Existence of God

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Philosophy of religion

Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others for thousands of years. In philosophical terms, such arguments involve primarily the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being, existence, or reality) and also the theory of value, since concepts of perfection are connected to notions of God. A wide variety of arguments exist which can be categorized as metaphysical, logical, empirical, or subjective. The existence of God is subject to lively debate in philosophy,[1] the philosophy of religion, and popular culture.

The Western tradition of philosophical discussion of the existence of God began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments that would now be categorized as cosmological. The field of theodicy arose from attempts to answer this question. Other arguments for the existence of God have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Aquinas, who presented their own versions of the cosmological argument (the kalam argument and the first way, respectively); Descartes, who said that the existence of a benevolent God was logically necessary for the evidence of the senses to be meaningful; and Immanuel Kant, who argued that the existence of God can be deduced from the existence of good. Thinkers who have provided arguments against the existence of God include David Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. In modern culture, the question of God's existence has been discussed by scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Francis Collins, Richard Dawkins, and John Lennox, as well as philosophers including Daniel Dennett, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and Alvin Plantinga.

Atheists maintain that arguments for the existence of God provide insufficient reason to believe. Additionally, some contend that it is possible to affirmatively disprove the existence of God, or of certain characteristics traditionally attributed to God such as perfection.[2]

Fideists acknowledge that belief in the existence of God may not be amenable to demonstration or refutation, but rests on faith alone. The Catholic Church maintains that knowledge of the existence of God is available in the "natural light of human reason" alone.[3] Other religions, such as Buddhism, do not concern themselves with the existence of gods at all.

Philosophical issues

Definition of God

Main articles: God and Deity

In Classical theism, God is characterized as the metaphysically ultimate being (the first, timeless, absolutely simple, and sovereign being, who is devoid of any anthropomorphic qualities), in distinction to other conceptions such as Theistic Personalism, Open Theism, and Process Theism. Despite extensive writing on the nature of God, these classical theists did not believe that God could be defined. They believed that it would contradict the transcendent nature of God for mere humans to define him. Robert Barron explains by analogy that it seems impossible for a two dimensional object to conceive of three dimensional humans.[4]

By contrast, much of Eastern religious thought (chiefly pantheism) posits God as a force contained in every imaginable phenomenon. For example, Baruch Spinoza and his followers use the term God in a particular philosophical sense to mean the essential substance/principles of nature.

In modern Western societies, the concept of God typically entails a monotheistic, supreme, ultimate, and personal being, as found in the Islamic, Christian and Hebrew traditions. In monotheisms outside the Abrahamic traditions, the existence of God is discussed in similar terms.

In the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, reality is ultimately seen as a single, qualityless, changeless nirguna Brahman. Advaitin philosophy introduces the concept of saguna Brahman or Ishvara as a way of talking about Brahman to people. Ishvara, in turn, is ascribed such qualities as omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence.[5]

Ignosticism

Ignosticism or "igtheism" is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts.

It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God. The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered meaningless. The second view is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, and skips the step of first asking "What is meant by 'God'?" before proclaiming the original question "Does God exist?" as meaningless.

Some philosophers have seen ignosticism as a variation of agnosticism or atheism,[6] while others have considered it to be distinct. An ignostic maintains that he cannot even say whether he is a theist or an atheist until a sufficient definition of theism is put forth.

The term "ignosticism" was coined in the 1960s by Sherwin Wine, a rabbi and a founding figure of Humanistic Judaism. The term "igtheism" was coined by the secular humanist Paul Kurtz in his 1992 book The New Skepticism.[7]

Epistemology

Main articles: Epistemology and Sociology of knowledge

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy which studies the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge. Knowledge is, from an epistemological standpoint, distinguished from mere belief by justification, warrant, or other such property the having of which is conducive to getting at the truth.

Knowledge in the sense of "understanding of a fact or truth" can be divided into a posteriori knowledge, based on experience or deduction (see methodology), and a priori knowledge from introspection, axioms, or self-evidence. Knowledge can also be described as a psychological state, since in a strict sense there can never be a posteriori knowledge proper (see relativism). Much of the disagreement about "proofs" of God's existence is due to different conceptions not only of the term "God" but also the terms "proof", "truth", and "knowledge". Religious belief from revelation or enlightenment (satori) can fall into either the first category, a posteriori knowledge, if rooted in deduction or personal revelation, or the second, a priori class of knowledge, if based on introspection.

Different conclusions as to the existence of God often rest on different criteria for deciding what methods are appropriate for deciding if something is true or not, including

  • whether logic counts as evidence concerning the quality of existence
  • whether subjective experience counts as evidence for objective reality
  • whether either logic or evidence can rule in or out the supernatural
  • whether an object of the mind is accepted for existence
  • whether a truthbearer can justify.

The problem of the supernatural

One problem posed by the question of the existence of God is that traditional beliefs usually ascribe to God various supernatural powers. Supernatural beings may be able to conceal and reveal themselves for their own purposes, as for example in the tale of Baucis and Philemon. In addition, according to concepts of God, God is not part of the natural order, but the ultimate creator of nature and of the scientific laws. Thus, in Aristotelian philosophy, God is viewed as part of the explanatory structure needed to support scientific conclusions, and any powers God possesses are, strictly speaking, of the natural order—that is, derived from God's place as originator of nature. (See also Monadology)

Some religious apologists offer the supernatural nature of God as the explanation for the inability of empirical methods to decide the question of God's existence. In Karl Popper's philosophy of science, belief in a supernatural God is outside the natural domain of scientific investigation because all scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable in the natural world. The Non-overlapping Magisteria view proposed by Stephen Jay Gould also holds that the existence (or otherwise) of God is irrelevant to and beyond the domain of science.

