Arguments for the Existence of God

St. Thomas Aquinas

Introductory Note

Does God exist?' and 'Can the existence of God be rationally proved?'-these questions have occupied the best minds of the East and the West through long ages of history. In India, we find in the different systems of philosophy, these questions and their answers. In the West, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have been witnessed as gripped by these questions. In the Medieval history of Europe, we find St. Thomas Aquinas proving existence of God by means of what is called the Ontological Argument. Three greatest philosophers of modern Europe, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz formulated their own Ontological Arguments in the context of their own systems of philosophy. Along with the Ontological Argument, the Cosmological Argument and Teleological Argument have flourished both in the East and the West. Immanuel Kant criticised the Ontological Argument but supplied a new argument, the Moral Argument. However, after Kant's refutation of the Ontological Argument, and particularly under the influence of the empiricist philosophy, the questions about the existence of God have become marginalised.

These questions are, however, extremely important. If God really exists, human life will be seen in a totally new light, and this has consequences for the way of life or the direction of life.

Page 15

In the inspiring life of Swami Vivekananda, we find how as a college student, he was gripped by the question of God's existence, and he was in search, not merely of intellectual proof of God but of experiential proof of God. That is why, when he met Sri Ramakrishna, he did not ask the question whether he believed in God or not, or whether he could provide any intellectual proof. He simply asked the question: "Have you seen God?" and he was seized by Sri Ramakrishna, when the latter told him, "Yes. I see him more vividly than I see you." Since that important encounter between Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna, many young people of India have entered into the debate regarding God's existence and about the intellectual and experiential proof of God.

It is in this context that it seems worthwhile to present in a short monograph an account of the intellectual proofs of the existence of God, particularly as they have been formulated and discussed in the West. This monograph has, however, also added a few pages which summarise the account of the Indian intellectual proofs of the existence of God. This monograph has devoted some space to the original statements of Descartes in regard to the Ontological Argument. The author of this monograph has also presented a critical essay on the Ontological Argument in the form in which it can be intellectually discussed in the contemporary course in philosophy.

Sri Aurobindo, the greatest Indian philosopher of our time, has devoted four chapters in his 'The Life Divine' to the twofold approach to the problem of the existence of God,— rational and experiential, and since these four chapters present the most elaborate and intellectually robust statement of the problem of God's existence and solution, all these four chapters have been placed in the Appendix.

It is not enough to prove the existence of God or that God is Self-Existence or Pure Existence. God is not mere essence, and as Plato had said long ago, the Supreme Good exceeds essence in both power and dignity. The Vedanta has also pointed out long before Plato that God exceeds essence or Pure Existence

Page 16

(Sat), both as Conscious Force (Cit), and Delight (Ananda). Sri Aurobindo dwells in these four chapters on the totality of the concept of God as the Pure Existent, Conscious Force and Delight.

Sri Aurobindo's logic of rationality conceives a kind of its completeness in itself, just as one's eye grasps the object of sight undeniably, yet it admits a room for the second eye in terms of empirical possession of the object, provided that empiricality (in the universe of discourse of 'God') is not limited to sense-bound experience, but extends into supra-sensuous and superconscient experience. The double edge of the sharpness of integrality is luminously visible in these four chapters. Idealistic rationality has its own completeness in the field of ideation and its relationship with reality, and yet integrality of our being demands a greater completeness in terms of direct experience.

Sri Aurobindo has stated:

"But our nature sees things through two eyes always, for it views them doubly as idea and as fact and therefore every concept is incomplete for us and to a part of our nature almost unreal until it becomes an experience. But the truths which are now in question, are of an order not subject to our normal experience. They are, in their nature, "beyond the perception of the senses but seizable by the perception of the reason". Therefore, some other faculty of experience is necessary by which the demand of our nature can be fulfilled and this can only come, since we are dealing with the supraphysical, by an extension of psychological experience." (The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol. 18, p. 61)

Ideative rationality demands undeniably the positing of the Infinite Pure Existence, but integrality of our being demands, equally undeniably, possession of the Infinite in intuition or knowledge by identity. This process ends in double certainty

Page 17

of Cod's existence in thought and in actual possession in experience.

These four chapters present this integrality, and in the history of thought, this presentation is not only novel but its intellectual perfection is so stimulating and satisfying that one could confidently invite any student, who contemplates on the existence of God, to study these four chapters.

It is hoped that the readers of this monograph will find the treatment of the problem of the existence of God stimulating and rewarding.

Editor

Page 18