Understanding God and Philosophical Methods
God as an Ontological Problem
Studying God within the world of images: For many people, God appears in their consciousness as a real, evident being. For religious people, belief in God is the foundation of their personal world. For some religions, like Christianity, God is a personal being who cares for his creatures. To other religions, such as Buddhism, God is an impersonal being.
- Theology: The science that deals with God. There has been talk of a theology based on supernatural experiences or revelations (not philosophy) and natural theology, based only on reason, which is ontological.
The goals of natural ontology are:
- To find out if God really exists; that is, if the evidence, so clear to many people, is part of their autobiographical philosophy.
- To consider what type of being God is, in case His real existence is demonstrated.
The Problem of the Existence of God
- Atheism: Denial of the existence of God.
- Theism: Affirmation of the existence of God.
- Pantheism: Identification of the whole of reality with God.
- Agnosticism: Inability to know anything certain about the existence or nonexistence of God.
Arguments for and against the existence of God include:
- The principle of causality underlying the five ways outlined by Thomas Aquinas: everything that moves is moved by another.
- The idea of God based on the ontological argument.
- The existence of moral law (Kant), enabling the assertion of the existence of God as the ultimate provider of justice.
First Philosophy
In the first philosophy, we have discussed three major issues of ontology. Throughout the history of philosophy, attempts have been made to base this first philosophy on real beings, on consciousness, and on God.
- Realistic philosophers: Real beings, given in sense experience, are the starting point for all our knowledge. Human intelligence begins in the sensible and visible.
- Idealistic philosophers: It had to be consciousness.
- Ontologist philosophers: Consider that only from God can we know the truth. Some thought that everything was known in God, that the evidence was more immediate.
Philosophical Methods
Mayeutic Method
Mayeutic method is a dialogue directed wisely, under the rules of correct human reasoning. “Mayéutica” is a term associated with birth, the art of the midwife who helps give birth. In developing the method, questions and answers are essential. The aim is to establish a definitive answer; the truth is reached through dialogue and reasoned arguments.
Physical (Empirical)-Rational Method
It has its origins in Aristotle. Contrary to assertion, it is argued that we must start its search from external experience; physical (empirical) data are collected by our senses. Knowledge and the pursuit of truth should be based on the observation of nature and the sensitive data provided by our senses. From them, reason has to step in, sorting the data.
Rationalist Method
The rationalist defense is based on the primacy of reason in the justification of knowledge. Reason works with a set of logical rules or principles that are the same as for deduction in mathematics. Applying these rules to human knowledge, we need to find the first truth. Descartes formulated it through his famous statement: “I think, therefore I exist.” If I think, I have to do it with ideas. The ideas are of two types: innate and sensitive.
Empiricist Method
Empiricism believes that there are two kinds of truth:
- Truths of reason: Own math, based on the deduction of a set of principles from others.
- Truths of fact: Peculiar to the empirical sciences, whether natural sciences or social sciences.
The problem of radical empiricism is that general statements applied to this knowledge can never be proven definitively. Any information that seeks to go beyond sensitive data is based on habit and belief.
Transcendental Method
The creator was Kant. His primary concern was to explain how the human being is able to establish true and universal knowledge. That is, how science can exist and what its conditions are. The explanation is based on a synthesis that transcends empiricism and rationalism. The conclusion after this analysis is that experience is absolutely necessary, but human reason applies a number of categories or principles, which are innate, to that data.