Logical positivists, such as Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer viewed any talk of gods as literal nonsense. For the logical positivists and adherents of similar schools of thought, statements about religious or other transcendent experiences could not have a truth value, and were deemed to be without meaning, because metaphysical naturalism, the philosophical basis for logical positivism, automatically excludes the possibility of the supernatural a priori without proof. As the Christian biologist Scott C. Todd put it "Even if all the data pointed to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."[8] This argument limits the domain of science to the empirically observable and limits the domain of God to the unprovable.

Nature of relevant proofs/arguments

Since God (of the kind to which the arguments relate) is neither an entity in the universe nor a mathematical object, it is not obvious what kinds of arguments/proofs are relevant to God's existence. Even if the concept of scientific proof were not problematic, the fact that there is no conclusive scientific proof of the existence, or non-existence, of God[9] mainly demonstrates that the existence of God is not a scientific question. John Polkinghorne suggests that the nearest analogy to the existence of God in physics are the ideas of quantum mechanics which are seemingly paradoxical but make sense of a great deal of disparate data.[10]

Alvin Plantinga compares the question of the existence of God to the question of the existence of other minds, claiming both are notoriously impossible to "prove" against a determined skeptic.[11]

One approach, suggested by writers such as Stephen D. Unwin, is to treat (particular versions of) theism and naturalism as though they were two hypotheses in the Bayesian sense, to list certain data (or alleged data), about the world, and to suggest that the likelihoods of these data are significantly higher under one hypothesis than the other.[12] Most of the arguments for, or against, the existence of God can be seen as pointing to particular aspects of the universe in this way. In almost all cases it is not seriously suggested by proponents of the arguments that they are irrefutable, merely that they make one worldview seem significantly more likely than the other. However, since an assessment of the weight of evidence depends on the prior probability that is assigned to each worldview, arguments that a theist finds convincing may seem thin to an atheist and vice-versa.[13]

Philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, take a view that is considered anti-realist and oppose philosophical arguments related to God's existence. For instance, Charles Taylor contends that the real is whatever will not go away. If we cannot reduce talk about God to anything else, or replace it, or prove it false, then perhaps God is as real as anything else.[14]

In George Berkeley's A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge of 1710, he argued that a "naked thought" cannot exist, and that a perception was a thought; therefore only minds could be proven to exist, since all else was merely an idea conveyed by a perception. This viewpoint has been used in popular fiction, including The Matrix movie series. From this Berkeley argued that the universe is based upon observation and is non-objective. However, he noted that the universe includes "ideas" not perceptible to mankind (or not always perceptible), and that there must therefore exist an omniscient superobserver, which perceives such things. Berkeley considered this proof of the existence of the Christian god.

Outside of Western thought

Existence in absolute truth is central to Vedanta epistemology. Traditional sense perception based approaches were put into question as possibly misleading due to preconceived or superimposed ideas. But though all object-cognition can be doubted, the existence of the doubter remains a fact even in nastika traditions of mayavada schools following Adi Shankara.[15] The five eternal principles to be discussed under ontology, beginning with God or Isvara, the Ultimate Reality cannot be established by the means of logic alone, and often require superior proof.[16] In Vaisnavism Vishnu, or his intimate ontological form of Krishna, is equated to personal absolute God of the Western traditions. Aspects of Krishna as svayam bhagavan in original Absolute Truth, sat chit ananda, are understood originating from three essential attributes of Krishna's form, i.e., "eternal existence" or sat, related to the brahman aspect; "knowledge" or chit, to the paramatman; and "bliss" or ananda in Sanskrit, to bhagavan.[17]

Arguments for the existence of God

Empirical arguments

Aquinas' Five Ways

Main article: Quinque viae
For in depth analysis of the individual arguments, see unmoved mover, first cause, argument from contingency, argument from degree, or teleological argument.

In the first part of his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas developed his five arguments for God's existence. These arguments are grounded in an Aristotelian ontology and make use of the infinite regression argument.[18][19] Aquinas did not intend to fully prove the existence of God as he is orthodoxly conceived (with all of his traditional attributes), but proposed his Five Ways as a first stage, which he built upon later in his work.[20] Aquinas' Five Ways argued from the unmoved mover, first cause, necessary being, argument from degree, and the teleological argument.

  • The unmoved mover argument asserts that, from our experience of motion in the universe (motion being the transition from potentiality to actuality) we can see that there must have been an initial mover. Aquinas argued that whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another thing, so there must be an unmoved mover.[18]
  • Aquinas' argument from first cause started with the premise that it is impossible for a being to cause itself (because it would have to exist before it caused itself) and that it is impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes, which would result in infinite regress. Therefore, there must be a first cause, itself uncaused.[18]
  • The argument from necessary being asserts that all beings are contingent, meaning that it is possible for them not to exist. Aquinas argued that if everything can possibly not exist, there must have been a time when nothing existed; as things exist now, there must exist a being with necessary existence, regarded as God.[18]
  • Aquinas argued from degree, considering the occurrence of degrees of goodness. He believed that things which are called good, must be called good in relation to a standard of good—a maximum. There must be a maximum goodness that which causes all goodness.[18]
  • The teleological argument asserts the view that things without intelligence are ordered towards a purpose. Aquinas argued that unintelligent objects cannot be ordered unless they are done so by an intelligent being, which means that there must be an intelligent being to move objects to their ends: God.[18]

