Five Proofs of the Existence of God Edward Feser

Five Proofs of the Existence of God

Edward Feser

Last annotated on Wednesday September 13, 2017

116 Highlight(s) | 113 Note(s)

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what might be known via unaided human reason, apart from divine revelation, concerning the existence and nature of God
Note:TEOLOGIA NATURALE

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1 The Aristotelian Proof
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Informal statement of the argument: Stage 1
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Change occurs.
Note:IL CAMBIAMENTO

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That changes of these sorts occur is evident from our sensory experience of the world outside our minds.
Note:ESTERNALISMO

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might even those changes be a kind of illusion? After all, the Greek philosopher Parmenides notoriously argued that when we carefully analyze what change of any sort would have to involve, we will see that it is impossible.
Note:L ILLUSIONE PARMENIDEA

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one premise after the other and finally reaches the conclusion is itself an instance of the change the argument denies.
Note:PARMENIDE SI CONFUTA QUANDO DIMOSTRA

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it is a mistake to think that change would have to involve something coming from nothing. Go back to the coffee. It is true that while the coffee is hot, the coldness is not actually present. Still, it is there potentially
Note:ALTRA CONFUTAZIONE... L ESSERE IN POTENZA

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What change involves, then, is for Aristotle the actualization of a potential.
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Change requires a changer. We find examples all around us in everyday experience.
Note:CAUSA

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Now these days it is often supposed that the Big Bang theory shows that he was wrong. On the other hand, some scientists have suggested that the Big Bang was itself the result of an earlier universe imploding,
Note:IL BIG BANG NEGA ARISTOTELE?

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Even if such linear series of changes and changers might in theory extend backward to infinity, with no first member, there is another kind of series—let us call it the hierarchical kind—which must have a first member.
Note:NECESSOTÀ DEL PRIMO MEMBRO DELLA SERIE

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To understand what a hierarchical series is, it will be useful, by contrast, to think instead of what might exist at a single moment of time.
Note:COS È UNA SERIE?

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So, consider, once again, the coffee cup as it sits on your desk. It is, we may suppose, three feet above the floor. Why? Because the desk is holding it up, naturally. But what holds the desk up? The floor, of course. The floor, in turn, is held up by the foundation of the house,
Note:SERIE NON TEMPORALE

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this is not a series which need be thought of as extending backward in time.
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we are considering each of these hierarchical series as existing at a particular moment
Note:QUI ED ORA

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What makes these series hierarchical in the relevant sense, though, is not that they are simultaneous, but that there is a certain sort of dependence of the later members on the earlier ones.
Note:DIPENDENZA

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What makes a hierarchical series of causes hierarchical, then, is this instrumental or derivative character of the later members of the series. The desk will hold the cup aloft only so long as it is itself being held up by the floor. If the floor collapses, the desk will go with it and the cup will fall as a result. The members of a linear series are not like that. The air conditioner is on because you turned it on. Still, once you’ve done so, the air conditioner will keep cooling the room even if you left the house or dropped dead. Now, it is because of this difference that a hierarchical series of causes has to have a first member while a linear series does not.
Note:NECESSITÀ DEL PRIMO MEMBRO

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the idea of a hierarchical series is best introduced by thinking in terms of a sequence whose members exist all together at a single moment of time,
Note:TUTTI INSIEME ORA

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change can occur only if things have potentials which can be actualized.
Note:RICORDIAMO LA PREMESSA

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Go back to the coffee in the cup. To state the obvious, it can only get cold, or be held up by the desk, if it exists;
Note:SOLO L ESISTENTE CAMBIA

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For one thing, the coffee will exist only insofar as the water that makes up the bulk of it exists, so to simplify things somewhat let’s consider that. What keeps the water in existence at any particular moment?
Note:ESISTENZA DELLA PRIMA CAUSA

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the sort of “first” cause we are talking about is one which can actualize the potential for other things to exist without having to have its own existence actualized by anything.
Note:LA CAUSA PRIMA

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is pure actuality itself.
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Unmoved Mover.

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change requires a changer insofar as a potential can be actualized only by something already actual.

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CONDIZIONE NECESSARIA PER IL CAMBIAMENTO

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there is another kind of series in which one potential is actualized by another which is in turn actualized by another, in which there must be a first member. In this hierarchical sort of series, the first member is “first” in the sense that it can cause other things without being caused itself.
Note:PERCHÈ LA SERIE GERARCHICA HA UN PRIMO MEMBRO? 1. SI ASSUME IL PRINC RAGION SUFFICIENTE: TUTTO È SPIEGABILE SE SI PUÒ CONOSCERE 2. È CONOSCIBILE SOLO CIÒ CHE ESISTE 3. NELLA SERIE TEMPORALE NON TUTTO È CONOSCIBILE POICHÈ DI MOLTI MEMBRI ESISTE SOLO IL RICORDO E ALTRI SONO NEL NULLA 3. UNA SERIE GERARCHICA È CONOSCIBILE POICHÈ TUTTI I SUOI MEMBRI ESISONO QUI ED ORA 4 UNA SERIE GER È SPIEGABILE X IL PRIC DI RAG SUFF 5 UNA SERIED GER È SPIEGABILE SOLO SE IL PRIMO MEMBRO ESISTE DI PER SÈ

