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What was Immanuel Kant’s childhood like?
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A human Inuit skull in a stone chambered cairn in Ilulissat in Greenland. These ancient graves are pre christian and are at least 2000

existence of God

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existence of God , in religion , the proposition that there is a supreme supernatural or preternatural being that is the creator or sustainer or ruler of the universe and all things in it, including human beings. In many religions God is also conceived as perfect and unfathomable by humans, as all-powerful and all-knowing (omnipotent and omniscient), and as the source and ultimate ground of morality .

Belief in the existence of God (or gods) is definitional of theism and characteristic of many (though not all) religious traditions. For much of its history , Christianity in particular has been concerned with the question of whether God’s existence can be established rationally (i.e., by reason alone or by reason informed by sense experience) or through religious experience or revelation or instead must be accepted as a matter of faith . The remainder of this article will consider some historically influential arguments that have been advanced to demonstrate the existence of God.

Arguments for the existence of God are usually classified as either a priori or a posteriori —that is, based on the idea of God itself or based on experience. An example of the latter is the cosmological argument , which appeals to the notion of causation to conclude either that there is a first cause or that there is a necessary being from whom all contingent beings derive their existence. Other versions of this approach include the appeal to contingency—to the fact that whatever exists might not have existed and therefore calls for explanation—and the appeal to the principle of sufficient reason , which claims that for anything that exists there must be a sufficient reason why it exists. The arguments by St. Thomas Aquinas known as the Five Ways—the argument from motion, from efficient causation, from contingency , from degrees of perfection, and from final causes or ends in nature—are generally regarded as cosmological. Something must be the first or prime mover, the first efficient cause, the necessary ground of contingent beings, the supreme perfection that imperfect beings approach, and the intelligent guide of natural things toward their ends. This, Aquinas said, is God. The most common criticism of the cosmological argument has been that the phenomenon that God’s existence supposedly accounts for does not in fact need to be explained.

The argument from design also starts from human experience: in this case the perception of order and purpose in the natural world. The argument claims that the universe is strongly analogous , in its order and regularity, to an artifact such as a watch; because the existence of the watch justifies the presumption of a watchmaker, the existence of the universe justifies the presumption of a divine creator of the universe, or God. Despite the powerful criticisms of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76)—e.g., that the evidence is compatible with a large number of hypotheses , such as polytheism or a god of limited power, that are as plausible as or more plausible than monotheism —the argument from design continued to be very popular in the 19th century. According to a more recent version of the argument, known as intelligent design , biological organisms display a kind of complexity (“irreducible complexity”) that could not have come about through the gradual adaptation of their parts through natural selection ; therefore, the argument concludes, such organisms must have been created in their present form by an intelligent designer. Other modern variants of the argument attempt to ground theistic belief in patterns of reasoning that are characteristic of the natural sciences, appealing to simplicity and economy of explanation of the order and regularity of the universe.

Perhaps the most sophisticated and challenging argument for the existence of God is the ontological argument , propounded by St. Anselm of Canterbury . According to Anselm, the concept of God as the most perfect being—a being greater than which none can be conceived—entails that God exists, because a being who was otherwise all perfect and who failed to exist would be less great than a being who was all perfect and who did exist. This argument has exercised an abiding fascination for philosophers; some contend that it attempts to “define” God into existence, while others continue to defend it and to develop new versions.

It may be possible (or impossible) to prove the existence of God, but it may be unnecessary to do so in order for belief in God to be reasonable. Perhaps the requirement of a proof is too stringent, and perhaps there are other ways of establishing God’s existence. Chief among these is the appeal to religious experience—a personal, direct acquaintance with God or an experience of God mediated through a religious tradition. Some forms of mysticism appeal to religious tradition to establish the significance and appropriateness of religious experiences. Interpretations of such experiences, however, typically cannot be independently verified.

The Abrahamic religions ( Judaism , Christianity , and Islam ) also appeal to revelation, or to claims that God has spoken through appointed messengers to disclose matters which would otherwise be inaccessible. In Christianity these matters have included the doctrine of creation, the Trinity , and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ . Various attempts have been made to establish the reasonableness of the appeal to revelation through the witness of the church and through signs and miracles , all of which are thought to herald the authentic voice of God. (This is the context in which Hume’s classic critique of the credibility of reported miracles—that no amount or kind of evidence can establish that a miracle has occurred—must be understood.) Yet appeals to revelation by the various religions conflict with each other, and the appeal to revelation itself is open to the charge of circularity.

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Moral Arguments for the Existence of God

Moral arguments for God’s existence form a diverse family of arguments that reason from some feature of morality or the moral life to the existence of God, usually understood as a morally good creator of the universe. Moral arguments are both important and interesting. They are interesting because evaluating their soundness requires attention to practically every important philosophical issue dealt with in metaethics. They are important because of their prominence in popular apologetic arguments for religious belief. Evidence for this can be found in the amazing popularity of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity (1952), which is almost certainly the best-selling book of apologetics in the twentieth century, and which begins with a moral argument for God’s existence. Many ordinary people regard religion as in some way providing a basis or foundation for morality. This fact might seem to favor religious arguments for morality rather than moral arguments for religious belief, but if someone believes that morality is in some way “objective” or “real,” and that this moral reality requires explanation, moral arguments for God’s reality naturally suggest themselves. The apparent connection between morality and religion appears to many people to support the claim that moral truths require a religious foundation, or can best be explained by God’s existence, or some qualities or actions of God.

After some general comments about theistic arguments and a brief history of moral arguments, this essay will discuss several different forms of the moral argument. A major distinction is that between moral arguments that are theoretical in nature and practical or pragmatic arguments. The former are best thought of as arguments that begin with alleged moral facts and argue that God is necessary to explain those facts, or at least that God provides a better explanation of them than secular accounts can offer. The latter typically begin with claims about some good or end that morality requires and argue that this end is not attainable unless God exists. Whether this distinction is hard and fast will be one of the questions to be discussed, as some argue that practical arguments by themselves cannot be the basis of rational belief. To meet such concerns practical arguments may have to include a theoretical dimension as well.

1. The Goals of Theistic Arguments

2. history of moral arguments for god’s existence, 3. theoretical moral arguments for god’s existence and divine command theories of moral obligation, 4. arguments from moral knowledge or awareness, 5. arguments from human dignity or worth, 6. practical moral arguments for belief in god, 7. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

Before attempting to explain and assess moral arguments for the existence of God, it would be helpful to have some perspective on the goals of arguments for God’s existence. (We shall generically term arguments for God’s existence “theistic arguments.”) Of course views about this are diverse, but most contemporary proponents of such arguments do not see theistic arguments as attempted “proofs,” in the sense that they are supposed to provide valid arguments with premises that no reasonable person could deny. Such a standard of achievement would clearly be setting the bar for success very high, and proponents of theistic arguments rightly note that philosophical arguments for interesting conclusions in any field outside of formal logic hardly ever reach such a standard.

More reasonable questions to ask about theistic arguments would seem to be the following: Are there valid arguments for the conclusion that God exists that have premises that are known or reasonably believed by some people? Are the premises of such arguments more reasonable than their denials, at least for some reasonable people? Arguments that meet these standards could have value in making belief in God reasonable for some people, or even giving some people knowledge of God’s existence, even if it turns out that some of the premises of the arguments can be reasonably denied by other people, and thus that the arguments fail as proofs.

A major issue that cannot be settled here concerns the question of where the burden of proof lies with respect to theistic arguments. Many secular philosophers follow Antony Flew (1976) in holding that there is a “presumption of atheism.” On this view, believing in God is like believing in the Loch Ness Monster or leprechauns, something that reasonable people do not do without sufficient evidence. If such evidence is lacking, the proper stance is atheism rather than agnosticism.

This “presumption of atheism” has been challenged in a number of ways. Alvin Plantinga (2000) has argued that reasonable belief in God does not have to be based on propositional evidence, but can be “properly basic.” On this view, reasonable belief in God can be the outcome of a basic faculty (called the sensus divinitatis by theologian John Calvin) and thus needs no support from arguments at all. In response some would argue that even if theistic belief is not grounded in propositional evidence, it still might require non-propositional evidence (such as experience), so it is not clear that Plantinga’s view by itself removes the burden of proof challenge.

A second way to challenge the presumption of atheism is to question an implicit assumption made by those who defend such a presumption, which is that belief in God is epistemologically more risky than unbelief. The assumption might be defended in the following way: One might think that theists and atheists share a belief in many entities: atoms, middle-sized physical objects, animals, and stars, for example. Someone, however, who believes in leprechauns or sea monsters in addition to these commonly accepted objects thereby incurs a burden of proof. Such a person believes in “one additional thing” and thus seems to incur additional epistemological risk. One might think that belief in God is relevantly like belief in a leprechaun or sea monster, and thus that the theist also bears an additional burden of proof. Without good evidence in favor of belief in God the safe option is to refrain from belief.

However, the theist may hold that this account does not accurately represent the situation. Instead, the theist may argue that the debate between atheism and theism is not simply an argument about whether “one more thing” exists in the world. In fact, God is not to be understood as an entity in the world at all; any such entity would by definition not be God. The debate is rather a debate about the character of the universe. The theist believes that every object in the natural world exists because God creates and conserves that object; every finite thing has the character of being dependent on God. The atheist denies this and affirms that the basic entities in the natural world have the character of existing “on their own.”

If this is the right way to think about the debate, then it is not obvious that atheism is safer than theism. The debate is not about the existence of one object, but the character of the universe as a whole. Both parties are making claims about the character of everything in the natural world, and both claims seem risky. This point is especially important in dealing with moral arguments for theism, since one of the questions raised by such arguments is the adequacy of a naturalistic worldview in explaining morality. Such accounts need to explain without watering the categories of morality down or otherwise domesticating them and thereby depriving them of their most interesting features. Evidentialists may properly ask about the evidence for theism, but it also seems proper to ask about the evidence for atheism if the atheist is committed to a rival metaphysic such as naturalism.

Something that resembles a moral argument for God’s existence, or at least an argument from value, can be found in the fourth of Thomas Aquinas’s “Five Ways” (Aquinas 1265–1274, I, 1, 3). Aquinas there begins with the claim that among beings who possess such qualities as “good, true, and noble” there are gradations. Presumably he means that some things that are good are better than other good things; perhaps some noble people are nobler than others who are noble. In effect Aquinas is claiming that when we “grade” things in this way we are, at least implicitly, comparing them to some absolute standard. Aquinas believes this standard cannot be merely “ideal” or “hypothetical,” and thus this gradation is only possible if there is some being which has this quality to a “maximum” extent: “so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. Ii.” Aquinas goes on to affirm that this being which provides the standard is also the cause or explanation of the existence of these qualities, and such a cause must be God. Obviously, this argument draws deeply on Platonic and Aristotelian assumptions that are no longer widely held by philosophers. For the argument to be plausible today, such assumptions would have to be defended, or else the argument reformulated in a way that frees it from its original metaphysical home.

Probably the most influential versions of the moral argument for belief in God can be traced to Kant (1788 [1956]), who famously argued that the theoretical arguments for God’s existence were unsuccessful, but presented a rational argument for belief in God as a “postulate of practical reason.” Kant held that a rational, moral being must necessarily will “the highest good,” which consists of a world in which people are both morally good and happy, and in which moral virtue is the condition for happiness. The latter condition implies that this end must be sought solely by moral action. However, Kant held that a person cannot rationally will such an end without believing that moral actions can successfully achieve such an end, and this requires a belief that the causal structure of nature is conducive to the achievement of this end by moral means. This is equivalent to belief in God, a moral being who is ultimately responsible for the character of the natural world. Kant’s arguments will be discussed later in this article.

Kant-inspired arguments were prominent in the nineteenth century, and continued to be important right up to the middle of the twentieth century. Such arguments can be found, for example, in W. R. Sorley (1918), Hastings Rashdall (1920), and A. E. Taylor (1945/1930). Although Henry Sidgwick was not himself a proponent of a moral argument for God’s existence, some have argued that his thought presents the materials for such an argument (see Walls and Baggett 2011). In the nineteenth century John Henry Newman (1870) also made good use of a moral argument in his case for belief in God, developing what could be called an argument from conscience.

Besides those luminaries from the history of the moral argument, several other figures made contributions of various sorts to the discussion, including Arthur Balfour (1915), Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1920), Clement Webb (2012), W. G. de Burgh (1938), W. R. Matthews (1921), Austin Farrer (2012), and H. P. Owen (1965). A chronicle of much of this history was published by Walls and Baggett (2019). Recovering such history is a helpful antidote to the ahistorical character of much contemporary analytic philosophy.

In recent philosophy there has been a revival of divine command metaethical theories, which has in turn led to new versions of the moral argument found in such thinkers as Robert Adams (1987), John Hare (1996), and C. Stephen Evans (2010). Work on divine command theory, both in favor and against, has experienced a recent resurgence of interest. This work has encompassed both motivations for and formulations of divine command theory, as well as extensive discussion of both old and new objections to it.

However, it is important to see that there are versions of the moral argument for God’s existence that are completely independent of such a divine command theory, and this possibility can be seen in arguments developed by Angus Ritchie (2012) and Mark Linville (2009). Perhaps the most extensive and developed account of a moral argument for God’s existence in recent philosophy is found in David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls (2016). This book examines a comprehensive cumulative form of moral argument and extensively explores underlying issues. It goes without saying that these renewed arguments have engendered new criticisms as well. Theoretical moral arguments for God’s existence can be understood as variations on the following template:

There are objective moral facts.
God provides the best explanation of the existence of objective moral facts.
Therefore, (probably) God exists.

As we shall see, there are a variety of features of morality that can be appealed to in the first steps of the arguments, as well as a variety of ways in which God might be thought to provide an explanation of those features in the second steps. The use of the somewhat vague phrase “objective moral facts” is intended to allow for this variety in Premise 1. The similarly vague notion of God providing the best explanation of such facts allows for the variety of ways moral features may depend on God—divine commands one salient option among them. Both types of premises are obviously open to challenge. For example, the first premise of such an argument can be challenged by popular metaethical views that see morality as “subjective,” or “expressive,” rather than something that consists of objective facts. Moral skeptics and “error theorists” also challenge the first premise. The second premise can be challenged on the basis of rival explanations of the features of morality, explanations that do not require God. Arguments about the second premise then may require comparison between theistic explanations of morality and these rival views, with an attentive eye on the relevant evidence in need of explanation.