Deductive arguments

Ontological argument

Main article: Ontological argument

The ontological argument has been formulated by philosophers including St. Anselm and René Descartes. The argument proposes that God's existence is self-evident. The logic, depending on the formulation, reads roughly as follows:[21]

  1. God is the greatest conceivable being.
  2. It is greater to exist than not to exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.[21]

Thomas Aquinas criticized the argument for proposing a definition of God which, if God is transcendent, should be impossible for humans.[22] Immanuel Kant criticized the proof from a logical standpoint: he stated that the term "God" really signifies two different terms: both idea of God, and God. Kant concluded that the proof is equivocation, based on the ambiguity of the word God.[23] Kant also challenged the argument's assumption that existence is a predicate (of perfection) because it does not add anything to the essence of a being. If existence is not a predicate, then it is not necessarily true that the greatest possible being exists.[24] A common rebuttal to Kant's critique is that, although "existence" does add something to both the concept and the reality of God, the concept would be vastly different if its referent was an unreal Being.[citation needed] Another response to Kant is attributed to Alvin Plantinga who explains that even if one were to grant Kant that "existence" is not a real predicate, "Necessary Existence", which is the correct formulation of an understanding of God, is a real predicate, thus according to Plantinga Kant's argument is refuted.[25]

Other arguments

These two arguments follow from possible deductions, i.e., they can be set up as deductions and therefore are placed here.

  • Argument from Meaning.
  • Argument from Ethics, being one type of view by ontologically considered intelligence.

Inductive arguments

Inductive arguments argue their conclusions through inductive reasoning.

  • Another class of philosophers asserts that the proofs for the existence of God present a fairly large probability though not absolute certainty. A number of obscure points, they say, always remain; an act of faith is required to dismiss these difficulties. This view is maintained, among others, by the Scottish statesman Arthur Balfour in his book The Foundations of Belief (1895). The opinions set forth in this work were adopted in France by Ferdinand Brunetière, the editor of the Revue des deux Mondes. Many orthodox Protestants express themselves in the same manner, as, for instance, Dr. E. Dennert, President of the Kepler Society, in his work Ist Gott tot?[26]

Other arguments

  • The will to believe doctrine was pragmatist philosopher William James' attempt to prove God by showing that the adoption of theism as a hypothesis "works" in a believer's life. This doctrine depended heavily on James' pragmatic theory of truth where beliefs are proven by how they work when adopted rather than by proofs before they are believed (a form of the hypothetico-deductive method).
  • The argument from reason holds that if, as thoroughgoing naturalism entails, all human thoughts are the effect of a physical cause, then there is no reason for assuming that they are also the consequent of a reasonable ground. Knowledge, however, is apprehended by reasoning from ground to consequent. Therefore, if naturalism were true, there would be no way of knowing it—or anything else not the direct result of a physical cause—and one could not even suppose it, except by a fluke.
  • The anthropic argument suggests that basic facts, such as humanity's existence, are best explained by the existence of God.
  • Qualia-based arguments: Some philosophers see the existence of Qualia (or the hard problem of consciousness) as strong arguments against materialism and therefore for the existence of material and immaterial entities.
  • The teleological argument argues that the universe's order and complexity are best explained by reference to a creator God. It starts with a rather more complicated claim about the world, i.e. that it exhibits order and design. This argument has two versions: One based on the analogy of design and designer, the other arguing that goals can only occur in minds.
  • The hypothesis of Intelligent design proposes that certain features of the universe and of living things are the product of an intelligent cause.[27] Its proponents are mainly Christians.[28]
  • Arguments that a non-physical quality observed in the universe is of fundamental importance and not an epiphenomenon, such as Morality (Argument from morality), Beauty (Argument from beauty), Love (Argument from love), or religious experience (Argument from religious experience), are arguments for theism as against materialism.
  • The transcendental argument suggests that logic, science, ethics, and other serious matters do not make sense in the absence of God, and that atheistic arguments must ultimately refute themselves if pressed with rigorous consistency.[citation needed]
  • The argument from degree, a version of the transcendental argument posited by Aquinas, states that there must exist a being which possesses all properties to the maximum possible degree in order for such properties to be coherent.
  • Argument from belief in God being properly basic as presented by Alvin Plantinga.[29]
  • Argument from the confluence of proper function and reliability and the evolutionary argument against naturalism, which demonstrate how naturalism is incapable of providing humans with the cognitive aparatus necessary for their knowledge to have positive epistemic status.[30]
  • Argument from Personal Identity.[31]
  • Argument from the "divine attributes of scientific law".[32]

Subjective arguments

Arguments from historical events or personages

Arguments from testimony

Arguments from testimony rely on the testimony or experience of witnesses, possibly embodying the propositions of a specific revealed religion. Swinburne argues that it is a principle of rationality that one should accept testimony unless there are strong reasons for not doing so.[34]

