PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
•The Existence of God
–Reason and Faith
–God’s Attributes.
•Chance or Design?
•Cosmological Argument
•Ontological Argument. God: The Necessary Being?
•The Problem of Evil
•Agnosticism
Philosophy of Religion
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How is god/God to be conceived?
What is the nature of God?
Can reason establish that there is a god/God?
Are there any reasons, apart form religious faith itself, to
believe in the existence of God?
Reason and Faith
• Reason:
– Human intellect abilities
– Our capacity to form beliefs for good reasons, on the
basis of evidence: Empirical or Rational.
• Faith:
– A set of beliefs at least some of which are not supported
by evidence; faith goes beyond available evidence.
Faith is a gift of God- supernatural.
• Natural Theology
• The study of God, His
attributes and His relation
to the world.
• Beliefs are established by
reason working
independently of any
revelation.
• Dogmatic Theology
• A belief that is mandatory
for members of a
particular religion
God’s Divine Attributes
• Omnipotence:
– God is perceived
doctrinally as allpowerful.
– God can do anything.
– God created the world
ex-nihilo ( from
nothing)
• Omniscience:
– God is all-knowing.
– God just knows
– God knows
miraculously. God
Knows in a way
beyond our
understanding.
• Immutability:
– unchanging God.
• Eternally:
– God exists at any
moment of time.
• Omni benevolence:
– God is all good.
THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT or CHANCE
OR DESIGN?
• Argument: in its broadest sense it is an argument to support the
thesis that the universe is designed; not necessarily the creation of
a theistic God. When the Greeks spoke of a cosmic designer they
obviously had no idea of the God conceived by the Jewish,
Christian and Muslim traditions. In examining the Design
• Argument, therefore, we need to divide it into two parts: firstly,
the argument in support of a ‘Theistic God’; secondly, the
argument in support of a ‘Cosmic Design’
The Design Argument to Support the
Existence of a Theistic God
• It is important to be aware that under the term ‘theism’ there
exists a diverse range of polytheistic and monotheistic beliefs.
However, in this particular argument, as it was developed in the
eighteenth century, theism was usually understood as a reference
to the ‘classical’ concept of God, as elaborated by Thomas
Aquinas and most commonly understood by the Catholic and
Anglican traditions of the period. Briefly, God is perceived as
single, omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and
benevolent (all-good). This is also the orthodox view for Jews and
Muslims.
• THE ARGUMENT:
• Premises:
– The purposive organization of man-made object is evidence
of the intelligence and purpose of the maker.
– The world contains many natural objects (plants, animals,
human body, etc.) whose organization is clearly purposive
and the world itself is purposely organized.
• Conclusion:
– By analogy, there must be a maker of the universe who has
made it accordingly to a PLAN. The world maker/creator,
is God.
• The argument was elaborated by the Archdeacon of Carlisle
William Paley (1743-1805) in his book Natural Theology. He
asks us to imagine walking across a heath:
• ‘suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how
the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for
anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever; nor
would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this
answer. But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it
should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I
should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that,
for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet
why should not this answer serve for the watch, as well as for the
stone?’
• If you were to inspect the watch more carefully you would note
that it has several parts that work in an orderly, regular and
precise manner. Assuming you have never seen a watch before
you would still infer that the watch has a purpose of some kind
and that it must, therefore, have had a maker. What Paley is
doing here is using the argument from an effect to its cause:
you look at the effect (the watch), and then determine what
caused it (the Watchmaker).
• But what has this got to do with the Universe? Paley also uses
the argument from analogy: does not a natural object, like, for
example, the eye, also seem to be similar to the working of a
watch? In fact, when we look at various aspects of nature, can we
not conclude that nature itself is like a very complex machine? If
we are to infer that the watch has a watchmaker, then we must
also conclude that the universe has a Divine Maker!
Arguments against the Teleological Proof of the
Existence of a Theistic God
• Cause and Effect Argument:
Adopting the empiricist
approach: our knowledge of
causes and effects is based on
our experience. For example,
you know that if you cut
yourself with a knife then you
will bleed and feel pain. But
how do your know this?
Whatever the source of your
knowledge, the fact is that you
were not born with this fact, it
is not innate knowledge. You
had to learn it.
• Comparison Argument.
How can we be sure that this
world is so perfect?
• How many worlds have you
seen? This world, if it is made
by a creator, could actually be
something of a ‘botched job’
compared to other worlds!
However perfect it may seem
to us, we only have this world
(and, now, a few others we’ve
partially explored in this solar
system) to go on.
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The Design Argument to support the Existence of a
Cosmic Design
The Problem of Evil does raise a very important point: this
problem is not just attacking the argument of God’s existence, but
is questioning the nature of God as understand by orthodox
Christianity at the time.
If we are to accept the idea of there being a ‘Cosmic Design’ then
one may have a stronger argument.
However, consequently, the concept of ‘God’ may need to be
altered:
God is not benevolent. The fact that there is evil in the world
could be accepted if the Designer were not a benevolent one.
