Have there been any attempts in theology to prove that God exists with logical necessity, is it possible in principle?

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5 Answers

  1. Of course, this is actually the main task and occupation of theology.

    Most of the arguments were not purely logical, but rather appealed to the evidence of experience, for example: everything has a beginning.

    But the best and most convincing argument, a logical argument proper, is of course an ontological one: the idea of God implies perfection, and to be only in the mind, but not in reality, is less perfection than to be also real.

    Or a different reading of it: God transcends all existence, but then he cannot be “limited” only by the mind, and therefore exists outside the mind, that is, in reality. If we think of a “God” that may not be total, but local (for example, being only in the mind), then we are simply not thinking straight: we are not thinking of God, but of our own invention, a chimera.

  2. SCIENTIFIC QUESTION-The Universe/Nature is –

    1) A reasonable Living System in which the emergence of living matter and evolution are self-evident facts ???

    or

    2) A dead Garbage Dump where miracles like the emergence of living matter and evolution take place ???

    By answering this question, you get two different worldviews that have a very significant impact on the quality of all life and science.

  3. Before answering, you need to clarify your question itself:

    Logically, from the point of view of theology, to prove the existence of whom?

    Who are you asking about?

    What do you mean by the term “God”?

  4. There was evidence, and there was quite a lot of it. You won't believe it, but all the Middle Ages were just doing this-intelligent understanding of God; and in general, all Catholic theology is a project for understanding the infinite God with a finite human mind. And here lies the catch – there is no evidence. That is, there are no assumptions that everyone would agree with, just as there are questions about the demonstration procedure. Therefore, now it is customary to talk about arguments, this is not as strong a formulation as “proof”.�

    We have already mentioned three reasonable arguments in favor of the existence of God. I'll add a few more details and give you a few more examples. So:�

    1. A cosmological argument. This argument is quite old, and we find it in Plato and Aristotle, two of the most famous ancient Greek philosophers. Naturally, they didn't know anything about Christianity, but they weren't classical pagans either. Reason demanded that the concept of God should be based on perfection, and a perfect being can only be one of a kind. As far as I know, Xenophanes was the first to express this idea, along with criticizing the anthropomorphism of the gods, here is one characteristic fragment:

    If bulls, or lions, or horses had hands
    If they could write like people, they could do anything,
    Horses would liken the gods to horses, the image of a bull
    They would give the immortals bulls; everyone would compare their appearance
    With the same breed, to which he himself on earth is involved.

    But Xenophanes himself did not put forward any cosmological proofs, except for the simple idea that God should be thought in the singular. But it was put forward by Aristotle, it consisted, approximately, in the following: everything has a reason, in particular, every movement has a reason. Unlike Newton, Aristotle believed that bodies move only when an action is applied to them. The source of this impact is the cause of the movement. Aristotle has many different types of motion (the movement of elements to certain places, the movement of celestial bodies, and so on), but all of them have a cause, except for one. For antiquity, it was quite difficult to imagine infinity, it was a kind of absurdity for them. Because, the reasons for the movement of bodies had to end sometime. That is, if we say that the reason that this billiard ball rolled was a cue shot, and the cue was set in motion by my muscles, and they were set in motion by my soul and the strength of my body, and the reason for the strength of my body is that this body undergoes certain exercises and so on, then somewhere we must stop. And in order for us to stop, we must think of an object that does not move itself, but at the same time moves the rest of the world through causal relationships. Aristotle has a rather tricky idea about why this object should be stationary, this is due to his understanding of movement as the transition of potential into reality, this is difficult, I'm afraid I won't have enough time to tell you at three in the morning, and therefore I refer you directly to texts or textbooks. In general, the point is that this series of causes ends with a motionless mover who thinks for himself and moves the whole world through love (all things seem to strive for him). This, according to Aristotle, is God. Mainly because it does not undergo any changes, because all the fullness of the potential is realized in it, it is immobile in all senses (that is, it is unchangeable), and therefore immortal. Immortality is the main difference between a deity and a person for the Greeks.�

