God

Essay # 25778

Philosophy > Metaphysics
Philosophy > Religion
Religion and Theology

A philosophical discussion of whether God really exists.

2,497 words () | 19 sources | MLA | 2002 | Canada

Published on: May 02, 2003

Paper Summary:

This paper attempts to answer the unanswered question of all time, the existence of God. It attempts to explain the different ?proofs? and theories presented by both sides, the theists and the atheists. It examines theories such as the Cosmological argument that there is a concept of a beginning, the starting point of all events (contingent beings) and Vacuum Genesis, a theory based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for mass and time. It also looks at the creeds of philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm of Canterbury.

From the Paper:

"St. Thomas Aquinas addressed this predicament in his "Five Ways" to God, in his published works entitled Summa Theologica. Aquinas's first proof for God concerns motion; everything around us is in a process of motion. That which moves is moved by another, and that by another, and so forth. Following this path in regression, we must come to the first cause of motion, which in itself is not moving - thus the unmoved mover. Aquinas's second way to God is analogous to the first, except it concerns efficient cause; nothing in nature is the cause of itself, for that would mean it preceded itself, which is impossible, so an effect must always have a cause, regressing backward in time; we must end at the first cause, the cause for everything - God."