It is easy to see then that the proponent of a moral argument has a complex task: She must defend the reality and objectivity of the feature of morality appealed to, but also defend the claim that this feature can be best explained by God. The second part of the task may require not only demonstrating the strengths of a theistic explanation, but pointing out weaknesses in rival secular explanations as well. Both parts of the task are essential, but it is worth noting that the two components cannot be accomplished simultaneously. The theist must defend the reality of morality against subjectivists, constructivists, and “moral nihilists.” Assuming that this task has been carried out, the theist must then try to show that morality thus understood requires or at least is most plausibly understood by a theistic explanation.

It is interesting to observe, however, that with respect to both parts of the task, the theist may enlist non-theists as allies. The theist may well make common cause with ethical naturalists as well as ethical non-naturalists in defending moral realism against “projective” theories such as expressivism. However, the theist may also enlist the support of error theorists such as J. L. Mackie (1977), and moral nihilists such as Friedrich Nietzsche (1887) in arguing that God is necessary for objective morality. Nietzsche, for example, explicitly holds that God does not exist, but also claims that God’s non-existence undermines the reality of traditional western morality. The fact that theists can enlist such unlikely allies does not mean the moral argument for God’s existence is sound, but it does suggest that the argument is not obviously question-begging, since both premises are sometimes accepted by (different) non-believers.

One easily understandable version of a theistic moral argument relies on an analogy between human laws promulgated by nation-states and moral laws. Sovereign states enact laws that make certain acts forbidden or required. If I am a U. S. citizen, and I earn more than a small amount of money I am obligated to file an income tax return each year. I am also forbidden, because of the laws that hold in the United States, to discriminate in hiring on the basis of sex, age, or race. Many people believe that there are moral laws that bind individuals in the same way that political laws do. I am obligated by a moral principle not to lie to others, and I am similarly obligated to keep promises that I have made. (Both legal and moral laws may be understood as holding prima facie , so that in some situations a person must violate one law in order to obey a more important one.)

We know how human laws come into existence. They are enacted by legislatures (or absolute monarchs in some countries) who have the authority to pass such laws. How then should the existence of moral laws be explained? It seems plausible to many to hold that they must be similarly grounded in some appropriate authority, and the or best candidate to fulfill this role is God. Some philosophers have dismissed an argument of this type as “crude,” presumably because its force is so obvious that no special philosophical training is necessary to understand it and see its appeal. The fact that one can understand the argument without much in the way of philosophical skill is not necessarily a defect, however. If one supposes that there is a God, and that God wants humans to know him and relate to him, one would expect God to make his reality known to humans in very obvious ways (See Evans 2010). After all, critics of theistic belief, such as J. L. Schellenberg (1993), have argued that the fact that God’s reality is not obvious to those who would like to believe in God is a grave problem. If an awareness of moral obligations is in fact an awareness of God’s commands or divine laws, then the ordinary person who is aware of moral obligations does have a kind of awareness of God. Of course such a person might be aware of God’s laws without realizing that they are God’s laws; she might be aware of God’s commands without being aware of them under that description. The religious apologist might view such a person as already having a kind of de re awareness of God, because a moral obligation is simply an expression of God’s will (or God’s command or motivation, preference or desire).

How can such an awareness be converted into full-fledged belief in God? One way of doing this would be to help the person gain the skills needed to recognize moral laws as what they are, as divine commands or divine laws. If moral laws are experienced, then moral experience could be viewed as a kind of religious experience or at least a proto-religious experience. Perhaps someone who has experience of God in this way does not need a moral argument (or any kind of argument) to have a reasonable belief in God. This may be one instance of the kind of case that Alvin Plantinga (2000) and the “Reformed epistemologists” have in mind when they claim that belief in God can be “properly basic.” It is worth noting then that there could be such a thing as knowledge of God that is rooted in moral experience without that knowledge being the result of a moral argument .

Even if that is the case, however, a moral argument could still play a valuable role. Such an argument might be one way of helping an individual understand that moral obligations are in fact divine commands or laws. Even if it were true that some ordinary people might know that God exists without argument, an argument could be helpful in defending the claim that this is the case. A person might conceivably need an argument for the second-level claim that the person knows God without argument.

In any case a divine command metaethical theory provides the material for such an argument. The revival of divine command theories (DCT) of moral obligation is due mainly to the work of Philip Quinn (1979/1978) and Robert Adams (1999). Adams’ version of a DCT has been particularly influential and is well-suited for the defense of the claim that moral knowledge can provide knowledge of God. Adams’ version of a DCT is an account of moral obligations and it must be distinguished from more general “voluntarist” views of ethics that try to treat other moral properties (such as the good) as dependent on God’s will. As explained below, by limiting the theory to obligations, Adams avoids the standard “ Euthyphro ” objection, which claims that divine command views reduce ethics to arbitrariness.

Adams’ account of moral obligations as divine commands rests on a more general social theory of obligations. There are of course many types of obligations: legal obligations, financial obligations, obligations of etiquette, and obligations that hold in virtue of belonging to some club or association, to name just a few. Clearly these obligations are distinct from moral obligations, since in some cases moral obligations can conflict with these other kinds. What is distinctive about obligations in general? They are not reducible simply to normative claims about what a person has a good reason to do.

J. S. Mill (1874, 164–165) argued that we can explain normative principles without making any reference to God. He contends that the “feeling of obligation” stems from “something that the internal conscience bears witness to in its own nature,” and thus the moral law, unlike human laws, “does not originate in the will of a legislator or legislature external to the mind.” Doubtless Mill had in mind here such normative logical principles as “it is wrong to believe both p and not-p at the same time.” Mill argues that such normative principles hold without any requirement for an “authority” to be their ground, and he thinks this is plausible for the case of moral principles as well. Mill’s view is plausible at least for some normative principles, though some theists have argued that metaphysical naturalists have difficulty in explaining any kind of normativity (see Devine 1989, 88–89). However, even if Mill is correct about normativity in general, it does not follow that his view is correct for moral obligations, which have a special character. An obligation has a special kind of force; we should care about complying with it, and violations of obligations appropriately incur blame (Adams 1999, 235). If I make a logical mistake, I may feel silly or stupid or embarrassed, but I have no reason to feel guilty, unless the mistake reflects some carelessness on my part that itself constitutes a violation of a moral obligation. Adams argues that “facts of obligation are constituted by broadly social requirements.” (ibid, 233) For example, the social role of parenting is partly constituted by the obligations one assumes by becoming a parent, and the social role of citizen is partly constituted by the obligations to obey the laws of the country in which one is a citizen.

All obligations are then constituted by social requirements, according to Adams. However, not all obligations constituted by social requirements are moral obligations. What social relation could be the basis of moral obligations? Adams argues that not just any human social relation will possess the requisite authority: “A morally valid obligation obviously will not be constituted by just any demand sponsored by a system of social relationships that one in fact values. Some such demands have no moral force, and some social systems are downright evil.” (ibid, 242) If a good and loving God exists and has created all humans, then the social relation humans have to God has the right features to explain moral obligations. For if moral obligations stem from God’s requirements, they will be objective, but they will also be motivating, since a relation to God would clearly be a great good that humans would have reason to value. Since a proper relation to God is arguably more important than any other social relation, we can also understand why moral obligations trump other kinds of obligations. On this view we can also explain why moral obligations have a transcendent character, which is important because “a genuinely moral conception of obligation must have resources for moral criticism of social systems and their demands.” (ibid, 242–243)

Notice that the DCT Adams defends in his later work is ontological rather than semantic: it is a claim that moral obligations are in fact identical with divine commands, not a claim that “moral obligations” has the same meaning as “divine commands.” On his account, applying the work of direct reference theorists like Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke to the arena of ethics, the meaning of “moral obligation” is fixed by the role this concept plays in our language. That role includes such facts as these: Moral obligations must be motivating and objective. They also must provide a basis for critical evaluation of other types of obligations, and they must be such that someone who violates a moral obligation is appropriately subject to blame. Adams argues that it is divine commands that best satisfy these desiderata. God’s existence thus provides the best explanation of moral obligations. If moral obligations are identical with divine commands (or perhaps if they are grounded in or caused to exist by divine commands) an argument for God’s existence from such obligations can easily be constructed:

There are objective moral obligations.
If there are objective moral obligations, there is a God who explains these obligations.
There is a God.

This argument is stated in a deductive form, but it can easily be reworded as a probabilistic “argument to the best explanation,” as follows:

God provides the best explanation of the existence of moral obligations.
Probably, God exists.

Obviously, those who do not find a DCT convincing will not think this argument from moral obligation has force. However, Adams anticipates and gives a forceful answer to one common criticism of a DCT. It is often argued that a DCT must fail because of a dilemma parallel to one derived from Plato’s Euthyphro . The dilemma for a DCT can be derived from the following question: Assuming that God commands what is right, does he command what is right because it is right (assuming that “right” here means “morally required” and not just “morally permissible.”)? If the proponent of a DCT answers affirmatively, then it appears the quality of rightness must hold antecedently to and thus independently of God’s commands. If, however, the proponent denies that God commands what is right because it is right, then God’s commands appear arbitrary. Adams’ version of a DCT evades this dilemma by invoking the good/right distinction and holding that God is essentially good and that his commands are necessarily aimed at the good. This allows Adams to claim that God’s commands make actions obligatory (or forbidden), while denying that the commands are arbitrary in any problematic sense.

Although Adams’ version of a DCT successfully meets this “ Euthyphro ” objection, there are other powerful criticisms that have been mounted against this metaethical theory in the literature. These objections can be found in the writings of Wes Morriston (2009, 2016), Erik Wielenberg (2005, especially part 3, 2014, and chapter 2, 2020), Oppy (2014, especially ch. 3), and Nicholas Wolterstorff (2007), among others. Besides arbitrariness, objections raised against DCT include autonomy objections, a variety of epistemic objections, a psychopathy objection, supervenience objections, prior obligations objection, and other Euthyphro objections, which include grounding, vacuity, and counterpossible objections.

Wielenberg explicitly defends as an alternative to divine command metaethics a view he calls “godless normative realism.” This is essentially the view that moral truths are basic or fundamental in character, not derived from natural facts or any more fundamental metaphysical facts. It thus seems similar to the view often called “ethical non-naturalism.” This view certainly provides a significant alternative to divine command metaethics. However, it is worth noting that some of the criticisms that metaphysical naturalists have against theistic metaethics may apply to Wielenberg’s view as well. Specifically, philosophers such as J. L. Mackie (1977) find non-natural ethical qualities of any kind “queer” since they are so unlike the realities discovered by science. The “brute moral facts” posited by Wielenberg as necessary truths seem vulnerable to this same criticism. In fact, the criticism may be sharper against Wielenberg’s view than against theistic views, since ethical truths may appear less odd in a universe that is ultimately grounded in a person. Responses to the objections of Wielenberg, Morriston, and others have also been given (see Evans 2013, Baggett and Walls, 2011, 2016, Flannagan, 2017, 2021a, 2021, Pruss, 2009, Davis and Franks, 2015). Clearly the version of a moral argument for God’s existence that rests on divine command theory will only be judged powerful by those who find a DCT plausible, and that will certainly be a minority of philosophers. (Although it is worth noting that no single metaethical theory seems to enjoy widespread support among philosophers, so a DCT is not alone in being a minority view.) Nevertheless, those who do find a DCT powerful will also see moral obligations as providing strong evidence for God’s reality.

A variety of arguments have been developed that God is necessary to explain human awareness of moral truth (or moral knowledge, if one believes that this moral awareness amounts to knowledge). Richard Swinburne (2004, 218), for example, argues that there is no “great probability that moral awareness will occur in a Godless universe.” On Swinburne’s view, moral truths are either necessary truths or contingent truths that are grounded in necessary truths. For example, it is obviously contingent that “It is wrong to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima,” since it is contingent that there exists a city such as Hiroshima. But one might hold that this proposition is true (assuming it is) because of some other truth such as “It is wrong intentionally to kill innocent humans” which does hold universally and is necessarily true. Swinburne does not think that an argument to God’s existence from moral facts as such is powerful, increasing the likelihood of theism only a little. However, the fact that we humans are aware of moral facts is itself surprising and calls for an explanation.

It may be true that creatures who belong to groups that behave altruistically will have some survival advantage over groups that lack such a trait. However, moral beliefs are not required in order to produce such behavior, since it is clear that “there are many species of animals that are naturally inclined to help others of their species, and yet do not have moral beliefs.” (Swinburne 2004, 217) If God exists, he has “significant reason to bring about conscious beings with moral awareness,” since his intended purpose for humans includes making it possible for them freely to choose good over evil, since this will make it possible for them to develop a relation to God. Swinburne does not think that this argument provides very strong evidence for God’s existence by itself, but rather that it provides some inductive support for belief in God. It is one of several phenomena which seem more probable in a theistic universe than in a godless universe. As we consider more and more such phenomena, it will be increasingly improbable that “they will all occur.” (ibid, 218) All of these inductive arguments together may then provide substantial support for theistic belief, even if no one of them by itself would be sufficient for rational belief by demonstrating that theism is likely true.

Swinburne’s version of the argument is quite brief and undeveloped, but some claims that could be used to support a more developed version of the argument (one that will be described below) can be found in a well-known and much cited article by Sharon Street (2006). Street’s argument, as the title implies, is in no way intended to support a moral argument for theism. To the contrary, her purpose is to defend anti-realist metaethical theories against realist theories that view moral truth as “stance-independent” of human attitudes and emotions. Street presents the moral realist with a dilemma posed by the question as to how our human evaluative beliefs are related to human evolution. It is clear, she believes, that evolution has strongly shaped our evaluative attitudes. The question concerns how those attitudes are related to the objective evaluative truths accepted by the realist. If the realist holds that there is no relation between such truths and our evaluative attitudes, then this implies that “most of our evaluative judgments are off track due to the distorting influence of Darwinian processes.” The other alternative for the realist is to claim that there is a relationship, and thus that is not an accident or miracle that our evaluative beliefs track the objective truths. However, this view, Street claims, is scientifically implausible. Street argues therefore that an evolutionary story about how we came to make the moral judgments we make undermines confidence in the objective truth of those judgments. Street’s argument is of course controversial and thinkers such as Erik Wielenberg (2014) have argued against evolutionary debunking arguments. Still, many regard such arguments as problematic for those who want to defend moral realism, particularly when developed as a “global” argument (Kahane, 2010).

