The Existence of God

This subject had been touched on several times in the Problem of Evil thread, so I thought it merited it's own thread since I know it's a subject people tend to have strong opinions and reasons for those opinions on...

I suppose a good place to start is with the classical 'proofs' for the existence of God.

First is Anselm of Canterbury's Ontological argument. He defines God for the purposes of this argument as 'That which no greater can be concieved.' This is a fair definition if going with a First Cause notion of the Creator. So, Anselm says, if you can think of God who does not possess the property of existence, there is clearly something greater which can be concieved- the same God only with the property of existence.

Anselm says:

"And certainly that than which a greater cannot be imagined cannot be in the understanding alone. For if it is at least in the understanding alone, it can be imagined to be in reality too, which is greater. Therefore if that than which a greater cannot be imagined is in the understanding alone, that very thing than which a greater cannot be imagined is something than which a greater can be imagined. But certainly this cannot be. There exists, therefore, beyond doubt something than which a greater cannot be imagined, both in the understanding and in reality."

Descartes uses a version of the Ontological argument. He argues it is as nonsensical to think of God without the property of existence as it is to think of a triangle without three sides or a hill without a valley. This clear and distinct idea of God has a source, and that is God. Otherwise it would be impossible for us, as contingent, limited beings, to imagine something perfect unless that perfect thing was putting the idea there.

The Cosmological arguments are based on the existence of the universe.

The kalam argument is:
(1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.
(2) The universe has a beginning of its existence.
Therefore:
(3) The universe has a cause of its existence.
(4) If the universe has a cause of its existence then that cause is God.
Therefore:
(5) God exists.

The version presented by Aquinas in his Five Ways, is based on contingency. The universe is contingent, and that requires something necessary to create it.

The Teleological arguments are the arguments from design. Paley's Watchmaker is probably the best known example of this argument.

To these three classical arguments can be added Kant's Moral argument. It is later developed by CS Lewis in Mere Christianity. Basically, we have a sense of Morality, of the Natural Law that says some things are right or wrong. Note that neither Kant nor Lewis are concerned with moral specifics, but the universal drive for morality that leads us to set moral standards and laws. The source of this sense of morality, based on its power, must be God, the "supreme commader" of the universe, so to speak, the only possible candidate to issue commands with such authority.

Individual believers will often argue from their experience; of course this argument, whilst ultimately the most convincing for the believer, is probably the least convincing to the outsider.

As Aquinas and others have pointed out though, that arguments for the existence of God aren't there to convince people or to provide actual PROOF. They are an explanation of the believers' mindset, an effort to present the universe the believer sees, and to show it to be internally coherent.

One thing I'm curious about it all of this is why the range of thinkers that you have quoted have always found it necessary to construct a logical argument for why god or some supreme being exists.

There has been a lot of time and thought put into this, often by people who are supposedly believe in God anyway, in the sense of having faith in Him (in the orthodox Christian notation).

The other thing is the existence of a moral drive. That doesn't presuppose God IMO. H. sapiens is a complicated species in many ways, but part of the biological urge on a species level (regardless of what individual members may decide) is to propogate the species. That requires breeding, and thanks to our development processes it requires some mechanism that causes most humans to care for their young, and not to randomly kill the young of the species.

If we ignore etiquette rules, which are (daft) constructs of society, most moral drives essentially say one or more of: don't kill breeders, don't kill children, protect breeders, protect children in some form. All these are rules that, for our species, are necessary for the species to survive.

We choose to add extras to that, looking after the elderly perhaps and the like, but there are societies where that is more important and societies where it is less important, so perhaps it is a cultural rule but common because it assists the protect breeders and protect children rules - extra child care and passing on lessons to the kids.

Now I'm not adamant that something that I might label as God doesn't exist, but I can explain away moral drives, at least to my satisfaction, without resorting to the need for a deity.

Jinny,

I would say the following:-

Since the beginning of time, Man has created Gods, all of which were the only true Gods. Most of these Gods now no longer attract human belief, apart from a few of them. Depending on where on the globe you live, you are likely to believe in one or other of them.

In view of the fact that the Christian God is only one of many, and in view of the fact that the many, like the Christian God, are repesented as the one true deity, it is highly unlikely that the Christian God is any more real than the others.

I touched on that at the end- it is more to defend believers against claims of bad logic or being unreasonable. It is more to show that accepting the existence of God isn't a completely ridiculous thing to do.

But I do think it comes down to experience, as does all things. One experiences things, and applying reason to them, decides thay were experiences of God, or not, as the case may be.

You raise some interesting points about morality.

