Aquinas and Anselm – Arguments for the existence of God

Extract

[...] It can be seen that both Aquinas and Anselm are religious individuals that desperately want to prove the existence of that which they believe in, but neither is able to do it. Both arguments, when scrutinized from a distance (like is being done in this paper), can be shown to be nothing more than arguments for language, not God. Language is an important part of religion but neither of these theorists are able to use language to actually prove the existence of God, they are only able to use language to make their arguments work (instead of proving the existence of God). [...]

[...] Anselm would say that Aquinas' theory is thus illogical because he does not give an adequate reasoning for the way that he generalizes the existence of things in the real world with requiring a cause of the world itself. In other words, Anselm would charge that the logical connection of steps in Aquinas' argument is in fact not logical as the first two steps argue that everything requires a cause, but then the third step says that there is something that does not require a cause. [...]

[...] Aquinas would say that his cosmological argument is best because it is evident in life that for something to exist, its existence needs to be caused by something, as the existence of all things requires a cause. The cause that he speaks of needs to be caused by something other than itself (as one cannot be the cause of itself). As such, there must be something that can be said to be the first cause, and this according to Aquinas is God. [...]