Street’s argument has also been challenged by such critics as Russ Shafer-Landau (2012). However, her argument, and similar arguments, have been acknowledged by some moral realists, such as David Enoch (2011) and Erik Wielenberg (2014) to pose a significant problem for their view. Enoch, for example, even though he offers a response to Street’s argument, evidently has some worries about the strength of his reply. Wielenberg, to avoid the criticism that in a non-theistic universe it would be extremely lucky if evolution selected for belief in objectively true moral values, proposes that the natural laws that produce this result may be metaphysically necessary, and thus there is no element of luck. However, many philosophers will see this view of natural laws as paying a heavy price to avoid theism. It might appear that Street is arguing straightforwardly that evolutionary theory makes it improbable that humans would have objective moral knowledge. However, it is not evolution by itself that predicts the improbability of objective moral knowledge, but the conjunction of evolution and metaphysical naturalism. A good deal of the force of Street’s argument stems from the assumption that naturalism is true, and therefore that the evolutionary process is one that is unguided. Since it is not evolution by itself that poses a challenge to moral realism but the conjunction of evolution and metaphysical naturalism, then rejecting naturalism provides one way for the moral realist to solve the problem. It does appear that in a naturalistic universe we would expect a process of Darwinian evolution to select for a propensity for moral judgments that track survival and not objective moral truths. Mark Linville (2009, 391–446) has developed a detailed argument for the claim that it is difficult for metaphysical naturalists to develop a plausible evolutionary story as to how our moral judgments could have epistemological warrant. However, if we suppose that the evolutionary process has been guided by God, who has as one of his goals the creation of morally significant human creatures capable of enjoying a relation with God, then it would not seem at all accidental or even unlikely that God would ensure that humans have value beliefs that are largely correct.

Some philosophers believe that the randomness of Darwinian natural selection rules out the possibility of any kind of divine guidance being exercised through such a process. Some thinkers, including both some atheists and some proponents of what is called “creation science,” believe that evolution and God are rivals, mutually exclusive hypotheses about the origins of the natural world. What can be explained scientifically needs no religious explanation. However, this is far from obviously true; in fact, if theism is true it is clearly false. From a theistic perspective to think that God and science provide competing explanations fails to grasp the relationship between God and the natural world by conceiving of God as one more cause within that natural world. If God exists at all, God is not an entity within the natural world, but the creator of that natural world, with all of its causal processes. If God exists, God is the reason why there is a natural world and the reason for the existence of the causal processes of the natural world. In principle, therefore, a natural explanation can never preclude a theistic explanation. Any argument that natural explanations preclude or are in tension with theistic explanations will in fact be theological in character, since they will be grounded in assumptions about the kind of world God would create.

But what about the randomness that is a crucial part of the Darwinian story? The atheist might claim that because evolutionary theory posits that the process by which plants and animals have evolved is one that involves random genetic mutations, it cannot be guided, and thus God cannot have used evolutionary means to achieve his ends. However, this argument fails. It depends on an equivocation in what is meant by “random.” When scientists claim that genetic mutations are random, they do not mean that they are uncaused, or even that they are unpredictable from the point of view of biochemistry, but only that the mutations do not happen in response to the adaptational needs of the organism. It is entirely possible for a natural process to include randomness in that sense, even if the whole natural order is itself created and sustained by God. The sense of “randomness” required for evolutionary theory does not imply that the evolutionary process must be unguided. A God who is responsible for the laws of nature and the initial conditions that shape the evolutionary process could certainly ensure that the process achieved certain ends.

Like the other moral arguments for God’s existence, the argument from moral knowledge can easily be stated in a propositional form, and I believe Swinburne is right to hold that the argument is best construed as a probabilistic argument that appeals to God as providing a better explanation of moral knowledge than is possible in a naturalistic universe.

Humans possess objective moral knowledge.
Probably, if God does not exist, humans would not possess objective moral knowledge.

There is a kind of argument from moral knowledge also implicit in Angus Ritchie’s book From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments (2012). Ritchie presses a kind of dilemma on non-theistic accounts of morality. Subjectivist theories such as expressivism can certainly make sense of the fact that we make the ethical judgments we do, but they empty morality of its objective authority. Objectivist theories that take morality seriously, however, have difficulty explaining our capacity to make true moral judgments, unless the process by which humans came to hold these capacities is one that is controlled by a being such as God.

The moral argument from knowledge will not be convincing to anyone who is committed to any form of expressivism or other non-objective metaethical theory, and clearly many philosophers find such views attractive. And there will surely be many philosophers who will judge that if moral objectivism implies theism or requires theism to be plausible, this is a reductio of objectivist views. Furthermore, non-theistic moral philosophers, whether naturalists or non-naturalists, have stories to tell about how moral knowledge might be possible. Nevertheless, there are real questions about the plausibility of these stories, and thus, some of those convinced that moral realism is true may judge that moral knowledge provides some support for theistic belief.

Many philosophers find Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy still offers a fruitful approach to ethics. Of the various forms of the “categorical imperative” that Kant offers, the formula that regards human beings as “ends in themselves” is especially attractive: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end” (Kant 1785 [1964], 96). Many contemporary moral philosophers influenced by Kant, such as Christine Korsgaard (1996), see Kant as offering a “constructivist” metaethical position. Constructivism is supposed to offer a “third way” between moral realism and subjectivist views of morality. Like subjectivists, constructivists want to see morality as a human creation. However, like moral realists constructivists want to see moral questions as having objective answers. Constructivism is an attempt to develop an objective morality that is free of the metaphysical commitments of moral realism.

It is, however, controversial whether Kant himself was a constructivist in this sense. One reason to question whether this is the right way to read Kant follows from the fact that Kant himself did not see morality as free from metaphysical commitments. For example, Kant thought that it would be impossible for someone who believed that mechanistic determinism was the literal truth about himself to believe that he was a moral agent, since morality requires an autonomy that is incompatible with determinism. To see myself as a creature who has the kind of value Kant calls “dignity” I must not see myself merely as a machine-like product of the physical environment. Hence Kant thought that it was crucial for morality that his Critical Philosophy had shown that the deterministic perspective on humans is simply part of the “phenomenal world” that is the object of scientific knowledge, not the “noumenal reality” that it would be if some kind of scientific realism were the true metaphysical view. When we do science we see ourselves as determined, but science tells us only how the world appears, not how it really is. Recognizing this fact suggests that when Kant posits that humans have this intrinsic value he calls dignity, he is not “constructing” the value humans have, but recognizing the value beings of a certain kind must have. Humans can only have this kind of value if they are a particular kind of creature. Whether Kant himself was a moral realist or not, there are certainly elements in his philosophy that push in a realist direction.

If the claim that human persons have a kind of intrinsic dignity or worth is a true objective principle and if it provides a key foundational principle of morality, it is well worth asking what kinds of metaphysical implications the claim might have. This is the question that Mark Linville (2009, 417–446) pursues in the second moral argument he develops. Linville begins by noting that one could hardly hold that “human persons have intrinsic dignity” could be true if human persons do not exist. Clearly, some metaphysical positions do include a denial of the existence of human persons, such as forms of Absolute Monism which hold that only one Absolute Reality exists. However, it also seems to be the case that some forms of Scientific Naturalism are committed to the denial of “ persons as substantive selves that essentially possess a first-person point of view” (See Dennett 2006, 107). Daniel Dennett, for example, holds that persons will not be part of the ultimately true scientific account of things. Dennett holds that to think of humans as persons is simply to adopt a certain “stance” toward them that he calls the “intentional stance,” but it is clear that the kind of picture of humans we get when we think of them in this way does not correspond with their intrinsic metaphysical properties. It is not clear how systems towards which we adopt an “intentional stance” could be truly autonomous and thus have the kind of value Kant believes human persons have.

The argument from human dignity could be put into propositional form as follows:

Human persons have a special kind of intrinsic value that we call dignity.
The only (or best) explanation of the fact that humans possess dignity is that they are created by a supremely good God in God’s own image.
Probably there is a supremely good God.

A naturalist may want to challenge premise (2) by finding some other strategy to explain human dignity. Michael Martin (2002), for example, has tried to suggest that moral judgments can be analyzed as the feelings of approval or disapproval of a perfectly impartial and informed observer. Linville (2009) objects that it is not clear how the feelings of such an observer could constitute the intrinsic worth of a person, since one would think that intrinsic properties would be non-relational and mind-independent. In any case, Linville notes that a “Euthyphro” problem lurks for such an ideal observer theory, since one would think that such an observer would judge a person to be intrinsically valuable because the person has intrinsic value.

Another strategy that is pursued by constructivists such as Korsgaard is to link the value ascribed to humans to the capacity for rational reflection. The idea is that insofar as I am committed to rational reflection, I must value myself as having this capacity, and consistently value others who have it as well. A similar strategy is found in Wielenberg’s form of ethical non-naturalism, since Wielenberg argues that it is necessarily true that any being with certain reflective capacities will have moral rights (Wielenberg, 2014, chapter 4). It is far from clear that human rationality provides an adequate ground for moral rights, however. Many people believe that young infants and people suffering from dementia still have this intrinsic dignity, but in both cases there is no capacity for rational reflection.

Some support for this criticism of the attempt to see reason as the basis of the value of humans can be found in Nicholas Wolterstorff’s recent work on justice (2007, especially Ch. 8). Wolterstorff in this work defends the claim that there are natural human rights, and that violating such rights is one way of acting unjustly towards a person. Why do humans have such rights? Wolterstorff says these rights are grounded in the basic worth or dignity that humans possess. When I seek to torture or kill an innocent human I am failing to respect this worth. If one asks why we should think humans possess such worth, Wolterstorff argues that the belief that humans have this quality was not only historically produced by Jewish and Christian conceptions of the human person, but even now cannot be defended apart from such a conception. In particular, he argues that attempts to argue that our worth stems from some excellence we possess such as reason will not explain the worth of infants or those with severe brain injuries or dementia.

Does a theistic worldview fare better in explaining the special value of human dignity? In a theistic universe God is himself seen as the supreme good. Indeed, theistic Platonists usually identify God with the Good. If God is himself a person, then this seems to be a commitment to the idea that personhood itself is something that must be intrinsically good. If human persons are made in God’s image, as both Judaism and Christianity affirm, then it would seem to follow that humans do have a kind of intrinsic value, just by way of being the kind of creatures they are.

This argument will of course be found unconvincing to many. Some will deny premise (1), either because they reject moral realism as a metaethical stance, or because they reject the normative claim that humans have any kind of special value or dignity. (Maybe they will even think that such a claim is a form of “speciesism.”). Others will find premise (2) suspect. They may be inclined to agree that human persons have a special dignity, but hold that the source of that dignity can be found in such human qualities as rationality. With respect to the status of infants and those suffering from dementia, the critic might bite the bullet and just accept the fact that human dignity does not extend to them, or else argue that the fact that infants and those suffering mental breakdown are part of a species whose members typically possess rationality merits them a special respect, even if they lack this quality as individuals. Others will find premise (2) doubtful because they find the theistic explanation of dignity unclear. Another alternative is to seek a Constructivist account of dignity, perhaps regarding the special status of humans as something we humans decide to extend to each other. Perhaps the strongest non-theistic alternative would be some form of ethical non-naturalism, in which one simply affirms that the claim that persons have a special dignity is an a priori truth requiring no explanation. In effect this is a decision for a non-theistic form of Platonism.

The proponent of the argument may well agree that claims about the special status of humans are true a priori , and thus also opt for some form of Platonism. However, the proponent of the argument will point out that some necessary truths can be explained by other necessary truths. The theist believes that these truths about the special status of humans tell us something about the kind of universe humans find themselves in. To say that humans are created by God is to say that personhood is not an ephemeral or accidental feature of the universe, because at bottom reality itself is personal (Mavrodes 1986).

As already noted, the most famous and perhaps most influential version of a moral argument for belief in God is found in Immanuel Kant (1788). Kant himself insisted that his argument was not a theoretical argument, but an argument grounded in practical reason. The conclusion of the argument is not “God exists” or “God probably exists” but “I (as a rational, moral agent) ought to believe that God exists.” We shall, however, see that there are some reasons to doubt that practical arguments can be neatly separated from theoretical arguments.

Kant’s version of the argument can be stated in different ways, but perhaps the following captures one plausible interpretation of the argument. Morality is grounded in pure practical reason, and the moral agent must act on the basis of maxims that can be rationally endorsed as universal principles. Moral actions are thus not determined by results or consequences but by the maxims on which they are based. However, all actions, including moral actions, necessarily aim at ends. Kant argues that the end that moral actions aim at is the “highest good,” which is a world in which both moral virtue and happiness are maximized, with happiness contingent on virtue. For Kant “ought implies can,” and so if I have an obligation to seek the highest good, then I must believe that it is possible to achieve such an end. However, I must seek the highest good only by acting in accordance with morality; no shortcuts to happiness are permissible. This seems to require that I believe that acting in accordance with morality will be causally efficacious in achieving the highest good. However, it is reasonable to believe that moral actions will be causally efficacious in this way only if the laws of causality are set up in such a way that these laws are conducive to the efficacy of moral action. Certainly both parts of the highest good seem difficult to achieve. We humans have weaknesses in our character that appear difficult if not impossible to overcome by our own efforts. Furthermore, as creatures we have subjective needs that must be satisfied if we are happy, but we have little empirical reason to think that these needs will be satisfied by moral actions even if we succeeded in becoming virtuous. If a person believes that the natural world is simply a non-moral machine with no moral purposiveness then that person would have no reason to believe that moral action could succeed because there is no a priori reason to think moral action will achieve the highest good and little empirical reason to believe this either. Kant thus concludes that a moral agent must “postulate” the existence of God as a rational presupposition of the moral life.

