Why Aristotle’s "Proof" for the Existence of God Is a Poor Basis for Religiosity
[Written by Connor for a Philosophy Masters]
Attempts by theologians to reinforce their doctrine of beliefs through philosophical arguments, such as those provided by Aristotle are surrounded by controversy and conceptual difficulties. Indeed, thinkers stand from both positions of religiosity and the philosophical tradition claiming that the subsequent “philosophy of religion” which springs forth from this endeavour is largely an invalid concept, making little meaningful sense. The move by Christian theologians to supplement their doctrine of belief with the recovered philosophy of Ancient Greek thinkers such as Aristotle can be seen as a syncretic blurring, damaging to the ideational roots of both discourses which are, in essence, principally converse. The prime example of such a contentious attempt is St. Thomas Aquinas’ work which seeks to bolster Catholic doctrine through Aristotelean metaphysics.
The difficulty of combining both discourses here is a conceptual one; whether such arguments as Aristotle’s proof for God are compatible, complimentary even, to the domain of religion and the conceptual realm of faith – a strong case can be made that they are incommensurable. That is, it is not necessarily due to Aristotle’s proof being strong or weak reasoning but whether reasoning itself is a valid basis for religious belief. Arguably, philosophy’s inquest into reason and values cannot be coherently understood when it comes to the world of religion. Many have advocated that religion is a realm exempt from the rational analytical gaze of philosophy and even perhaps much of its more poetic existential contemplations, and for good reason.[1] Others have argued that they are more homogenous than we might imagine - that they can and should be intellectually married due to their ‘mutual relationship’.[2] In any case, it is worth noting that despite being an intellectually controversial basis for belief, Aristotelian argument has historically and does continue to characterise religious thought. Whether it “should” be a basis for belief is one thing, though it certainly “has” been. As Clifford McManis remarks, Aristotelean contributions ‘laid down the basic principles of reason used by most apologists’ which church officials were dependent upon for centuries.[3]
In evidencing this narrative of the intellectual controversy surrounding the philosophy of religion it is necessary to examine the work of Aristotle and Aquinas themselves in order to show their conceptual discordancy. Moreover, the current state of “God arguments” in modernity further showcases the critical analysis of the philosophy of religion discourse even further. In looking to philosophies which, by comparison to Aristotelean metaphysical groundings, reveal more accurate notions of religion and more valid attempts to provide a basis for belief we can look to specific existential philosophy, such as that of Søren Kierkegaard and personal testimonies of faith.
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In Aristotle’s work are some of the first examples of the philosophy of religion, examining the meaning, consequences and nature of God’s existence.[4] As a branch of philosophy this is done in a philosophical framing however; being objective and external to the premises of a particular religion. Meaning that religious thought takes certain foundations to be incontestably true within its framework, such as “God exists”. In contradistinction, theology examines what it means to be religious from a religious perspective. In such works as Metaphysics, Aristotle proposes the logical necessity of the existence of a deity and similar arguments can be found in preceding Greek philosophy, who were similarly intellectually borrowed by theologians, apologists and Neoplatonists of later centuries. Many are critical of how this tradition has evolved, as Taylor notes, particularly of attempts to utilise metaphysical arguments from this era to supplement concepts of religious theology.[5]
In The Physics, Aristotle’s argument for proof of God can be very briefly summarised as such. Within Aristotle’s pre-Newtonian worldview, motion is a matter of both movement and states of change. Aristotle thus seeks to explain the movement of the cosmos, which is observed as being inherently ordered and reasonable. He sees these motions in terms of objects acting upon one another in a chain of causality with the movements and changes of the universe enacted through ‘the actuality of a potentiality’.[6] Rather than the Form of the Good; that by which all things gain their intelligibility, Aristotle’s rational reflection upon observations of the natural world attempted to account for the variety of goods and postulated a self-thinking entity. Thus, contextually Aristotle’s notion of God is an attempt to explain this rational chain of ordered causality, which without a first cause is an infinite regress.
One way of refuting Aristotle’s work as a basis for belief is to note that the God of religion would have made little sense to Aristotle in comparison to his God of Philosophy. It is important to understand that unlike the later Abrahamic God of Monotheism Aristotle’s God of Philosophy is a calculative postulate of logic and empiricism, rather than any kind of faith or discernible religiosity. Aristotle’s deist deity is even so abstract to be described as Thought Thinking Itself or ‘the thinking of thinking’ due to its requisite nature as pure actuality; a notion which can only be truly understood in context of Aristotle’s theory of motion and causality as an immutable absolute.[7] As Herb Gruning remarks the Unmoved Mover ‘acts only as a final cause (rejecting) any role as a caregiver to the world and is absorbed in self-contemplation’.[8] So under Aristotle’s theorising, God thinking on a more relatable level of cognitive deliberation than this metacognition would require a preceding cause of motion to act upon it. Aristotle comments that ‘it must be itself that thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of all things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking’; a far cry from the being so characterised by interaction, mediation and contemplation found in (particularly Judeo-Christian) scripture.[9]
A further point of disconnect between faith and Aristotle’s notion of divinity is Aristotle’s method which is essentially different from revelation. So empirically grounded is this discourse that is perhaps best anachronistically understood better as a kind of physics within a pre-Newtonian proto-science rather than ‘in any sort of religious sense’.[10] This of course makes its use in Catholic theology to underpin faith all the more questionable. Aristotle’s Prime Mover is therefore little more than a theorised piece of reasoning within his understanding of physics conjured to explain the astronomical movement of the cosmos; principally the natural laws of substance, causality and actuality/potentiality. As Heidegger reminds us ‘man can neither pray nor sacrifice to this god’.[11] Aquinas’ attempts to supplement his theological understanding of Catholicism with the formal arguments of the philosophy of antiquity is a move that is far removed from both faith and Aristotle’s conceptions. It can be seen as an amalgamative discourse, detrimental to the continuity of both disciplines and their foundational roots.
