The Existence of God

For over a thousand years, European philosophers worked very hard at the really big question – can we prove that God exists. The Greeks and Romans weren’t too bothered – their gods were very different and were a simple explanation for lots of the good or nasty things that happened. But it was often still a hanging crime to say that they didn’t exist. But once most people had the ‘one, true God’ it became important – for one thing quite a few people started arguing about the ‘nature’ of God.
It is important to do this, not to attack anyone’s beliefs but because the existence of a God is used as an explanation by many people for many things. Think of ‘creationism’ for instance. Even the great philosopher, mathematician and scientist, René Descartes relied on a proof of God to establish that the material world exists. .
So, where do we start? Must a religious person rely only on belief, faith, or can they prove God by logical argument? .

Saint Thomas Aquinas rejected the idea that philosophy and theology (the study of God) were different – had a different kind of truth. He thought that there was just one truth. He suggested five ways or arguments that we could prove the existence of God. The first three are very closely related, arguments by ‘regression’. .
The Prime Mover. Movement, motion seems real to our senses. All motion requires a push or something to set it moving. Whatever the ‘mover’ may be, it had to be pushed itself or given the energy in some way. Each moving object is at the end of a long chain of movers acting on each other. So there most have been a ‘first mover,’ something that started everything else in motion. That could only be God. .
The First Cause. New things and life come into being all the time. Each event has a cause. The cause were also caused by a previous cause (ouch!). There is a long chain of causes and effects. What was the very first cause that did not need to be created – God. .
Contingency. Everything changes and everything is dependent on something else for it’s existence. There must be an original thing that is not – that everything else depends on in some way. That is God. .
Perfection. Everything has some degree of perfection. For instance, a flower may have a fault, a damaged petal, but we can see what a perfect flower might be. Everything is more, or less perfect but nothing we see is completely perfect – but we can understand that something, somewhere is perfect. That thing is God. .
Order. We can see order everywhere – in the way things grow and live. The universe has rules (physics) which control the way matter behaves, living and non-living. It runs like a watch – who is the watchmaker? God. Creationists often use this – they say that things are too complex to have evolved and must have been created by God.

These are all serious logical attempts to argue that a god exists. While the first three use the idea of working back to something that got the universe started or keeps it going, the second two use the idea that there is evidence of God all around us in everything. Unfortunately, each of these claims can be refuted in some way, often thanks to advances in science and better explanations.
For some people, the combination of the arguments are ‘good grounds’ to assume that God exists. For them, picking holes in the arguments one by one is a bit ridiculous. It’s the overall weight of argument that convinces.

Another ‘set’ of proofs are also available. They are –.
Cosmological – (after ‘Cosmos’) This is similar to the ‘cause’ and ‘order’ arguments of Augustine. It simply points out that the universe is impossibly huge and complex and something like that must have a designer or creator. It could not have just appeared, developed or happened – that’s just too unlikely. (See Ockham’s Razor). .

Teleological – (after ‘telos’, purpose). This extends the cosmological argument by analogy. For instance, everything around us has a purpose. If we find a watch on the beach, we do not assume that it just grew – it’s too complex. It is obviously designed and must have a purpose, even if we can’t work out what it is. Therefore, it is reasonable to think that everything must have a purpose and designer, including us. It’s not impossible that things just appeared, but it is unlikely. Then we only have to work out what our purpose might be. .

Ontological – This is a tough one but is absolutely logical. Hold on tight. Anselm was earlier than Aquinas and developed this argument which is difficult to follow but almost impossible to break – just like its own idea, it has a perfection to it. Again, it requires you to think of a chain of effects but this time they ascend rather than going back into time. .
He used a bible quotation “Fools say in their hearts that, ‘There is no God’.” (Psalm 14). .
Part One.
But, he pointed out, even a fool can imagine something or someone greater than himself. .
And then something greater than that again. And greater again. .
Therefore even a fool can imagine the ‘top of the ladder’ – something that is greater than anything else. And it would be perfect, because perfect is always greater than imperfect. .
So we can imagine a being who is perfect – there is nothing greater that can exist. .
This would be God and the idea, the possibility exists in the mind of everyone. .
Part Two.
We can only have in our mind something that does or could exist. .
If it exists in your mind, it would be contradictory to claim that it does not exist. .
Therefore, as we all have an idea of a perfect being we can call God, God must exist.

Now when you first read this it seems like nonsense. You might say, “I’ve got a great imagination. I can imagine things that don’t exist – chimera and hippogriffs (look them up) or little green aliens. Well, the fact is that they are usually based on things we know already or on things that could be. I could describe some animals in a way that would make them seem impossible – until I tell you what they are. That’s too simple an objection and easy to refute.
No, people have been trying to beat this one for a thousand years – they ‘feel’ that it’s wrong but they can’t knock it down. This is the one that Descartes used it to prove that the world of material, matter, actually exists and is not a dream.
One thing that bothers me about it is that it is reversible. Instead of ascending this ladder of goodness towards absolute perfect, we can just as easily descend the ladder through a series of imaginary and increasingly unpleasant and imperfect beings until we reach the logical absurdity of a 'perfectly imperfect' being.