One problem with this argument is that many will deny that morality requires us to seek the highest good in Kant’s sense. Even if the Kantian highest good seems reasonable as an ideal, some will object that we have no obligation to achieve such a state, but merely to work towards realizing the closest approximation to such a state that is possible (See Adams 1987, 152). Without divine assistance, perhaps perfect virtue is unachievable, but in that case we cannot be obliged to realize such a state if there is no God. Perhaps we cannot hope that happiness will be properly proportioned to virtue in the actual world if God does not exist, but then our obligation can only be to realize as much happiness as can be attained through moral means. Kant would doubtless reject this criticism, since on his view the ends of morality are given directly to pure practical reason a priori , and we are not at liberty to adjust those ends on the basis of empirical beliefs. However, few contemporary philosophers would share Kant’s confident view of reason here, and thus to many the criticism has force. Even Kant admits at one point that full-fledged belief in God is not rationally necessary, since one could conceivably seek the highest good if one merely believes that God’s existence is possible (Kant, 1781–1787, 651).

Another way of interpreting Kant’s argument puts more stress on the connection between an individual’s desire for happiness and the obligation to do what is morally right. Morality requires me to sacrifice my personal happiness if that is necessary to do what is right. Yet it is a psychological fact that humans necessarily desire their own happiness. In such a state it looks as if human moral agents will be torn by what Henry Sidgwick called the “dualism of the practical reason” (1884, 401). Reason both requires humans to seek their own happiness and to sacrifice it. Sidgwick himself noted that only if there is a God can we hope that this dualism will be resolved, so that those who seek to act morally will in the long run also be acting so as to advance their own happiness and well-being. (Interestingly, Sidgwick himself does not endorse this argument, but he clearly sees this problem as part of the appeal of theism.) A contemporary argument similar to this one has been developed by C. Stephen Layman (2002).

The critic of this form of the Kantian argument may reply that Kantian morality sees duty as something that must be done regardless of the consequences, and thus a truly moral person cannot make his or her commitment to morality contingent on the achievement of happiness. From a Kantian point of view, this reply seems right; Kant unequivocally affirms that moral actions must be done for the sake of duty and not from any desire for personal reward. Nevertheless, especially for any philosopher willing to endorse any form of eudaimonism, seeing myself as inevitably sacrificing what I cannot help but desire for the sake of duty does seem problematic. As John Hare affirms, “If we are to endorse wholeheartedly the long-term shape of our lives, we have to see this shape as consistent with our happiness” (1996, 88).

The critic may reply to this by simply accepting the lamentable fact that there is something tragic or even absurd about the human condition. The world may not be the world we wish it was, but that does not give us any reason to believe it is different from what it is. If there is a tension between the demands of morality and self-interest, then this may simply be a brute fact that must be faced.

This reply raises an issue for all forms of practical or pragmatic arguments for belief. Many philosophers insist that rational belief must be grounded solely in theoretical evidence. The fact that it would be better for me to believe p does not in itself give me any reason to believe p. This criticism is aimed not merely at Kant, but at other practical moral arguments. For example, Robert Adams argues that if humans believe there is no moral order to the universe, then they will become demoralized in their pursuit of morality, which is morally undesirable (1987, 151). The atheist might concede that atheism is (somewhat) demoralizing, but deny that this provides any reason to believe there is a moral order to the universe. Similarly, Linda Zagzebski (1987) argues that morality will not be a rational enterprise unless good actions increase the amount of good in the world. However, given that moral actions often involve the sacrifice of happiness, there is no reason to believe moral action will increase the good unless there is a power transcendent of human activity working on the side of the good. Here the atheist may claim that moral action does increase the good because such actions always increase good character. However, even if that reply fails the atheist may again simply admit that there may be something tragic or absurd about the human condition, and the fact that we may wish things were different is not a reason to believe that they are. So the problem must be faced: Are practical arguments merely rationalized wish-fulfillment?

The theist might respond to this kind of worry in several ways. The first thing to be said is that the fact that a naturalistic view of the universe implies that the universe must be tragic or absurd, if correct, would itself be an important and interesting conclusion. However, apart from this, it makes a great deal of difference how one construes what we might call the background epistemic situation. If one believes that our theoretical evidence favors atheism, then it seems plausible to hold that one ought to maintain a naturalistic view, even if it is practically undesirable that the world have such a character. In that case a practical argument for religious belief could be judged a form of wish-fulfillment. However, this does not seem to be the way those who support such a practical argument see the situation. Kant affirms that the limits of reason established in The Critique of Pure Reason would silence all objections to morality and religion “in Socratic fashion, namely, by the clearest proof of the ignorance of the objectors.” (1781, 1787, 30. See also 530–531) In fact, the situation actually favors theism, since Kant holds that theoretical reason sees value in the concept of God as a regulative ideal, even though God’s existence cannot be theoretically affirmed as knowledge. If we appeal to God’s will to explain what happens in the natural order, we undermine both science and religion, since in that case we would no longer seek empirical evidence for causality and we would make God into a finite object in the natural world (1781, 1787, 562–563). However, as a regulative ideal, the concept of God is one that theoretical reason finds useful: “The assumption of a supreme intelligence, as the one and only cause of the universe, though in the idea alone, can therefore always benefit reason and can never injure it” (1781, 1787, 560). There is a sense in which theoretical reason itself inclines towards affirmation of God, because it must assume that reality is rationally knowable: “If one wishes to achieve systematic knowledge of the world, he ought to regard it as if it were created by a supreme reason.” (Kant 1786, 298) Although theoretical reason cannot affirm the existence of God, it finds it useful to think of the natural world as having the kinds of characteristics it would have if God did exist. Thus, if rational grounds for belief in God come from practical reason, theoretical reason will raise no objections.

For Kant the argument from practical reason for belief in God is not a form of wish-fulfillment because its ground is not an arbitrary desire or wish but “a real need associated with reason” (Kant, 1786, 296). Human beings are not purely theoretical spectators of the universe, but agents. It is not always rational or even possible to refrain from action, and yet action presupposes beliefs about the way things are (For a good interpretation and defense of this view of Kant on the relation between action and belief, see Wood 1970, 17–25). Thus, in some cases suspension of judgment is not possible. The critic may object that a person may act as if p were true without believing p. However, it is not clear that this advice to distinguish action on the basis of p and belief that p can always be followed. For one thing, it seems empirically the case that one way of acquiring belief that p is simply to begin to act as if p were true. Hence, to begin to act as if p were true is at least to embark upon a course of action that makes belief in p more likely. Second, there may well be a sense of “belief” in which “acting as if p were true” is sufficient to constitute belief. This is obviously the case on pragmatist accounts of belief. But even those who reject a general pragmatic account of belief may well find something like this appealing with respect to religious belief. Many religious believers hold that the best way to measure a person’s religious faith is in terms of the person’s actions. Thus, a person who is willing to act on the basis of a religious conception, especially if those actions are risky or costly, is truly a religious believer, even if that person is filled with doubt and anxiety. Such a person might well be construed as more truly a believer than a person who smugly “assents” to religious doctrines but is unwilling to act on them.

Perhaps the right way to think of practical moral arguments is not to see them as justifying belief without evidence, but as shifting the amount of evidence seen as necessary. This is the lesson some would draw from the phenomenon of “pragmatic encroachment” that has been much discussed in recent epistemology. Here is an example of pragmatic encroachment:

You: I am about to replace the ceiling fan in the kitchen. Spouse: Did you turn off the main electrical power to the house? You: Yes. Spouse: If you forgot you could electrocute yourself. You: I better go back and check. (See McBrayer 2014, Rizzieri 2013).

A plausible interpretation of this scenario is that ordinarily claims such as the one I made, based on memory, are justified, and count as knowledge. However, in this situation, the stakes are raised because my life is at risk, and my knowledge is lost because the pragmatic situation has “encroached” on the normal truth-oriented conditions for knowledge. Pragmatic encroachment is controversial and the idea of such encroachment is rejected by some epistemologists. However, defenders hold that it is reasonable to consider the pragmatic stakes in considering evidence for a belief that underlies significant action (see Fantl and McGrath 2007). If this is correct, then it seems reasonable to consider the pragmatic situation in determining how much evidence is sufficient to justify religious beliefs. In theory the adjustment could go in either direction, depending on what costs are associated with a mistake and on which side those costs lie.

In any case it is not clear that practical moral arguments can always be clearly distinguished from theoretical moral arguments. The reason this is so is that in many cases the practical situation described seems itself to be or involve a kind of evidence for the truth of the belief being justified. Take, for example, Kant’s classic argument. One thing Kant’s argument does is call to our attention that it would be enormously odd to believe that human beings are moral creatures subject to an objective moral law, but also to believe that the universe that humans inhabit is indifferent to morality. In other words, the existence of human persons understood as moral beings can itself be understood as a piece of evidence about the character of the universe humans find themselves in. Peter Byrne (2013, 1998) has criticized practical arguments on the grounds that they presuppose something like the following proposition: “The world is likely to be organized so as to meet our deepest human needs.” Byrne objects that this premise is likely to be false if there is no God and thus arguments that assume it appear circular. However, it is not clear that only those who already believe in God will find this premise attractive. The reason for this is that humans are themselves part of the natural universe, and it seems a desirable feature of a metaphysical view that it explain (rather than explain away) features of human existence that seem real and important.

It seems likely therefore that any appeal to a practical argument will include some theoretical component as well, even if that component is not always made explicit. Nevertheless, this does not mean that practical arguments do not have some important and distinctive features. For Kant it was important that religious beliefs stem from practical reason. For if religious belief were grounded solely in theoretical reason, then such belief would have to conform to “extrinsic and arbitrary legislation.” (Kant 1790, 131) Kant thinks such a religion would be one grounded in “fear and submission,” and thus it is good that religious belief is motivated mainly by a free moral act by which the “final end of our being” is presented to us. (1790, 159) For any practical argument makes religious belief existential; the issue is not merely what I believe to be true about the universe but how I shall live my life in that universe.

It seems clear that no version of the moral argument constitutes a “proof” of God’s existence. Each version contains premises that many reasonable thinkers reject. However, this does not mean the arguments have no force. One might think of each version of the argument as attempting to spell out the “cost” of rejecting the conclusion. Some philosophers will certainly be willing to pay the cost, and indeed have independent reasons for doing so. However, it would certainly be interesting and important if one became convinced that atheism required one to reject moral realism altogether, or to embrace an implausible account of how moral knowledge is acquired. For those who think that some version or versions of the arguments have force, the cumulative case for theistic belief may be raised by such arguments.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Byrne, Peter, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/moral-arguments-god/ >. [This was the previous entry on moral arguments for the existence of God in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — see the version history .]
Divine Command Theory , entry by Michael Austin, in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Trent Dougherty and Mark Linville for reading a draft of this essay and making many useful suggestions. Matthew Wilson also deserves thanks for tracking many bibliographical references and page numbers.

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

...For close to two decades Cass Seltzer has all but owned the psychology of religion, but only because nobody else wanted it, not anyone with the smarts to do academic research in psychology and the ambition to follow through. It had been impossible to get grants, and the prestigious journals would return his manuscripts without sending them out for peer review. The undergraduates crowded his courses, but that counted, if anything, as a strike against him in his department. The graduate students stayed away in droves. The sexy psychological research was all in neural network modeling and cognitive neuroscience. The mind is a neural computer and the folks with the algorithms ruled.

But now things had happened — fundamental and fundamentalist things — and religion as a phenomenon is on everybody's mind. And among all the changes that religion's new towering profile has wrought in the world, which are mostly alarming if not downright terrifying, is the transformation in the life of one Cass Seltzer.

First had come the book, which he had entitled The Varieties of Religious Illusion, a nod to both William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience and to Sigmund Freud's The Future of An Illusion. The book had brought Cass an indecent amount of attention. Time Magazine, in a cover story on the so-called new atheists, had ended by dubbing him "the atheist with a soul." When the magazine came out, Cass's literary agent, Sy Auerbach, called to congratulate him. "Now that you're famous, even I might have to take you seriously. ...

Introduction

By John Brockman

"What is this stuff, you ask one another," says the narrator in Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's new novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, "and how can it still be kicking around, given how much we already know?"

We have very short memories.

It was in April 2006 that President George W. Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and Senator John McCain all announced their support of teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. This assault on science and on the separation of church and state was a mobilizing moment for the Edge community which responded to this initiative with book of essays by 16 eminent scientists entitled Intelligent Thought, excerpts from which appeared on Edge.

At the time, three and a half years ago, no one was using the phrase "the new atheists". In fact, in early 2006 only Sam Harris's book The End of Faith (2004), and Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell(February, 2006) had been published. It was in response to the highly organized and well-financed campaign by the religious right that led champions of rational thinking such as Jerry Coyne , Richard Dawkins , Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, A.C. Grayling , and P.Z. Myers to mount an unrelenting campaign against the purveyors of superstition, supernaturalism, ignorance ... and their apologists (the self-proclaimed "moderates", or to use more apt terms, the "accommodationists", or the "faitheists").

The term "the new atheists" came into play in early 2007, followed by "I am an atheist, but". This is hardly the lingo of the far right. In fact, you don't have to leave the pages of Edge to read variations on this meme from some very distinguished and respected scientists. But what some appear to be saying is "I am an atheist but... other people, not as smart as I am, require religion (a) to get through the day, (b) to create sustainable societies, (c) to have moral values, etc. Others, intellectually lazy, afraid, or unable to invent their own personal narratives, simply wear their parents' old ideas like a hand-me-down suit, defaulting to the maudlin sentimentality that is the soundtrack to the American mind.

Now, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, known to Edge readers as a philosopher who has interesting things to say about Gödel and Spinoza, among others, enters into this conversation, taking on these and wider themes, and pushing the envelope by crossing over into the realm of fiction.