  • The witness argument gives credibility to personal witnesses, contemporary and throughout the ages. A variation of this is the argument from miracles which relies on testimony of supernatural events to establish the existence of God.
  • The majority argument argues that the theism of people throughout most of recorded history and in many different places provides prima facie demonstration of God's existence.
Arguments grounded in personal experiences
See also: Anecdotal evidence
  • An argument for God is often made from an unlikely complete reversal in lifestyle by an individual towards God. Paul of Tarsus, a persecutor of the early Church, became a pillar of the Church after his conversion on the road to Damascus. Modern day examples in Evangelical Protestantism are sometimes called "Born-Again Christians".
  • The Scottish School of Common Sense led by Thomas Reid taught that the fact of the existence of God is accepted by people without knowledge of reasons but simply by a natural impulse. That God exists, this school said, is one of the chief metaphysical principles that people accept not because they are evident in themselves or because they can be proved, but because common sense obliges people to accept them.
  • The Argument from a Proper Basis argues that belief in God is "properly basic"; that it is similar to statements like "I see a chair" or "I feel pain". Such beliefs are non-falsifiable and, thus, neither provable nor disprovable; they concern perceptual beliefs or indisputable mental states.
  • In Germany, the School of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi taught that human reason is able to perceive the suprasensible. Jacobi distinguished three faculties: sense, reason, and understanding. Just as sense has immediate perception of the material so has reason immediate perception of the immaterial, while the understanding brings these perceptions to a person's consciousness and unites them to one another.[35] God's existence, then, cannot be proven (Jacobi, like Immanuel Kant, rejected the absolute value of the principle of causality), it must be felt by the mind.
  • In Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that when a person's understanding ponders over the existence of God it encounters nothing but contradictions; the impulses of people's hearts, however, are of more value than the understanding, and these proclaim clearly the truths of natural religion, namely, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.
  • The same theory was advocated in Germany by Friedrich Schleiermacher, who assumed an inner religious sense by means of which people feel religious truths. According to Schleiermacher, religion consists solely in this inner perception, and dogmatic doctrines are inessential.[36]
  • Many modern Protestant theologians follow in Schleiermacher's footsteps, and teach that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated; certainty as to this truth is only furnished to people by inner experience, feeling, and perception.
  • Modernist Christianity also denies the demonstrability of the existence of God. According to them, one can only know something of God by means of the vital immanence, that is, under favorable circumstances the need of the divine dormant in one's subconsciousness becomes conscious and arouses that religious feeling or experience in which God reveals himself. In condemnation of this view the Oath Against Modernism formulated by Pius X, a Pope of the Catholic Church, says: "Deum ... naturali rationis lumine per ea quae facta sunt, hoc est per visibilia creationis opera, tanquam causam per effectus certo cognosci adeoque demostrari etiam posse, profiteor." ("I declare that by the natural light of reason, God can be certainly known and therefore his existence demonstrated through the things that are made, i.e., through the visible works of creation, as the cause is known through its effects.")
  • Brahma Kumaris religion was established in 1936, when God was said to enter the body of diamond merchant Lekhraj Kripalani (1876–1969) in Hyderabad, Sindh and started to speak through him.[37][38]

Hindu arguments

Most schools of Hindu philosophy accept the existence of a creator god (Brahma), while some do not. The school of Vedanta argues that one of the proofs of the existence of God is the law of karma. In a commentary to Brahma Sutras (III, 2, 38, and 41), a Vedantic text, Adi Sankara, an Indian philosopher who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, a sub-school of Vedanta, argues that the original karmic actions themselves cannot bring about the proper results at some future time; neither can super sensuous, non-intelligent qualities like adrsta—an unseen force being the metaphysical link between work and its result—by themselves mediate the appropriate, justly deserved pleasure and pain. The fruits, according to him, then, must be administered through the action of a conscious agent, namely, a supreme being (Ishvara).[39]

A human's karmic acts result in merits and demerits. Since unconscious things generally do not move except when caused by an agent (for example, the axe moves only when swung by an agent), and since the law of karma is an unintelligent and unconscious law, Sankara argues there must be a conscious supreme Being who knows the merits and demerits which persons have earned by their actions, and who functions as an instrumental cause in helping individuals reap their appropriate fruits.[40] Thus, God affects the person's environment, even to its atoms, and for those souls who reincarnate, produces the appropriate rebirth body, all in order that the person might have the karmically appropriate experiences.[41] Thus, there must be a theistic administrator or supervisor for karma, i.e., God.

The Nyaya school, one of six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, states that one of the proofs of the existence of God is karma;[42] it is seen that some people in this world are happy, some are in misery. Some are rich and some are poor. The Naiyanikas explain this by the concept of karma and reincarnation. The fruit of an individual's actions does not always lie within the reach of the individual who is the agent; there ought to be, therefore, a dispenser of the fruits of actions, and this supreme dispenser is God.[42] This belief of Nyaya, accordingly, is the same as that of Vedanta.[42]

Arguments against the existence of God

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Each of the following arguments aims at showing either that a particular subset of gods do not exist (by showing them as inherently meaningless, contradictory, or at odds with known scientific or historical facts) or that there is insufficient reason to believe in them. Some of these arguments suggest that there is evidence of absence of a god.

Empirical arguments

Empirical arguments depend on empirical data in order to prove their conclusions.

  • The argument from inconsistent revelations contests the existence of the deity called God as described in scriptures—such as the Jewish Tanakh, the Christian Bible, the Muslim Qur'an, Hindu Vedas, the Book of Mormon or the Baha'i Aqdas—by identifying apparent contradictions between different scriptures, within a single scripture, or between scripture and known facts. To be effective this argument requires the other side to hold that its scriptural record is inerrant, or at least to assert that a proper understanding of scripture gives rise to knowledge of God's existence.
  • The problem of evil contests the existence of a god who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent by arguing that such a god should not permit the existence of evil or suffering. The theist responses are called theodicies.
  • The destiny of the unevangelized, by which persons who have never even heard of a particular revelation might be harshly punished for not following its dictates.
  • The argument from poor design contests the idea that God created life on the basis that lifeforms, including humans, seem to exhibit poor design.
  • The argument from nonbelief contests the existence of an omnipotent God who wants humans to believe in him by arguing that such a god would do a better job of gathering believers.
  • The argument from parsimony (using Occam's razor) contends that since natural (non-supernatural) theories adequately explain the development of religion and belief in gods,[43] the actual existence of such supernatural agents is superfluous and may be dismissed unless otherwise proven to be required to explain the phenomenon.
  • The analogy of Russell's teapot argues that the burden of proof for the existence of God lies with the theist rather than the atheist. The Russell's teapot analogy can be considered an extension of Occam's Razor.
  • Stephen Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow state in their book The Grand Design that it is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. In this view, it is accepted that some entity exists that needs no creator, and that entity is called God. This is known as the first-cause argument for the existence of God. Both authors claim however, that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings.[44] Some Christian philosophers disagree.[45]

Deductive arguments

Deductive arguments attempt to prove their conclusions by deductive reasoning from true premises.

