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Cosmological Vs Ontological Argument

1444 Words6 Pages

There have been an innumerable amount of arguments for the existence of God for hundreds of years. Some have become much more popular due to their merit, and their ability to stay relevant through changing times. Two arguments in particular that have been discussed for a very long time are the ontological and cosmological arguments. Each were proposed in the period of the high middle ages by members of the Roman Catholic Church. They each have been used extensively by many since their introduction. However, one of the arguments is superior ant that is the ontological argument. The Ontological argument is the stronger of the two due to the fact that it is based in pure logic and reasoning. The major premise of the Ontological argument is about what God is. In the Abrahamic tradition God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He is the pinnacle of perfection because of those points, and therefore it is …show more content…

This is its biggest weakness, in order for it to succeed someone has to presuppose that God exists. Another weakness is based on whether or not existence is an actual property of something like its size, weight, or color. If existence isn’t considered a property then it fails, but if it is then it succeeds. Then there is the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument looks to the world to prove God’s existence rather than pure definitions. The proponent of the cosmological argument was St. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian in the eleventh century CE (Solomon). He proposed that everything that exists must have a cause, and that the cause was God (Aquinas). Aquinas’ first point was based off of motion, that nothing can be both the mover and moved. An item sitting in place has the potential to be moving, but cannot move unless something that is already moving imparts motion to it

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The question that is asked time and time again is whether or not god exists. It is evident that people hold different beliefs. It is evident that through some of the beliefs of J.L. Mackie that it could be argued that God does not actually exist. I find this argument to be more agreeable. In Mackie’s Evil and Omnipotence, he argues many points to support why it should be believed that god does not exist.

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Evaluate The Ontological Argument

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552 Words | 3 Pages

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945 Words | 4 Pages

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1784 Words | 8 Pages

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