Goldstein isn't the first novelist to appear on Edge, nor the first to discuss religion. In October 1989, the novelist Ken Kesey came to New York spoke to The Reality Club. "As I've often told Ginsberg," he began, "you can't blame the President for the state of the country, it's always the poets' fault. You can't expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don't have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold."

It's in this spirit that Edge presents a brief excerpt from the first chapter, and the nonfiction appendix from 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (21,250 words).

REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN is a philosopher, a novelist, and Edge contributor. She is the author of the nonfiction works Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, and Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel. Her other novels include The Mind-Body Problem and Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal, and Quantum Physics, and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's Edge Bio page

Chapter I: The Argument from the Improbable Self

Something shifted, something so immense you could call it the world.

Call it the world.

The world shifted, catching lots of smart people off guard, churning up issues that you had thought had settled forever beneath the earth's crust. The more sophisticated you are, the more annotated your mental life, the more taken aback you're likely to feel, seeing what the world's lurch has brought to light, thrusting up beliefs and desires you had assumed belonged to an earlier stage of human development.

What is this stuff, you ask one another, and how can it still be kicking around, given how much we already know? It looks like the kind of relics that archeologists dig up and dust off, speculating about the beliefs that once had animated them, to the best that they can be reconstructed, gone as they are now, those thrashings of proto-rationality and mythico-magical hypothesizing, and mostly forgotten.

Now it's all gone unforgotten, and minds that have better things to think about have to divert precious neuronal resources to figuring out how to knock some sense back into the species. It's a tiresome proposition, having to take up the work of the Enlightenment all over again, but it's happened on your watch. You ought to have sent up a balloon now and then to get a read on the prevailing cognitive conditions, the Thinks watching out for the Think-Nots. Now you've gone and let the stockpiling of fallacies reach dangerous levels, and the massed weapons of illogic are threatening the survivability of the globe.

None of this is particularly good for the world, but it has been good for Cass Seltzer. That's what he's thinking at this moment, gazing down at the frozen river and regarding the improbable swerve his life has lately taken. He's thinking his life has gotten better because the world has gone bonkers. He's thinking zealots proliferate and Seltzer prospers.

It's 4 a.m., and Cass Seltzer is standing on Weeks Bridge, the graceful arc that spans the Charles River near Harvard University, staring down at the river below, which is in the rigor mortis of late February in New England. The whole vista is deserted beyond vacancy, deserted in the way of being inhospitable to human life. There's not a car passing on Memorial Drive, and the elegant river dorms are darkened to silent hulks, the most hyper-kinetic of undergraduates sedated to purring girls and boys.

It's not like Cass Seltzer to be out in the middle of an icy night, lost in thought while losing sensation in his extremities. Excitement had gotten the better of him. He had lain in his empty bed for hours, mind racing, until he gave up and crawled out from under the luxe comforter that his girlfriend Lucinda Mandelbaum had brought with her when she moved in with him at the end of June. This comforter has pockets for the hands and feet and a softness that's the result of impregnation with aloe vera. As a man, Cass had been skeptical, but he's become a begrudging believer in Lucinda's comforter, and in her Tempur-Pedic pillow, too, suffused with the fragrance of her coconut shampoo, making it all the more remarkable that he'd forsake his bed for this no-man's stretch of frigid night.

Rummaging in the front closet for some extra protection, he had pulled out, with a smile he couldn't have interpreted for himself, a long-forgotten item, the tricolor scarf that his ex-wife, Pascale, had learned to knit for him during the four months when she was recovering from aphasia, four months that had produced, among other shockers, an excessively long French flag of a scarf, which he wound seven and a half times around his neck before heading out into the dark to deal with the rush in his head.

Lucinda's away tonight, away for the entire bleak week to come. Cass is missing Lucinda in his bones, missing her in the marrow that's presently crystallizing into ice. She's in warmer climes, at a conference in Santa Barbara on "Non-Nash Equilibria in Zero-Sum Games." Among these equilibria is one that's called the "Mandelbaum Equilibrium," and it's Cass's ambition to have the Mandelbaum Equilibrium mastered by the time he picks her up from the airport Friday night.

Technically, Lucinda's a psychologist, like Cass, only not like Cass at all. Her work is so mathematical that almost no one would suspect it has anything to do with mental life. Cass, on the other hand, is about as far away on the continuum as you can get and still be in the same field. He's so far away that he is knee-deep in the swampy humanities. Until recently, Cass had felt almost apologetic explaining that his interest is in the whole wide range of religious experience — a bloated category on anyone's account, but especially on Cass's, who sees religious frames of mind lurking everywhere, masking themselves in the most secular of settings, in politics and scholarship and art and even in personal relationships.

For close to two decades Cass Seltzer has all but owned the psychology of religion, but only because nobody else wanted it, not anyone with the smarts to do academic research in psychology and the ambition to follow through. It had been impossible to get grants, and the prestigious journals would return his manuscripts without sending them out for peer review. The undergraduates crowded his courses, but that counted, if anything, as a strike against him in his department. The graduate students stayed away in droves. The sexy psychological research was all in neural network modeling and cognitive neuroscience. The mind is a neural computer and the folks with the algorithms ruled.

Next had come the girl, although that designation hardly does justice to the situation, not when the situation stands for the likes of Lucinda Mandelbaum, known in her world as "the Goddess of Game Theory." Lucinda is, pure and simple, a wondrous creature, with adoration her due and Cass's avocation.

And now, only today, as if his cup weren't already gushing over, had come a letter from Harvard, laying out its intention of luring him away from Frankfurter University, located in nearby Weedham, about twelve miles upriver from where Cass is standing right now. After all that has happened to Cass over the course of this past year, he's surprised at the degree of awed elation he feels at the letter bearing the insignia of Veritas. But he's an academic, his sense of success and failure ultimately determined by the academy's utilities (to use the language of Lucinda's science), and Harvard counts as the maximum utility. Cass has the letter on him right now, zippered into an inside pocket of his parka, insulating him against the elements.

The night is so cold that everything seems to have been stripped bare of superfluous existence, reduced to the purity of abstraction. Cass has the distinct impression that he can see better in the sharpened air, that it's counteracting the near-sightedness that has had him wearing glasses since he was twelve. He takes them off and, of course, can't see a thing, can barely see past the nimbus phantom of his own breath.

But then he stares harder and it seems that he can see better, that the world has slid into sharper focus. It's only now, with his glasses off, that he catches sight of the spectacle that the extreme cold has created in the river below, frozen solid except where it quickens through the three graceful arches of the bridge's substructure, creating an effect that could reasonably be called sublime, and in the Kantian sense: not cozily beautiful, but touched by a metaphysical chill. The quickened water has sculpted three immense and perfect arches into the thick ice, soaring fifty or sixty feet to their apices, sublime almost as if by design. The surface of the water in the carved-out breaches is polished to obsidian, lustered to transparency against the white-blue gleam of the frozen encasement, and perspective askew, the whole of it looks like a cathedral rising endlessly, the arches becoming windows that open into vistas of black.

Standing dead center on Weeks Bridge, in the dead of winter in the dead of night, staring down at the three enormous arches sublimely carved into the Charles, suggesting a cathedral shaped into the ice, Cass is contemplating the strange thing that his life has become.

To him. His life has become strange to him. He feels like he's wearing somebody else's coat, grabbed in a hurry from the bed in the spare bedroom after a boozy party. He's walking around in someone else's bespoke cashmere while that guy's got Cass's hooded parka, and only Cass seems to have noticed the switch.

What has happened is that Cass Seltzer has become an intellectual celebrity. He's become famous for his abstract ideas. And not just any old abstract ideas, but atheist abstract ideas, which makes him, according to some of the latest polls, a spokesperson for the most distrusted minority in America, the one that most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

This is a fact. Studies have found that a large proportion of Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays, and Communists, as "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists, the researchers reported, seem to be playing the pariah role once assigned to Catholics, Jews, and Communists, seen as harboring alien and subversive values, or, more likely, as having no inner values at all, and therefore likely to be criminals, rapists and wild-eyed drug addicts.

"As if," as Cass often finds himself saying into microphones, "the only reason to live morally is out of fear of getting caught and being spanked by the heavenly father."

Cass Seltzer has become the unlikely poster boy for this misunderstood group. His is a good face for counteracting the fallacy of equating godlessness with vice. Handsome, but not in a way to make the squeamish consider indeterminate sexual orientation, Cass's fundamental niceness is written all over him. He's got a strong jaw, a high ovoid forehead from which his floppy auburn hair is only just slightly receding, and the sweetest, most earnest smile this side of Oral Roberts University. Is this a man who could possibly go out and commit murder and mayhem, rape our virgin daughters and shoot controlled substances into his veins?

Cass is still trying to assimilate the fact that his book has become an international sensation, translated into twenty-seven languages, including Latvian. He understands that it's not just a matter of what he's written — as much as he'd like to believe it is — but also a matter of the rare intersection of the preoccupations of his lifetime with the turmoil of the age. When Cass, in all the safety of his obscurity, set about writing a book that would explain how irrelevant the belief in God can be to religious experience — so irrelevant that the emotional structure of religious experiences can be transplanted to completely godless contexts with little of the impact lost; and when he had also, almost as an afterthought, included as an Appendix thirty-six arguments for the existence of God, with rebuttals, his claim being that the most thorough demolition of these arguments would make little difference to the felt qualities of religious experience, he'd had no idea of the massive response his efforts would provoke.

For the most part, fame is agreeable to Cass. For one thing, people treat him more nicely. It's a revelation to learn what a nice bunch of upright mammals we're capable of being. Everybody happily, gratefully, applies the Golden Rule when it comes to interacting with the famous. Thou must treat the famous as thou wouldst wish to be treated thyself. Easy! If only everybody could be famous, we would all be effortlessly altruistic.

The atheist with a soul. Cass always smiles at the absurdity of the phrase. But which is the more absurd element, he wonders. The truth is — and what's the good of a man contemplating an inhumanly frozen world at 4 a.m. if no truth-telling ensues? — that Cass is somewhat at a loss to account for what he has done. How to explain those 36 Arguments for the Existence of God (see Appendix), all of them formally constructed in the preferred analytic style, premises parading with military precision and every shirking presupposition and sketchy implication forced out into the open and subjected to rigorous inspection?

Cass had started out with all the standard arguments for God's existence, the ones discussed in philosophy classes and textbooks: The Cosmological Argument (#1), The Ontological Argument (#2), The Classical Argument from Design (#3A), the arguments from Miracles, Morality, and Mysticism (#'s 11, 16, and 22, respectively), Pascal's Wager (#31) , and William James's Argument from Pragmatism (#32). He had also analyzed the new batch of arguments recently whipped up by the Intelligent Design crowd, to wit, The Argument from Irreducible Complexity (#3B), The Argument from the Paucity of Benign Mutations (# 3C), The Argument from The Original Replicator (#3D), The Argument from The Big Bang (#4), The Argument from the Fine-Tuning of the Physical Constants (#5), and The Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness (#12). But then he had gone beyond these, too, attempting to polish up into genuine arguments those religious intuitions and emotions that are often powerfully evocative but too sub-syllogistic to be regarded as actual arguments. He had tried to capture under the net of analytic reason those fleeting shadows cast by unseen winged things darting through the thick foliage of the religious sensibility.

So Cass had formulated The Argument from Cosmic Coincidences (#7), appealing to such facts as these: that the diameter of the moon, as seen from the earth, is the same as the diameter of the sun, as seen from the earth, which is why we can have those spectacular eclipses when the corona of the sun is revealed in all its glory. He had formulated The Argument from Sublimity (#34), trying to capture the line of reasoning lurking behind, for example, the recent testament of one evangelical scientist who had felt his doubts falling away from him when he was hiking in the mountains and came upon a frozen waterfall — in fact a trinity of a frozen waterfall, with three parts to it. "At that moment, I felt my resistance leave me. And it was a great sense of relief. The next morning, in the dewy grass in the shadow of the Cascades, I fell on my knees and accepted this truth — that God is God, that Christ is his son and that I am giving my life to that belief."

For the right observer, Cass supposed, the triptych cathedral etched out in the ice below might yield a similar epiphany.

Cass had named the twenty-eighth in his list "The Argument from Prodigious Genius", though privately he thinks of it as "The Argument from Azarya." The astonishment of beholding genius, especially when it shows up in child prodigies, is so profound that it can feel almost like violence, as if a behavioral firestorm has devastated the laws of psychology, leaving us with no principles for explaining what we're seeing and hearing. "It's as if these children come into the world knowing" are words that Cass had heard twenty years ago, inspired by a child who could see the numbers and thought that they were angels.

And then there's The Argument from the Improbable Self (#13), another one that engages Cass in a personal way. He had struggled to squeeze precision into the sense of paradox he knows too well, the flailing attempt to calm the inside-outside vertigo to which he's given, trying to construct something semi-coherent beneath that vertiginous step outside himself that would result from his staring too long at the improbable fact of his being identical with . . . himself.

If somebody hasn't experienced this particular kind of metaphysical seizure for himself, then it's hard to find the words to give a sense of what it's like. Cass had experienced it as a boy, lying in bed and thinking his way into the sense of the strangeness of being just this.

Cass had had the lower bunk bed. Both he and Jesse, his younger brother, had wanted the higher bunk, but, as usual, Jesse had wanted what he wanted so much more than Cass had wanted it, with a fury of need that was exhausting just to watch, that Cass had let it go. Lying there awake on his lower bunk, Cass would think about being himself rather than being Jesse.

There was Jesse, and here was Cass. But if someone were looking at the two of them, Jesse there, Cass here, how could that observer tell that he, Cass, was Cass here and not Jesse there? If it got switched on them, everything the same about them, the body and memories and sense of self and everything else, only now he was Jesse here and there was Cass there, how would anybody know? How would he know, how would Jesse? Maybe a switch had already happened, maybe it happened again and again, and how could anybody tell?

