IB Philosophy 5.1.2 Arguments for the Existence of God Key Definitions

Analogy in Aquinas's philosophy of religious language holds that terms applied to God are neither purely literal (univocal) nor purely metaphorical (equivocal) but bear a proportional resemblance to their ordinary meaning. This doctrine allows theists to make meaningful claims about divine attributes such as goodness and wisdom while respecting the infinite qualitative difference between Creator and creation.

The cosmological argument is an a posteriori proof for God's existence that reasons from the observable fact that the universe exists and requires a cause to the conclusion that there must be a necessary, uncaused first cause. Versions by Aquinas, Leibniz, and the Islamic kalam tradition differ in detail but share the core claim that an infinite regress of contingent causes is impossible or explanatorily unsatisfying.

Karma is the principle, found across Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, that every intentional action produces moral consequences that shape an agent's future experiences, either in this life or in subsequent rebirths. In the philosophy of religion, the doctrine functions as both a theodicy and a moral framework, explaining suffering as the fruit of past actions while grounding ethical responsibility in cosmic causal order.

Nyaya is a classical school of Indian philosophy that places logic and rigorous epistemological analysis at the centre of philosophical inquiry, recognising four valid means of knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony. The Nyaya tradition developed a sophisticated theistic argument contending that the orderly operation of karma and the structure of the universe require an omniscient, eternal God as their ultimate coordinator.

Scientific realism is the view that science aims to produce true descriptions of the world, and that the entities posited by successful scientific theories (such as electrons and genes) genuinely exist.

The teleological argument (or design argument) reasons from the order, complexity, and apparent purposefulness of the natural world to the existence of an intelligent designer. While Paley's watchmaker analogy remains its most famous expression, the argument faces a powerful challenge from Darwinian natural selection, which offers a non-purposive mechanism capable of producing biological complexity.

Theism is the belief that at least one god exists; it takes multiple forms including monotheism (one God), polytheism (many gods), pantheism (God identical with nature), and panentheism (the universe is within God but God also transcends it).