    Aristotle was extremely popular with the scholastics, and therefore this proof gradually migrated to Christians. You can read something on this subject from Thomas Aquinas.�

    1. Then, as mentioned above, there was another interesting argument, called it ontological (not always, of course, so called it, for the first time, if memory serves, Kant). And in principle, it is aimed at showing that the very concept of god already contains existence, and if not, then we do not think of God, but something else. If we think of God as the most perfect being, then he must necessarily be, because what is is more perfect than what is not. If we think of God as an infinite being (having the predicate of completeness), then he must necessarily be, because otherwise he will lack something that is absurd (this is anthropomorphism). Or, in the classic formulation of Anselm of Canterbury (paraphrased in my own words): god is something beyond which nothing can be conceived. If we say that there is no God, it is as if we can think of something more, namely, an existing God. So a nonexistent god is just an oxymoron.�

    The ontological argument was thoroughly shaken by Kant. His idea was that for the concept of an object, it does not matter at all whether it exists or not. That is, in order to give our minds a satisfactory idea of a hundred rubles, we absolutely do not need these hundred rubles to exist in our country, or anywhere else. The definition will not be affected by this. Kant tried to argue that existence is not a predicate of things.�

    1. Yes, and the third argument mentioned is a teleological one. Telos (I hope I remember correctly) – from ancient Greek means “goal”. The world appears to us as if it has a purpose. Evolution has a goal, man has a goal. Now there are even thoughts that the universe is so finely tuned (the fine-tuning argument; the anthropic principle) that it can also be assumed to have a goal – the origin of life and its evolution to man. Well, since we do not live in chaos, not in absolute randomness, and the world, on the contrary, is orderly and beautiful, the idea that all this happened by chance causes a certain skepticism among a number of people. Somewhere I met the wording that it would be stupid to think, having found a watch in an open field, that they were assembled by themselves. Or that the chance of life being born (or fine-tuning, I don't remember) is comparable to the chance that a plane will appear out of a pile of garbage and fly by itself.�

    There are still a couple of classic arguments from Thomas, for example, I will quickly retell them. He says that things, in general, arise and disappear, thereby he wants to point out to us that they may or may not be. If they may not exist, it means that there was a moment in the history of the world when they did not exist at all. And they could not appear by themselves, something out of nothing is absurd. Or, for example, another move-proof of degrees of perfection. Things in the world can be roughly divided into more or less perfect (complex) ones. Well, somewhere there is the most perfect object, this is God. In addition, there was also a consensus omnium – there is not a single nation on earth that does not have certain religious beliefs (which is confirmed by modern anthropological studies) and this is all for a reason. Descartes had an interesting argument – time runs out irrevocably, one second is completely destroyed by another. But we continue to exist, and the power that preserves us personally is God. Russian thinkers have had quite a lot of arguments on this subject, mainly ethical and personalistic. This is a vivid influence of Kant, which is very firmly established in our country.�

    All arguments suffer from some kind of understatement, both for and against. There is a discussion, it is quite large (you can read modern authors-Platinga, Swinburne; somewhere I definitely saw a direct list of arguments for and against, with a good historical reference, but I don't remember where; you can look for something here: http://www.iphras.ru ). It must be remembered that the question of the existence of God is a metaphysical question, which means that it does not sin because it cannot be justified in any way, but on the contrary, because it can be justified by anything, but it is so difficult to refute it that someone can talk about the fundamental impossibility. The picture of the world does not change from the fact that we assume the presence or absence of God, the facts remain themselves, and therefore this question is beyond the scope of science – this also needs to be remembered when some scientist undertakes to talk about God. Because, naturally, he uses his social capital and, in a sense, conducts prophetic speeches, because not a single dissertation on the existence of God was written in any scientific department. It's just not a matter of science.

  5. Of course, there were. At a minimum, we have:�

    1. cosmological argument (the most popular one) – “everything had to start somewhere”;

    2. ontological argument (the strangest) – “to be is better than not to be”;

    3. the teleological argument is “everything is too complicated and expedient.”

    All of them aimed to show that God exists precisely with logical necessity. And how well they did it is a question that can and should be discussed.

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