The longer he tried to get a fix on the fact of being Cass here, the more the whole idea of it just got away from him. If he tried long enough to grasp it, then he could get the fact of being Cass here to blank out of existence and then come dribbling weakly back in, like a fluorescent fixture flickering on and off toward death. He would get the sense of having been shot outside of himself, and now was someone who was regarding his being Cass Seltzer as something like his being in the sixth grade, just something about him that happened to be true. Who was that Other that he was who was regarding his being Cass Seltzer as if he didn't have to be Cass Seltzer? The sense of giddiness induced by these exercises could be a bit too overwhelming for a kid in a lower bunk bed.

It could be a bit overwhelming still.

"Here I am," Cass is saying, standing on Weeks Bridge and talking aloud into the sublimely indifferent night.

Cass knows he needs to tamp down his tendencies toward the transcendental. It isn't becoming in America's favorite atheist, who is, at this moment, Cass Seltzer, who is, somehow or other, just this here.

"Here I am."

How can it be that, of all things, one is this thing, so that one can say, astonishingly — in the right frame of mind, it is astonishing, with the metaphysical chill blowing in from afar — "here I am."

When you didn't force yourself to think in formal reconstructions, when you didn't catch these moments of ravishments under the lens of premises and conclusions, when you didn't impale them and label them , like so many splayed butterflies, bleeding the transcendental glow right out of them, then . . . what?

It's even hard at a time like this to resist the shameful narcissistic appeal of reasonings like The Argument from Personal Coincidences (#8) and The Argument from Answered Prayers (#9) and The Argument from A Wonderful Life (#10). William James had rebuked the "scoundrel logic" that calculates divine provenance from one's own goody-bag of gains, and Cass couldn't agree more with the spirit of James, but here it is, his bulging goody bag, and call him a scoundrel for feeling personally grateful to the universe when, at this same moment that he is standing on Weeks Bridge and tossing hosannas out into the infinite universe, there are multitudes of others whose lives are painfully constricting with misfortunes that are just as arbitrary and undeserved as his own expansive good luck, but Cass Seltzer does feel grateful.

At moments like this could Cass altogether withstand the sense that — how hard to put it into words — the sense that the universe is personal, that there is something personal that grounds existence and order and value and purpose and meaning — and that the grandeur of that personal universe has somehow infiltrated and is expanding his own small person, bringing his littleness more in line with its grandeur, that the personal universe has been personally kind to him, gracious and forgiving, to Cass Seltzer, gratuitously, exorbitantly, divinely kind, and this despite Cass's having, with callowness and shallowness aforethought, thrown spitballs at the whole idea of cosmic intentionality?

No, no, that doesn't capture it either. Those words are far too narrowed by Cass's own particular life, when what it is he could feel, has felt, might even be feeling now, has nothing to do with the contents of Cass's existence, but rather with existence itself, Itself, this, This, THIS . . . what?

This expansion out into the world which is a kind of love, he supposes, a love for the whole of existence, that could so easily well up in Cass Seltzer at this moment, standing here in the pure abstractions of this night and contemplating the strange thisness of his life when viewed sub specie aeternitatus, that is to say from the vantage point of eternity which comes so highly recommended to us by Spinoza.

Here it is then: the sense that existence is just such a tremendous thing, one comes into it, astonishingly, here one is, formed by biology and history, genes and culture, in the midst of the contingency of the world, here one is, one doesn't know how, one doesn't know why, and suddenly one doesn't know where one is either or who or what one is either, and all that one knows is that one is a part of it, a considered and conscious part of it, generated and sustained in existence in ways one can hardly comprehend, all the time conscious of it, though, of existence, the fullness of it, the reaching expanse and pulsing intricacy of it, and one wants to live in a way that at least begins to do justice to it, one wants to expand one's reach of it as far as expansion is possible and even beyond that, to live one's life in a way commensurate with the privilege of being a part of and conscious of the whole reeling glorious infinite sweep, a sweep that includes, so improbably, a psychologist of religion named Cass Seltzer, who, moved by powers beyond himself, did something more improbable than all the improbabilities constituting his improbable existence could have entailed, did something that won him someone else's life, a better life, a more brilliant life, a life beyond all the ones he had wished for in the pounding obscurity of all his yearnings, because all of this, this, this, THIS couldn't belong to him, to the man who stands on Weeks Bridge, wrapped round in a scarf his once-beloved ex-wife Pascale had knit for him for some necessary reason that he would never know, perhaps to offer him some protection against the desolation she knew would soon be his, and was, but is no longer, suspended here above sublimity, his cheeks aflame with either euphoria or frostbite, a letter in his zippered pocket with the imprimatur of Veritas and a Lucinda Mandelbaum with whom to share it all.

Appendix: 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

1. The Cosmological Argument

1. Everything that exists must have a cause. 2. The universe must have a cause (from 1). 3. Nothing can be the cause of itself. 4. The universe cannot be the cause of itself (from 3). 5. Something outside the universe must have caused the universe (from 2 & 4). 6. God is the only thing that is outside of the universe. 7. God caused the universe (from 5 & 6). 8. God exists.

FLAW 1: can be crudely put: Who caused God? The Cosmological Argument is a prime example of the Fallacy of Passing the Buck: invoking God to solve some problem, but then leaving unanswered that very same problem when applied to God himself. The proponent of the Cosmological Argument must admit a contradiction to either his first premise — and say that though God exists, he doesn't have a cause — or else a contradiction to his third premise — and say that God is self-caused. Either way, the theist is saying that his premises have at least one exception, but is not explaining whyGod must be the unique exception, otherwise than asserting his unique mystery (the Fallacy of Using One Mystery To Pseudo-Explain Another). Once you admit of exceptions, you can ask why the universe itself, which is also unique, can't be the exception. The universe itself can either exist without a cause, or else can be self-caused . Since the buck has to stop somewhere, why not with the universe?

FLAW 2: The notion of "cause" is by no means clear, but our best definition is a relation that holds between events that are connected by physical laws. Knocking the vase off the table caused it to crash to the floor; smoking three packs a day caused his lung cancer. To apply this concept to the universe itself is to misuse the concept of cause, extending it into a realm in which we have no idea how to use it. This line of skeptical reasoning, based on the incoherent demands we make of the concept of cause, was developed by David Hume.

COMMENT: The Cosmological Argument, like the Argument from the Big Bang, and The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe, are expressions of our cosmic befuddlement at the question: why is there something rather than nothing? The late philosopher Sydney Morgenbesser had a classic response to this question: "And if there were nothing? You'd still be complaining!"

2. The Ontological Argument

1. Nothing greater than God can be conceived (this is stipulated as part of the definition of "God"). 2. It is greater to exist than not to exist. 3 . If we conceive of God as not existing, then we can conceive of something greater than God (from 2). 4. To conceive of God as not existing is not to conceive of God (from 1 and 3). 5. It is inconceivable that God not exist (from 4). 6. God exists.

This argument, first articulated by Saint Anselm (1033-1109), the Archbishop of Canterbury, is unlike any other, proceeding purely on the conceptual level. Everyone agrees that the mere existence of a concept does not entail that there are examples of that concept; after all, we can know what a unicorn is and at the same time say "unicorns don't exist." The claim of the Ontological Argument is that the concept of God is the one exception to this rule. The very concept of God, when defined correctly, entails that there is something that satisfies that concept. Although most people suspect that there is something wrong with this argument, it's not so easy to figure out what it is.

FLAW: It was Immanuel Kant who pinpointed the fallacy in the Ontological Argument: it is to treat "existence" as a property, like "being fat" or "having ten fingers." The Ontological Argument relies on a bit of wordplay, assuming that "existence" is just another property, but logically it is completely different. If you really could treat "existence" as just part of the definition of the concept of God, then you could just as easily build it into the definition of any other concept. We could, with the wave of our verbal magic wand, define a trunicorn as "a horse that (a) has a single horn on its head, and (b) exists." So if you think about a trunicorn, you're thinking about something that must, by definition, exist; therefore trunicorns exist. This is clearly absurd: we could use this line of reasoning to prove that any figment of our imagination exists.

COMMENT: Once again, Sydney Morgenbesser had a pertinent remark, this one offered as an Ontological Argument for God's Non-Existence: Existence is such a lousy thing, how could God go and do it?

3. The Argument from Design

A. The Classical Teleological Argument 1. Whenever there are things that cohere only because of a purpose or function (for example, all the complicated parts of a watch that allow it to keep time), we know that they had a designer who designed them with the function in mind; they are too improbable to have arisen by random physical processes. (A hurricane blowing through a hardware store could not assemble a watch.) 2. Organs of living things, such as the eye and the heart, cohere only because they have a function (for example, the eye has a cornea, lens, retina, iris, eyelids, and so on, which are found in the same organ only because together they make it possible for the animal to see.) 3. These organs must have a designer who designed them with their function in mind: just as a watch implies a watchmaker, an eye implies an eyemaker (from 1 & 2). 4. These things have not had a human designer. 5. Therefore, these things must have had a non-human designer (from 3 & 4). 6. God is the non-human designer (from 5). 7. God exists.

FLAW: Darwin showed how the process of replication could give rise to the illusion of design without the foresight of an actual designer. Replicators make copies of themselves, which make copies of themselves, and so on, giving rise to an exponential number of descendants. In any finite environment the replicators must compete for the energy and materials necessary for replication. Since no copying process is perfect, errors will eventually crop up, and any error that causes a replicator to reproduce more efficiently than its competitors will result in that line of replicators predominating in the population. After many generations, the dominant replicators will appear to have been designed for effective replication, whereas all they have done is accumulate the copying errors which in the past did lead to effective replication. The fallacy in the argument, then is Premise 1 (and as a consequence, Premise 3, which depends on it): parts of a complex object serving a complex function do not, in fact, require a designer.

In the twenty-first century, creationists have tried to revive the Teleological Argument in three forms:

B. The Argument from Irreducible Complexity 1. Evolution has no foresight, and every incremental step must be an improvement over the preceding one, allowing the organism to survive and reproduce better than its competitors. 2. In many complex organs, the removal or modification of any part would destroy the functional whole. Examples are, the lens and retina of the eye, the molecular components of blood clotting, and the molecular motor powering the cell's flagellum. Call these organs "irreducibly complex." 3. These organs could not have been useful to the organisms that possessed them in any simpler forms (from 2). 4. The Theory of Natural Selection cannot explain these irreducibly complex systems (from 1 & 3). 5. Natural selection is the only way out of the conclusions of the Classical Teleological Argument. 6. God exists (from 4 & 5 and the Classical Teleological Argument).

This argument has been around since the time of Charles Darwin, and his replies to it still hold.

FLAW 1: For many organs, Premise 2 is false. An eye without a lens can still see, just not as well as an eye with a lens.

FLAW 2: For many other organs, removal of a part, or other alterations, may render it useless for its current function, but the organ could have been useful to the organism for some other function. Insect wings, before they were large enough to be effective for flight, were used as heat-exchange panels. This is also true for most of the molecular mechanisms, such as the flagellum motor, invoked in the modern version of the Argument from Irreducible Complexity.

FLAW 3: (The Fallacy of Arguing from Ignorance): There may be biological systems for which we don't yet know how they may have been useful in simpler versions. But there are obviously many things we don't yet understand in molecular biology, and given the huge success that biologists have achieved in explaining so many examples of incremental evolution in other biological systems, it is more reasonable to infer that these gaps will eventually be filled by the day-to-day progress of biology than to invoke a supernatural designer just to explain these temporary puzzles.

COMMENT: This last flaw can be seen as one particular instance of the more general and fallacious

Argument from Ignorance:

1.There are things that we cannot explain yet. 2. Those things must be caused by God.

FLAW: Premise 1 is obviously true. If there weren't things that we could not explain yet, then science would be complete, laboratories and observatories would unplug their computers and convert to condominiums, and all departments of science would be converted to departments in the History of Science. Science is only in business because there are things we have not explained yet. So we cannot infer from the existence of genuine, ongoing science that there must be a God.

C. The Argument from the Paucity of Benign Mutations 1. Evolution is powered by random mutations and natural selection. 2. Organisms are complex, improbable systems, and by the laws of probability any change is astronomically more likely to be for the worse than for the better. 3. The majority of mutations would be deadly for the organism (from 2). 4. The amount of time it would take for all the benign mutations needed for the assembly of an organ to appear by chance is preposterously long (from 3). 5. In order for evolution to work, something outside of evolution had to bias the process of mutation, increasing the number of benign ones (from 4). 6. Something outside of the mechanism of biological change — the Prime Mutator — must bias the process of mutations for evolution to work (from 5). 7. The only entity that is both powerful enough and purposeful enough to be the Prime Mutator is God. 8 .God exists.

FLAW : Evolution does not require infinitesimally improbable mutations, such as a fully formed eye appearing out of the blue in a single generation, because (a) mutations can have small effects (tissue that is slightly more transparent, or cells that are slightly more sensitive to light), and mutations contributing to these effects can accumulate over time; (b) for any sexually reproducing organism, the necessary mutations do not have to have occurred one after the other in a single line of descendants, but could have appeared independently in thousands of separate organisms, each mutating at random, and the necessary combinations could come together as the organisms mate and exchange genes; (c) life on earth has had a vast amount of time to accumulate the necessary mutations (almost four billion years).

D. The New Argument from The Original Replicator 1. Evolution is the process by which an organism evolves from simpler ancestors. 2. Evolution by itself cannot explain how the original ancestor — the first living thing — came into existence (from 1). 3. The theory of natural selection can deal with this problem only by saying the first living thing evolved out of non-living matter (from 2). 4. That non-living matter (call it the Original Replicator) must be capable of (i) self-replication (ii) generating a functioning mechanism out of surrounding matter to protect itself against falling apart, and (iii) surviving slight mutations to itself that will then result in slightly different replicators. 5. The Original Replicator is complex (from 4). 6. The Original Replicator is too complex to have arisen from purely physical processes (from 5 & the Classical Teleological Argument). For example, DNA, which currently carries the replicated design of organisms, cannot be the Original Replicator, because DNA molecules requires a complex system of proteins to remain stable and to replicate, and could not have arisen from natural processes before complex life existed. 7. Natural selection cannot explain the complexity of the Original Replicator (from 3 & 6). 8. The Original Replicator must have been created rather than have evolved (from 7 and the Classical Teleological Argument). 9. Anything that was created requires a Creator. 10. God exists.