It is worth noting earlier attempts by Aristotle’s contemporaries, which Aristotle had essentially expanded upon, including his teacher Plato, at also providing a proof for God. Notably here is the idea of Plato’s “Demiurge” in Timaeus, a notion which was taken in the same manner as Aristotle to somewhat bizarrely underpin the argumentations of Christendom, contextually showcasing the overall misconception of using Ancient Greek reasoning to reinforce Christianity. Indeed, Plato’s Demiurge is often noted as being less abstract than that of Aristotle’s Prime Mover.[12] But even the Demiurge is a being of little more than necessity and abstraction in comparison to the later God of Religion. The Demiurge is typically characterised as simply a teleological cause for the harmony and reason in the universe produced from attempts to explain its order and symmetry. (It is worth noting that Aristotle does not even attribute this causality and order to the divine and simply recognises it as an inherent natural law, even further removed from religious notions). Though Plato’s notion of God does infer some meaning in relation to authority and morality it is also a cosmological text and contrasts to the interpersonal, relational and anthropomorphic deity of monotheism.[13] So it appears on the surface to be a similar, rather clumsy move to use Plato’s Demiurge God to reinforce the notion of Creation ex Nihlo (creation from nothing). As Jowett critically remarks, this is a result of intellectual Neoplatonist ’absurdities’, ultimately resulting from an overall misreading of Greek metaphysics.[14]
As such, this reveals a rather poor reading of Greek philosophy in general by those who had grappled with its conceptuality in the medieval period.[15] This is not due to some collective intellectual deficiency of Neoplatonists however and must be understood against the retrieval of ancient knowledge and the challenges they presented to Christendom. Namely here is the question of epistemology in light of the existence of two kinds of knowledge; reason and faith. That is, Aristotle ultimately cast questions upon theological considerations, particularly whether reason and faith are compatible and whether faith itself is reasonable. Truth via reason challenges the entire discourse of the importance of faith and revelation, whilst conversely thinking of belief as ultimately irrational is equally detrimental to the believer. As such compatibilists, such as St Thomas Aquinas attempted to reconcile these concepts to some degree. Subsequently it is not difficult to imagine how this contextually lends to the narrative of Aristotle’s somewhat spurious misuse as an underpinning for religious belief.
Before we consider the acquisition of belief in a manner beyond reason we can criticise the rational argument of Aristotle alone also. Firstly, there is the assumption that the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” makes meaningful sense and requires any kind of answer at all. Not only because the notion of an absolute nothingness is an unthinkable and unclear concept but Aristotle turns to the unmoved mover as the best explanation of causality when other philosophers have suggested the universe’s status as a simple brute fact.[16] Then there is the rejection of the meaningful sense given to both a self-caused and necessary being; something which arguably only applies with validity to propositions and not beings.[17] Of course, there are subsequent objections to these objections themselves but ultimately these go beyond what we can consider to be the thought of Aristotle alone. Besides, the continuity of western rationalist philosophy, Aristotle’s very school, now sits relatively firmly upon the position that there is no God.[18] However, given centuries of philosophical revision it is not only easy to object to Aristotle on his own logical terms but also facile given the true nature of belief.
As one of very few then-existing wellsprings of philosophy, Aquinas drew upon the work of Aristotle to develop his own proofs for God, even crediting Aristotle as ‘The Philosopher’.[19] As such, the paradigmatic language of Aquinas is essentially Aristotelean, but Aquinas’ argument advocates a slightly different dynamic. Rejecting St. Anselm’s more theological Ontological argument, Aquinas posits that due to God’s inherent ineffability, they can only be negatively described through the principle of Via Negativa – what God is not. Aquinas’ Five ways of proving God are thus more empirical and evolve from Aristotelean arguments of motion and causality.
Yet even Aquinas himself, while advancing what has become known as the famous Teleological and Cosmological arguments for God’s existence from Aristotle’s, seemed to note the disconnect between the revelatory, experiential nature of his own faith and the calculative reasoning of philosophy. This is perhaps best exemplified in his comment that ‘everything that I have written seems like straw in comparison to what has been revealed and shown to me’.[20] Anslem for instance wrote his Ontological Argument, taken as a logical proof of God, in the form of a prayer in Proslogion; never actually intending it to be viewed as a philosophical argument ‘outside this context of faith’.[21] This is testimony to the strange and paradoxical nature of unnecessarily “proving God”.
It is also worth noting that Aquinas, (and most other people of faith for that matter), prizing faith above reason, did not require such arguments and reasoning to explain or support their pre-existing staunch faith. Aquinas’ adaptions of Aristotelean thought is perhaps best viewed as a post-faith explanation of the intelligibility of the universe, rather than a basis of faith itself. God, for Aristotle, is the conclusion of his argument; for Aquinas, it is the premise. Indeed, the great arguments were typically attempts by Christians to reinforce their faith, so are probably best viewed in a largely religious paradigm rather than Aristotle’s philosophical one. In fact, Anslem, who can be seen as engaging with faith in a manner almost entirely divorced from the philosophical tradition due to his writing before its rediscovery makes ‘little distinction between explaining the meaning of a theological proposition and giving an argument for it’.[22] Often it is simply the case that ways of life often congeal into propositions – but it is the experiential consequence of believing them that truly matters to believers. It is only after these rituals and values are adopted that they are subsequently justified through propositions. Davies notes that Anselm himself did not need his ontological “proof” for God and only created it to ‘describe what the Christian already believes’.[23]
One way of showing this basis to be invalid is to point out that the philosophy of religion is conceptually distinct from theology. This is apparent as ‘its critical reflections are based on religious convictions’ and ‘theology is responsible to an authority that initiates its thinking, speaking, and witnessing’ as opposed to the free and open enquiries of philosophy.[24] Essentially therefore, the philosophy of religion goes beyond theological thinking in questioning fundamental elements rather than starting from premises such as God’s existence; and this simply isn’t the way in which faith operates. As such, this philosophy of religion seems to examine faith in a way only the faithless could.
However, we must not be too barbed with this narrative and in doing so acknowledge that, in part, Aquinas was aware of the apparent disconnect between reason and faith. Indeed, this was somewhat the purpose of Aquinas’ work; to demonstrate that, contrary to a contemporary conception, they were in fact compatible.[25] In fact this can, in part, be seen as a response to thinkers such as Tertullian who were intellectually suspicious of reason’s relevance to faith given the ‘unreliability of reason as a source of truth’.[26] However, that said, for Aquinas this was a compatibility of a relatively technical nature, more to convey that reason and faith were not actually opposed rather than having a mutually exclusive relationship. One could attain ‘incomplete truths’ through reason alone yet ‘faith in eternal salvation’ exceeds this kind of truth.[27] That is, faith is still of principal importance in comparison to reason as ‘some truths of theology lie beyond reason’s grasp’.[28] So in the case of both positions of this argument the reason of the Ancient Greeks remains menial in the face of experiential revelation and divine authority. Though important for Aquinas, reason is not necessarily a basis for religion therefore but an intellectual footnote or nuance to established belief.
His developments of Aristotle’s arguments are therefore not intended to move atheists to theism and ‘convince his listeners that there is a God’.[29] This would be an exceptionally anachronistic narrative as theoretical atheism was a concept all but unknown in Medieval Europe. Veritably, the debate that Aquinas’ arguments have found themselves thrust into service for into in modernity would have made little sense to him. Indeed, as Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt observes the vice of ‘unbelief’ could only have been legitimately addressed to Judaism, Paganism or perhaps the rejection of myth by Democritus centuries earlier, as the closest examples of modern atheism.[30] So even in Aquinas’ union of reason and faith, reason falls short of a valid basis for religious belief.
