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Proof of the Existence of God

Arguments seeking to prove the main dogma of religion—the existence of God—put forward by various idealist philosophers. The three basic arguments are as follows.

The cosmological argument, found already in Plato and Aristotle and maintained by Leibniz and Wolff, states that God exists as the prime cause of all things and all phenomena. This argument is based on the unscientific assumption that the world must be finite in time, and that its prime cause is non-material.

The teleological argument, proposed by Socrates and Plato, subsequently developed by the Stoics, states that everything in nature has a purpose that can be explained only by assuming the existence of a supernatural rational being, which arranges all phenomena harmoniously. This argument was disproved by Darwin's theory of evolution, which proved the natural causes of purposefulness.

The ontological argument was advanced by St. Augustine, who asserted that all men conceive of God as the perfect being. This conception, he argued, could not arise unless a perfect being existed in reality. Therefore God exists. In the Middle Ages this argument was taken up and defended by Anselm of Canterbury. Its weakness in assuming that what is thought must be real was so obvious that it was criticised not only by the materialist philosophers but by many theologians, for example, Thomas Aquinas.

Other arguments for the existence of God, epistemological, psychological, and moral, are advanced by various idealist philosophers. Arguments for the existence of God were disproved within the framework of idealism by Kant, who asserted that God is a being above experience (transcendental) and known only by reason, and therefore the existence of God cannot be proved. Analysis of the arguments for the existence of God reveals that they all contain a logical mistake and rest ultimately on blind faith.