There has been far from a consistent moral drive to protect the young, or indeed the breeders. Infanticide has been regularly practised by many cultures, often because the baby has the misfortune to be female, and thus a potential breeder. As we know women have been treated like property by many cultures, basically as breeding machines or status symbols.

I'm going to quote and paraphrase Lewis here, as he deals with a similar objection to his notion of Moral Law.

He is asked my many: "Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?"

Lewis replies... basically, the herd instinct is not the moral law. He says: "We... know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct-- by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food... and of course we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not."

He gives the example... we hear the cry for help of a drowning man. We have two instincts that come into play. Our "herd instinct" tells us to help the man. Our self-preservation instinct tells us to keep out of danger. What Lewis means by the Moral Law is another thing altogether-- the thing that tells us to follow our herd instinct and help the man, not our self-preservation instinct.

"The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys."

I'm not talking about a specifically Christian notion of deity here-- the notion of Unmoved Mover, Uncaused Cause, Grand Poobah of the Universe, goes back to the ancient Greeks. Indeed, Aquinas is largely rehashing Aristotle in Christian terminology.

Eloise,

IMV you are right to say that the moral drive has nothing to do with any deity. It's been there while a whole succession of them has passed.

The moral drive is complex, because we are a complex social animal. If you look at the qualities of 'good' and 'evil', you will see that the good tends to be that which has a binding effect on society, and evil is what has a destructive effect.

Interestingly enough, people are finding out more and more that some animals have a sense that might be called moral. To me, the most interesting one came with the discovery of a particular skeleton of Smilodon, the sabre-toothed tiger. Not an animal one would suppose to be prone to moral ambiguities.

The skeleton was of an old female, and the bones showed that the individual was crippled with arthritis. In fact the condition was so bad, it was said that the she would have been completely incapable of hunting for many years. The only conclusion that could be reached was that she was kept alive because she was fed by other individuals. Clearly the group felt that she contributed in some way, and felt the 'moral need' to keep her alive.

In the same way we feel the 'moral need' not to steal, for example, because widescale theft would cause the breakup of our society, and would therefore have a deleterious effect on the survival of our species.

you Kant, you!

Jinny,

Define your God!

Actually, once you start talking about a prime mover you start to enter areas of ambiguity. Following that train of thought it could be said that the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity, electromagnetic force, all make up God. Clearly, those forces are not endowed with any consciousness or will.

I would have thought that the one thing that differentiated the scientific view of the prime mover and the theological one, is that the theological one requires that there is some specific connexion between the deity and human beings.

Certainly, if you are not talking about the Christian God or Allah, or Vishnu or one of the others, then you are talking about something that the adherents of these religions probably wouldn't recognise as a God at all.

Jinny,

Who you calling a Kant?

PS: Speaking as someone totally ignorant of philosophy, is that what he said? I must try to read him some time.

Actually i was trying to use breeders as the young post-pubescents and young adults of either sex, hence a word that was as non-gender-specific as possible. Perhaps it was a bad choice though.

Anyway, yes I agree there are cultures which have overriden that imperative, often with some very interesting rationales, and invading armies often kill infants to establish their gene pool quickly, but it isn't all that common.

I suspect it leads us into a very different debate though - If we don't require God for morals, we can then start looking at how cultures impose rules on it members and how these cultural rules interact with our biological imperatives.

From: someone

I'm going to quote and paraphrase Lewis here...

But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not."

He gives the example... we hear the cry for help of a drowning man. We have two instincts that come into play. Our "herd instinct" tells us to help the man. Our self-preservation instinct tells us to keep out of danger. What Lewis means by the Moral Law is another thing altogether-- the thing that tells us to follow our herd instinct and help the man, not our self-preservation instinct.

Not convinced. I am happy that most people have a drive to help the herd and a drive to self-preservation. Two conflicting impulses in the situation described. But people who wouild regard themselves as moral in any other situation might not take the moral path here. People who might be regarded as not that moral (soldiers say) might be much more likely to offer help, even if on another day they might be killing or raping the person that they are risking their lives to save today.

I think that these two drives are expressed at different intensities in different people. People with a strong herd instinct might choose to become teachers, nurses, police officers etc. But the cops require a lower drive to self-preservation than the other two roles.

Now Lewis saying the urge to rescue people is the moral thing to do is possibly correct - but he is saying that after about 1500 years of broadly Christian influences shaping our society. Christianity would say that is the correct thing to do, so Lewis will say it is the moral thing to do. But I suspect we are back to that point where we need to think about whether the culture is saying this is the right thing to do rather than there being any requirement for an external set of morals.