It is worth examining the atheist-theist debate in modernity to evidence this narrative further. As one glances at the state of contemporary debate it is evident that dialogues continue to bear little fruit under the guise of the ilk of Richard Dawkins, who to the annoyance of atheists and theists alike, abortively challenges the rationality of countless believers. As writers have pointed out, the conversation seems to consist of ‘increasingly tired, and tiring, arguments’ which often fail to have any practical effect.[31] Those invested in the debate are also attempting, or at least recognising the meretricious nature in abandoning more barbed approaches which have historically focused on logical argumentation, propositions, and scientific claims.[32] The only inclusions to this conversation that seem to muster any real effect and validity are the more empathetic and existential kind which engage with the ethical and experiential dimensions of faith, rather than dismantling metaphysics.[33] Hence there is a move away from “unproving God” as despite apologists’ endeavours, proofs of any kind similar to Aristotle bear little importance for religious believers.
This seems to support the account that there is a language problem, of a syncretic nature in that interlocutors are arguing past one another believing that religion concerns analytic philosophy in any meaningful way. [34] That is, rituals and practices are not always concerned with objective statements, at least not in the minds of religion’s adherents. These ways of life often congeal into propositions as mentioned previously. Indeed, modern writers have also seemingly come to this conclusion and have begun to transcend the classic “God debate” and question whether ‘reason plays any significant role in the life of the religious believer’.[35] Arthur Bradley identifies that insistence on literalism is a fairly novel phenomenon, principally believed only by the most recent wave of atheists. He argues it is characterised by ‘a-historical and de-contextualized reading of the Bible and the Qur’an alone, insist[ing] upon the literal falsity of Genesis’, etc.[36]
If we grant this view that a rational defence is conjured after the belief is held, rather than vice versa, then we can further see that Aristotle’s is still a deficient justification for religious belief; at least not the kind of religious belief one with faith would seemingly be drawn to. After all, as far as the desirability of faith and deities go we can imagine there are few alluring elements to Aristotle’s characterisation of God in contrast to the Abrahamic God. It is true that Aristotle’s God is similarly acetic, immutable, eternal, transcendent and in Aristotle’s more conceptual sense the greatest possible Good. Aristotle explains that ‘God is always in that good state which we sometimes are’ and that he is ‘life most good and eternal’.[37] In this, Aristotelean examinations of God seem similar to religious claims of goodness, such as the Judeo-Christian notion of ‘supreme good’.[38] Descriptions of Brahman within Hinduism also seem to parallel this aspect of the Unmoved Mover as ‘the eternal, infinite Godhead’ and the ‘highest abode’.[39] However here is largely where the similarities to the Gods of religiosity end. For instance, the relational aspect typically found in religion such as that of divine guidance or even, as critical psychology advocates; parentage, is entirely absent from Aristotle’s Prime Mover.
The psychology of religion, in exploring attachment has tended to observe that description of God as a ‘Father’ within scripture runs parallel to a psychological function of paternity, maternity or perhaps the ‘preferred image of a parent’.[40] Similarly, the appealing ideas of destiny, purpose and providence are all non-existent in Aristotle’s worldview which have been argued to allow for a sense of comfort and faith in God’s interaction and belonging to a wider cosmic plan. When we consider this in conjunction with research evidencing the established phenomena that many people ‘pick and choose their religious beliefs’, even rejecting other elements of a holistic and entrenched tradition, this further lends to this narrative.[41] In contrast, there is no sense of parentage or temporal interaction within Aristotle’s framework; by logical necessity the Prime Mover cannot interact within the world beyond its causality.
A further critical psychological distinction between belief of other deities and Aristotle’s reason-based God is the absence of an afterlife. Aristotle’s basis for God also relies on what some may consider to be an unattractive worldview of materialism and monism, particularly as belief is so often characterised by corporeal and eschatological concerns. In this way religion is often seen as a ‘coping mechanism’.[42] Aristotle purported, as part of his framework of physics, what can be understood as a materialist universe - that all phenomena (even thought) are fundamentally the result of the interactions of matter and substances. Also present in Aristotle’s work is a monist view of the soul or psyche, denying the existence of Cartesian dualism and any possible existence of an afterlife as the ‘soul cannot exist in independently (or) in separation from of the body’.[43] These beliefs regarding the natural world are contingent to Aristotle’s view on God and vice-versa – That is, the Unmoved Mover fits by necessity into Aristotle’s world of physics, a world without the soul, an afterlife or divinity. Because of these key features, it is difficult to find any truly alluring reasons to believe in the God of Philosophy over others if we grant this perception of the acquisition of belief. As such Aristotle’s basis is somewhat moot in this regard.
The proofs of analytic philosophy therefore simply cannot understand faith on an experiential level, nor do they intend to. If religion links coherently with philosophy anywhere it is in the thinking of continental existentialism. Concerned more chiefly with interpretative (sometimes phenomenological) social constructions of truth rather than pure analytical logic. That is, a position embracing and engaging with the experiential nature of reality that some might be tempted to call postmodernist. To this effect, we must turn to Søren Kierkegaard for a more truthful account of philosophy on religion.
Kierkegaard’s take on the philosophy of religion advocates that the analytical take on faith, typified through Christendom has led to a crisis in religious existentialism. This notion is perhaps best exemplified in his comment that ‘it is quite true what philosophy says: that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forward’.[44] That is, faith has become an abstract and propositional notion, understood theoretically rather than as a practice or engaging way of life as, in Kierkegaard’s view, it should be.[45] In his Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard even idolises the staunch dogma of Abraham who ‘is ‘beyond the scope of justification’, fully realising the implications of his faith and living them, realising that they cannot be intellectually defended in the manner that theologians have attempted to. [46] As such, being a fideist, Kierkegaard maintains that religious faith does not need rational justification or require the support of rational arguments. In fact, for Kierkegaard, attempting to prove one’s religious faith may even be an indication of a lack of faith. So, religion is therefore more of a sentiment than proposition and philosophy can only ever converse in religion to reflect this, never providing a true basis for the adoption of belief. If religion can be in any way made compatible with the discourses of philosophy it is through the more continental and experiential branches of the discipline.
If Kierkegaard’s thought on religion as existentialism over proposition is true, then this would explain the current state of affairs and would account for an increasingly deleterious and inaccurate understanding of religion ‘as a hypothesis’.[47] It would seem apparent that philosophy should subsequently not be concerned with religion, and certainly cannot unhinge or underpin its ideas in any valid sense (to the religious at least) with the exception of Kierkegaard’s very narrow commentary in which he successfully combines the two in a satisfactory and accurate narrative.