God is not omnipotent. Perhaps God’s powers are limited. It is
possible to create something and yet have limited power over
your creation, whether by choice or otherwise. Again, you might
imagine creating a computer world with artificial intelligence
(AI).
Arguments against the Teleological Proof of
the Existence of a Cosmic Design
• Chaos Theory. Another significant scientific theory that may
undermine the whole Design Argument is the belief that the
universe is not really all that ordered at all! As quantum theory
developed early this century, it became clear that at the
microscopic level, physical processes were indeterminate; they
were not predictable! Over the past thirty years or so it has
become clearer that the motion of many physical systems
(including planets) are not as regular as Newton had suggested. In
other words; nature is not as mechanical as the machines we make
at all, and, therefore, the analogy does not work! Such a theory
also lends support to Hume’s thesis that there is no obvious sense
in which the universe resembles human production. In fact, it
could be argued that human production is ‘better’ than the
universe, which is why we feel the need to produce things in the
first place!
Cosmological Argument
• The Cosmological Argument is based on 3 principles:
– 1. Something cannot be the cause of itself.
– 2. Something cannot be come from nothing.
– 3. There cannot be an infinite series of causes and effects.
• The Efficient Cause: (Aristotle)
• Efficient -Material - Formal - Final
• Sculptor/sculpting- marble/wood- characteristics-the object
Thomas Aquinas- Summa
Theologica
• Question II. The Existence of God
• A1.Whether the existence of God, is self
evident?
• A2. Whether it can be demonstrated that
God exists?
• A3. Whether God Exists?
Objections:
• Objection 1:
• It seems that God does not
exist:
• God means-infinite
goodness. If God existed
there would be no evil, but
there is evil therefore God
does not exists.
• Objection 2:
• Everything in the world can be
accomplished by a few
principles. The processes of
the world can be accounted by
other principles.
• Natural things can be reduced
to one principle, that is the
principle of nature. All
voluntary things can be
reduced to one principle:
Human Reason and Will.
• There is no need to be
supposed the existence of
GOD.
Existence of God can be proved in five ways:
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Argument from Motion
Efficient Cause
Possibility and Necessity
Gradation to be found in things
Governance of things.
• Argument from Motion
• Would not it be much easier to say that there is a beginning? Let’s
be empirical: when we observe the world we see that everything
has a cause: the rain causes the plants to grow, the plants cause
the production of oxygen, oxygen causes animal life to exist, etc.
Does not follow from this that the whole universe, too, has a
cause? Aristotle, rejecting Plato’ concept of the Forms, believed
that everything must have an efficient cause; the efficient cause
was the “Unmoved Mover”
• Efficient Cause
• Aristotle was a major influence on Thomas Aquinas who
developed the causal argument as part of his Christian beliefs.
Basically, Aquinas stated that if A causes B, and B causes C, then
A is the first cause, and C is the last cause. But what happens if A
does not occur? Neither B nor C will occur either. The causal
chain must, therefore, have a beginning, and that beginning is
God.
From Possibility to Necessity
• In Nature things that are
possible are either, to be they are created, or not to
be, they are destroyed; it is
impossible for them to
always exist, if this is
possible, then at one time
there could have been
nothing in existence.
• For something to exist, its
existence begins by
something already
existing.
• If at one time Nothing was in
existence, it would have been
impossible for anything to have
begun to exist… and now
nothing would be in existence,
but there are things that exist,
therefore, not all being are
merely possible, but must be
something which existence is
necessary.
• Every necessary thing is caused
by another.
• We must admit the existence of
some being having of itself its
own necessity - GOD, causing
others to exist.
Argument of Perfection
• Things in the world are in gradation, less or
more, good, noble, hot- therefore there must
be something that is best, noblest, hottest,
and something, which is MOST BEING PERFECTION, and that is GOD.
Governance of Things
• Things that lack being (imperfect), as
natural bodies act for an end, to obtain the
best result.
• They achieve their goal not by chance, but
by design.
• Who ordered things to their end, directed
them, GOD, in the same way that ‘the arrow
is directed by the archer”.
Ontological Argument, God, The Necessary
Being?
• Saint Anselm, defines God “is that than which
nothing greater can be thought”. God is the
greatest possible thing we can conceived,
• His logical argument is a Reduction to
Absurdity- the negation of the conclusion leads
to an absurdity.
• The concept of GOD is of a being no greater that
which can be conceived. But a being which
exists is greater than a being which is merely
conceived;if GOD did not exist, GOD would be a
being no greater that which can be conceived,
THEREFORE, GOD exists.
Main Points of Anselm’s Argument:
• There are two types of existence: We can conceive of
things that exist in reality, but we can also conceive of
things that do not.
• That which exists in the mind could possibly exist in
reality. The fact that we are able to conceive of a being
that is capable of performing acts that we, as mere
mortals, are not, at least points to its possibility, even if
you are unable to understand all of its attributes.