  • The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to the argument from design. The argument from design claims that a complex or ordered structure must be designed. However, a god that is responsible for the creation of a universe would be at least as complicated as the universe that it creates. Therefore, it too must require a designer. And its designer would require a designer also, ad infinitum. The argument for the existence of god is then a logical fallacy with or without the use of special pleading. The Ultimate 747 gambit states that God does not provide an origin of complexity, it simply assumes that complexity always existed. It also states that design fails to account for complexity, which natural selection can explain.
  • The omnipotence paradox suggests that the concept of an omnipotent entity is logically contradictory, from considering a question like: "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot move it?" or "If God is all powerful, could God create a being more powerful than Himself?"
  • The omniscience paradox shows a different angle of the omnipotence paradox. "If God is omnipotent, then he should be able to change the future to an 'alternate future' that is unknown to him, conflicting with his omniscience." Similarly, an omniscient god would know the position of all atoms in the universe over its ~14 billion-year history as well as its infinite future. To know that, god's memory needs to be bigger than the infinite set of possible states in the current universe. Also, a twist on the omnipotence paradox is that God's omniscience is logically contradictory, since He could not think up a puzzle or code that he could not solve.
  • The problem of hell is the idea that eternal damnation for actions committed in a finite existence contradicts God's omnibenevolence or omnipresence.
  • The argument from free will contests the existence of an omniscient god who has free will—or has allotted the same freedom to his creations—by arguing that the two properties are contradictory. According to the argument, if God already knows the future, then humanity is destined to corroborate with his knowledge of the future and not have true free will to deviate from it. Therefore our free will contradicts an omniscient god. Another argument attacks the existence of an omniscient god who has free will directly in arguing that the will of God himself would be bound to follow whatever God foreknows himself doing throughout eternity.
  • A counter-argument against the Cosmological argument ("chicken or the egg") takes its assumption that things cannot exist without creators and applies it to God, setting up an infinite regress. This attacks the premise that the universe is the second cause (after God, who is claimed to be the first cause).
  • Theological noncognitivism, as used in literature, usually seeks to disprove the god-concept by showing that it is unverifiable by scientific tests.
  • The anthropic argument states that if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect, He would have created other morally perfect beings instead of imperfect humans.

Inductive arguments

Inductive arguments argue their conclusions through inductive reasoning.

  • The atheist-existentialist argument for the non-existence of a perfect sentient being states that if existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a sentient being cannot be complete or perfect. It is touched upon by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness. Sartre's phrasing is that God would be a pour-soi [a being-for-itself; a consciousness] who is also an en-soi [a being-in-itself; a thing]: which is a contradiction in terms. The argument is echoed thus in Salman Rushdie's novel Grimus: "That which is complete is also dead."
  • The "no reason" argument tries to show that an omnipotent and omniscient being would not have any reason to act in any way, specifically by creating the universe, because it would have no needs, wants, or desires since these very concepts are subjectively human. Since the universe exists, there is a contradiction, and therefore, an omnipotent god cannot exist. This argument is expounded upon by Scott Adams in the book God's Debris, which puts forward a form of Pandeism as its fundamental theological model. A similar argument is put forward in Ludwig von Mises's "Human Action". He referred to it as the "praxeological argument" and claimed that a perfect being would have long ago satisfied all its wants and desires and would no longer be able to take action in the present without proving that it had been unable to achieve its wants faster—showing it imperfect.
  • The "historical induction" argument concludes that since most theistic religions throughout history (e.g. ancient Egyptian religion, ancient Greek religion) and their gods ultimately come to be regarded as untrue or incorrect, all theistic religions, including contemporary ones, are therefore most likely untrue/incorrect by induction. It is implied as part of Stephen F. Roberts' popular quotation:
    I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Subjective arguments

See also: Anecdotal evidence

Similar to the subjective arguments for the existence of God, subjective arguments against the supernatural mainly rely on the testimony or experience of witnesses, or the propositions of a revealed religion in general.

  • The witness argument gives credibility to personal witnesses, contemporary and from the past, who disbelieve or strongly doubt the existence of God.
  • The conflicted religions argument notes that many religions give differing accounts as to what God is and what God wants; since all the contradictory accounts cannot be correct, many if not all religions must be incorrect.
  • The disappointment argument claims that if, when asked for, there is no visible help from God, there is no reason to believe that there is a God.