In contrast to Aristotelian bases for belief, or any other propositional ones for that matter, we can look to the testimony of more experiential characterisations of faith. These ideas take an alternative view on religious epistemology to Aristotle’s rationalism. In engagement with theology the idea has arisen that revelation is irreducible to propositional language as it is ultimately ‘an activity’ (and) subjective human experience’.[48] It is therefore uncapturable by the paradigmatic language of Aristotle despite its frequent use. Thus, we can again lend more merit to the view that belief is typically not reducible to propositions.
So, given the failures of Western rationalist philosophy to engage true religious belief with validity it cannot successfully and therefore should not engage with or reinforce faith-based claims on its own terms alone. In contradistinction to what we have seemingly convinced ourselves of in modernity both discourses are somewhat incommensurable and religion is in fact rarely concerned with the veracity of its claims. Philosophy and Religion can therefore be seen to remain separate phenomena and Aristotelean engagements with divinity are not equivocal to the essence of considerations found in theology and faith. The New Atheists have seemingly correctly coined one thing in their critical analysis of religiosity - religion is not reasonable; what they have yet to realise however is that this is the very essence of religion so nor should it try to be. It is the examination of phenomena rather than its invention that concerns philosophy and Aristotle’s view of faith fails in this regard in working with an inaccurate depiction of the acquisition of belief, or at least belief as we can understand it in modernity. Aristotle’s proof is therefore no basis for religious belief, as is any objective proof.
[1] Thomas Chubb, A Collection of Tracts: On Various Subjects (1730) p. 165
[2] R.W. Perrett, Indian Philosophy of Religion (Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media, 2012) p. 64
This is generally a more common theme within Eastern religions but not unheard of in Western thought.
[3] Norman L. Geisler in Clifford B. McManis, Biblical Apologetics: Advancing and Defending the Gospel of Christ (Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation, 2013) p. 142
[4] Chad Meister, Introducing Philosophy of Religion (London: Routledge, 2009) p. 92
[5] James Taylor, Introducing Apologetics: Cultivating Christian Commitment (Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006) p. 31
[6] Joe Sachs, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Aristotle: Motion and its Place in Nature, http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-mot/ [Accessed 16 January 2017]
[7] Jiyuan Yu, The Structure of Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media, 2003) p. 196
[8] Herb Gruning, How in the World Does God Act? (Oxford: University Press of America, 2000) p. 2
[9] Aristotle in Vivian Boland, Ideas in God According to Saint Thomas Aquinas: Sources and Synthesis (Netherlands: BRIL, 1996) p. 165
[10] Richard DeWitt, Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2011) p. 110
[11] Ted Sadler, Heidegger and Aristotle: The Question of Being (London: A&C Black, 2000) p. 175
[12] Thomas Kheller Johansen in Patricia Katrina Slatin, The Concept of the Divine in Plato (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) p. 99
[13] Roy Jackson, Plato: A Complete Introduction (Croydon: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2016) p. 198
Gruning P. 3
[14] Plato, Edited by B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato: Volume III (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968) p. 631
[15] Lloyd P. Gerson, Aristotle and Other Platonists (New York: Cornell University Press, 2006) p. 2-3
[16] Bertrand Russell in YouTube, firstcauseargument, Leibnizian Cosmological Argument (Frederick Copleston vs Bertrand Russell), 11 July 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgyWuJFd3ho [Accessed 04 January 2017]
Steven Law, Humansim: A Very Short Introduction ()
[17] Ibid.
Emanuel Rutten, A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments: Towards a Renewed Case for Theism (Zutphen: Wohrmann Print Service, 2012) p. 172
[18] BBC, Rationalism, 27th October 2009, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/types/rationalism.shtml [Accessed 04 January 2017]
[19] St. Thomas Aquinas in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle's De Anima: In the version of William of Moerbeke and the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2007) P. 63
[20] St. Thomas Aquinas in Simon Tugwell, Albert & Thomas: Selected Writings (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1988) p. 266
[21] Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (New Jersey: John Wiley & Son, 2012) p. 101
[22] James Swindal, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Faith and Reason, http://www.iep.utm.edu/faith-re/#SH4e [Accessed 5 December 2016]
[23] Brian Davies, Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: Critical Essays (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) p. 40
[24] Helmut Thielicke and Andrew Louth, Encyclopædia Britannica, Theology, 19 August 2009, https://www.britannica.com/topic/theology [Accessed 15 November 2016]
[25] Shawn Floyd, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Aquinas: Philosophical Theology, http://www.iep.utm.edu/aq-ph-th/ [Accessed 1 January 2017]
[26] Murray Rae, Christian Theology: The Basics (London: Routledge, 2015) p. 14
[27] Swindal
[28] Ibid. p. 15
[29] Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and Following Christ (Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2013) p. 91
[30] Ibid.
[31] David Webster, Dispirited: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid Selfish and Unhappy (Zero Books: Winchester, 2012) p. 6
[32] Julian Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press: New York, 2003) p. 106
Sophie Elmhirst, The Guardian, Is Richard Dawkins Destroying His Reputation?, 9 April 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/09/is-richard-dawkins-destroying-his-reputation [Accessed 20 April 2016]
[33] Chris Stedman’s work Fathiest is such an example which seeks to establish common ground with religion and a positively defined, ethical atheism.
