Proving Good: Imossible

Proving God: Impossible

For hundreds of years people believed that the world was flat. While now-a-days this seems ridiculous at the time it made a lot of sense. Everything we encounter in day to day life makes the world seem flat. It would be counterintuitive to believe that the earth is round. There were plenty of theories at the time to prove the world's flatness. As we all know now, these proofs were simply wrong. They were easy to believe in context, but taken in the context we understand now, they are laughable. Quite similar is trying to prove the existence of God to a nonbeliever. Both St. Anselm, and St. Thomas Aquinas provide proofs of the existence of God, intended for mixed audiences of both believers and nonbelievers. By examining Anselm's ontological argument and St. Thomas Aquinas's efficiently causality argument, we see that the argument start with givens and make a leap at the end to God showing that it is impossible to truly prove anything about God to people who are not already believers.

Anselm's ontological argument attempts to prove God's existence. To start out with Anselm claims, "we believe that You are something than which nothing greater can be thought." (Proslogion, 2). God is the greatest thing conceivable. He then goes on to say that it is possible for this thing to exist in the mind. He then reminds us that it is better to exist in reality and in the mind. Fortunately, God can exist in the mind and in reality. Then, because it is better to exist in reality than only in the mind, if God does not exist in reality then he is not "that-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought." That would counter the definition. Therefore, God must exist in reality in order to be the greatest thing conceivable. In short, God exists.

St. Thomas Aquinas's first mover argument proves the existence of God. Things in the world are in motion. Being in motion means moving from a state of potentiality (not movement) to a state of actuality (movement.) It is impossible to move from potentiality to actuality without another being in actuality. In short, all things that move are moved by something else. If something A is moved by something B, then something B must also be moved by a something C and so on. This cannot go on to infinity. There must be a first mover, or there would not be other movers. This first mover is God.

By examining both Anselm's and Aquinas's proofs, we see that most proofs relating to God are based on certain givens. These givens are often questionable, leaving the whole proof up for question. The first basis of Anselm's argument is that there is some being that which nothing greater can be thought. There are many questionable aspects of this very statement. Primarily, it is not necessary that a greatest possible being exists. In fact, it is impossible to prove that such a thing does exist. A greatest possible being is infinite. Something that is infinite is not possible to be proven. This leaves the whole proof based on something that is not provable. It is impossible to go on from there, the rest of the proof is therefore void. Without being able to prove the first part of a proof, it is impossible to prove that God exists.

Contrary to Anselm's proof, Aquinas' first mover argument is based on something that can be proven. Aquinas builds this proof on the basis that "it is certain, and evident to our sense, that in the world some things are in motion" (Whether God exists?, 2). This is undisputable. This proof is easier to believe from the beginning because this is obviously quite true.

The ends of both proofs are also points of contention. In Anselm's