Hindu arguments

Atheistic Hindu doctrines cite various arguments for rejecting a creator-God or Ishvara. The Sāṁkhyapravacana Sūtra of the Samkhya school states that there is no philosophical place for a creationist God in this system. It is also argued in this text that the existence of Ishvara (God) cannot be proved and hence cannot be admitted to exist.[46] Classical Samkhya argues against the existence of God on metaphysical grounds. For instance, Samkhya argue that an unchanging God cannot be the source of an ever changing world. It says God was a necessary metaphysical assumption demanded by circumstances.[47] The Sutras of Samkhya endeavour to prove that the idea of God is inconceivable and self-contradictory, and some commentaries speak plainly on this subject. The Sankhya- tattva-kaumudi, commenting on Karika 57, argues that a perfect God can have no need to create a world, and if God's motive is kindness, Samkhya questions whether it is reasonable to call into existence beings who while non-existent had no suffering. Samkhya postulates that a benevolent deity ought to create only happy creatures, not an imperfect world like the real world.[48]

Proponents of the school of Mimamsa, which is based on rituals and orthopraxy, decided that the evidence allegedly proving the existence of God was insufficient. They argue that there was no need to postulate a maker for the world, just as there was no need for an author to compose the Vedas or a God to validate the rituals.[49] Mimamsa argues that the Gods named in the Vedas have no existence apart from the mantras that speak their names. In that regard, the power of the mantras is what is seen as the power of Gods.[50]

Conclusions

Europeans polled who "believe in a god", according to Eurobarometer in 2005.
North Americans polled about religious identity.

Conclusions on the existence of God can be divided along numerous axes, producing a variety of orthogonal classifications. Theism and atheism are positions of belief (or lack of it), while gnosticism and agnosticism are positions of knowledge (or the lack of it). Ignosticism concerns belief regarding God's conceptual coherence. Apatheism concerns belief regarding the practical importance of whether God exists.

Theism

The theistic conclusion is that there is sufficient reason to believe that god or gods exists, or that arguments do not matter as much as the "personal witness of the holy spirit", as argued by preeminent apologist William Lane Craig. The Catholic Church, following the teachings of Saint Paul the Apostle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the First Vatican Council, which affirms that God's existence "can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason".[51] In Christian faith, theologians and philosophers make a distinction between: (a) preambles of faith and (b) articles of faith. The preambles include alleged truths contained in revelation which are nevertheless demonstrable by reason, e.g., the immortality of the soul, the existence of God. The articles of faith, on the other hand, contain truths that cannot be proven or reached by reason alone and presuppose the truths of the preambles, e.g., the Holy Trinity, is not demonstrable and presupposes the existence of God.

The argument that the existence of God can be known to all, even prior to exposure to any divine revelation, predates Christianity. St. Paul made this argument when he said that pagans were without excuse because "since the creation of the world [God's] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made".[52] In this Paul alludes to the proofs for a creator, later enunciated by St. Thomas[53] and others, but that had also been explored by the Greek philosophers.

Another apologetical school of thought, including Dutch and American Reformed thinkers (such as Abraham Kuyper, Benjamin Warfield, Herman Dooyeweerd), emerged in the late 1920s. This school was instituted by Cornelius Van Til, and came to be popularly called Presuppositional apologetics (though Van Til himself felt "transcendental" would be a more accurate title). The main distinction between this approach and the more classical evidentialist approach is that the presuppositionalist denies any common ground between the believer and the non-believer, except that which the non-believer denies, namely, the assumption of the truth of the theistic worldview. In other words, presuppositionalists do not believe that the existence of God can be proven by appeal to raw, uninterpreted, or "brute" facts, which have the same (theoretical) meaning to people with fundamentally different worldviews, because they deny that such a condition is even possible. They claim that the only possible proof for the existence of God is that the very same belief is the necessary condition to the intelligibility of all other human experience and action. They attempt to prove the existence of God by means of appeal to the transcendental necessity of the belief—indirectly (by appeal to the unavowed presuppositions of the non-believer's worldview) rather than directly (by appeal to some form of common factuality). In practice this school utilizes what have come to be known as transcendental arguments. In these arguments they claim to demonstrate that all human experience and action (even the condition of unbelief, itself) is a proof for the existence of God, because God's existence is the necessary condition of their intelligibility.

Alvin Plantinga presents an argument for the existence of God using modal logic.[54] Others have said that the logical and philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God miss the point. The word God has a meaning in human culture and history that does not correspond to the beings whose existence is supported by such arguments, assuming they are valid. The real question is not whether a "most perfect being" or an "uncaused first cause" exist. The real question is whether Jehovah, Zeus, Ra, Krishna, or any gods of any religion exist, and if so, which gods? On the other hand, many theists equate all monotheistic or henotheistic "most perfect Beings", no matter what name is assigned to them/him, as the one monotheistic God (one example would be understanding the Muslim Allah, Christian Yhwh, and Chinese Shangdi as different names for the same Being). Most of these arguments do not resolve the issue of which of these figures is more likely to exist. These arguments fail to make the distinction between immanent gods and a Transcendent God.

Some Christians note that the Christian faith teaches "salvation is by faith",[55] and that faith is reliance upon the faithfulness of God. The most extreme example of this position is called fideism, which holds that faith is simply the will to believe, and argues that if God's existence were rationally demonstrable, faith in its existence would become superfluous. Søren Kierkegaard argued that objective knowledge, such as 1+1=2, is unimportant to existence. If God could rationally be proven, his existence would be unimportant to humans.[citation needed] It is because God cannot rationally be proven that his existence is important to us. In The Justification of Knowledge, the Calvinist theologian Robert L. Reymond argues that believers should not attempt to prove the existence of God. Since he believes all such proofs are fundamentally unsound, believers should not place their confidence in them, much less resort to them in discussions with non-believers; rather, they should accept the content of revelation by faith. Reymond's position is similar to that of his mentor Gordon Clark, which holds that all worldviews are based on certain unprovable first premises (or, axioms), and therefore are ultimately unprovable. The Christian theist therefore must simply choose to start with Christianity rather than anything else, by a "leap of faith". This position is also sometimes called presuppositional apologetics, but should not be confused with the Van Tillian variety.

