Copleston and Russell argued upon the metaphysical disagreement on the existence of God. This paper is an attempt to unravel the meanings behind Copleston’s arguments and to comprehend it further to be able to support the reality of God’s existence.
Copleston and Russell first agreed upon their understanding about the term “God”. By “God”, they mean the highest personal Being who is the creator of the world. The metaphysical argument was agreed upon by the two to be based from Leibniz’s argument about contingency.
Copleston explains that a 'contingent' being is a creature that possesses an incomplete reason and explanation of its being or existence. For human beings, their existence cannot be fully explained unless they are referred to their parents as well as the basic needs of life such as water, food and air. On the other hand, a ‘necessary being’ means a creature that must and is extremely essential to exist. The soundness and legitimacy of Copleston’s argument relies on the reality or falsity of the two aforementioned ideas.
In my opinion, Copleston is right. God really exist and this argument is strongly supported by the statements made by Copleston during the discussion with Russell. With the notion of the contingent and necessary beings, we can say that some beings exist in the world even without the control of the rationale of their subsistence.
The world, as described by Copleston, is merely the imagined or real entirety or the collective of individual things that do not possess the reason of their existence. Copleston stated the aggregate of objects made up the entire world. It is wrong to assume that the world and the collection of its aggregates are two different things. This idea is the same as the human beings not being different from the human race.
Since there exist no known entity that contains the reason within itself for the fact of its existence, then there must be an unknown reason outside to itself. That particular reason might be an existent being. This creature can either be the reason for its personal existence or it is not. If the existent being is not the reason for its existence, then we meet an infinite regress. This regression is a succession of beings which are dependent for its survival on a previous being. This is an endless series and to avoid this, we ought to visualize a creature that has in itself the reason for its own survival.
The Leibnitz's argument about the contingent and necessary being constitutes Copleston’s case because it is an understandable and concise formulation of the primary metaphysical argument for the existence of God. The proposition in which the existence of a contingent being depends on the existence of the necessary being expressed hypothetically but is necessary. If a contingent being exists, then it follows that a necessary being also exists. That necessary being is what we termed as God.
The argument supports that a contingent being have cause as a type of necessary reason but cause is not present for God. For God, he is his own reason and he does not need any cause of his being. Copleston gave a sufficient explanation for the existence of such being.
The humankind is essentially meaningless without the reality of God. We can inquire all the purposes of every object. We can also ask the reason of the existence of something instead of being nothing. To enable science to support the argument, experiments were made with the assumption of transparency and organization in nature. The experts in physics presume that there are different prudence in the investigation of the nature and the causesof events.
When a metaphysician searches for reasons and causes of an experience, he was as warranted as the physicist. Phenomena all seem to suppose a prearranged and comprehensible universe.
In the part for which moral argument was mentioned, Copleston put across the belief that all goodness replicates God in a number of ways. Goodness advances from God. In that sense, a person who loves what is truthfully good also loves God even though that person does not refer or recognize God.
Inquiring the existence of God can be tackled through the deliberation of moral obligation. Copleston asserts that the majority of human beings always attempt to clear the separation of right from wrong. The immeasurable preponderance appears to contain some perception, some awareness of a commitment in the moral subject.
The discernment of values and the realization of moral regulation andresponsibility are greatly explicated in the course of the supposition of a awe-inspiring argument of an instigator of the moral bylaw and of value. A moral arrangement located upon the humansense of right and wrong is incomprehensible aside from the reality of God. The likelihood of disapproving or accepting moral systems in humanity presumes that there exist an intended standard. It means that there is a perfect moral arrangement, which enforces itself.
Copleston considers that the acknowledgment of this perfect moral regulation is an element of the acknowledgment of the unforeseen event as well as the contingent being. It involves the continuation of a genuine basis of God.
Copleston bears down on the position that moral values are fundamental; he considered it impracticable to convey true morality from a person to another. He affirms that an individual has a perception of both responsibility and moral values. Copleston concluded that the existence of God is the only thing that will create sense of man's moral understanding and of spiritual familiarity.
One of the strengths of Copleston’s argument is the support given by modern logicians who consider metaphysics as not meaningless. Russell contradicts the idea of the necessary being and the contingent being because he regarded these things as meaningless and belongs to the logic that he does not accept. However, Copleston stated that there exist several modern thinkers, equipped with modern logic, who do not regard metaphysics as irrelevant and the problem concerning God as meaningless.
Surely, it is hard to argue about the existence of God. The term “existence” alone gave rise to another argument. However, human beings do exist and our existence is surely due to the fact that there is someone or some supreme being out there, beyond our imagination, who made our existence possible and who possesses the reason of our existence.
Thus, I must say that I do agree with Copleston’s argument. I believe that God exists. His reason and his existence are still mysterious. Nevertheless, it is one thing to state that a certain thing has not yet been found; but it does not mean that we should not look for that thing.