FLAW 1: Premise 6 states that a replicator, because of its complexity, cannot have arisen from natural processes, i.e. by way of natural selection. But the mathematician John von Neumann showed in the 1950s that it is theoretically possible for a simple physical system to make exact copies of itself from surrounding materials. Since then, biologists and chemists have identified a number of naturally occurring molecules and crystals that can replicate in ways that could lead to natural selection (in particular, that allow random variations to be preserved in the copies). Once a molecule replicates, the process of natural selection can kick in, and the replicator can accumulate matter and become more complex, eventually leading to precursors of the replication system used by living organisms today.

FLAW 2: Even without von Neumann's work (which not everyone accepts as conclusive), to conclude the existence of God from our not yet knowing how to explain the Original Replicator is to rely on The Argument from Ignorance.

4. The Argument from The Big Bang

1. The Big Bang, according to the best scientific opinion of our day, was the beginning of the physical universe, including not only matter and energy, but space and time and the laws of physics. 2. The universe came to be ex nihilo (from 1). 3. Something outside the universe, including outside its physical laws, must have brought the universe into existence (from 2). 4. Only God could exist outside the universe. 5. God must have been caused the universe to exist (from 3 & 4). 6. God exists.

The Big Bang is based on the observed expansion of the universe, with galaxies rushing away from each other. The implication is that if we run the film of the universe backward from the present, the universe must continuously contract, all the way back to a single point. The theory of the Big Bang is that the universe exploded into existence about 14 billion years ago.

FLAW 1: Cosmologists themselves do not all agree that the Big Bang is a "singularity" — the sudden appearance of space, time, and physical laws from inexplicable nothingness. The Big Bang may represent the lawful emergence of a new universe from a previously existing one. In that case, it would be superfluous to invoke God to explain the emergence of something from nothing.

FLAW 2: The Argument From the Big Bang has all the flaws of The Cosmological Argument — it passes the buck from the mystery of the origin of the universe to the mystery of the origin of God, and it extends the notion of "cause" outside the domain of events covered by natural laws (also known as the universe) where it no longer makes sense.

5. The Arguments from the Fine-Tuning of Physical Constants

1. There are a vast number of physically possible universes. 2. A universe that would be hospitable to the appearance of life must conform to some very strict conditions: Everything from the mass ratios of atomic particles and the number of dimensions of space to the cosmological parameters that rule the expansion of the universe must be just right for stable galaxies, solar systems, planets, and complex life to evolve. 3. The percentage of possible universes that would support life is infinitesimally small (from 2). 4. Our universe is one of those infinitesimally improbable universes. 5. Our universe has been fine-tuned to support life (from 3 & 4). 6. There is a Fine-Tuner (from 5). 7. Only God could have the power and the purpose to be the Fine-Tuner. 8. God exists.

Philosophers and physicists often speak of "The Anthropic Principle," which comes in several versions, labeled "weak," "strong" and "very strong." All three versions argue that any explanation of the universe must account for the fact that we humans ( or any complex organism that could observe its condition) exist in it. The Argument from Fine-Tuning corresponds to the Very Strong Anthropic Principle. Its upshot is that the upshot of the universe is . . . us. The universe must have been designed with us in mind.

FLAW 1: The first premise may be false. Many physicists and cosmologists, following Einstein, hope for a unified "theory of everything," which would deduce from as-yet-unknown physical laws that the physical constants of our universe had to be what they are. In that case, ours would be the only possible universe. (See also The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe,# 35, below).

FLAW 2: Even were we to accept the first premise, the transition from 4 to 5 is invalid. Perhaps we are living in a multiverse (a term coined by William James), a vast plurality (perhaps infinite) of parallel universes with different physical constants, all of them composing one reality. We find ourselves, unsurprisingly (since we are here doing the observing), in one of the rare universe that does support the appearance of stable matter and complex life, but nothing had to have been fine-tuned. Or perhaps we are living in an "oscillatory universe," a succession of universes with differing physical constants, each one collapsing into a point and then exploding with a new big bang into a new universe with different physical constants, one succeeding the other over an infinite time span. Again, we find ourselves, not surprisingly, in one of those time-slices in which the universe does have physical constants that support stable matter and complex life. These hypotheses, which are receiving much attention from contemporary cosmologists, are sufficient to invalidate the leap from 4 to 5.

6. The Argument from the Beauty of Physical Laws

1. Scientists use aesthetic principles (simplicity, symmetry, elegance) to discover the laws of nature. 2. Scientist s could only use aesthetic principles successfully if the laws of nature were intrinsically and objectively beautiful. 3. The laws of nature are intrinsically and objectively beautiful (from 1 & 2). 4. Only a mind-like being with an appreciation of beauty could have designed the laws of nature. 5 . God is the only being with the power and purpose to design beautiful laws of nature. 6. God exists.

FLAW 1: Do we decide an explanation is good because it's beautiful, or do we find an explanation beautiful because it provides a good explanation? When we say that the laws of nature are beautiful, what we are really saying is that the laws of nature are the laws of nature, and thus unify into elegant explanation a vast host of seemingly unrelated and random phenomena. We would find the laws of nature of any lawful universe beautiful. So what this argument boils down to is the observation that we live in a lawful universe. And of course any universe that could support the likes of us would have to be lawful. So this argument is another version of the The Anthropic Principle — we live in the kind of universe which is the only kind of universe in which observers like us could live — and thus is subject to the flaws of Argument #5.

FLAW 2: If the laws of the universe are intrinsically beautiful, then positing a God who loves beauty, and who is mysteriously capable of creating an elegant universe (and presumably a messy one as well, though his aesthetic tastes led him not to), makes the universe complex and incomprehensible all over again. This negates the intuition behind Premise 3, that the universe is intrinsically elegant and intelligible. (See The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe, #35 below.)

7. The Argument from Cosmic Coincidences

1. The universe contains many uncanny coincidences, such as that the diameter of the moon, as seen from the earth is the same as the diameter of the sun, as seen from the earth, which is why we can have spectacular eclipses when the corona of the sun is revealed. 2. Coincidences are, by definition, overwhelmingly improbable. 3. The overwhelmingly improbable defies all statistical explanation. 4. These coincidences are such as to enhance our awed appreciation for the beauty of the natural world. 5. These coincidences must have been designed in order to enhance our awed appreciation of the beauty of the natural world (from 3 & 4). 6. Only a being with the power to effect such uncanny coincidences and the purpose of enhancing our awed appreciation of the beauty of the natural world could have arranged these uncanny cosmic coincidences. 7. Only God could be the being with such power and such purpose. 8. God exists.

FLAW 1: Premise 3 does not follow from Premise 2. The occurrence of the highly improbable can be statistically explained in two ways. One is when we have a very large sample. A one-in-a-million event is not improbable at all if there are a million opportunities for it to occur. The other is that there is a huge number of occurrences that could be counted as coincidences, if we don't specify them beforehand but just notice them after the fact. (There could have been a constellation that forms a square around the moon; there could have been a comet that appeared on January 1, 2000; there could have been a constellation in the shape of a Star of David, etc. etc. etc.) When you consider how many coincidences are possible, the fact that we observe any one coincidence (which we notice after the fact) is not improbably but likely. And let's not forget the statistically improbable coincidences that cause havoc and suffering, rather than awe and wonder, in humans: the perfect storm, the perfect tsunami, the perfect plague, etc.

FLAW 2: The derivation of Premise 5 from Premises 3 and 4 is invalid: an example of the Projection Fallacy, in which we project the workings of our mind onto the world, and assume that our own subjective reaction is the result of some cosmic plan to cause that reaction. The human brain sees patterns in all kinds of random configurations: cloud formations, constellations, tea leaves, inkblots. That is why we are so good at finding supposed coincidences. It is getting things backwards to say that, in every case in which we see a pattern, someone deliberately put that pattern in the universe for us to see.

COMMENT: Prominent among the uncanny coincidences that figure into this argument are those having to do with numbers. Numbers are mysterious to us because they are not material objects like rocks and tables, but at the same time they seem to be real entities, ones that we can't conjure up with any properties we fancy but that have their own necessary properties and relations, and hence must somehow exist outside us (see The Argument from Our Knowledge of The Infinite, #29, and The Argument from Mathematical Reality, #30 below). We are therefore likely to attribute magical powers to them. And, given the infinity of numbers and the countless possible ways to apply them to the world, "uncanny coincidences" are bound to occur (see FLAW 1). In Hebrew, the letters are also numbers, which has given rise to the mystical art of "gematria," often used to elucidate, speculate, and prophesy about the unknowable.

8. The Argument from Personal Coincidences

1. People experience uncanny coincidences in their lives (for example, an old friend calling out of the blue just when you're thinking of him, or a dream about some event that turns out to have just happened, or missing a flight that then crashes). 2. Uncanny coincidences cannot be explained by the laws of probability (which is why we call them uncanny). 3. These uncanny coincidences, inexplicable by the laws of probability, reveal a significance to our lives. 4. Only a being who deems our lives significant and who has the power to effect these coincidences could arrange for them to happen. 5. Only God both deems our lives significant and has the power to effect these coincidences. 6. God exists.

FLAW 1: The second premise suffers from the major flaw of the Argument from Cosmic Coincidences: a large number of experiences, together with the large number of patterns that we would call "coincidences" after the fact, make uncanny coincidences probable, not improbable.

FLAW 2: Psychologists have shown that people are subject to an illusion called Confirmation Bias. When they have a hypothesis (such as that daydreams predict the future), they vividly notice all the instances that confirm it (the times when they think of a friend and he calls), and forget all the instances that don't (the times when they think of a friend and he doesn't call). Likewise, who among us remembers all the times when we miss a plane and it doesn't crash? The vast number of non-events we live through don't make an impression on us; the few coincidences do.

FLAW 3: There is an additional strong psychological bias at work here: Every one of us treats his or her own life with utmost seriousness. For all of us, there can be nothing more significant than the lives we are living. As David Hume pointed out, the self has an inclination to "spread itself on the world," projecting onto objective reality the psychological assumptions and attitudes that are too constant to be noticed, that play in the background like a noise you don't realize you are hearing until it stops. This form of the Projection Fallacy is especially powerful when it comes to the emotionally fraught questions about our own significance.

9. The Argument from Answered Prayers

1. Sometimes people pray to God for good fortune, and against enormous odds, their calls are answered. (For example, a parent prays for the life of her dying child, and the child recovers.) 2. The odds of the beneficial event happening are enormously slim (from 1). 3. The odds that the prayer would have been followed by recovery out of sheer chance are extremely small (from 2). 4. The prayer could only have been followed by the recovery if God listened to it and made it come true. 5. God exists.

This argument is similar to The Argument from Miracles below, except instead of the official miracles claimed by established religion, it refers to intimate and personal miracles.

FLAW 1: Premise 3 is indeed true. However, to use it to infer that a miracle has taken place (and an answered prayer is certainly a miracle) is to subvert it. There is nothing that is less probable than a miracle, since it constitutes a violation of a law of nature (see The Argument from Miracles, #11, below). Therefore, it is more reasonable to conclude that the correlation of the prayer and the recovery is a coincidence than that it is a miracle.

FLAW 2: The coincidence of a person praying for the unlikely to happen and its then happening is, of course, improbable. But the flaws in The Argument from Cosmic Coincidences and The Argument from Personal Coincidences apply here: Given a large enough sample of prayers (the number of times people call out to God to help them and those they love is tragically large), the improbable is bound to happen occasionally. And, given the existence of Confirmation Bias, we will notice these coincidences, yet fail to notice and count up the vastly larger number of unanswered prayers.

FLAW 3: There is an inconsistency in the moral reasoning behind this argument. It asks us to believe in a compassionate God who would be moved to pity by the desperate pleas of some among us — but not by the equally desperate pleas of others among us. Together with The Argument from A Wonderful Life, it appears to be supported by a few cherry-picked examples, but in fact is refuted by the much larger number of counterexamples it ignores: the prayers that go unanswered, the people who do not live wonderful lives. When the life is our own, or that of someone we love, we are especially liable to the Projection Fallacy, and spread our personal sense of significance onto the world at Large.

FLAW 4: Reliable cases of answered prayers always involve medical conditions that we know can spontaneously resolve themselves through the healing powers and immune system of the body, such as recovery from cancer, or a coma, or lameness. Prayers that a person can grow back a limb, or that a child can be resurrected from the dead, always go unanswered. This affirms that supposedly answered prayers are actually just the rarer cases of natural recovery.

10. The Argument from A Wonderful Life

1. Sometimes people who are lost in life find their way. 2. These people could not have known the right way on their own. 3. These people were shown the right way by something or someone other than themselves (from 2). 4. There was no person showing them the way. 5. God alone is a being who is not a person and who cares about each of us enough to show us the way. 6. Only God could have helped these lost souls (from 4 & 5). 7. God exists.

FLAW 1: Premise 2 ignores the psychological complexity of people. People have inner resources on which they draw, often without knowing how they are doing it or even that they are doing it. Psychologists have shown that events in our conscious lives—from linguistic intuitions of which sentences sound grammatical to moral intuitions of what would be the right thing to do in a moral dilemma—are the end-products of complicated mental manipulations of which we are unaware. So, too, decisions and resolutions can bubble into awareness without our being conscious of the processes that led to them. These epiphanies seem to announce themselves to us, as if they came from an external guide: another example of the Projection Fallacy.

FLAW 2: The same as FLAW 3 in The Argument from Answered Prayers, #9 above.

11. The Argument from Miracles

1. Miracles are events that violate the laws of nature. 2. Miracles can be explained only by a force that has the power of suspending the laws of nature for the purpose of making its presence known or changing the course of human history (from 1). 3. Only God has the power and the purpose to carry out miracles (from 2). 4. We have a multitude of written and oral reports of miracles. (Indeed, every major religion is founded on a list of miracles.) 5. Human testimony would be useless if it were not, in the majority of cases, veridical. 6. The best explanation for why there are so many reports testifying to the same thing is that the reports are true (from 5). 7. The best explanation for the multitudinous reports of miracles is that miracles have indeed occurred (from 6). 8. God exists (from 3 & 7).