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Informal statement of the argument: Stage 2
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Something is perfect, then, to the extent that it has actualized such potentials and is without privations.
Note:PERFEZIONE

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Unmoved Mover must be one, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, and fully good
Note:PROPRIETÁ

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A hierarchical series without such a first member would be like an instrument that is not the instrument of anything,
Note:STRUMENTO DI NIENTE

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Thus, even if for the sake of argument we allowed that there could be an infinitely long hierarchical series—D actualized by C, which is in turn actualized by B, which is in turn actualized by A, and so on ad infinitum—there would still have to be a source of causal power outside the series to impart causal power to the whole.
Note:IL CONTENUTO

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It is also sometimes objected that the argument for a first member of a hierarchical series begs the question, insofar as characterizing other causes as instrumental itself presupposes that there is such a first member.
Note:PERCHÈ UNA SERIE GERARCHICA?

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There is nothing in that characterization that presupposes that a series of such causes cannot regress to infinity or that there must be some cause which has underived causal power.
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2 The Neo-Platonic Proof
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Informal statement of the argument: Stage 1
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The things of our experience are made up of parts. Suppose you are sitting in a chair as you read this book. The chair is made up of parts,
Note:TUTTO È FATTO DI PARTI

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The book itself is made up of parts,
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There is a sense in which, in each of these cases, the parts are less fundamental than the whole.
Note:IL PRIMATO DEL TUTTO

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there is obviously also another sense in which each of these wholes is less fundamental than its parts. For the whole cannot exist unless
Note:IL PRIMATO DELLE PARTI

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How do the parts of a composite come together to form the whole? It can’t be the composite itself that causes this to happen.
Note:CHI COMPONE?

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composite things of our experience. At any moment at which they exist, their parts exist and are arranged in just the right way, and that is the case only because various other factors exist and are combined in just the right way at that moment. Composite things have causes,
Note:CAUSA APPROPRIATA

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combined in just the right way
Note:IL GIUSTO MODO

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the factors in question are simultaneous,
Note:LA COMPOSIZIONE SIMULTANEA

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what has been said here about ordinary physical parts like chair legs and screws would be true also of metaphysical parts like form and matter, if they exist. That is to say, anything that is a composite of form and matter would have to have a cause which combines those parts,
Note:VERO ANCHE PER LE ENTITÀ METAFISICHE

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Other metaphysical parts too might be identified. For example, Thomist philosophers hold that we can distinguish between the essence of a thing and its existence—that is, between what the thing is and the fact that it is.
Note:FORMA SOSYANZA ESSENZA ESISTENZA

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the principle that whatever is composite has a cause is completely general,
Note:IL PRINCIPIO

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for the reasons set out in the previous chapter, that series must have a first member. But the first member cannot itself be composite, for then it would require a cause of its own and thus not be first. So, it must be something noncomposite, something utterly simple
Note:SERIE GERARCHICA

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SEMPLICITÀ DEL PRIMO MEMBRO

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following the Neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus, we might call the One.
Note:L UNO

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3 The Augustinian Proof
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Informal statement of the argument: Stage 1
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We are surrounded by particular, individual objects.
Note:PARTICOLARE E GENERALE

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But each of these particular things is an instance of an abstract, general pattern.
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Such patterns are called universals by philosophers, and they are “abstract”
Note:UNIVERSALI

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For instance, when we consider triangularity as a general pattern, we abstract from or ignore the facts that this particular triangle is made of wood and that one of stone,
Note:TRIANGOLARITÀ

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Universals like triangularity, redness, and roundness exist at least as objects of thought. After all, we can meaningfully talk about them, and indeed we know certain things about them.
Note:ESISTENZA DEGLI UNIVERSALI

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Like universals, propositions exist at least as objects of thought.
Note:ALTRE ASTRAZIONI... I PENSIERI

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Then there are numbers and other mathematical entities.
Note:NUMERI

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Finally, consider what philosophers call possible worlds.
Note:MONDI POSSIBILI

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So, in some sense there are abstract objects such as universals, propositions, numbers and other mathematical objects, and possible worlds. But in what sense, exactly, do they exist? Are they merely objects of human thought—purely conventional entities, sheer constructs of our minds? Are they merely useful fictions? Or might they after all really be material things,
Note:UTILI FINZIONI?

