“One thing I like about this proof is that it captures, in rigorous terms, a reason that I think actually underlies people’s belief in God. Hey presto, we’ve proven that there is a necessary existent which causes all other things! And this, of course, is God.” How did this argument mark an advance on theological proofs in the Christian world? “Since that external cause has to be outside the whole aggregate of contingent things, it cannot itself be contingent. Thus it also needs an external cause, just like I do. After all, everything in the universe is contingent, so taken all together as one thing, it too must be contingent. Now Avicenna observes that the aggregate whole of all contingent things – in other words the physical universe – is also contingent. “So there must have been a cause, maybe my parents, who brought me into existence. In fact, at one time I didn’t yet exist, and in the future I will cease existing, that proves I’m not necessary. I am contingent, meaning that I am the sort of thing that could easily have failed to exist. “To do this, Avicenna points out that since a contingent thing on its own merit could either exist or not exist, it must have some external cause that made it exist - like ‘tipping the scales’ in favor of its existence rather than its non-existence. What Avicenna wants to do is show you that although all the things we experience directly are indeed contingent, there is also something else that exists necessarily, in other words, whose very nature guarantees that it exists. “The idea here is that a contingent thing is something that may either exist or not exist its nature does not guarantee that it exists. Instead, he argues from the idea that the things we see around us are ‘contingent’ or merely ‘possible’. Avicenna’s proof actually has nothing to do with design, he doesn’t need the idea that the universe is intelligently put together. “The full argument is a bit complicated, but here is a somewhat simplified version. “But once Avicenna came along, doing philosophy meant responding to him.” How did Avicenna ‘prove’ God exists? “In the Islamic world people who called themselves ‘philosophers’ at first responded above all to Aristotle,” Adamson explains. Asked to single out one thinker, he names the Persian polymath Avicenna (980-1037) who invented "probably the most influential and interesting medieval attempt to show that God exists". Adamson, a specialist in ancient and medieval philosophy, highlights in his latest book Philosophy in the Islamic World just how influential certain theologians and mystics from this milieu have been.
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