When first encountered with this question, the answer seems almost simple and obvious: one, possibly two. All one would have to do is read Berkeley and count exactly how many arguments he gives for the existence of God. However, it seems that after reading the text and reading two of the responses to the text and a response to one of the responses, it really is not that simple at all. Instead it became horribly complicated with questions of the importance and definitions of certain words that Berkeley uses. In my essay, I am going to present Berkeley's supposed arguments for the existence of God followed by three different philosopher's opinions of what he actually meant in using these arguments and what the purpose of each argument was. The philosopher's names are Jonathan Bennett, E.J. Furlong, and Jonathan Dancy.

The arguments that supposedly exist in Berkeley's Principles and Dialogues are not presented in argument form, but I will use instead, Bennett's argumentative form of the arguments. By using his form, I do not concede that Bennett is correct in his own opinions, but that he has laid out a clear path to the arguments that Berkeley has given us. Th

It is plain then that at the end of his notebook that the tree continues to be when no one's about in the quad... When he had written his 'intermittency entries' 194 and 293a it had looked as if esse est percipi and the commonsense belief... were incompatible. Now he has found, to his relief, that they are compatible.

However, the ambiguity of the word 'depend' etc. worries Bennett in this case, as it has in several other cases. In the first case Berkeley seems to use the word 'independent' to mean 'not caused by'. In the second use of it, it seems to mean 'owned by some mind other than mine'.

The argument form of this statement, according to Bennett would then go as follows:

Finally, however, Bennett finds a solution in the third dialogue. It occurs on page 178 of the Penguin edition and is, according to Bennett, the only part in either of the two publications in which the continuity argument is brought up:

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Approximate Word count = 1920
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)