God’s Ontology (An Introduction) -By Idowu Odeyemi

The debate on the ontological status on the being of God has been a major controversy among philosophic minds.  The debate also exists among laymen, who debate the issue primitively if check-mated by the arguments of these philosophic minds. What, however, led to these clouds of enormous debate is the fact of human curiosity about and on the question: what is it that can be the origin of life on earth and who the creator of universe is?

This question has been answered in different ways. Thou these answers are rich variegated, none of it have enjoined universal or conventional assent. This position can be justify with the fact of exponent and opponents of various philosophical arguments. The existence of exponent and opponents in the philosophical scene have been a major reason in which it is differentiated from other disciplines where we have facts and not arguments on what should we accept as a fact, as it is seen in philosophy. The dialectics that exist in philosophy, also, is the major reason philosophy has not and will not go into extinction. Even sometimes, when philosophers agree, “such a thing is the case,” they still go on to disagree on “how that thing happens to be the case.”  For instance: St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas accepted, as a fact, that God exists, but they disagree on how we –humans- can come to comprehend His existence, whether through empirical observable  and verifiable phenomenal or through the faculty of reasoning. St. Anselm accepted the latter, while St. Thomas Aquinas solemnly supported the former.  This question about the origin of life and creation of the universe has variegated opinions from atheist, pantheist, theist, amphitheist and even pagan worshippers. In other words, the question about the origin of life is broad.

Both philosophers and biologist have answered the question about the origin of life, controversially. The debate on the origin of life has birthed two major answers: Creationism and the theory of evolution. The creationist arguments are based on the premises aided through faith while the evolutionist back up their own arguments with empirical fine arguments. The first person to propose the theory of evolution is the English naturalist, Charles Darwin, in his 1859 text titled ‘The origin of species’.

The creationist in all their arguments concluded that God, the immortal and immutable being, exist. While the evolutionist argued to the contrary by concluding that God is unperceivable, and He is not the creator of the universe, neither the originator of life on earth. However, life and the universe exist because of the psychochemical reactions in inorganic matters some billions of years ago.

The debate about the origin of life between the creationist and the evolutionist often lead to the question of either God is in existence or He – God- is inexistence.

In philosophy, the debate on the ontological status of God occurs in the infrastructural branch of philosophy known as “Philosophy of Religion.” Philosophy of religion is also called “Natural Theology.” Due to the nature of philosophy -providing arguments to justify points- philosophers of religion have produced arguments and counter arguments to prove either the existence of God or the inexistence of God.

Arguments for God existence include: the cosmological argument (also called the first cause argument), the ontological argument, Teleological argument, etc. one of the arguments atheist used to justify their position that “no God exists” is the verifiability principle by the logical positivist of the 20^th century. Another argument is that of the “problem of evil.”

Theologians of the medieval period, however, have used varieties of natural theological arguments to defend their position that God, the immortal and immutable being, exist extra-mundane of the universe. The natural theologians’ arguments are dualistic.