertaken in search for the answers of the doubts are the most meaningful. Indeed, though we cannot put everything in words to this paper and concretely establish the significance and relation of the arguments, at least we can say that “there is a relationship” in spite that we doubt and cannot fully reason.
There are things in this world that cannot be explained that of any comprehension we made it totally eludes us, the same as true with this statement that eludes us to recognize, that there are non-things, non-non-things in another world, in another completely other world that we apparently feel its force, of another completely other force, that cannot be explained by the predicate “- that cannot be explained that of any comprehension”. But it can only be seemingly felt of another deeper feeling that is totally not a feeling or not a conviction at all when you believe in the right God whom your thoughts and hearts is directed to. The source of our doubts originated to move when we are not worshipping the true God. When we say that we believed in the false god, there are points in our life that our faith is shaky, that when the false god cannot met our expectations and comprehensions we tend to side in the disbelieving process, and that when the false god cannot at least fill our emptiness we then sort to search “deeply” yet actually “superficially” on why such god cannot fill our emptiness. Then after of such inquiry, because it is “deeply yet superficial” we strongly came into conclusion yet actually a false one. The problem of disbelief is not actually the problem, the real problem is our frailty and weakness to recognize the true God. Our frailty also is not our fault because “it is innate in our human dimension the question “Does God Exist?”, and it is also innate in us by the evidence of our human mortality to seek for answers. My point here is that we failed to see the true God because the foundation of our faith is not built on solid ground. When I mean a solid ground, I mean that the faith is mismatched or the other way, a blinded faith. Blinded faith occurs when one follows to what everyone is saying, to what the books are telling, to what other intelligent like you is expressing, to what the search “deeply” yet actually “superficially” process and to what the personal relationship the true God inscribed in you that you fail to nurture. The false god is the god of love, the god of the good, the god of living, the god of omnipotence, the god of omniscience, the god of omnipresence and the god that is perfect. By stating those attributes we actually limits god, we are attributing Him as to what the world thinks and as to what the world needs and as to what the world projects. But actually, it may be heretical for some but the true God is not those of the attributes, He is much more than love that we can think of, he is much more than the god of the good, he is much more than the god of the living, he is beyond omnipotence, he is beyond omniscience, he is beyond omnipresence and rightfully He is not perfect but beyond to nothing in this world that can describe perfect. He is the God of this paper yet much more that I cannot describe with the predicate – “I cannot describe” He is the God whom I pray this prayer, “Thank you God for the magic that I am alive and at last finished this paper. Amen”.