Chris Stedman, Fathiest, The Book, http://faitheistbook.com/ [Accessed 10 November 2016]
[34] Webster, Dispirited, The Circle of Stupid.., 8 August 2015, https://dispirited.org/2015/08/08/the-circle-of-stupid/ [Accessed 15 November 2016]
[35] Kelly James Clark, The Internet Encyclopaedia, Religious Epistemology: Groundless Believing, http://www.iep.utm.edu/relig-ep/ [Accessed 17 April 2016]
[36] Arthur Bradley, The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic After 9/11 (Edinburgh: A&C Black, 2010) p. 5
[37] Aristotle in Vivian Boland p. 164
Eknath Easwaran, Bhagavad Gita (Boulder City: Shambhala Publications: 2004) p. 100
Ibid. p. 174
[38] Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 209) p. 196
[39] Ibid. p. 195
[40] Lee A. Kirkpatrick, Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 80
[41] Christian Smith and Melina Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 76
[42] Sylvan D. Ambrose, Religion and Psychology: New Research (New York: Nova Publishers, 2006) p. 112
[43] Victor Kal, On Institution and Discursive Reasoning in Aristotle (Netherlands: BRILL, 1988) p. 92
[44] Soren Kierkegaard in W. Glenn Kirkconnell, Kierkegaard on Sin and Salvation: From Philosophical Fragments Through the Two Ages (Edinburgh: AC & Black, 2010) p. 83
[45] Reidar Thomte, Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religion (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009) p. 217
[46] J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008) p. 49
[47] Ryan C. Falconi in Amarnath Amarasingam, Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal (Netherlands; BRILL, 2010) p. 203
[48] Ian Mobsby, God Unknown (London: Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd, 2012) p. 114
The difficulty of combining both discourses here is a conceptual one; whether such arguments as Aristotle’s proof for God are compatible, complimentary even, to the domain of religion and the conceptual realm of faith – a strong case can be made that they are incommensurable. That is, it is not necessarily due to Aristotle’s proof being strong or weak reasoning but whether reasoning itself is a valid basis for religious belief. Arguably, philosophy’s inquest into reason and values cannot be coherently understood when it comes to the world of religion. Many have advocated that religion is a realm exempt from the rational analytical gaze of philosophy and even perhaps much of its more poetic existential contemplations, and for good reason.[1] Others have argued that they are more homogenous than we might imagine - that they can and should be intellectually married due to their ‘mutual relationship’.[2] In any case, it is worth noting that despite being an intellectually controversial basis for belief, Aristotelian argument has historically and does continue to characterise religious thought. Whether it “should” be a basis for belief is one thing, though it certainly “has” been. As Clifford McManis remarks, Aristotelean contributions ‘laid down the basic principles of reason used by most apologists’ which church officials were dependent upon for centuries.[3]
In evidencing this narrative of the intellectual controversy surrounding the philosophy of religion it is necessary to examine the work of Aristotle and Aquinas themselves in order to show their conceptual discordancy. Moreover, the current state of “God arguments” in modernity further showcases the critical analysis of the philosophy of religion discourse even further. In looking to philosophies which, by comparison to Aristotelean metaphysical groundings, reveal more accurate notions of religion and more valid attempts to provide a basis for belief we can look to specific existential philosophy, such as that of Søren Kierkegaard and personal testimonies of faith.
***
In Aristotle’s work are some of the first examples of the philosophy of religion, examining the meaning, consequences and nature of God’s existence.[4] As a branch of philosophy this is done in a philosophical framing however; being objective and external to the premises of a particular religion. Meaning that religious thought takes certain foundations to be incontestably true within its framework, such as “God exists”. In contradistinction, theology examines what it means to be religious from a religious perspective. In such works as Metaphysics, Aristotle proposes the logical necessity of the existence of a deity and similar arguments can be found in preceding Greek philosophy, who were similarly intellectually borrowed by theologians, apologists and Neoplatonists of later centuries. Many are critical of how this tradition has evolved, as Taylor notes, particularly of attempts to utilise metaphysical arguments from this era to supplement concepts of religious theology.[5]
In The Physics, Aristotle’s argument for proof of God can be very briefly summarised as such. Within Aristotle’s pre-Newtonian worldview, motion is a matter of both movement and states of change. Aristotle thus seeks to explain the movement of the cosmos, which is observed as being inherently ordered and reasonable. He sees these motions in terms of objects acting upon one another in a chain of causality with the movements and changes of the universe enacted through ‘the actuality of a potentiality’.[6] Rather than the Form of the Good; that by which all things gain their intelligibility, Aristotle’s rational reflection upon observations of the natural world attempted to account for the variety of goods and postulated a self-thinking entity. Thus, contextually Aristotle’s notion of God is an attempt to explain this rational chain of ordered causality, which without a first cause is an infinite regress.
One way of refuting Aristotle’s work as a basis for belief is to note that the God of religion would have made little sense to Aristotle in comparison to his God of Philosophy. It is important to understand that unlike the later Abrahamic God of Monotheism Aristotle’s God of Philosophy is a calculative postulate of logic and empiricism, rather than any kind of faith or discernible religiosity. Aristotle’s deist deity is even so abstract to be described as Thought Thinking Itself or ‘the thinking of thinking’ due to its requisite nature as pure actuality; a notion which can only be truly understood in context of Aristotle’s theory of motion and causality as an immutable absolute.[7] As Herb Gruning remarks the Unmoved Mover ‘acts only as a final cause (rejecting) any role as a caregiver to the world and is absorbed in self-contemplation’.[8] So under Aristotle’s theorising, God thinking on a more relatable level of cognitive deliberation than this metacognition would require a preceding cause of motion to act upon it. Aristotle comments that ‘it must be itself that thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of all things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking’; a far cry from the being so characterised by interaction, mediation and contemplation found in (particularly Judeo-Christian) scripture.[9]
A further point of disconnect between faith and Aristotle’s notion of divinity is Aristotle’s method which is essentially different from revelation. So empirically grounded is this discourse that is perhaps best anachronistically understood better as a kind of physics within a pre-Newtonian proto-science rather than ‘in any sort of religious sense’.[10] This of course makes its use in Catholic theology to underpin faith all the more questionable. Aristotle’s Prime Mover is therefore little more than a theorised piece of reasoning within his understanding of physics conjured to explain the astronomical movement of the cosmos; principally the natural laws of substance, causality and actuality/potentiality. As Heidegger reminds us ‘man can neither pray nor sacrifice to this god’.[11] Aquinas’ attempts to supplement his theological understanding of Catholicism with the formal arguments of the philosophy of antiquity is a move that is far removed from both faith and Aristotle’s conceptions. It can be seen as an amalgamative discourse, detrimental to the continuity of both disciplines and their foundational roots.
It is worth noting earlier attempts by Aristotle’s contemporaries, which Aristotle had essentially expanded upon, including his teacher Plato, at also providing a proof for God. Notably here is the idea of Plato’s “Demiurge” in Timaeus, a notion which was taken in the same manner as Aristotle to somewhat bizarrely underpin the argumentations of Christendom, contextually showcasing the overall misconception of using Ancient Greek reasoning to reinforce Christianity. Indeed, Plato’s Demiurge is often noted as being less abstract than that of Aristotle’s Prime Mover.[12] But even the Demiurge is a being of little more than necessity and abstraction in comparison to the later God of Religion. The Demiurge is typically characterised as simply a teleological cause for the harmony and reason in the universe produced from attempts to explain its order and symmetry. (It is worth noting that Aristotle does not even attribute this causality and order to the divine and simply recognises it as an inherent natural law, even further removed from religious notions). Though Plato’s notion of God does infer some meaning in relation to authority and morality it is also a cosmological text and contrasts to the interpersonal, relational and anthropomorphic deity of monotheism.[13] So it appears on the surface to be a similar, rather clumsy move to use Plato’s Demiurge God to reinforce the notion of Creation ex Nihlo (creation from nothing). As Jowett critically remarks, this is a result of intellectual Neoplatonist ’absurdities’, ultimately resulting from an overall misreading of Greek metaphysics.[14]
As such, this reveals a rather poor reading of Greek philosophy in general by those who had grappled with its conceptuality in the medieval period.[15] This is not due to some collective intellectual deficiency of Neoplatonists however and must be understood against the retrieval of ancient knowledge and the challenges they presented to Christendom. Namely here is the question of epistemology in light of the existence of two kinds of knowledge; reason and faith. That is, Aristotle ultimately cast questions upon theological considerations, particularly whether reason and faith are compatible and whether faith itself is reasonable. Truth via reason challenges the entire discourse of the importance of faith and revelation, whilst conversely thinking of belief as ultimately irrational is equally detrimental to the believer. As such compatibilists, such as St Thomas Aquinas attempted to reconcile these concepts to some degree. Subsequently it is not difficult to imagine how this contextually lends to the narrative of Aristotle’s somewhat spurious misuse as an underpinning for religious belief.
