Discussing the Existence of God (Essay Sample)

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God Exists
The existence of God is a contentious topic that has raised divergent ideas in the philosophical world. While some people may believe in a world without a supreme being, I am of the belief that God exists, and this finds support from various philosophical arguments. In the philosophy of religion, various ancient philosophers that include Aquinas, Pascal, Anselm, Kant, and Descartes have all had their opinions in support of the existence of God through ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, and theoretical moral arguments. This paper will use the arguments raised by the philosophers to show why God exists, and it is better to be a theist.
A supreme being, God, exists in the universe, and this is supported by the philosophical arguments raised by Descartes. According to Descartes, the ontological arguments that support God’s existence have nearly the same analogy as the geometric demonstrations. Descartes posits that his argument is simple and can be compared to the way people establish the basic fact in geometry and arithmetic in an ordinary way, for instance, one would get the same value by finding the sum total of angles in a triangle, and two right angles or two is an even number. Similarly, the understanding of God's existence can be better understood by simply comprehending that necessary existence is part of the distinct views and thoughts of a greater being that is perfect. In the Fifth Meditation, Descartes notes that: “But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God?” (Nolan 1). This mediation employs a clear and distinct perception or intuition where things perceived to be part of something's idea, is true of that thing. Thus, as much as it is easier to believe in theorems in geometry, we can use intuition to support the existence of God. Using the intuition principle, one can perceive in a clear and distinct way the essential existence, as is pertained to the notion of the almighty being, then it is evident that God exists.
The existence of God has also received support from Anselm, the originator of ontological views, and Archbishop of Canterbury between 1033 to 1109 (Himma 2). His arguments, described in the proslogium, is that the God is unimaginable and only exists as an idea in mind, thus, what exists in our mind is a reality and a proof that a supreme existing. In the proslogium, he writes that “there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality” (Plantiaga 12). The idea means that using the basic understanding of God's definition, and even a fool would get the conceptual truth that he is the supreme being without any other greater being. Therefore, this being can only exist as an idea or illusion we create in our minds. When we can have the imagination of the greatest being, but can not have the imagination of something greater than the one in our minds since it would be a contradiction, then it is possible that the supreme being exists in the universe.