Atheism

Main article: Atheism

The atheistic conclusion is that the arguments and evidence both indicate there is insufficient reason to believe that any gods exist, and that personal subjective religious experiences are indistinguishable from misapprehension; therefore one should not believe that a god exists.

Positive atheism

Main article: Negative and positive atheism

Positive atheism (also called "strong atheism" and "hard atheism") is a form of atheism that asserts that no deities exist.[56][57][58] The strong atheist explicitly asserts the non-existence of gods. Some strong atheists further assert that the existence of gods is logically impossible, stating that the combination of attributes which God may be asserted to have (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, transcendence, omnibenevolence) are logically contradictory, incomprehensible, or absurd, and therefore the existence of such a god is a priori false. Metaphysical naturalism is a common worldview associated with strong atheism.

In Science Refutes Religion, Isaacson argues an empirical form of strong atheism. If God is in the world (as opposed to being an abstract being), then science effectively proves there is no god. Because "the absence of evidence is overwhelming. There is no more reason to believe that a god-of-this-world exists than there is to believe that Zeus exists, or that Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy exist, or the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot."[59] If, on the other hand, God is an "abstract being", then it means (by definition) that god doesn't interfere in the lives of us mortals. "He doesn't answer prayers. There was no burning bush." etc.[60]

Negative atheism

Negative atheism (also called "weak atheism" and "soft atheism") is any type of atheism other than positive, wherein a person does not believe in the existence of any deities, but does not explicitly assert there to be none.[56][57][58]

Agnosticism

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.[61] Agnosticism as a broad umbrella term does not define one's belief or disbelief in gods; agnostics may still identify themselves as theists or atheists.[62]

Strong agnosticism

Strong agnosticism is the belief that it is impossible for humans to know whether or not any deities exist.

Weak agnosticism

Weak agnosticism is the belief that the existence or nonexistence of deities is unknown but not necessarily unknowable.

Agnostic theism

Agnostic theism is the philosophical view that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. For theism, an agnostic theist believes that the proposition at least one deity exists is true, but, per agnosticism, believes that the existence of gods is unknown or inherently unknowable. The agnostic theist may also or alternatively be agnostic regarding the properties of the god(s) they believe in.[63]

Agnostic atheism

Agnostic atheism is the view of those who do not claim to know the existence of any deity but do not believe in any.[62]

The theologian Robert Flint explains: "If a man have failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist, although he assume no superhuman knowledge, but merely the ordinary human power of judging of evidence. If he go farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist, an agnostic-atheist—an atheist because an agnostic."[64]

Apatheism

The apatheist concludes the question of God's existence or nonexistence to be of little or no practical importance.

Psychological aspects

See also: Evolutionary psychology of religion

Several authors have offered psychological or sociological explanations for belief in the existence of God. Many of these views have been sought to give a naturalistic explanation of religion, though this does not necessarily mean such views are exclusive to naturalism.

Psychologists observe that the majority of humans often ask existential questions such as "why we are here" and whether life has purpose. Some psychologists have posited that religious beliefs may recruit cognitive mechanisms in order to satisfy these questions. William James emphasized the inner religious struggle between melancholy and happiness, and pointed to trance as a cognitive mechanism. Sigmund Freud stressed fear and pain, the need for a powerful parental figure, the obsessional nature of ritual, and the hypnotic state a community can induce as contributing factors to the psychology of religion.

Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained" (2002), based in part on his anthropological field work, treats belief in God as the result of the brain's tendency towards agency detection. Boyer suggests that, because of evolutionary pressures, humans err on the side of attributing agency where there isn't any. In Boyer's view, belief in supernatural entities spreads and becomes culturally fixed because of their memorability. The concept of "minimally counterintuitive" beings that differ from the ordinary in a small number of ways (such as being invisible, able to fly, or having access to strategic and otherwise secret information) leave a lasting impression that spreads through word-of-mouth.

Scott Atran's "In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion" (2002) makes a similar argument and adds examination of the socially coordinating aspects of shared belief. In "Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion", Todd Tremlin follows Boyer in arguing that universal human cognitive process naturally produces the concept of the supernatural. Tremlin contends that an agency detection device (ADD) and a theory of mind module (ToMM) lead humans to suspect an agent behind every event. Natural events for which there is no obvious agent may be attributed to God (c.f. Act of God).