Before we consider the acquisition of belief in a manner beyond reason we can criticise the rational argument of Aristotle alone also. Firstly, there is the assumption that the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” makes meaningful sense and requires any kind of answer at all. Not only because the notion of an absolute nothingness is an unthinkable and unclear concept but Aristotle turns to the unmoved mover as the best explanation of causality when other philosophers have suggested the universe’s status as a simple brute fact.[16] Then there is the rejection of the meaningful sense given to both a self-caused and necessary being; something which arguably only applies with validity to propositions and not beings.[17] Of course, there are subsequent objections to these objections themselves but ultimately these go beyond what we can consider to be the thought of Aristotle alone. Besides, the continuity of western rationalist philosophy, Aristotle’s very school, now sits relatively firmly upon the position that there is no God.[18] However, given centuries of philosophical revision it is not only easy to object to Aristotle on his own logical terms but also facile given the true nature of belief.
As one of very few then-existing wellsprings of philosophy, Aquinas drew upon the work of Aristotle to develop his own proofs for God, even crediting Aristotle as ‘The Philosopher’.[19] As such, the paradigmatic language of Aquinas is essentially Aristotelean, but Aquinas’ argument advocates a slightly different dynamic. Rejecting St. Anselm’s more theological Ontological argument, Aquinas posits that due to God’s inherent ineffability, they can only be negatively described through the principle of Via Negativa – what God is not. Aquinas’ Five ways of proving God are thus more empirical and evolve from Aristotelean arguments of motion and causality.
Yet even Aquinas himself, while advancing what has become known as the famous Teleological and Cosmological arguments for God’s existence from Aristotle’s, seemed to note the disconnect between the revelatory, experiential nature of his own faith and the calculative reasoning of philosophy. This is perhaps best exemplified in his comment that ‘everything that I have written seems like straw in comparison to what has been revealed and shown to me’.[20] Anslem for instance wrote his Ontological Argument, taken as a logical proof of God, in the form of a prayer in Proslogion; never actually intending it to be viewed as a philosophical argument ‘outside this context of faith’.[21] This is testimony to the strange and paradoxical nature of unnecessarily “proving God”.
It is also worth noting that Aquinas, (and most other people of faith for that matter), prizing faith above reason, did not require such arguments and reasoning to explain or support their pre-existing staunch faith. Aquinas’ adaptions of Aristotelean thought is perhaps best viewed as a post-faith explanation of the intelligibility of the universe, rather than a basis of faith itself. God, for Aristotle, is the conclusion of his argument; for Aquinas, it is the premise. Indeed, the great arguments were typically attempts by Christians to reinforce their faith, so are probably best viewed in a largely religious paradigm rather than Aristotle’s philosophical one. In fact, Anslem, who can be seen as engaging with faith in a manner almost entirely divorced from the philosophical tradition due to his writing before its rediscovery makes ‘little distinction between explaining the meaning of a theological proposition and giving an argument for it’.[22] Often it is simply the case that ways of life often congeal into propositions – but it is the experiential consequence of believing them that truly matters to believers. It is only after these rituals and values are adopted that they are subsequently justified through propositions. Davies notes that Anselm himself did not need his ontological “proof” for God and only created it to ‘describe what the Christian already believes’.[23]
One way of showing this basis to be invalid is to point out that the philosophy of religion is conceptually distinct from theology. This is apparent as ‘its critical reflections are based on religious convictions’ and ‘theology is responsible to an authority that initiates its thinking, speaking, and witnessing’ as opposed to the free and open enquiries of philosophy.[24] Essentially therefore, the philosophy of religion goes beyond theological thinking in questioning fundamental elements rather than starting from premises such as God’s existence; and this simply isn’t the way in which faith operates. As such, this philosophy of religion seems to examine faith in a way only the faithless could.
However, we must not be too barbed with this narrative and in doing so acknowledge that, in part, Aquinas was aware of the apparent disconnect between reason and faith. Indeed, this was somewhat the purpose of Aquinas’ work; to demonstrate that, contrary to a contemporary conception, they were in fact compatible.[25] In fact this can, in part, be seen as a response to thinkers such as Tertullian who were intellectually suspicious of reason’s relevance to faith given the ‘unreliability of reason as a source of truth’.[26] However, that said, for Aquinas this was a compatibility of a relatively technical nature, more to convey that reason and faith were not actually opposed rather than having a mutually exclusive relationship. One could attain ‘incomplete truths’ through reason alone yet ‘faith in eternal salvation’ exceeds this kind of truth.[27] That is, faith is still of principal importance in comparison to reason as ‘some truths of theology lie beyond reason’s grasp’.[28] So in the case of both positions of this argument the reason of the Ancient Greeks remains menial in the face of experiential revelation and divine authority. Though important for Aquinas, reason is not necessarily a basis for religion therefore but an intellectual footnote or nuance to established belief.
His developments of Aristotle’s arguments are therefore not intended to move atheists to theism and ‘convince his listeners that there is a God’.[29] This would be an exceptionally anachronistic narrative as theoretical atheism was a concept all but unknown in Medieval Europe. Veritably, the debate that Aquinas’ arguments have found themselves thrust into service for into in modernity would have made little sense to him. Indeed, as Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt observes the vice of ‘unbelief’ could only have been legitimately addressed to Judaism, Paganism or perhaps the rejection of myth by Democritus centuries earlier, as the closest examples of modern atheism.[30] So even in Aquinas’ union of reason and faith, reason falls short of a valid basis for religious belief.
