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    Perspectives
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    42
    God must exist — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    God must exist

    Natural Theology
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.For each thing there must be a cause or reason both for its existence and for its non-existence (Principle of Sufficient Reason)
      ?

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    • 2.God is a substance, and substances are causally independent of each other, so God's existence or non-existence cannot be caused or explained externally
      ?

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    • 3.If God did not exist, God would have to be the internal cause of his own non-existence, just as a square-circle is the cause of its non-existence
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The PSR, applied universally, demands a sufficient reason for God's own existence, generating an infinite regress or an arbitrary stopping point.
      ?

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    • 2.Leibniz's escape—that God is self-explanatory as a necessary being—smuggles modal assumptions that the PSR itself cannot establish without circularity.
      ?

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    • 3.A principle that cannot be applied consistently to its own foundational case lacks the universality required to ground any cosmological proof.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Kant argued in the Critique of Pure Reason that 'existence' is not a predicate, so no analysis of a concept can entail that its referent exists.
      ?

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    • 2.If existence is not a genuine predicate, then P4's claim that God 'cannot internally rule out his own existence' conflates logical consistency with ontological necessity.
      ?

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    Topics

    Natural Theology

    Connections

    3 topics

    Divine Attributes2 linkedCausation1 linkedModality & Possibility1 linked

    Related

    A principle that cannot be applied consistently to its own foundational case lac...For each thing there must be a cause or reason both for its existence and for it...God is a substance, and substances are causally independent of each other, so Go...God is not a contradictory entity and therefore cannot internally rule out his o...
    +5 moreShow less
    If God did not exist, God would have to be the internal cause of his own non-exi...If existence is not a genuine predicate, then P4's claim that God 'cannot intern...

    Similar

    God must exist.98%Therefore, it is necessary that God exists.90%God exists.89%God exists necessarily88%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: sufficient-reason
    View source passageHide passage
    In E1p11d2, Spinoza states explicitly a variant of the PSR: “For each thing there must be assigned a cause, or reason, both for its existence and for its nonexistence”. Similarly, in E1p8s2, Spinoza argues, “if a certain number of individuals exists, there must be a cause why those individuals, and why neither more nor fewer, exist”. Spinoza’s insistence that even the non-existence of things must be explainable is crucial. It allows him, for example, to argue that were God not to exist, his non-
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Kant argued in the Critique of Pure Reason that 'existence' is not a predicate, ...
    Leibniz's escape—that God is self-explanatory as a necessary being—smuggles moda...
    The PSR, applied universally, demands a sufficient reason for God's own existenc...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit