Arguments for and against the 'existence of God' have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, and others. In
philosophical terminology, existence of God arguments concern schools of thought on the
epistemology of the
ontology of
God. The debate concerning the existence of God raises many philosophical issues. A basic problem is that there is no universally accepted definition of God. Some definitions of God's existence are so non-specific that it is certain that ''something'' exists that meets the definition; in stark contrast, there are suggestions that other definitions are self-contradictory. Arguments for the existence of God typically include
metaphysical,
empirical,
inductive, and
subjective types. Arguments against the existence of God typically include empirical,
deductive, and inductive types. Viewpoints represented include
atheism, either no belief in God or the view that God does not exist;
theism, the view that God exists; and
agnosticism, the view that whether or not God exists is unknown or unknowable. Although once regarded as a non-issue in much of western academia, the question of the existence of God is now subject to lively debate both in philosophy
[1] and in popular culture.
[2]
Philosophical issues
Definition of God's existence
Main articles: Definition,
God,
Deity,
Ontology
Today in the West, the term "
God" typically refers to a
monotheistic concept of a Supreme Being that is unlike any other being. Classical
theism asserts that God possesses every possible perfection, including such qualities as
omniscience,
omnipotence, and perfect
benevolence. Of course this definition is not the only possible definition of "God". Other philosophical approaches take a logically simple definition of God such as "
the Prime Mover" or "
the Uncaused Cause",
[3] or "the Ultimate Creator"
[4] or "a being greater than which nothing can be conceived"
[5] from which the classical properties may be deduced.
[6] By contrast
Pantheists do not believe in a personal God. For example,
Spinoza and his philosophical followers (such as
Einstein) use the term 'God' in a particular philosophical sense, to mean (roughly) the essential substance/principles of Nature.
[7]
In the
Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, reality is ultimately seen as being a single, qualityless, changeless being called
nirguna Brahman. However, nirguna Brahman is understood to be beyond "ordinary" human comprehension.
[8] What we ordinarily perceive - that is, a world of many things - is brought on by consequences of our actions. Thus, 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.
Polytheistic religions use the word "
god" for multiple beings with varying degrees of power and abilities. Some
stories such as those of
Homer and
Ovid portray gods arguing with, tricking and fighting with one another.
Epistemology
Main articles: Epistemology,
Sociology of knowledge
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy which studies the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge. One cannot be said to "know" something just because one believes it.
Knowledge is, from an epistemological standpoint, distinguished from
belief by
justification.
Knowledge in the sense of "
understanding of a
fact or
truth" can be divided in ''
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) falls in the second, ''a priori'' class of "knowledge".
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; some examples include
★ 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.
The problem of the supernatural
One problem posed by the question of the existence of a 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 most concepts of God, God is not part of the natural order, but the ultimate creator of nature and of the scientific laws.
Religious apologists offer the supernatural nature of God as one explanation of the inability of
empirical methods to decide the question of God's existence. In
Karl Popper's philosophy of science, the assertion of the existence of a supernatural God would be a
non-falsifiable hypothesis, not in the domain of scientific investigation. The
Non-overlapping Magisteria view proposed by
Stephen Jay Gould also holds that the existence (or otherwise) of God is beyond the domain of science.
Proponents of
intelligent design (I.D.) believe there is empirical evidence for
Irreducible complexity pointing to the existence of an intelligent creator, though their claims are challenged by most in the scientific community. Even some scientifically literate theists appear to have been impressed by the observation that certain natural laws and universal constants seem "fine-tuned" to favor the development of life (see
Anthropic principle). However, reliance on phenomena which have not yet been resolved by natural explanations may be equated to the pejorative
God of the gaps.
Logical positivists, such as
Rudolph Carnap and
A. J. Ayer viewed any talk of gods as literally
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.
Nature of relevant Proofs/Arguments
Since God (of the kind to which the Proofs/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 normal scientific question.
John Polkinghorne suggests that the nearest analogy to the existence of God in Physics are the ideas of
Quantum Mechanics which are paradoxical but make sense of a great deal of disparate data.
[10] However you cannot do experiments on God, and, if God exists and is indeed the creator of reality, God created the laws of Physics and is not necessarily bound by them, so it will inevitably be more difficult to reason reliably about God
[11].
Alvin Plantinga compares the question of the existence of God to the question of the existence of other minds: both of which are notoriously impossible to "prove" against a determined skeptic
[12].
One approach, suggested by writers such as
Stephen D. Unwin, is to treat (particular versions of) the existence of God or
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
[13] 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
[14].
Arguments for the existence of God
★ The
Cosmological argument argues that there was a "first cause", or "prime mover" who is identified as God.
★ The
Teleological argument argues that the
universe's order and complexity are best explained by belief in a loving creator God.
★ The
Ontological argument is based on arguments about a "being greater than which can not be conceived".
Alvin Plantinga formulates this argument to show that if it is logically possible for God (a necessary being) to exist, then God exists
[15].
★ The
mind-body problem argument suggests that the relation of consciousness to materiality is best understood in terms of the existence of God.
★ Arguments that some non-physical quality observed in the universe is of fundamental importance and not an
epiphenomenon, such as
justice,
beauty,
love or
religious experience are arguments for
Theism as against
Materialism.
★ The
Anthropic argument suggests that basic facts, such as our existence, are best explained by the existence of God.
★ The
Moral argument argues that the existence of objective morality depends on the existence of God.
★ The
Transcendental argument for the existence of God suggests that
logic,
science,
ethics, and other things we take seriously do not make sense if there is no god, and that atheistic arguments must ultimately refute themselves if pressed with rigorous consistency.
★ 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).
★ Arguments based on claims of
miracles wrought by God associated with specific historical events or personages.
Arguments from historical events or personages
★
Islam asserts that the life of
Mohammad and especially the revealing of the
miraculous Quran by an
angel similarly vindicates
Islam.
★
Judaism asserts that God intervened in key specific moments in history, especially at the
Exodus and the giving of the
Ten Commandments, thus demonstrating his special care for the Jewish people, and ''a fortiori'' his existence.
★ The
argument from the life of Jesus. This asserts that
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, that in this he was either deluded, deceitful or truthful, and that it is possible to assess Jesus's character sufficiently from the accounts of his life and teaching to rule out the first two possibilities.
C S Lewis put forward this argument (the
Trilemma) and it is followed in the widely adopted
Alpha Course.
[16]
★ The argument from the
Resurrection of
Jesus. This asserts that there is sufficient historical evidence for Jesus's resurrection and that this vindicates his claim to be Son of God and ''a fortiori'' God's existence.
[17]
★
Mormonism similarly asserts that the miraculous finding of the
Book of Mormon vindicates
Mormonism.
★
Thelema's
Liber Al Vel Legis is generally offered as proof of the existence of a supernatural being of some sort, the internal evidence for which deals heavily in Qabalistic theory.
Inductive arguments (for)
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?''.
[18]
Arguments from testimony (for)
Arguments from testimony rely on the testimony or experience of certain 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.
[19]
★ 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 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.
★ 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.
★ 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.
[20] God's existence, then, cannot be proved--Jacobi, like
Immanuel Kant, rejected the absolute value of the principle of causality--it must be felt by the mind.
★ In his '',
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 (died
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 inessential.
[21]
★ 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.")
Arguments against the existence of God
Each of the following arguments aims at showing that some particular conception of a god is either inherently meaningless,
contradictory, or contradicts known
scientific and/or
historical facts, and that therefore a god thus described does not exist.
Empirical arguments (against)
Empirical arguments depend on
empirical data in order to prove their conclusions.
★ The
argument from inconsistent revelations contests the existence of the Middle Eastern, Biblical deity called God as described in holy scriptures, such as the
Jewish Tanakh, the
Christian Bible, or the
Muslim Qur'an, by identifying apparent contradictions between different scriptures, within a single scripture, or between scripture and known facts.
★ 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
argument from poor design contests the idea that God created life on the basis that lifeforms exist which 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 contends that since natural (non-supernatural) theories adequately explain the
development of religion and belief in god
[22], the actual existence of such supernatural agents is superfluous and may be dismissed unless otherwise proven to be required to explain the phenomenon.
Deductive arguments (against)
Deductive arguments attempt to prove their conclusions by
deductive reasoning from true premises. These arguments inherently depend on specific definitions of the term "God".
★ The
omnipotence paradox suggests that the concept of an
omnipotent God is logically contradictory, from considering a question like: "Can God create a rock so big that He Himself could not lift it?" or "If God is all powerful, could God create a being more powerful than Himself?". It is reasonable to assume that God knows all the answers, then, if one were to ask the question: Please tell me something you don't know. If God confirms, it would mean that God does not have all the answers, which contradicts the assumption. If God knows everything, then he does not have the answer to this particular question. The cycle continues.
★ Another argument suggests that there is a contradiction between God being omniscient and omnipotent, basically asking "how can an All-Knowing Being change His mind?" See the article on
omniscience for details.
★ 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.
★ The
Transcendental argument for the non-existence of God contests the existence of an intelligent creator by suggesting that such a being would make logic and morality contingent, which is incompatible with the presuppositionalist assertion that they are necessary, and contradicts the efficacy of science. A more general line of argument based on this argument,
[23], seeks to generalize this argument to all necessary features of the universe and all god-concepts.
★ The counter-argument against the
Cosmological argument (''"chicken or the egg"'') states that if the Universe had to be created by God because it must have a creator, then God, in turn would have had to be created by some other God, and so on. 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.
★ It is alleged that there is a logical impossibility in theism: God is defined as an extra-temporal being, but also as an active creator. The argument suggests that the very act of creation is inconceivable and absurd beyond the constraints of time and space, and the fact that it cannot be proven if God is in either.
[24]
Inductive arguments (against)
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 or perfect being would not have any reason to act in any way, specifically creating the universe, because it would have no desires since the very concept of desire is subjectively human. As the universe exists, there is a contradiction, and therefore, an omnipotent god cannot exist. This argument is espoused by
Scott Adams in the book ''
God's Debris''.
Subjective arguments (against)
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 where specific religions give differing accounts as to what God is and what God wants. All the contradictory accounts cannot be correct, so many if not all religions must be incorrect.
★ The
Argument from a Proper Basis mentioned in the "Arguments From Testimony (For)" section of this article is in itself inherently flawed. It argues that the existence of god should be accepted despite being unprovable, because statements such as "I see a chair" or "I feel pain" can also not be proven through scientific method, when in fact they can. Seeing a chair can be verified by asking the subject to point in the direction of the chair, whilst pain can be detected through sudden elevated levels of serotonin and adrenaline in the brains frontal cortices responsible for the sensation of touch and pain. Taking statements like "god exists" at face value is more comparable to accepting similarly unprovable statements without question, such as "pigs can fly".
★ The "Need for an Answer" argument states that if God needs no beginning and needs no end, why does the cosmos need a begininng and end so badly that humans need create concepts such as a divine creator and the
apocalypse without proof.
Conclusions
Conclusions on the existence of God can be roughly divided into three camps: ''theist'', ''atheist,'' and ''agnostic''.
Theism
The
theistic conclusion is that the arguments indicate there are sufficient reasons to believe in the existence of God or gods.
God exists and this can be demonstrated
The ''
Catechism of the Catholic Church'', following the
Thomist tradition and the dogmatic definition of the
First Vatican Council, affirms that it is a doctrine of the
Catholic Church that God's existence has been rationally demonstrated. For the proofs of God's existence by
Saint Thomas Aquinas see
Quinquae viae. Many other Christian denominations share the view that God's existence can be demonstrated without recourse to claims of revelation.
On beliefs of Christian faith, theologians and philosophers make a distinction between:
#doctrines arising from
special revelation that arise ''essentially'' from faith in divinely inspired revelations, including the life of Christ, but cannot be proved or even anticipated by reason alone, such as the doctrines of the
Trinity or the
Incarnation, and
#doctrines arising from
general revelation, that is from reason alone drawing conclusions based on relatively obvious observations of the world and self.
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 insisted 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".
[25] In this Paul alludes to the proofs for a Creator, later enunciated by St. Thomas
[26] and others, but that had also been explored by the Greek philosophers.
Another apologetical school of thought, a sort of synthesis of various existing 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 mentioned above 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 don't 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. In other words, they attempt to prove the existence of God by means of appeal to the alleged
transcendental necessity of the belief -- indirectly (by appeal to the allegedly 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 for the Existence of God. 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.
God exists, but this cannot be demonstrated or refuted
Others have suggested that the several 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
Yahweh or
Vishnu or
Zeus, or some other deity of attested human religion, exists, and if so, which deity. Most of these arguments do not resolve the issue of which of these figures is more likely to exist, although all empirical arguments suggest that none of them do.