It is worth examining the atheist-theist debate in modernity to evidence this narrative further. As one glances at the state of contemporary debate it is evident that dialogues continue to bear little fruit under the guise of the ilk of Richard Dawkins, who to the annoyance of atheists and theists alike, abortively challenges the rationality of countless believers. As writers have pointed out, the conversation seems to consist of ‘increasingly tired, and tiring, arguments’ which often fail to have any practical effect.[31] Those invested in the debate are also attempting, or at least recognising the meretricious nature in abandoning more barbed approaches which have historically focused on logical argumentation, propositions, and scientific claims.[32] The only inclusions to this conversation that seem to muster any real effect and validity are the more empathetic and existential kind which engage with the ethical and experiential dimensions of faith, rather than dismantling metaphysics.[33] Hence there is a move away from “unproving God” as despite apologists’ endeavours, proofs of any kind similar to Aristotle bear little importance for religious believers.
This seems to support the account that there is a language problem, of a syncretic nature in that interlocutors are arguing past one another believing that religion concerns analytic philosophy in any meaningful way. [34] That is, rituals and practices are not always concerned with objective statements, at least not in the minds of religion’s adherents. These ways of life often congeal into propositions as mentioned previously. Indeed, modern writers have also seemingly come to this conclusion and have begun to transcend the classic “God debate” and question whether ‘reason plays any significant role in the life of the religious believer’.[35] Arthur Bradley identifies that insistence on literalism is a fairly novel phenomenon, principally believed only by the most recent wave of atheists. He argues it is characterised by ‘a-historical and de-contextualized reading of the Bible and the Qur’an alone, insist[ing] upon the literal falsity of Genesis’, etc.[36]
If we grant this view that a rational defence is conjured after the belief is held, rather than vice versa, then we can further see that Aristotle’s is still a deficient justification for religious belief; at least not the kind of religious belief one with faith would seemingly be drawn to. After all, as far as the desirability of faith and deities go we can imagine there are few alluring elements to Aristotle’s characterisation of God in contrast to the Abrahamic God. It is true that Aristotle’s God is similarly acetic, immutable, eternal, transcendent and in Aristotle’s more conceptual sense the greatest possible Good. Aristotle explains that ‘God is always in that good state which we sometimes are’ and that he is ‘life most good and eternal’.[37] In this, Aristotelean examinations of God seem similar to religious claims of goodness, such as the Judeo-Christian notion of ‘supreme good’.[38] Descriptions of Brahman within Hinduism also seem to parallel this aspect of the Unmoved Mover as ‘the eternal, infinite Godhead’ and the ‘highest abode’.[39] However here is largely where the similarities to the Gods of religiosity end. For instance, the relational aspect typically found in religion such as that of divine guidance or even, as critical psychology advocates; parentage, is entirely absent from Aristotle’s Prime Mover.
The psychology of religion, in exploring attachment has tended to observe that description of God as a ‘Father’ within scripture runs parallel to a psychological function of paternity, maternity or perhaps the ‘preferred image of a parent’.[40] Similarly, the appealing ideas of destiny, purpose and providence are all non-existent in Aristotle’s worldview which have been argued to allow for a sense of comfort and faith in God’s interaction and belonging to a wider cosmic plan. When we consider this in conjunction with research evidencing the established phenomena that many people ‘pick and choose their religious beliefs’, even rejecting other elements of a holistic and entrenched tradition, this further lends to this narrative.[41] In contrast, there is no sense of parentage or temporal interaction within Aristotle’s framework; by logical necessity the Prime Mover cannot interact within the world beyond its causality.
A further critical psychological distinction between belief of other deities and Aristotle’s reason-based God is the absence of an afterlife. Aristotle’s basis for God also relies on what some may consider to be an unattractive worldview of materialism and monism, particularly as belief is so often characterised by corporeal and eschatological concerns. In this way religion is often seen as a ‘coping mechanism’.[42] Aristotle purported, as part of his framework of physics, what can be understood as a materialist universe - that all phenomena (even thought) are fundamentally the result of the interactions of matter and substances. Also present in Aristotle’s work is a monist view of the soul or psyche, denying the existence of Cartesian dualism and any possible existence of an afterlife as the ‘soul cannot exist in independently (or) in separation from of the body’.[43] These beliefs regarding the natural world are contingent to Aristotle’s view on God and vice-versa – That is, the Unmoved Mover fits by necessity into Aristotle’s world of physics, a world without the soul, an afterlife or divinity. Because of these key features, it is difficult to find any truly alluring reasons to believe in the God of Philosophy over others if we grant this perception of the acquisition of belief. As such Aristotle’s basis is somewhat moot in this regard.
The proofs of analytic philosophy therefore simply cannot understand faith on an experiential level, nor do they intend to. If religion links coherently with philosophy anywhere it is in the thinking of continental existentialism. Concerned more chiefly with interpretative (sometimes phenomenological) social constructions of truth rather than pure analytical logic. That is, a position embracing and engaging with the experiential nature of reality that some might be tempted to call postmodernist. To this effect, we must turn to Søren Kierkegaard for a more truthful account of philosophy on religion.
Kierkegaard’s take on the philosophy of religion advocates that the analytical take on faith, typified through Christendom has led to a crisis in religious existentialism. This notion is perhaps best exemplified in his comment that ‘it is quite true what philosophy says: that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forward’.[44] That is, faith has become an abstract and propositional notion, understood theoretically rather than as a practice or engaging way of life as, in Kierkegaard’s view, it should be.[45] In his Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard even idolises the staunch dogma of Abraham who ‘is ‘beyond the scope of justification’, fully realising the implications of his faith and living them, realising that they cannot be intellectually defended in the manner that theologians have attempted to. [46] As such, being a fideist, Kierkegaard maintains that religious faith does not need rational justification or require the support of rational arguments. In fact, for Kierkegaard, attempting to prove one’s religious faith may even be an indication of a lack of faith. So, religion is therefore more of a sentiment than proposition and philosophy can only ever converse in religion to reflect this, never providing a true basis for the adoption of belief. If religion can be in any way made compatible with the discourses of philosophy it is through the more continental and experiential branches of the discipline.
If Kierkegaard’s thought on religion as existentialism over proposition is true, then this would explain the current state of affairs and would account for an increasingly deleterious and inaccurate understanding of religion ‘as a hypothesis’.[47] It would seem apparent that philosophy should subsequently not be concerned with religion, and certainly cannot unhinge or underpin its ideas in any valid sense (to the religious at least) with the exception of Kierkegaard’s very narrow commentary in which he successfully combines the two in a satisfactory and accurate narrative.
In contrast to Aristotelian bases for belief, or any other propositional ones for that matter, we can look to the testimony of more experiential characterisations of faith. These ideas take an alternative view on religious epistemology to Aristotle’s rationalism. In engagement with theology the idea has arisen that revelation is irreducible to propositional language as it is ultimately ‘an activity’ (and) subjective human experience’.[48] It is therefore uncapturable by the paradigmatic language of Aristotle despite its frequent use. Thus, we can again lend more merit to the view that belief is typically not reducible to propositions.