Counter Arguments and Modern Views

Most people now accept the idea that there is a difference between religious truth and factual truth. The Greeks distinguished between episteme (knowledge) and doxa (belief).
From doxa we get the word ‘dogma’ which means ‘belief presented as truth’, usually in a very authoritarian way by a religious leader (‘accept this or go to hell’!).
Later, people talked about ‘Double Truth’ – both rational philosophical and scientific argument and religious argument are true but in different ways. Many people accept this explanation now – they want both Faith and Reason to be correct. .
A good example of this is the Theory of Evolution. Fundamentalist Christians who believe that every word in the Bible is correct as it is the word of God reject Evolutionary theory in favour of Creation. Some have even worked out that the world was created in about 4004BC! However most Christians accept that the creation account in the Bible is not meant to be read literally, especially the ‘seven days’ timescale but is a story designed to be understood by people with no scientific knowledge. I have met people who think that because they are Christians, they are required to refuse to accept evolutionary theory. Not so. The present Pope accepts Evolution, as do most major Christian leaders. One can think of it as God’s mechanism for creating species of animals and plants. That means that in this case, faith and scientific reason can exist side by side without problem. .
Occam's RazorPerhaps the most telling argument against God is provided by a monk, William of Ockham (c.1300-1349). It is possible that had he not died of the Black Death, the church may have had to burn him at the stake.
His principle is referred to as Ockham’s or Occam’s Razor (they weren’t so fussy about speling bak then). It is stated as ‘Do not multiply entities unnecessarily.’ Huh? This means that you should not invent unlikely or unnecessary explanations – you should prefer the simplest explanation possible. You use the ‘Razor’ to cut away anything unnecessary. For him, the idea of Plato inventing mysterious ‘Forms’ or Aristotle ‘Universals’ is ridiculous. The simplest explanation is that the material world exists and we can experience it. The trouble is that you can apply the razor to God. Why invent God to create everything when you can see quite plainly that the world is very busy creating itself? Again, the basic form of evolutionary theory is very simple and plausible and conforms to the principle.

Theodicy and the problem of evil

(Theodicy, a term coined by Leibnitz, means the justice of God).
There is a problem with the existence of God, based on our understanding of the nature of God. If we accept the ontological proof as the best and most logical proof then it implies that God is an omniperfect being (perfect in every possible way). This is the dogma of the major western religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
A perfect being would have to have certain characteristics by definition. It would be –
Omniscient – all knowing; nothing would be unknown to God. .
Omnipotent - all powerful; able to do anything. .
Omnibenevolent – perfection implies absolute goodness. .
Omnipresent – in all places and things (part of omniscience perhaps).
Now there is a logical problem for openers with omnipotence – if God is all-powerful and so able to do anything, can he make an immoveable object? Clearly not because if he makes it and then can’t move it he is not omnipotent. There is something that he can't move. But if he can’t make to be immoveable it he is not omnipotent. But this is a logical bind that would not impress a person with faith.
The presence of evil is far more difficult. If God is perfectly good, then how can He (I’ll use He for cultural convenience) allow evil to exist? There are a couple of neat answers.

The usual one is that the dark side has to exist so that we have choice - free will. We are tested by evil to see if we are worthy of God’s grace. Also there is no credit in being good if we did not have the opportunity to be bad. A person in a coma is good but has no choice to be anything else! We have to be good in an active way. But then, if God is omniscient, He already knows which one we will choose so there is no point in giving us free will.

Another is that if God is perfect he can lack nothing. Bad/evil exists so he must have that too or he would not be perfect. If that is the case, then he cannot be omnibenevolent, all good because he also incorporates malevolence. Therefore He is not perfect. Another logic trap. However it allows you to think of the spectrum developed in the ontological proof as a circle, with the imperfect end also leading to God - but on the dark side.

The last easy one is the ‘mysterious ways’ argument. We cannot hope to understand the mind of God bcause we simply can't understand, being lesser and imperfect beings - his mind and motive is mysterious. So if something awful happens like a natural evil event – an earthquake for instance – then those who died did so for reasons we cannot know. Possibly they were being punished; many people adopt the idea that God is just in the sense of being a judge of man – He punishes those who sin (a rather Judaic idea, rather than Christian but many Christians hold on to it). This is plausible but for me it falls on the death of a child. What possible sin could an infant have committed to deserve such punishment? Original sin perhaps (born in a state of sin) but then the child was denied the opportunity to redeem. This one shakes the faith of many who work in places where famine and disease kill many infants.

Eventually there is only one escape. Some people drop the idea of omnipotence. They take on a living force of evil, a Satan perhaps who engages in a fight with God for our soul. This is not technically Christian and may have its origin in the Manichean heresy – bits of the Persian Zoroastrian religion imported into the Christian world. It is very attractive to many who see evil as an actual ‘thing’ rather than the mere absence of good.

Another view is the ‘free-process’ view which rejects God as a ‘Cosmic tyrant’, operating a puppet theatre. This suggests that God merely set everything in motion as a First Cause and then lets nature take its course guided only by the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. We have complete free will and God judges our choices. This is wholly consistent with an acceptance of some form of evolutionary theory (there are several versions). Some versions suggest that God deliberately created an imperfect world which contains evil, or at least less-good events and choices, so that we would have the benefits of free will.

The eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism sidestep Theodicy by using reincarnation. The dead infant may have committed an evil deed in a former life. Life is a continuum of multiple lives and sin is carried over as your new life may be a punishment for the previous one. Neat. We even say (well I do) as a joke that 'it must be punishment because of something I did in a previous life', implying that we've been good in this one.

It’s no wonder that people in the west tend to rely on faith rather than logic these days as there seems no possibility of proving the existence of God by reason. In fact the weight of evidence seems to fall the other way. .
Many rely on some personal revelation or experience of God to establish their faith. However, there is a problem here too. Unlike Saul on the road to Damascus, people seem to have experiences that confirm their faith. Muslims never seem to have an experience of Christ or Christians of Allah. Neither do Hindus suddenly meet Jehovah, the Jewish God. These experiences are culturally unique for the most part although people may slide from one sect of a religion to another. That internal ‘consistency’ is grounds for suspicion of the validity of the religious experiences – if there is one true God, how can other people have experiences of a false God? If so many are having false experiences, how can we trust anyone’s claims to be true?