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conclude instead that abstract objects of the sort we’ve been considering are real, and neither reducible to anything material nor sheer constructs of the human mind. This is a view known as realism.
Note:REALI MA NN MATERIALI

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some version of realism about abstract objects like universals, propositions, numbers and other mathematical objects, and possible worlds must be correct. But which version? There are three alternatives: Platonic realism, Aristotelian realism, and Scholastic realism.
Note:REALISMI

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Aristotelian realists emphasize that abstraction is essentially a mental process, so that abstract objects are essentially tied to the mind.
Note:ARISTOTELICI

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there are universals, propositions, mathematical objects, necessities, and possibilities that the Aristotelian realist is bound to have a more difficult time dealing with. For example, suppose no material world or human minds had existed at all.
Note:I PROBLEMI DEGLI IMMANENTISTI

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Scholastic realist
Note:SCOLASTICA.... COLMARE I BUCHI DELL IMMANENTISMO

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endorsing a thesis famously associated with Saint Augustine—it holds that universals, propositions, mathematical and logical truths, and necessities and possibilities exist in an infinite, eternal, divine intellect.
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If some form of realism must be true, then, but Platonic realism and Aristotelian realism are in various ways inadequate, then the only remaining version, Scholastic realism, must be correct. And since Scholastic realism entails that there is an infinite divine intellect, then there really must be such an intellect. In other words, God exists.
Note:IL REALISMO VINCENTE

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4 The Thomistic Proof
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So, we can distinguish between a thing’s essence and its existence, between what it is and the fact that it is.
Note:ESSENZA E ESISTENZA

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There are several reasons why the distinction between essence and existence must be a real distinction, a distinction that reflects objective, mind-independent reality
Note:DIFFERENZA REALE NN NOMINALE

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A second reason why the essences of the things of our experience must be distinct from the existence of those things has to do with their contingency
Note:CONTINGENZA

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The way these members are differentiated is by virtue of being associated with different parcels of matter.
Note:DISTINGUI TRA INDIVIDUI

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Note that to say that a thing’s essence and existence are really distinct is not to say that they can exist separately. It does not entail that (say) a stone’s essence is a kind of object and its existence another object,
Note:LA DISTINZIONE TRA ESSENZA E ESISTENZA

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Nor can it be the case that the things of our experience somehow impart existence to themselves—adding it, as it were, to their essences from outside.
Note:DALL ESSENZA ALL ESISTENZA

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So, anything whose essence is distinct from its existence must have a cause of its existence at any moment that it exists, here and now and not merely at some point in the past.
Note:QUI ED ORA... E NON NEL PASSATO

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Notice that what we have here is what I called in chapter 1 a hierarchical causal series.
Note:ANCORA LA SERIE GERAR CHICA

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So, for Fido to exist here and now and at any moment, his existence must here and now be caused, whether directly or indirectly, by something the essence of which is identical to its existence, something which is subsistent existence itself. And that entails that it must be caused by God.
Note:ANZICHÈ POTENZA E ATTO... ESSENZA E ESISTENZA

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6 The Nature of God and of His Relationship to the World
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The rationalist proof begins with the principle of sufficient reason and argues that the ultimate explanation of things can only lie in an absolutely necessary being.
Note:RAZIOMALISMO

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7 Common Objections to Natural Theology
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“If everything has a cause, then what caused God?”
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If everything has a cause, then what caused God? If the response is that nothing caused God, then, the critic maintains, we might as well say that nothing caused the universe.
Note:IL NEOATEISMO

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The problem is this: Not one of the many prominent defenders of the cosmological argument in the history of Western philosophy ever actually put forward anything like this so-called “basic cosmological argument”. In particular—and to hammer the point home—you will not find such an argument in Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Al-Ghazali, Avicenna, Averroes,
Note:IL PROBLEMA... ARGOMENTO MAL FORMULATO

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Suppose “Intelligent Design” theorists routinely characterized “the basic Darwinian thesis” as the claim that at some point in the distant past a monkey gave birth to a human baby.
Note:ANALOGIA

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But that raises yet another question: How did this straw man ever enter the literature in the first place? A plausible answer was proposed by the Thomist philosopher W. Norris Clarke in his 1970 article “A Curious Blind Spot in the Anglo-American Tradition of Antitheistic Argument”.10 Clarke provides several examples of philosophy textbooks of the mid-twentieth century which present variations of the caricature of First Cause arguments that we’ve been discussing, including John Hospers’ widely used An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. As Clarke indicates, Bertrand Russell’s famous 1957 book Why I Am Not a Christian (the title of which derives from a 1927 lecture of Russell’s that is printed in the book) may be the source from which many subsequent writers learned this caricature and the stock reply to it.
Note:ORIGINI DELLO STRAW MAN

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Hume-Russell straw man tradition