• Things that exist in reality are greater that those that
exist in the mind. Anselm suggests that if you can
conceive of something greater in the mind and that there
is a possibility that it exists, then its existence would be
greater than a figment of someone’s imagination.
Main Points of Anselm’s Argument: II
• God only exists in the mind. If we accept the definition
of God, ‘a being than which none greater can be
conceived’ and we also accept the argument that a being
that exists in reality is considerably greater than one than
exists in the mind, then God must exist. God in reality is
far greater than God in the mind.
• God exists both in reality and in the mind. Provided we
accept the possibility of the greatest being, and that
which exists in reality is greater than that which exists in
the mind, then God, as the greatest being cannot exist
only in the mind.
• The Problem of Evil.
• This problem is a long and complex one, and is
best detailed in a future article. Briefly, if the
Cosmic Designer is the theistic omnipotent and
benevolent God, then why is the world so full of
evil? When we look at the world it does not appear
to be as happy and harmonious as one might wish:
seemingly arbitrary mass destruction, disease,
creatures torturing and killing other creatures, pain
and illness…Why would a benevolent God let
such things happen? Or why would an omnipotent
God create a world where such things have to
happen?
• At the beginning of Summa Theologica, Thomas
Aquinas admitted that the existence of evil is the best
argument against the existence of God. A tension exists
between the beliefs about evil and the characteristics of
the classical, theistic view of God:
• Omnipotence. God is perceived doctrinally as 'allpowerful', but immediately we can see problems with
this. Are we to say, as Descartes suggests, that God can
do anything? Can he square a circle, or commit suicide?
Can he create a being greater than himself? If so, why
cannot God prevent evil?
• Omniscience. God is 'all-knowing.' Does this mean he
knows what has happened, is happening, and is going to
happen everywhere (therefore, also omnipresent) and to
every body? If this is the case, why did he not foresee
the rise of Hitler and do something about it?
• Omnibenevolence. In a narrow sense, God as 'all-good'
refers to his moral character (as opposed to the wider
definition of 'perfection'). If God is creator of all things,
how could he have allowed the existence of evil?
• Bearing these characteristics in mind, we seem to
come to one of either the following conclusions:
• Either
a. The 'Theistic God' exists
& Evil does not exist.
• Or
b. The 'Theistic God' does not exist
& Evil does exist.
Interconnectedness Without the Divine
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From the Buddhist tradition, we see an
intuitive understanding of what is that contains
no divine figure. In this vision of the
simultaneous existence of all that is, has been or
will be, only “time” stands between
(Siddhartha).
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Fritjof Capra, a contemporary theoretical
physicist, has observed, this Eastern conception
of the universe bears a striking resemblance to
the Western scientific understanding of reality as
described by quantum theory:
• “The eastern mystics see the universe as an
inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic
and not static. The cosmic web is alive; it moves, grows
and changes continually. Modern physics, too, has
come to conceive of the universe as such as web of
relations and, like Eastern mysticism, has recognized
that this web is intrinsically dynamic. The dynamic
aspect of matter arises in quantum theory as a
consequence of the wave-nature of subatomic particles,
and is even more essential in relativity theory… where
the unification of space and time implies that being of
matter cannot separated from its activity.”
• It seems that scientist and mystics sometimes
use a common language to describe what both
agree is in many ways indescribable: the inner
essence of reality. Like Anselm, Aquinas, and
Paley, Christian mystics claim knowledge of
God. Their certainty arises not out of the linear
logic of reason, but intuitively , based on their
experience. What they know cannot be proved,
but then again, much of what we know about
the world cannot be proved either, at least not
using the traditional methods of science.
Nontraditional Images of God- “Herland”
God as Mother
• The image of God as loving father and the maleness of Jesus have
both been cited as reasons for excluding women from the
Christian institution and priesthood. If not excluding completely,
this specific and purposive conception of God has restricted,
women participation in religion. If to mediate between the divine
and the human one must be male, where does this leave women?
• We have then the responsibility to make explicit the assumptions
received from this tradition that clearly exclude as well include
women; the inclusion as favorable to the interested of the
dominant gender, in order to find begin responsibility for some of
the inconsistencies of the system. This approach could begin a
process in which both woman and men must be demythologized.
Atheistic Worldview: from “Roots of Wisdom”
• If the God of theism does not exist, then all meaning might be said
to derive from human values. According to Protagoras, without
God, “man is the measure of all things.” Without a personal God,
we might conclude that all creative and technological
accomplishments are monuments to human potential and should be
celebrated as the legacies one generation leave to the next so that
continuous progress is possible. We are responsible to ourselves and
to our fellow travelers to behave reasonably and to be true to our
human nature. The purpose of life is what we bring to it; our dreams
and hopes for a better present and brighter future. The purpose of
my life is whatever I decide it should be. When I die, my
consciousness will die with me; my contributions to human
knowledge and the creative spirit, as well as the people whose lives
I have influenced, will be my immortality. While they live and while
my accomplishments endure, I will not be forgotten. My children
and grandchildren are my legacies to the future.