See also

References

  1. ↑ see e.g. The Rationality of Theism quoting Quentin Smith "God is not 'dead' in academia; it returned to life in the late 1960s". They cite "the shift from hostility towards theism in Paul Edwards's Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967) to sympathy towards theism in the more recent Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  2. ↑ "The Argument From Perfection". Retrieved 2013-03-06. 
  3. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 47; cf. Canons of the First Vatican Council, 2:2
  4. ↑ Barron, Robert (2011). Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith. The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. ISBN 9780307720511. 
  5. ↑ Hebbar, Neria Harish. "The Principal Upanishads". Retrieved 2007-01-12. 
  6. ↑ "The Argument From Non-Cognitivism". Retrieved 2008-02-11. 
  7. ↑ "isms of the week: Agnosticism and Ignosticism". Retrieved December 19, 2011. 
  8. ↑ Scott C. Todd, "A View from Kansas on that Evolution Debate," Nature Vol. 401, Sep. 30, 1999, p. 423
  9. ↑ Those holding this range from Dawkins to Ward to Plantinga.
  10. ↑ Polkinghorne, John (1998). Belief in God in an Age of Science. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07294-5. 
  11. ↑ see his God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God Cornell (1990) ISBN 0-8014-9735-3 and Warranted Christian Belief OUP (2000) ISBN 0-19-513193-2
  12. ↑ See e.g. the Beale/Howson debate published Prospect May, 1998
  13. ↑ see e.g. The Probability of God by Stephen D. Unwin its criticism in The God Delusion, and the critical comment in that article.
  14. ↑ "iep.utm.edu". iep.utm.edu. 2004-08-30. Retrieved 2013-05-14. 
  15. ↑ Klostermaier, Klaus K. (2007). A survey of Hinduism. Albany: Sate University of New York Press. p. 357. ISBN 0-7914-7081-4. 
  16. ↑ Sudesh Narang (1984)The Vaisnava Philosophy According to Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa, p. 30
  17. ↑ Maria Ekstrand; Bryant, Edwin H. (2004). The Hare Krishna movement: the postcharismatic fate of a religious transplant. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 7. ISBN 0-231-12256-X. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 18.5 Aquinas, Thomas (1274). Summa Theologica. Part 1, Question 2, Article 3. 
  19. ↑ Aquinas, Thomas; Kreeft, Peter (1990). Summa of the Summa. Ignatius Press. pp. 65–69. ISBN 9780898703009. 
  20. ↑ Davies, Brian (1992). The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. Oxford University Press. p. 26. ISBN 9780191520440. 
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Nolan, Lawrence. "Descartes' Ontological Argument". Stanford. 
  22. ↑ Aquinas, Thomas (1274). Summa Theologica. Part 1, Question 2. 
  23. ↑ Kreeft, Peter (2009). Socrates Meets Kant. Ignatius Press. ISBN 9781586173487. 
  24. ↑ Himma, Kenneth Einar (27 April 2005). "Ontological Argument". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved October 12, 2011. 
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  26. ↑ (Stuttgart, 1908)
  27. ↑ "Intelligent Design". Intelligent Design. Retrieved 2013-05-14. 
  28. ↑ Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 04 cv 2688 (December 20, 2005) (“the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity”). , Ruling p. 26. A selection of writings and quotes of intelligent design supporters demonstrating this identification of the Christian god with the intelligent designer are found in the pdf Horse's MouthArchived June 27, 2008 at the Wayback Machine (PDF) by Brian Poindexter, dated 2003.
  29. ↑ Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief
  30. ↑ Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function
  31. ↑ Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism
  32. ↑ This argument is articulated by Vern Poythress in chapter 1 of Redeeming Science (pages 13-31). Available: http://www.frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/PoythressVernRedeemingScience.pdf#page=14
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  34. ↑ Swinburne, Richard (1997). Is there a God?. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-823545-3. 
  35. ↑ (A. Stöckl, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, II, 82 sqq.)
  36. ↑ (Stöckl, loc. cit., 199 sqq.)
  37. ↑ "Based on our real life experiences we clearly know that it was God, the Supreme Soul, Shiva, Himself, had entered into his body. It was God who had revealed the truth about the coming destruction, and of the establishment of the heavenly world which would then follow. And it was God Himself who had given the sign that he, Dada, was to be His medium and the engine for creating such a divine world."
  38. ↑ Babb, Lawrence A. (1987). Redemptive Encounters: Three Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-7069-2563-7.
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  40. ↑ see,Theistic Explanations of Karma, pg. 146 of Causation and Divine Intervention by BR Reichenbach at http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/reiche2.htm citing Sankara's commentary on Brahma Sutras,III, 2, 38, and 41.
  41. ↑ See, Theistic Explanations of Karma, Causation and Divine Intervention by BR Reichenbach at http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/reiche2.htm citing Sankara's commentary on Brahma Sutras,III, 2, 38, and 41.
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 42.2 See Theistic Explanations of Karma, pg. 146 of Causation and Divine Intervention by BR Reichenbach, citing Uddyotakara, Nyaayavaarttika, IV, 1, 21, at http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/reiche2.htm
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  51. ↑ Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 2; quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition (New York: Doubleday, 1995) n. 36, p. 20.
  52. ↑ Romans 1:20
  53. ↑ For the proofs of God's existence by Saint Thomas Aquinas see Quinquae viae.
  54. ↑ Plantinga, Alvin (1974). The Nature of Necessity. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 63. 
  55. ↑ 2 Timothy 3:14–15 NIV "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." The Holy Bible, New International Version. International Bible Society. 1984.
  56. ↑ 56.0 56.1 Flew, Antony (1976). "The Presumption of Atheism". The Presumption of Atheism, and other Philosophical Essays on God, Freedom, and Immortality. New York: Barnes and Noble. pp. 14ff. Retrieved 2011-12-10. "In this interpretation an atheist becomes: not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God; but someone who is simply not a theist. Let us, for future ready reference, introduce the labels 'positive atheist' for the former and 'negative atheist' for the latter." 
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  60. ↑ Science Refutes Religion, pg. 24
  61. ↑ Carroll, Robert (2009-02-22). "agnosticism". The Skeptic's Dictionary. skepdic.com. Retrieved 2009-10-17. 
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  63. ↑ "Introduction to Agnosticism: What is Agnostic Theism? Believing in God, but not Knowing God". Atheism.about.com. 2012-04-13. Retrieved 2013-05-14. 
  64. ↑ Flint, Robert (1903). "Erroneous VIews of Agnosticism". Agnosticism. C. Scribner sons. p. 50. Retrieved 2009-11-15. 

Further reading

External links

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