FAITH AND REASON: THE NATURE OF ARGUMENTS FOR THE
EXISTENCE OF GOD.
Reactions to the World Youth Day in Sydney earlier this year have been many and
varied. They range from comments made by young pilgrims that ‘this is the place to
be… what an incredible pilgrimage’ to the decidedly cynical observation of one
blogger on the Richard Dawkins’ website, who saw the whole exercise as totally
irrelevant for today’s world. Whatever your own reaction may have been, the fact
that so many did react in one way or another indicates that the events that took place
in Sydney from 15-20 July were not simply neutral; no, these events were
impregnated with meaning – and one tended to react either positively or negatively to
the meaning that was perceived. Perhaps this was well summed up by David Burchell
commenting in The Australian: “For all the obstacles placed in its way, the religious
impulse stubbornly refuses to die.”
In order for something to survive, it must be seen to have meaning within this wide
world of ours. We are rational beings, and this means that we need to engage in
discourses of meaning. Discourses that engender no meaning will soon be discarded
as irrelevant for authentic human existence. Within the sphere of religion and
theology, this fact is crucial in our understanding of what have been termed
‘arguments for the existence of God’. What lies at the heart of such arguments is not
the commonly perceived aim of seeking to prove through logical argument that a God
who may or may not exist does actually exist – as if the person engaged in such
arguments is religiously agnostic until the moment that the argument reaches its
conclusion. No, the classical arguments for the existence of God within Christian
theology are concerned with elucidating deeper meaning within the faith of the one
who already believes in God. In other words, the arguments are responses to the
question: does belief in God have meaning within this wide world of ours?
Arguments for the existence of God appear within the wider framework of the
question of the relationship between faith and reason. Some would hold that faith and
reason are opposed, that the fantasy world created by the uncertainty of faith will
eventually be replaced by the certainty that reason alone can provide. But surely this
comes from a misunderstanding of the nature and operation of both faith and reason in
our daily lives. In order to carry out the everyday tasks that are necessary for human
survival, we must have faith. I must have faith that the food I buy for my lunch is not
poisoned – but I do not know this for certain. If I had to test every morsel of food or
every drop of drink I consume in order to determine for certain whether or not it is
poisoned, life would soon become unmanageable. But at the same time, my reason
will influence my faith. If I buy food presuming it to be healthy, yet my reason tells
me that because of a suspicious odour this food may not be all that healthy, my reason
will influence my faith in the continuing safety of this food. Faith and reason are
intertwined. I have beliefs about the world, but my reason has to be involved in these
beliefs. We must avoid placing an absolute dichotomy between faith and reason.
When religious believers see reason as inimical to faith, we move towards religious
fundamentalism, religious extremism. In a recent article that appeared in the Sydney
Morning Herald, the former Dutch M.P. Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes how, during her
formative years in her native country of Somalia, she was brought up within a very
strict, fundamentalist religious tradition. It was one in which she was never
encouraged to question. Later in her life, she became educated within the context of
Enlightenment values that encouraged the use of reason; this led her to move away
from and reject the religious tradition of her childhood. Now she sees religion as an
enemy of reason within the West. Given her early experience of the narrowness of
religious fundamentalism, her present position is understandable. But the question
remains to be asked: does belief in God entail as a necessary consequence the
rejection of reason? Is religion necessarily the enemy of reason?
Let us focus on some of the arguments that have been put forward for the existence of
God and consider the nature of these arguments. Perhaps the most famous of the
classical arguments are those put forward by Thomas Aquinas in what has come to be
known as his Five Ways.
Thomas Aquinas was born at the end of 1224 or the beginning of 1225 at Roccasecca
near Naples. He came from a noble family, his father being Count of Aquino. His early
education was at the abbey of Monte Cassino. From 1239 until 1243 his studies
continued in arts at the University of Naples. In 1244, against the wishes of his family,
he entered the religious Order founded by St Dominic, the Dominicans. In 1252 Thomas
came to Paris and in 1257 was admitted as Master at the University of Paris, teaching
there until the end of the academic year, 1259. He then returned to Italy, teaching at
Orvieto, Rome, Viterbo and Naples. He died in 1274.
