| Many arguments for the existence of God exist.
Arguments for the necessity of God
These arguments can be classified under two headings. First are the strictly logical
or metaphysical arguments; these arguments seek to prove that the existence
of a being with at least one attribute that only God could have is logically necessary.
Metaphysical arguments
The chief such arguments are:
- The Cosmological argument, which argues that, without
an ultimate cause or explanation (a first cause or necessary being), the entire cosmos is itself inexplicable.
- The Ontological argument, which tries to logically
deduce God's existence from the mere concept of God as a perfect being.
Empirical arguments
Other arguments avail themselves of data beyond definitions and axioms. Some of these arguments require only that one assume
that a non-random universe able to support life exists. Others are more strongly tied to the testimony of certain witnesses or
the propositions of a specific revealed religion. These arguments include:
- The Teleological argument, which argues that since
the universe's order and complexity shows signs of purpose (telos), it must have been designed by an intelligent designer, i.e. God.
- The Anthropic argument, which focuses on the (allegedly
striking) fact that our universe is such as to support life, drawing on recent discoveries in cosmology.
- The Witness argument relies on personal witnesses, contemporary
and throughout the ages.
- The religious or Christological argument is
specific to religions such as Christianity, and asserts that for example
Jesus' life as written in the New
Testament establishes his credibility, so we can believe in the truth of his statements about God.
- The Majority argument: people in all
times and in different places have believed in God, so it is unlikely that he does not exist.
- The Moral argument argues that morality cannot
exist without God.
- The Transcendental argument, which argues that logic, science, ethics, and
other things we take seriously do not make sense if there is no God. Therefore, arguments against the existence of
God must ultimately refute themselves if pressed with rigorous consistency.
- Historical
argument. This is the one taken by the Bible, that God has acted into history and
that those actions have been recorded. According to this argument, the historical claims of the Bible are subject to the same
techniques of historical analysis as those in any other ancient document (or modern document as well) to evaluate its historical
accuracy. If the Bible is not a historically accurate document, then its truth claims concerning the existence and nature of God
are equally invalid.
Subjective arguments for the belief in God
Arguments for the reasonableness of belief in God
- Another class of philosophers asserts that the proofs for the existence of God present a fairly large probability but no
absolute certainty. A number of obscure points, they say, always remain. In order to overcome these difficulties there is
necessary either an act of the will, a religious experience, or the discernment of the misery of the world without God, so that
finally the heart makes the decision. This view is maintained, among others, by the English statesman Arthur Balfour in his book The Foundations of
Belief (1895). The opinions set forth in this work were adopted in France by Brunetiére, 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? (Stuttgart, 1908).
- The Argument from a Proper Basis argues that belief in God is "properly basic"--that is, similar
to statements such as "I see a chair" or "I feel pain." Such beliefs are non-falsifiable and, thus, neither able to be proved nor
disproved; they concern perceptual beliefs or indisputable mental states.
Arguments for belief in God grounded in subjective experience
- The Scotch School led by
Thomas Reid taught that the fact of the existence of God is accepted by us
without knowledge of reasons but simply by a natural impulse. That God exists, this school said, is one of the chief metaphysical
principles that we accept not because they are evident in themselves or because they can be proved, but because common sense obliges us to accept them.
- In Germany, the School of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi taught that our 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 our consciousness and unites them to one another (Stöckl, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, II, 82 sqq.).
God's existence, then, cannot be proved--Jacobi, like Kant, rejected the absolute value of the principle of causality--it must be
felt by the mind.
- In his Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that when our understanding ponders over the existence of God it
encounters nothing but contradictions; the impulses of our hearts, however, are of more value than the understanding, and these
proclaim clearly to us 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 (d. 1834), who assumed an inner
religious sense by means of which we feel religious truths. According to Schleiermacher, religion consists solely in this inner
perception, and dogmatic doctrines are unessential (Stöckl, loc. cit., 199 sqq.).
- 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 us by inner experience,
feeling, and perception.
- Modernist Christianity also denies the
demonstrability of the existence of God. According to them we can only know something of God by means of the vital immanence,
that is, under favorable circumstances the need of the Divine dormant in our subconsciousness becomes conscious and arouses that
religious feeling or experience in which God reveals himself to us. In condemnation of this view the oath against Modernism formulated by Pius X 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.")
Pragmatic arguments for belief in the existence of God
- Pascal's Wager holds that, whether or not God's existence can be
proved, belief in God is the most prudentially rational
choice, because one has everything to gain if God exists, and nothing to lose if he does not.
The relationship among the arguments
A dispute arose as to whether there are a number of proofs of the existence of God or whether all are not merely parts of one
and the same proof (cf. Dr. C.
Braig, Gottesbeweis oder Gottesbeweise?, Stuttgart, 1889). While all such proofs would end in the same way, by
asserting the existence of God, they do not all start at the same place. St. Thomas calls them aptly (Summ. theol., I, Q. ii, a.3) Viæ; roads to the apprehension of God which all
open on the same highway.
The theological status of the arguments
Christian views
The theological standing of arguments for the existence of God is also subject
to some debate among believers. Within the Christian tradition there are
two sharply opposed viewpoints. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, following the Thomist tradition of St Thomas Aquinas and the dogmatic
definition of the First Vatican Council, affirms that it
is a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that God's
existence can in fact be rationally demonstrated. Some other Christians in different denominations hold similar views. On this
view, a distinction is to be drawn between (1) doctrines that belong essentially to faith and cannot be proved, such as
the doctrine of the Trinity or the Incarnation, and (2) doctrines that can be accepted by faith but can also be known by reason. The existence of
God is said to be one of the latter. As a theological defense of this view, one might cite Paul's claim 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" (Rom. 1:20).
On the other hand, some Christians hold a contrary position. These believers note that the Christian faith teaches salvation is by faith, and that faith is reliance
upon the faithfulness of God, which has little to do with the believer's ability to comprehend that in which he trusts. In other
words, if Christian theology is true, then God's existence can
never be demonstrated, either by empirical means or by philosophical argument. 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 His existence would become superfluous. In The Justification of
Knowledge, the Calvinist theologian Robert S. 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, but rather accept the content of revelation by faith.
An intermediate position is that of Alvin Plantinga who holds that
belief in the existence of God can be rational and indeed a species of knowledge, even though the existence of God cannot be
demonstrated. After all, there are kinds of knowledge that are rational but do not proceed through demonstration: sensory
knowledge, for instance.
Arguments against the existence of God
There are also arguments
against the existence of God.
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