Jinny nice post.

Let me qualify myself b4 interjecting. I have a masters in philosophy from Columbia university. As an undergrad my majors were philosophy and art w a minor in religious studies. I was raised southern Baptist and used to go to church and witness ppl fall to the ground twitching and speaking in tongues and crazy shit like that. I even saw my own mother do it. It freaked me out hardcore but was so very cool. Also ppl that couldnt walk would suddenly spring up and have their own lil personal Hammertime (break it down..lol). I wish I had a camcorder but they didn’t exist then. hehe. Having said that i will also tell u upfront i am a Philosophical Materialist in the strict sense of the word (with a dog named buddha.) My wife is Mexican roman catholic and I activey read the Tibetian Book of the Dead for plesure. Ok enough about me let move get to the point.

I am very familiar w all the arguments u have touched upon... nice job btw but how could u leave out Nietzsche? God is dead no? hehe. Anyway after studying and dealing w the question of god's existence my entire adult life I have to say I find it so totally unimportant. I mean it is obviously not something w can prove or disprove though empirical evidence. Most ppl r religious in the world. Most ppl adopt religious beliefs (either consciously or unconsciously) out of necessity and/or convenience. The fact is the questions that resonate thru our being (i.e. Where did we come from? Where r we going? What does it mean? etc.) r too time consuming and frightening for most to attempt to answer our their own. Religion (the service and worship of God or the supernatural as defined by Webster’s) provides a wonderful and convenient parcel of answers to these questions most often by invoking the non-material. This serves the needs of the masses. The rest of us go around w a ruler measuring everything looking for empirical evidence to support our collection of secular believes.

It has always seemed to me to an exercise in futility to continue this life old questioning of god's existence. Those w true faith do not listen to logic anyway nor should they...they have the gift of blind faith. That is both good and bad as I see it but it does make such discussion very fruitless. I am sure of the reason for ur post but I love it. I think it wonderful to encourage such thought and would suspect on some level it is a question u r interested in attempting to answer and for that I commend u. The answers surely don’t exist here in the forums…though that would be way cool.

My personal feeling is let those of u who have faith not be challenged by such discussions. Let those u attempt to answer the questions have the strength and perseverance to forge forward and be careful not to over indulge in what Kierkegaard so brilliantly described as “floundering in the possible”.

Ok I wrote this while totally stoned. So if i left out so words or didn’t follow though w some of points forgive me. It is something I feel passion about and just responded viscerally. And by the way I love kant *winks.

I think those of us form the western world stand to gain a great deal by reading more philosophy from the east. OHM...OHM.

Before I discuss the existence of God (a great hobby of mine), I'd like throw out an observation.

When a philosopher tackles the subject of the existence God, they often do so using every flavor of philosophy that's existed through the times with the exception of the most prolific one, the philosophy of sciences, otherwise known as the scientific method. Arguably, it has transformed mankind as no other branch of philosophy has, displacing most nonrational philosophies.

When someone in the field of general philosophy quotes works, the works could very well be thousands of years old, whereas someone in the field of the philosophy of sciences will often quote the newest works. Encompassing biology, physics, psychology, computer science, mathematics, engineering, and more, the philosophy of science is anchored by the largest testable knowledge base of any other branch of philosophy. It's a bedrock from which fledgling philosophies can stand with their feet firmly rooted.

For example, when I read my first evolutionary psychology book, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life by Robert Wright, it was like hearing the theory of natural selection for the first time. This new work presented an argument for human morality that was so simple and obvious. It was right in front of my face the whole time if I just would have looked.

Yet when I read, "If the universe has a cause of its existence then that cause is God," I can clearly see that it is a non sequitor. Why even bring up such an old argument of it contains an obvious logical fallacy? It's as if those who discuss philosophy outside of the philosophy of science are doomed to run in circles for all eternity repeating the same arguments regardless of their logical verity or testability.

~Ulrika~

well said ulrika.

oh btw when i clicked on the reply button i did not realize this was a group forum. i apologize. is the group forum open forum open for non-member posts?

plz forgive me!

So I do an experiment.

I get result X.

Boffin A reads my result and says, 'Result X is another proof of design in the universe.'
Boffin B reads my result and says, 'Result X is another proof of the random nature of existence.'
Boffin C reads my result and says, 'Result X is another fine example of blobby.'
Boffin D reads my result and says, 'Oooeee ooeee, wibble squiff, sp'tang twiddly doo-dah.' For Boffin D is a nutter.