Blaise Pascal suggested this objection in his ''
Pensées'' when he wrote "The God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob — not the god of the philosophers!", see also
Pascal's wager.
Some Christians note that the Christian faith teaches "
salvation is by
faith",
[27] 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.
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 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 discussed above.
An intermediate position is that of
Alvin Plantinga who holds that a specific form of
modal logic and an appeal to world-indexed properties render belief in the existence of God rational and justified, even though the existence of God cannot be proven in a mathematical sense. Plantinga equates knowledge of God's existence with kinds of knowledge that are rational but do not proceed through proof, such as sensory knowledge.
[28]
Atheism
The
atheistic conclusion is that the arguments indicate there are insufficient reasons to believe in the existence of God or gods.
Strong atheism
Strong atheism is the position that a god or gods do not exist. The strong atheist explicitly asserts god's non-existence
[29]. Some strong atheists further assert that the existence of some or all gods is logically impossible, for example claiming that the combination of attributes which God may be asserted to have (For example:
omnipotence,
omniscience,
omnipresence,
transcendence,
omnibenevolence) is logically contradictory, incomprehensible, or absurd, and therefore that the non-existence of such a god is ''
a priori'' true. It needs to be noted that believing the qualities of a particular God to be contradictory is not the sole basis of strong atheist; many strong atheists would assert that, owing to the lack of evidence, even a god described in a manner that was not contradictory is still unlikely to exist. It should also be noted that many religions credit human achievements to God, many strong atheists consider this to be outrageous, and that human achievements are the result of millions of years of inspiration and innovation.
Weak atheism
The term
weak atheism is used of those who do not believe that a god or gods exists. This is different from
agnosticism which states that the existence of God is either unknown or unknowable. There is some controversy in the use of this term.
Richard Dawkins in ''
The God Delusion'' uses the term "strong atheist" but not "weak atheist"
[30]
Agnosticism
The term
agnosticism refers to the philosophical position that the existence of God is unknown, specifically in distinction from
theism and
atheism. A stronger form of this position, also called agnosticism, is that the question of whether or not God exists cannot be known - this is sometimes called "strong" agnosticism. This seems to have been the position of
Thomas Huxley who coined the term
[31]; however, other self-described Agnostics like
Anthony Kenny hold the "weaker" position
[32].
Psychological Issues
In his book "Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion,"
Todd Tremlin argues that universal human cognitive process naturally produce gods. In particular, an agency detection device (ADD) and a theory-of-mind module (ToMM) lead us to expect an agent behind every event. We err on the side of attributing agency where there isn't any - a trait that no doubt served our ancestors well.
We ask why we are here and whether life has purpose; we are anxious about being alone. Religious beliefs may recruit the cognitive mechanisms.
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 parent to care for us, the obsessional nature of
ritual, and the hypnotic state a community can induce.
See also
★
Apologetics
★
Conceptions of God
★
Elohim
★
Existence of Jesus
★
God in Buddhism
★
God in Hinduism
★
God in Sikhism
★
Gödel's ontological proof
★
Metaphysics
★
Mythology
★
Philosophy of religion
★
Polemic
★
Problem of evil
★
Quinquae viae
★
Rationalism
★
Spectrum of Theistic Probability – a way of categorizing ones belief about the existence of a deity, first formulated by
Richard Dawkins in "
The God Delusion"
Further reading
★
The Classical Islamic Arguments for the Existence of God by Majid Fakhry
★
Philosophy of Religion.Info Introductory articles on philosophical arguments about the existence of God (for and against)
★
A collection of arguments for the existence of God
★
Jesus Evidence Arguments for the existence of God based upon the evidence for Jesus Christ.
★
Christian Bible God/Jesus Truth A collection of Bible quotes pertaining to the flawed morality of God.
★
Arguments for the Existence of God from the Christian Cadre.
★
Proofs of God's Existence - Islam - Ahmadiyyat
★
Arguments for Atheism from
Infidels.org
★
StrongAtheism.net References page A listing of references containing atheistic arguments.
★
"50 simple proofs" that God is imaginary.
★
The Existence of God - Catholic Encyclopedia
★ ''The Rationality of Theism'' London: Routledge (2003) ISBN 0415263328 - a collection of essays by 13 philosophers exploring the arguments for and against the existence of God
★
Does the Divine exist ?
