[thread] on God as the necessary being. (remake)

iA this thread will serve as a small introduction to key points in the discussion of philosophy. To start, we need to understand existence itself to then ask the question of whether or not a metaphysical reality can or cannot exist. In metaphysics we say that there are...

three modes of existence these are: Necessary, Impossible and contingent. They are self explanatory and do not require much elaboration to understand. A necessary existence is when the things existence is necessary. Impossible existence is that which...

its non-existence is necessary and a contingent existence is that which neither its existence or non-existence is necessary. Within the three modes of existence we also have three sub-divisions which roughly apply to all three modes.

These are: essential, accidental and relative. Essential is that which is such be itself, accidental is that which is such be something else, and relative is that which is such relative to something else.

For the sake of this discussion we don't need to elaborate much more on all of these sub-categories however, if you want to read more I recommend bidayatul hikmah(chapter 4).

Now why does all of this matter??? surely if we want to prove God we should try and find him somewhere right??? this is unfortunately how many people think in today's world.

All we have to do to prove the existence of God is to prove the existence of the necessary being (wajib al-wujud) who's existence is essential. There are many arguments to prove the necessary being from the first teacher to Mulla Sadra. I'll present Ibn Sina's argument shorty.

Ibn Sina in his al-Isharat wa at-Tanbihat the following argument is presented:

1) something exists
2) That being is either the Necessary being or the possible being.
3) In the first case it proves the necessary being and in the second case it requires the necessary being.

Therefore the necessary being exists. It has to be essential because it is such be itself and doesn't require anything else. This counters a usual counter argument which suggest that everything is a necessary existence because of determinism and causality.

However all those things have accidental necessity and thus are not The Necessary Being. Another contention is "can't the universe itself be the necessary being" This is a weak contention that cannot be because the essence of the necessary being is its actual existence.

This is quite complicated metaphysics that will require some understanding of the fundamental reality to maybe better grasp but I'll try to explain it here. First we need to understand what essence is, essence is the reply to the question "what is it?"

The universe has existence that is additional to its essence. This means that its existence is accidental to its essence, everything accidental is necessarily caused, which means its existence would be caused by its essence or something else.

If its essence is the cause then its essence would be prior in existence to its existence. If its priority is with this existence then that means a thing is prior to itself which is impossible and if its with another existence that leads to an infinite regress sequence.

If its essence isn't the cause of its existence then that means it cannot be The Necessary Being because it doesn't have essential necessity. I hope that is somewhat clear I do apologies if I haven't explained it well. Please like and retweeet if it was beneficial.