'Hard' science produces facts, but what you do with them is entirely up to you. Result X doesn't "prove" what Boffin A, B, C or even D claim *about* result X.

Incidentally, the arguments were presented simply as an overview of the classical "proofs" for the existence of God. As a starting point. As people might notice from my posts, the only one I really give any credence to is the Moral argument, but even then, it's not a "proof". It is, as Aquinas said, just an explanation of what we have in mind when we talk about God.

The notion of cause is tied up with the old notions of contingent and necessary beings. The Universe is contingent, so the argument runs, and thus needs a Necessary Cause. This Necessary Cause is called God- but equally could be called Bob, Mr Blobby, Supreme Being X etc. The dispute is really whether the universe is contingent or not.

I'd have sworn I'd seen you at Thinkers dude-- are you not a member? If you want to join just trade cards with a prefect or ask and we'll invite you in.

right on! very cool of u indeed.

As I didn't make so clear in the other thread, "proving the existence of god" is almost a contradiction in terms. By the very definition of Judeo-Christian (and many other gods) his/her/its existence is not amenable to proof.

Or, as someone above put it, the folks who attempt a rational derivation of god are mixing their modes of inquiry.

That doesn't say anything about the premise. In philosophical jargon I am technichally an agnostic which means I beleive that the proposition "does god exist?" is simply unanswerable - almost axiomatically so.

By the same token that doesn't mean I'm going to call a believer wrong, because that word is inappropriate too.

There are times in my life where I wished I did believe in a supreme being because I know people who have found great solace in that when needed. Although ocassionally envious, I would have to overhaul so much of my belief system to do so, that it is highly unlikely. So it goes.

sorry for the hijack. two things...

1) when i posted my reply i wasnt aware of this group or the thread that led to the creation of this one. i am sorry for jumping in having not read any of the thread "the promlem w evil." plz accept my apology.

i will actively read these threads but refrian from posting such subjective rants until i get a better feel for the general tone and ways in which the group members interacts w one another.

u r all very interesting ppl w brilliant minds. i look forward in engaging in some of these topics as well as introducing a few of my own if appropriate.

2) just curous how many of the thinker groups members r either asetheist or agnostic? furhtermore r there any buddahist, chrisitans, pagans, scientoligits, muslims, rastafarians, satanists etc. in the group?

ty and now back to GOD TALK!

Darko feel free to comment as and when, in any form, you like .

I think the "bottom line" is experience, as it is with everything. This is why it's a matter of faith, and not mere belief. I know many people who believe in an academic way there may well be a supreme grand poobah of the universe-- I know one scientifically minded dude who claims to know beyond a shadow of a doubt God exists, yet has no "faith" in the God he claims he knows.

How one experiences God is a religious matter and beyond the scope of this thread, I think.

I think the cannabis plant is proof enough of design anyway...

right up...in fact i am skinnin one up 4 jesus right now.

Oops - I'm not a member either (I've maxed out). I didn't realise there was an etiquette about posting to group forums, so if I've contravened anything, please forgive me.

Don't worry chaps, I didn't realise there was an ettiquette either (is there one??), I'm just glad to see the Forum being used!

Maybe one day we'll convince you we are worth dropping a group for, Selador .

Hey! When you guys eventually find God could you ask him/her to please be a little more expedient on the next version of humans. I'm tired of getting the hiccups. I'm also curious about who's genius idea it was to have us walk upright -blasted hemmorhoids!

You see God, you let him or her know I want to have a word.

Rock Psaltery

Seriously though. I grew up in the church. I was once convinced there was a God. Now I mostly don't, though I do say a prayer every time I feel like I'm going to die.

One idea has remained constant throughout my life however, and that's the notion that heaven is the presence of all knowledge. It doesn't say that in the Bible or anything, but I've always thought that everything would come clear when I died. Every nuance of every decision linked to a clear and good outcome. I do think that there must be something out there that people tap into in various ways through their various religions and metaphysical understandings. Otherwise people wouldn't believe in them.

What's also interesting in the study of religion and faith is healing, which has always occured under questionable circumstances. Throughout history there have been quack doctors who have miraculously cured people with all kinds of odds and ends, and various techniques. It all points to the fact that our beliefs shape our reality in some sense. This truth is only starting to gain ground now as hospitals employ hypnotherapists to help with people's rehabilitation.

Anyway, I know that may be a bit off subject, but I know you thinkers can handle it.

Rock,

<<Otherwise people wouldn't believe in them.>>

Not sure I follow your logic. I can think of a very good reason why people believe in them, which can be stated in three words. Fear of death.