Notes
1. see eg ''The Rationality of Theism'' quoting Quentin Smith "God is not 'dead' in academia; he 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. Consider the sales and lively discussion of a whole raft of recent books arguing for and against theism, such as The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and The Language of God by Francis Collins
3. Both following Aquinas, see Quinquae viae.
4. A modern re-statement, see [1]
5. Following Anselm's Ontological argument
6. See Swinburne's ''Does God Exist?'' or Polkinghorne
7. See the articles on them, and especially Einstein's 1940 paper in Nature
8.
9. Agreed by everyone from Dawkins to Ward to Plantinga
10.
11. see eg
12. see his ''God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God'' Cornell (1990) ISBN 0801497353 and ''Warranted Christian Belief'' OUP (2000) ISBN 0195131932
13. See eg the Beale/Howson debate published in Prospect May, 1998
14. see eg ''The Probability of God'' by ''Stephen D. Unwin'' its criticism in The God Delusion, and the critical comment in that article.
15. PLANTINGA, ALVIN (1998). God, arguments for the existence of. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved March 03, 2007, from [2] he attributes this to Charles Hartshorne
16. See the books by Nicky Gumbel on the subject.
17. Contains a highly scientifically-aware discussion of the evidence.
18. (Stuttgart, 1908)
19.
20. (A. Stöckl, ''Geschichte der neueren Philosophie'', II, 82 sqq.)
21. (Stöckl, loc. cit., 199 sqq.)
22. ''Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought'', Pascal Boyer, Basic Books (2001)
23. materialist apologetics
24.
25.
26. For the proofs of God's existence by Saint Thomas Aquinas see Quinquae viae.
27. 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." (Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.)
28.
29. Richard Dawkins is the most famous contemporary example, in a line stretching back through Russell and Marx to the 18th Century
30. The God Delusion p50
31. see the SOED entry on Agnostic
32. see Kenny op cit
14. ^ See eg
The Probability of God by
Stephen D. Unwin, its criticism in
The God Delusion, the critical comment in that
article, and
elsewhere.
References and Further Reading
★ Broad, C.D.
"Arguments for the Existence of God," ''Journal of Theological Studies'' 40 (1939): 16-30; 156-67.
★ Jordan, Jeff.
"Pragmatic Arguments for Belief in God", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition)'', Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
★ Cohen, Morris R.
"The Dark Side of Religion," ''Religion Today, a Challenging Enigma'', ed. Arthur L. Swift, Jr. (1933). Revised version in Morris Cohen, ''The Faith of a Liberal'' (1946).
★ FreeThoughtPedia
"Common Theist Arguments" and
"Theological Criticisms"
★ Haisch, Bernard.
The God Theory: Universes, Zero-Point Fields and What's Behind It All. Red Wheel/Weiser Books, 2006.
★ Hume, David. 1779, ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion''. Richard Popkin (ed), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998.
★ Mackie, J.L. ''The Miracle of Theism''. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982.
★ Nielson, Kai. ''Ethics Without God''. London: Pemberton Books, 1973.
★ Oppy, Graham.
"Ontological Arguments", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2005 Edition)'', Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
★ Paley, William, 1802, ''Natural Theology''. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.
★ Plantinga, Alvin. ''Warranted Christian Belief''. Oxford Univ. Press, 1993.
★ Pojman, Louis P. ''Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology'', Fourth Ed., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2003. ISBN 0-534-54364-2.
★ Ratzsch, Del.
"Teleological Arguments for God's Existence", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2005 Edition)'', Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
★ Rouvière, Jean-Marc, ''Brèves méditations sur la création du monde'' L'Harmattan, Paris (2006), ISBN 2-7475-9922-1.
★ Swinburne, Richard. ''The Existence of God''. New York: Clarendon, 1991.
★
The Non-Existence of God: An Introduction, , Nicholas, Everitt, London: Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0-415-30107-6
★
The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the existence of God, , J. L., Mackie, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-19-824682-X
★
The Existence of God, , Wallace I., Matson, , 1965,
★ McTaggart, John & McTaggart, Ellis (1927). ''The Nature of Existence.'' Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
★
Logic and theism: Arguments for and against beliefs in God, , Jordan H., Sobel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-87975-307-2
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