The world of the thirteenth century was a world of social, intellectual and religious
turbulence, and for that reason a fascinating world. Within theology, new influences
from Islamic and Aristotelian thought came into the universities and initiated
sometimes contentious debate about what had been regarded as the certainties of
traditional theology. In fact it seems clear that the period from the middle of the
twelfth to the end of the thirteenth century was a time of cultural and intellectual
upheaval that seriously unsettled the Western world. In the midst of such upheaval,
Thomas saw it as his task to draw out anew the meaning of the Christian faith in a
world that, culturally and intellectually, was radically different from the age that
preceded his.
It was within this context that Thomas produced his most voluminous work, the
Summa Theologiae. In the first part of this Summa, we find his outline of five
arguments to demonstrate the existence of God. Remember that Thomas was
convinced of the fundamental tenet of Christian theology as put forward by St
Augustine, the essential compatibility between faith and reason. In Thomas’ time, the
highest achievements of human reason were being recognised with the rediscovery of
the writings of the great Greek philosopher, Aristotle – referred to as The Philosopher.
One of Thomas’s main tasks was to show that the Christian faith is essentially
compatible with the thought of Aristotle.
Thomas saw it as vital that philosophy should be used within theology. In this sense,
he was faithful to the Augustinian theological tradition. Philosophy, however, would
not be simply placed side by side with traditional theological methodology; rather the
insights available through faith would transform human reason, allowing it to achieve
the potential it has by nature. Reason, in its turn, would provide deeper meaning to
what is already believed through faith. Thomas saw it as vital that philosophy should
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be used within theology, the two disciplines engaging in mutual interaction. The
insights available through faith would transform human reason, allowing it to achieve
the potential it has by nature. Reason, in its turn, would provide deeper meaning to
what is already believed through faith.
In Article 3 of Question 2 in the first part of the Summa, Aquinas proposes the
question, “Is there a God?” and begins his reply, “There are five ways in which one
can demonstrate that there is a God.”
He soon makes it clear, however, that he is not speaking of arguments that will prove
according to irrefutable logic that a being called God does in fact exist. Thomas is
rather concerned with the understanding of the use of our language. The question of
God’s existence centres around clarifying what we mean when Christian believers use
the word ‘God’.
Through the Five Ways, Thomas basically looks at phenomena in the world of human
experience and seeks to demonstrate that the meaning which we find in asserting that
these phenomena have some originating source is also that which we mean when we
use the word ‘God’. By following this procedure, he claims, it is possible to
demonstrate ‘that God exists’ by showing what the meaning of the word ‘God’ is
within human discourse.
Now when demonstrating from effects that God exists, we are able to start
from what the word ‘God’ means. (1a.2.2)
Each of the five Ways begins with an aspect of human experience, seen as effects in
our world. We are presented with a study of motion, of efficient causation, of the
possible and the necessary, of gradation in being and of the end purposes of things.
The Five arguments have Aristotelian philosophy as their foundation. (The first
argument draws heavily on Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. The Aristotelian origin of the
second and third arguments is indicated by the use as their key concepts of two wellknown Aristotelian ideas - (1) efficient cause and (2) 'what can be and what must be'.
Aquinas links the fourth argument, which is focused upon the gradation found in being,
with Aristotle's Metaphysics. The fifth argument, which speaks of that which directs all
beings towards their end, is traced back to Averroes' commentary on Aristotle's Physics.)
What Aquinas claims in his Five Ways is that when Christians use the word ‘God’, this
word has the same philosophical meaning as is found in Aristotle’s language concerning
the necessity of an originating source behind all that is. The total meaning of ‘God’ as
believed in by Christians is more than this, but the foundation of Christian belief is this
originating source behind all existence, which is also to be discerned in the thinking of
Aristotle.
Classical arguments for the existence of God take on a variety of forms – the
Cosmological argument, reflecting upon the nature of the cosmos; the Teleological
Argument, reflecting upon the claim that there appears to be design within the
universe; the Moral Argument, reflecting upon the source of morality; the Ontological
Argument, reflecting upon the meaning of the definition of God; the Argument from
Religious Experience, reflecting upon people’s claims to have experienced God.
Essentially all can be regarded as exercises to demonstrate, within a particular context
and under certain conditions, that faith in God can be seen as meaningful within the
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wider framework of the ways in which we reflect upon and understand our experience
of our entire world.
This is important in examining not only arguments that seek to support belief in God
but also in evaluating arguments that support the claim that God does not exist. In
many ways, the methodology is the same. The person who believes that there is no
God (note that we cannot logically prove once and for all either that God exists or that
God does not exist – both those who believe in God and those who do not believe in
God are believers) seeks to provide arguments that will demonstrate that the belief
that there is no God is a meaningful belief within the context of the ways in which we
reflect upon and understand our experience of the world.