So, given the failures of Western rationalist philosophy to engage true religious belief with validity it cannot successfully and therefore should not engage with or reinforce faith-based claims on its own terms alone. In contradistinction to what we have seemingly convinced ourselves of in modernity both discourses are somewhat incommensurable and religion is in fact rarely concerned with the veracity of its claims. Philosophy and Religion can therefore be seen to remain separate phenomena and Aristotelean engagements with divinity are not equivocal to the essence of considerations found in theology and faith. The New Atheists have seemingly correctly coined one thing in their critical analysis of religiosity - religion is not reasonable; what they have yet to realise however is that this is the very essence of religion so nor should it try to be. It is the examination of phenomena rather than its invention that concerns philosophy and Aristotle’s view of faith fails in this regard in working with an inaccurate depiction of the acquisition of belief, or at least belief as we can understand it in modernity. Aristotle’s proof is therefore no basis for religious belief, as is any objective proof.
[1] Thomas Chubb, A Collection of Tracts: On Various Subjects (1730) p. 165
[2] R.W. Perrett, Indian Philosophy of Religion (Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media, 2012) p. 64
This is generally a more common theme within Eastern religions but not unheard of in Western thought.
[3] Norman L. Geisler in Clifford B. McManis, Biblical Apologetics: Advancing and Defending the Gospel of Christ (Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation, 2013) p. 142
[4] Chad Meister, Introducing Philosophy of Religion (London: Routledge, 2009) p. 92
[5] James Taylor, Introducing Apologetics: Cultivating Christian Commitment (Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006) p. 31
[6] Joe Sachs, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Aristotle: Motion and its Place in Nature, http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-mot/ [Accessed 16 January 2017]
[7] Jiyuan Yu, The Structure of Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media, 2003) p. 196
[8] Herb Gruning, How in the World Does God Act? (Oxford: University Press of America, 2000) p. 2
[9] Aristotle in Vivian Boland, Ideas in God According to Saint Thomas Aquinas: Sources and Synthesis (Netherlands: BRIL, 1996) p. 165
[10] Richard DeWitt, Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2011) p. 110
[11] Ted Sadler, Heidegger and Aristotle: The Question of Being (London: A&C Black, 2000) p. 175
[12] Thomas Kheller Johansen in Patricia Katrina Slatin, The Concept of the Divine in Plato (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) p. 99
[13] Roy Jackson, Plato: A Complete Introduction (Croydon: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2016) p. 198
Gruning P. 3
[14] Plato, Edited by B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato: Volume III (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968) p. 631
[15] Lloyd P. Gerson, Aristotle and Other Platonists (New York: Cornell University Press, 2006) p. 2-3
[16] Bertrand Russell in YouTube, firstcauseargument, Leibnizian Cosmological Argument (Frederick Copleston vs Bertrand Russell), 11 July 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgyWuJFd3ho [Accessed 04 January 2017]
Steven Law, Humansim: A Very Short Introduction ()
[17] Ibid.
Emanuel Rutten, A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments: Towards a Renewed Case for Theism (Zutphen: Wohrmann Print Service, 2012) p. 172
[18] BBC, Rationalism, 27th October 2009, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/types/rationalism.shtml [Accessed 04 January 2017]
[19] St. Thomas Aquinas in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle's De Anima: In the version of William of Moerbeke and the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2007) P. 63
[20] St. Thomas Aquinas in Simon Tugwell, Albert & Thomas: Selected Writings (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1988) p. 266
[21] Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (New Jersey: John Wiley & Son, 2012) p. 101
[22] James Swindal, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Faith and Reason, http://www.iep.utm.edu/faith-re/#SH4e [Accessed 5 December 2016]
[23] Brian Davies, Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: Critical Essays (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) p. 40
[24] Helmut Thielicke and Andrew Louth, Encyclopædia Britannica, Theology, 19 August 2009, https://www.britannica.com/topic/theology [Accessed 15 November 2016]
[25] Shawn Floyd, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Aquinas: Philosophical Theology, http://www.iep.utm.edu/aq-ph-th/ [Accessed 1 January 2017]
[26] Murray Rae, Christian Theology: The Basics (London: Routledge, 2015) p. 14
[27] Swindal
[28] Ibid. p. 15
[29] Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and Following Christ (Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2013) p. 91
[30] Ibid.
[31] David Webster, Dispirited: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid Selfish and Unhappy (Zero Books: Winchester, 2012) p. 6
[32] Julian Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press: New York, 2003) p. 106
Sophie Elmhirst, The Guardian, Is Richard Dawkins Destroying His Reputation?, 9 April 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/09/is-richard-dawkins-destroying-his-reputation [Accessed 20 April 2016]
[33] Chris Stedman’s work Fathiest is such an example which seeks to establish common ground with religion and a positively defined, ethical atheism.
Chris Stedman, Fathiest, The Book, http://faitheistbook.com/ [Accessed 10 November 2016]
[34] Webster, Dispirited, The Circle of Stupid.., 8 August 2015, https://dispirited.org/2015/08/08/the-circle-of-stupid/ [Accessed 15 November 2016]
[35] Kelly James Clark, The Internet Encyclopaedia, Religious Epistemology: Groundless Believing, http://www.iep.utm.edu/relig-ep/ [Accessed 17 April 2016]
[36] Arthur Bradley, The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic After 9/11 (Edinburgh: A&C Black, 2010) p. 5
[37] Aristotle in Vivian Boland p. 164
Eknath Easwaran, Bhagavad Gita (Boulder City: Shambhala Publications: 2004) p. 100
Ibid. p. 174
[38] Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 209) p. 196
[39] Ibid. p. 195
[40] Lee A. Kirkpatrick, Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 80
[41] Christian Smith and Melina Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 76
[42] Sylvan D. Ambrose, Religion and Psychology: New Research (New York: Nova Publishers, 2006) p. 112
[43] Victor Kal, On Institution and Discursive Reasoning in Aristotle (Netherlands: BRILL, 1988) p. 92
[44] Soren Kierkegaard in W. Glenn Kirkconnell, Kierkegaard on Sin and Salvation: From Philosophical Fragments Through the Two Ages (Edinburgh: AC & Black, 2010) p. 83
[45] Reidar Thomte, Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religion (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009) p. 217
[46] J. Aaron Simmons and David Wood, Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008) p. 49
[47] Ryan C. Falconi in Amarnath Amarasingam, Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal (Netherlands; BRILL, 2010) p. 203
[48] Ian Mobsby, God Unknown (London: Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd, 2012) p. 114