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Clarke suggests that what Hume did was essentially to confuse these two senses of “cause”, taking the rationalist claim that “everything has a ‘cause’-in-the-sense-of-a-suffuient-reason” to be identical to the claim that “everything has a ‘cause’-in-the-sense-of-an-efficient-cause-distinct-from-itsef.”
Note:LA CONFUSIONE... CAUSA E RAGIONE SUFFICIENTE

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“It is false to suppose in the first place that everything has a cause or an explanation.”
Note:PRESUPPORRE UNA RAGIONE

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In putting forward this objection, Stenger attributes some events to “chance” rather than causation.
Note:IL CASO

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Dennett and Rosenberg suggest that quantum mechanics shows that events can occur without a cause.
Note:QUANTI

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there is simply nothing about chance that rules out causality. On the contrary, chance presupposes nonchance causal regularities. To take a stock example, when a farmer plowing a field comes across buried treasure, that is a chance event. But it occurs only because of the convergence of two nonchance lines of causality: the farmer’s decision to plow in a certain direction that day, and someone else’s decision to bury treasure at precisely that spot.
Note:CASO E REGOLA

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Quantum physics shows at most that some events do not have a deterministic cause or explanation, but there is nothing in either the principle of causality or PSR per se that requires that sort of cause or explanation, specifically. Furthermore, quantum events occur even in a nondeterministic way only given the laws of quantum mechanics,
Note:CONFONDERE CAUSA E DETERMINISMO

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“Why assume that the universe had a beginning or that a regress of causes must terminate?”
Note:ASSUMERE IL PRIMO MEMBRO

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Richard Feynman, also suggests that for all we know there might always be deeper and deeper layers of laws of physics which we can probe until we get bored.
Note:DEEPER AND DEEPER

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First Cause arguments like those defended in this book are not concerned in the first place with the question of whether the universe had a beginning.
Note:ESCLUDERE LE SERIE LINEARI

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level upon level of laws of nature would constitute a hierarchical series of the sort described in chapter 1—laws at one level would hold only as a special case of laws at a deeper level, which would in turn hold only as a special case of yet deeper laws—and we have seen why such a series cannot fail to have a first member
Note:RISPOSTA AL DEEPER AND DEEPER

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“First Cause arguments commit a fallacy of composition.”
Note:FALLACIA

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“The cosmological argument presupposes the ontological argument, which is unsound.”
Note:KANT

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one needs to do more than merely claim that the cosmological argument presupposes the ontological argument should be obvious enough from the fact that Aquinas, and most Thomists following him, explicitly reject the ontological argument while endorsing the cosmological.
Note:E TOMMASO?

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“The cosmological argument proposes a ‘god of the gaps’ in order to explain something which in fact either is, or eventually will be, better explained via a naturalistic scientific theory.”
Note:DIO TAPPABUCHI

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“Science is the only genuine source of knowledge, and our best scientific theories make no reference to God.”
Note:SCIENTISMO

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scientism.

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“The fundamental laws of nature are best regarded as an unexplained ‘brute fact’ rather than as something in need of any explanation, theological or otherwise.”
Note:FATTO BRUTO

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One problem with this view is that it is incompatible with the principle of sufficient reason, and as I argued in chapter 5, the principle of sufficient reason is true.
Note:PRINCIPIO DELLA RAGIONE

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Another problem with this view is that it is entirely ad hoc. There seems to be no motivation at all for adopting it other than as a way to avoid having to accept arguments like the ones defended in this book
Note:AD HOC

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“A designer of the universe would be even more complex than the universe itself and thus require a cause of its own.”
Note:DESIGNER

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One problem is that the objection is directed at “design arguments” like those associated with William Paley and “Intelligent Design” theory.
Note:PALEY

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The arguments defended in this book simply have nothing at all to do with “design arguments” of this sort.
Note:ccccc

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“The God of philosophical theism is not the God most ordinary religious believers believe in.”
Note:IL TEISMO È IRRELIGIOSO

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it would be irrelevant even if it were true.

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But the objection in question is not true. For one thing, some religions to which ordinary religious believers adhere embrace the God of philosophical theism. For example, it is standard Catholic teaching that the God of the Bible and the God which can be known by means of philosophical arguments are one and the same.
Note:CATTOLICI

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“The reality of suffering and of other kinds of evil shows that God does not exist.”
Note:IL MALE

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First of all, it is not true to say without qualification that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. Even God cannot make a round square,
Note:ONNIPOTENZA

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It is not true to say that a good thing will eliminate all evil as far as it can.
Note:MALE VS IL MALE

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What sorts of goods would be eliminated if God were to get rid of all evil? The main examples are familiar from the literature on the problem of evil. For instance, it is good for there to be creatures which act of their own free will rather than being mere automata.
Note:FREE WILL

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“If God really existed, then he would not be ‘hidden’ from us, but his existence would be obvious to everyone.”
DIO NASCOSTO