The Proofs

Five arguments for God, and what making them cost.

A course on the thought of The God Question.

Theology · Religion

Course outline

1. The Argument Before the Argument — The earliest surviving debate about the Christian God is not between a believer and an unbeliever. Celsus believes in God, in providence, and in judgement. What he denies is that a crucified man…
2. The Proof Inside a Prayer — Anselm's single argument, delivered inside a prayer, and Aquinas's refusal of it — the charge that it can only move someone who has already granted its conclusion. Both men believe God exists. They…
3. Why Is There Anything At All — The philosophers claimed to have proved the world eternal. al-Ghazālī breaks the proof — and to break it denies that any observed pairing is a necessary connection at all. Hume makes the identical…
4. The Wrong Turn — Aquinas reasons from the world up to God. Descartes reverses it — God is more evident than any sensible thing, established first, and the world is known through him. Same conclusion, opposite…
5. The Watch and the Man Who Broke It First — The design argument at its most confident, and the refutation that was twenty-three years old and on its author's shelf when he published. The lesson's question is not whether Paley was answered — he…

Built from

This course was built from 13 books.

• Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism
• Anselm, Proslogium; Monologium; Gaunilo's In Behalf of the Fool
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part I
• al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers
• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
• Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Works, Vol I
• Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Works, Vol II: Objections and Replies
• William Paley, Natural Theology
• Origen, The Writings of Origen, Vol II (Contra Celsum)
• Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
• D. L. LeMahieu, The Mind of William Paley
• Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference

Part of the Simposeum course library.