Culture, Faith, Religion, Bible, Unanswered questions, Can God be Proved?
People have been trying for thousands of years to prove that God exists. Some of the arguments used can be traced back to Greek philosophy. Over the centuries several types of argument have been put forward:
- The Ontological Argument — from the Greek word on (being) — attempts to prove the being of God by reason alone; first put forward by Anselm (1033-1109). God is defined as something greater than anything else that can be conceived. Such a being must exist, for if he did not, he would not be the greatest conceivable being.
- The argument in its various forms has fascinated philosophers down to the present day. But most philosophers today would regard it as fallacious on the grounds that it is at best a piece of abstract logic. A definition may be logically self- consistent, but does it apply to something that actually exists? Before we can say it does, we need evidence to show that there is something actually corresponding to the definition.