Richard Dawkins lectured in Zoology at Oxford University. He is also an atheist – he
believes that God does not exist. Much of his more recent work is devoted to
explaining the existence of life within the context of a neo-Darwinian framework,
without postulating the involvement of supernatural forces. As a Darwinian, Dawkins
believes that evolution by natural selection can offer a full account of the nature of
our universe. The appearance of design in the world is to be attributed to blind forces
(the name of one of his books is The Blind Watchmaker) and evolutionary theory can
explain life without any need to refer to God. Arguments for the existence of God,
such as the Design Argument, are a futile waste of time, Dawkins claims, because
evolution has no purpose and there is no grand overall design for the universe.
Evolution has no long term goal… the criterion for selection is always short
term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success… the
‘watchmaker’ that is cumulative natural selection is blind to the future and has
no long term goal. (The Blind Watchmaker p.58)
Dawkins essential argument is that his belief that there is no God is the only
meaningful one in the light of his interpretation of an understanding of the
fundamental nature of the universe. In his 2006 book The God Delusion Dawkins
argues vehemently that belief in God is both irrational and profoundly harmful to
society. His argument was dissected by the Oxford Biophysicist and theologian
Alister McGrath, who responded to Dawkins in a work entitled The Dawkins
Delusion. Using the arguments of both scientists and theologians, McGrath argues
that, contrary to Dawkins, faith in God is not irrational. Dawkins may claim that
acceptance of Darwinian evolution necessitates atheism, but McGrath contends that
Darwinism is certainly compatible with religious belief.
Arguments for the existence of God, then, are not logical, empirical attempts to prove
that there must be a God. Their aim, rather, is to demonstrate that belief in God is a
meaningful and hence rational belief. Rationality can too quickly be assessed simply
according to the standards of empiricism formulated in the nineteenth century. The
influences of Hume and Kant restricted the scope of rationality to the exercise of
human reason solely within the domain of our experience of the material world. This
gave rise to the twentieth century domination of Logical Positivism.
But such an understanding of rationality can rightly be questioned. Rationality
pertains to thinking persons, not to propositions. Even when we are attempting to
come to a conclusion on the basis of the evidence that is before us, our decision is
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influenced not only by the evidence but my many other prior assumptions and
considerations that we bring to our assessment of the evidence.
Two historians, for example, may examine the same evidence but come to differing
conclusions (beliefs) about events on the basis of that evidence. We do not normally
say that one of the historians is irrational; on the contrary we may hold that both
positions are rational and move on to explain the variant conclusions in terms of the
prior assumptions which the historians may have held and subsequently brought to
their assessment of the evidence. We would only describe the conclusion as
irrational if we were to make the judgement that the historian’s assumptions or
methods of argumentation were irrational. Such an assessment would entail a
consideration of a very wide range of factors - an examination of the kind of evidence
which the historian has admitted as evidence, the principles of historical interpretation
followed within the tradition to which the historian belongs, and convictions about the
purpose of a human life which are acceptable within that tradition. It will be in the
light of the relationship to this wider framework, that the rationality of the historian’s
belief that such and such was the case will be assessed.
The question of the rationality of a belief, then, is seen to be a far wider question than
one which simply examines whether a particular proposition is justifiable according to
impersonal procedures of empirical enquiry. The rationality of a belief is not
established by considering the belief in isolation but rather in terms of its ability to be
acceptable in the light of other beliefs. We are not speaking about assessing whether
an individual proposition meets the standards set by an empirical process. The
rationality of a belief is to be assessed within the context of an evaluation of an
interacting network of factors which will defend or attack the veracity of that belief.
Belief in God can be held to be a rational belief, not because it is possible to prove
empirically from this experience that God exists. No, belief in God can be held to be
a rational belief when this belief is seen to have meaning and is acceptable within the
context of the other claims which arise from the believer’s engagement with the
natural and social world. If the belief does not cause irrational behaviour in the
subject’s engagement with the natural and social environment but rather has positive
implications for such engagement, the belief is acceptable in the light of other claims.
Belief in God remains a belief, it is based on faith not on logical proof. But
arguments for the existence of God seek to demonstrate that there are indeed grounds
within our experience of the world which show that what is believed is indeed
meaningful for understanding human existence.
Dr Paul Rout OFM
Heythrop College
University of London
(2820 words)
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