COTE one shots

Creation 2

(This chapter is just an excuse for me to act like I'm productive and I've wrote something. But it can be used if any of you are trying to find religion)

ALTHOUGH I am NOT by any means really religious, I just found the topic insightful and will share it.

It was prewritten by me and I'm just going to copy it all into here.

I'll restart with actual COTE content next chapter.

Topic - Summarising the ideas of Avicenna regarding the existence of God. #

Arguement name - "Proof of the truthful" 

  Written- Stella

Side note - This is mostly agreed to be the best arguement humans have for the existence of God. 

Introduction - Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Sīnā (more notabaly Avicenna) is arguablly the greatest philosopher of all time, and one of the smartest men to ever grace the planet. His involvements to expanding the development of humanity have been vast, be it through medicine or influencing Newtons laws of physics. Whilst most may know him for writing the book used for medicine in Europe for a good 600-700 years, I would like to delve into his more...Personal thoughts. Being a Muslim, Ibn Sina wished to provide proof that a God did exist, and I will summarise the writings of a genius below. 

Main body - Ibn Sina referred to God as the "The Necessary Existent." Let's just keep that in mind. Look around you. Please. I'm serious. Take a look around you. Everything you see is contingent. Contingent meaning to depend on or be conditioned by something else. A contingent is something that could exist, but it might as well not exist. It is possible it exists and equally possible it doesn't exist. It is dependent on its cause for existence. Ibn Sina believed that there had to be a Necessary Existent. Something that has to exist by virtue of itself. It can not be dependent or caused by anything else. All things are contingent and caused. Not caused in the sense that your alive because your parents decided to have intercourse. It is much deeper. Cause meaning you only exist because the parts that make you up exist and are in a particular configuration to allow you to exist. Alive because you have just the right amount of heat from the sun to not burn/freeze you to death. Every part that makes you what you are is contingent and dependent on things that causes that thing that causes that thing that causes that thing and it goes on infinitely. But. They don't have to exist. To summarise. All contingent things are contingent. The chain of dependency continues. So is everything contingent? Or is there a necessary existence? Existing without depending on anything else.

It stretches on infinitely. Something has to STOP that chain of dependence. Something...Independent. 

  Counter argument to Ibn Sina and refutation: Let's presume all existence we know are contingent. Then we can consder that the whole set of things in the entire universe taken together are necessary. However. THIS IS WRONG. Because then. Why are there things at all if everything is dependent on each other. Where is the first cause? Summary of everything so far before we carry on towards the large chunk of proof - As quoted in the Al-Isharat - If that other (one existent in the chain) goes on to infinity, every one of the units of the chain will be possible in essence. But the whole chain depends on these units. Thus the chain too will not be necessary and becomes necessary through another. PROOF -

Ibn Sina, presented four main ideas regarding this topic. I have summarised the first and second ones above. I won't take up too much of your time to go through the 3rd one in depth. I will shorten it severely. But this will not do justice to Ibn Sina, so you must read it sometime when you can.

Argument 3 - It does not require a cause at all; hence it is necessary and not possible. How can this be tho when it is necessitated by its units? 

Arguement 4 - I quote Ibn Sina - "It requires a cause external to all of its units. This is the remaining truth."

GOD.

2ND PART

2] Summarising the ideas of Avicenna regarding the existence of God. 

Argument name - "Proof of the truthful" 

Source - Avicenna's isharat 

Written - Hope 

Second introduction: This will be shorter, a lot shorter. Just delving into the fourth arguement and how it proves God.

Second main body: As stated, every totality organized of causes and effects consecutively, including a noncaused cause, has this uncaused cause as an extremity; for if this cause were an intermediate, it would be caused. Something that HAS to exist, and could possibly NOT exist. The uncaused cause of all things beyond time and space. This existence, is GOD. God has to be - Beyond time and space Simple, without parts. If God had parts it would be dependent on the parts and so created by the parts. Immaterial, without form or body. Doesn't share genus, species or similarity with anything in the created world. The existence of the necessary is indivisible, whether in concept or in quantity. 

  COUNTER ARGUEMENT - Why there can't be more than one necessary existence (God).

I suggest you all read this intently. Let's say there are two necessary existences. There has to be SOMETHING that separates them, or they are identical and not 2. So there is something that makes them DIFFERENT from each other. Because there are things that make them different, there are PARTS that make them different from each other. They will be caused by those parts and so no longer necessary. Hence, no longer independent as they are dependent on the the parts that make them different. Hence, only one God. Not more. Not 2, not 5, not 10. One. One and one only. 

I will now quote Ibn Sina, in the 'Kitab al-shifa' - 

"It has become manifest to us that there is, for the whole, a Principle whose exitence is necessary, neither included in genus nor is subject to definition or demonstration; is free from quantity, quality, quiddity, place, time, and motion; has neither equal, companion, not contrary; that He is one in all respects because He is not divisible - neither in terms of parts in actuality, in terms of parts by supposition and estimation, nor in the mind in that His essence is composed of varied intellectual ideas from which an aggregate becomes united; that He is one inasmuch as He does not share at all the existence that belongs to Him. He is thus, by this unity, single. He is one because He is perfect in existence; nothing in Him awaits completion, this being one of the aspects of the one."