FLAW 1: It is certainly true, as Premise 4 asserts, that we have a multitude of reports of miracles, with each religion insisting on those that establish it alone as the true religion. But the reports are not testifying to the same events; each miracle list justifies one religion at the expense of the others. See FLAW 2 in the Argument from Holy Books, #23 below.

FLAW 2: The fatal flaw in The Argument from Miracles was masterfully exposed by David Hume in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Chapter 10, "On Miracles." Human testimony may often be accurate, but it is very far from infallible. People are sometimes mistaken; people are sometimes dishonest; people are sometimes gullible — indeed, more than sometimes. Since in order to believe that a miracle has occurred we must believe a law of nature has been violated (something for which we otherwise have the maximum of empirical evidence), and we can only believe it on the basis of the truthfulness of human testimony (which we already know is often inaccurate), then even if we knew nothing else about the event, and had no particular reason to distrust the reports of witness, we would have to conclude that it is more likely that the miracle has not occurred, and that there is an error in the testimony, than that the miracle has occurred. (Hume strengthens his argument, already strong, by observing that religion creates situations in which there are particular reasons to distrust the reports of witnesses. "But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense.")

COMMENT: The Argument from Miracles covers more specific arguments, such as The Argument from Prophets, The Arguments from Messiahs, and the Argument from Individuals with Miraculous Powers.

12. The Argument from The Hard Problem of Consciousness

1. The Hard Problem of Consciousness consists in our difficulty in explaining why it subjectively feels like something to be a functioning brain. (This is to be distinguished from the so-called Easy Problem of Consciousness, which is not actually easy at all, and is only called so in relation to the intractable Hard Problem. See FLAW 3 below.) 2. Consciousness (in the Hard-Problem sense) is not a complex phenomenon built out of simpler ones; it can consist of irreducible "raw feels" like seeing red or tasting salt. 3. Science explains complex phenomena by reducing them to simpler ones, and reducing them to still simpler ones, until the simplest ones are explained by the basic laws of physics. 4. The basic laws of physics laws describe the properties of the elementary constituents of matter and energy, like quarks and quanta, which are not conscious. 5. Science cannot derive consciousness by reducing it to basic physical laws about the elementary constituents of matter and energy (from 2, 3, and 4). 6. Science will never solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness (from 3 and 5). 7. The explanation for consciousness must lie beyond physical laws (from 6). 8. Consciousness, lying outside physical laws, must itself be immaterial (from 7). 9. God is immaterial 10. Consciousness and God both partake in the same immaterial kind of being (from 8 and 9). 11. God has not only the means to impart consciousness to us, but also the motive, namely, to allow us to enjoy a good life, and to make it possible for our choices to cause or prevent suffering in others, thereby allowing for morality and meaning. 12. Consciousness can only be explained by positing that God inserted a spark of the divine into us (from 7, 10, & 11). 13. God exists.

FLAW 1: Premise 3 is dubious. Science often shows that properties can be emergent: they arise from complex interactions of simpler elements, even if they cannot be found in any of the elements themselves. (Water is wet, but that does not mean that every H¬2 0 molecule it is made of is also wet.) Granted, we do not have a theory of neuroscience that explains how consciousness emerges from patterns of neural activity, but to draw theological conclusions from the currently incomplete state of scientific knowledge is to commit the Fallacy of Arguing from Ignorance.

FLAW 2: Alternatively, the theory of panpsychism posits that consciousness in a low-grade form, what is often called "proto-consciousness," is inherent in matter. Our physical theories, with their mathematical methodology, have not yet been able to capture this aspect of matter, but that may just be a limitation on our mathematical physical theories. Some physicists have hypothesized that contemporary malaise about the foundations of quantum mechanics arise because physics is here confronting the intrinsic consciousness of matter, which has not yet been adequately formalized within physical theories.

FLAW 3: It has become clear that every measurable manifestation of consciousness, like our ability to describe what we feel, or let our feelings guide our behavior (the "Easy Problem" of consciousness) has been, or will be, explained in terms of neural activity (that is, every thought, feeling, and intention has a neural correlate). Only the existence of consciousness itself (the "Hard Problem") remains mysterious. But perhaps the hardness of the hard problem says more about what we find hard — the limitations of the brains of Homo sapiens when it tries to think scientifically — than about the hardness of the problem itself. Just as our brains do not allow us to visualize four-dimensional objects perhaps our brains do not allow us to understand how subjective experience arises from complex neural activity.

FLAW 4: Premise 12 is entirely unclear. How does invoking the spark of the divine explain the existence of consciousness? It is the Fallacy of Using One Mystery To Pseudo-Explain Another.

COMMENT: Premise 11 is also dubious, because our capacity to suffer is far in excess of what it would take to make moral choices possible. This will be discussed in connection with The Argument from Suffering, #25 below.

13. The Argument from The Improbable Self

1. I exist in all my particularity and contingency: not as a generic example of personhood, not as any old member of Homo sapiens, but as that unique conscious entity that I know as me. 2. I can step outside myself and view my own contingent particularity with astonishment. 3. This astonishment reveals that there must be something that accounts for why, of all the particular things that I could have been, I am just this, namely, me (from 1 & 2). 4. Nothing within the world can account for why I am just this, since the laws of the world are generic: they can explain why certain kinds of things come to be, even (let's assume) why human beings with conscious brains come to be. But nothing in the world can explain why one of those human beings should be me. 5. Only something outside the world, who cares about me, can therefore account for why I am just this (from 4). 6. God is the only thing outside the world who cares about each and every one of us. 7. God exists.

FLAW: Premise 5 is a blatant example of the Fallacy of Using One Mystery To Pseudo-Explain Another. Granted that the problem boggles the mind, but waving one's hands in the direction of God is no solution. It gives us no sense of how God can account for why I am this thing and not another.

COMMENT: In one way, this argument is reminiscent of the Anthropic Principle. There are a vast number of people who could have been born. One's own parents alone could have given birth to a vast number of alternatives to oneself—same egg, different sperm; different egg, same sperm; different egg, different sperm. Granted, one gropes for a reason for why it was, against these terrific odds, that oneself came to be born. But there may be no reason; it just happened. By the time you ask this question, you already are existing in a world in which you were born. Another analogy: the odds that the phone company would have given you your exact number are minuscule. But it had to give you some number, so asking after the fact why it should be that number is silly. Likewise, the child your parents conceived had to be someone. Now that you're born, it's no mystery why it should be you; you're the one asking the question.

14. The Argument from Survival after Death

1. There is empirical evidence that people survive after death: patients who flat-line during medical emergencies report an experience of floating over their bodies and seeing glimpses of a passage to another world, and can accurately report what happened around their bodies while they were dead to the world. 2. A person's consciousness can survive after the death of his or her body (from 1) 3. Survival after death entails the existence of an immaterial soul. 4. The immaterial soul exists (from 2 & 3). 5. If an immaterial soul exists, then God must exist (from Premise 12 in The Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness, #12, above). 6. God exists.

FLAW : Premise 5 is vulnerable to the same criticisms that were leveled against Premise 12 in the Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Existence after death no more implies God's existence than our existence before death does.

COMMENT: Many, of course, would dispute Premise 1. The universal experiences of people near death, such as auras and out-of-body experiences, could be hallucinations resulting from oxygen deprivation in the brain. In addition, miraculous resurrections after total brain death, and accurate reports of conversations and events that took place while the brain was not functioning, have never been scientifically documented, and are informal, secondhand examples of testimony of miracles. They are thus vulnerable to the same flaws pointed out in The Argument from Miracles. But the argument is fatally flawed even if Premise 1 is granted.

15. The Argument from the Inconceivability of Personal Annihilation

1. I cannot conceive of my own annihilation: as soon as I start to think about what it would be like not to exist, I am thinking, which implies that I would exist (as in Descartes' Cogito ergo sum), which implies that I would not be thinking about what it is like not to exist. 2. My annihilation is inconceivable (from 1). 3. What cannot be conceived, cannot be. 4. I cannot be annihilated (from 2 & 3). 5. I survive after my death (from 4) The argument now proceeds on as in the argument from Survival After Death, only substituting in 'I' for 'a person,' until we get to: 6. God exists.

FLAW 1: Premise 2 confuses psychological inconceivability with logical inconceivability. The sense in which I can't conceive of my own annihilation is like the sense in which I can't conceive of those whom I love may betray me—a failure of the imagination, not an impossible state of affairs. Thus Premise 2 ought to read "My annihilation is inconceivable to me.", which is a fact about what my brain can conceive, not a fact about what exists.

FLAW 2: Same as Flaw 3 from The Argument from the Survival of Death.

COMMENT: Though logically unsound, this is among the most powerful psychological impulses to believe in a soul, and an afterlife, and God. It genuinely is difficult—not to speak of disheartening— to conceive of oneself not existing!

16. The Argument from Moral Truth

1. There exist objective moral truths. (Slavery and torture and genocide are not just distasteful to us, but are actually wrong.) 2. These objective moral truths are not grounded in the way the world is but rather in the way that the world ought to be. (Consider: should white-supremacists succeed, taking over the world and eliminating all who don't meet their criteria for being existence-worthy, their ideology still would be morally wrong. It would be true, under this hideous counterfactual, that the world ought not to be the way they have made it.) 3. The world itself — the way that it is, the laws of science that explain why it is that way — cannot account for the way that the world ought to be. 4. The only way to account for morality is that God established morality (from 2 and 3). 5. God exists.

FLAW 1: The major flaw of this argument is revealed in a powerful argument that Plato made famous in the Euthyphro. Reference to God does not help in the least to ground the objective truth of morality. The question is: why did God choose the moral rules he did? Did he have a reason justifying his choice that, say, giving alms to the poor is good, while genocide is wrong? Either he had a good reason or he didn't. If he did, then his reasons, whatever they are, can provide the grounding for moral truths for us, and God himself is redundant. And if he didn't have a good reason, then his choices are arbitrary—he could just as easily have gone the other way, making charity bad and genocide good—and we would have no reason to take his choices seriously. According to theEuthyphro argument, then, the Argument from Moral Truth is another example of The Fallacy of Passing the Buck. The hard work of moral philosophy consists in grounding morality in some version of the Golden Rule: that I cannot be committed to my own interests mattering in a way that yours do not just because I am me and you are not.

FLAW 2: Premise 4 is belied by the history of religion, which shows that the God from which people draw their morality (for example, the God of the Bible and the Koran) did not establish what we now recognize to be morality at all. The God of the Old Testament commanded people to keep slaves, slay their enemies, execute blasphemers and homosexuals, and commit many other heinous acts. Of course, our interpretation of which aspects of Biblical morality to take seriously has grown more sophisticated over time, and we read the Bible selectively and often metaphorically. But that is just the point: we must be consulting some standards of morality that do not come from God in order to judge which aspects of God's word to take literally and which aspects to ignore.

COMMENT : Some would question the first premise, and regard its assertion as a flaw of this argument. Slavery and torture and genocide are wrong by our lights, they would argue, and conflict with certain values we hold dear, such as freedom and happiness. But those are just subjective values, and it is obscure to say that statements that are consistent with those values are objectively true in the same way that mathematical or scientific statements can be true. But the argument is fatally flawed even if Premise 1 is granted.

17. The Argument from Altruism

1. People often act altruistically — namely, against their interests. They help others, at a cost to themselves, out of empathy, fairness, decency, and integrity. 2. Natural selection can never favor true altruism, because genes for selfishness will always out-compete genes for altruism (recall that altruism, by definition, exacts a cost to the actor). 3. Only a force acting outside of natural selection and intending for us to be moral could account for our ability to act altruistically (from 2). 4. God is the only force outside of natural selection that could intend us to be moral. 5. God must have implanted the moral instinct within us (from 3 & 4). 6. God exists.

FLAW 1: Theories of the evolution of altruism by natural selection have been around for decades and are now widely supported by many kinds of evidence. A gene for being kind to one's kin, even if it hurts the person doing the favor, can be favored by evolution, because that gene would be helping a copy of itself that is shared by the kin. And a gene for conferring a large benefit to a non-relative at a cost to oneself can evolve if the favor-doer is the beneficiary of a return favor at a later time. Both parties are better off, in the long run, from the exchange of favors.

Some defenders of religion do not consider these theories to be legitimate explanations of altruism, because a tendency to favor one's kin, or to trade favors, are ultimately just forms of selfishness for one's genes, rather than true altruism. But this is a confusion of the original phenomenon: we are trying to explain why people are sometimes altruistic, not why genes are altruistic. (We have no reason to believe that genes are ever altruistic in the first place!) Also, in a species with language, namely humans, committed altruists develop a reputation for being altruistic, and thereby win more friends, allies, and trading partners. This can give rise to selection for true, committed, altruism, not just the tit-for-tat exchange of favors.

FLAW 2: We have evolved higer mental faculties, such as self-reflection and logic, that allow us to reason about the world, to persuade other people to form alliances with us, to learn from our mistakes, and to achieve other feats of reason. Those same faculties, when they are honed through debate, reason, and knowledge, can allow us to step outside ourselves, learn about other people's point of view, and act in a way that we can justify as maximizing everyone's well-being. We are capable of moral reasoning because we are capable of reasoning in general.

FLAW 3: In some versions of the Argument from Altruism, God succeeds in getting people to act altruistically because he promises them a divine reward and threatens them with divine retribution. People behave altruistically to gain a reward or avoid a punishment in the life to come. This argument is self-contradictory. It aims to explain how people act without regard to their self-interest, but then assumes that there could be no motive for acting altruistically other than self-interest.

18. The Argument from Free Will

1. Having free will means having the freedom to choose our actions, rather than their being determined by some prior cause. 2. If we don't have free will, then we are not agents, for then we are not really acting, but rather we're being acted upon. (That's why we don't punish people for involuntary actions—such as a teller who hands money to a bank robber at gunpoint, or a driver who injures a pedestrian after a defective tire blows out.) 3. To be a moral agent means to be held morally responsible for what one does. 4. If we can't be held morally responsible for anything we do then the very idea of morality is meaningless. 5. Morality is not meaningless. 6. We have free will (from 2- 5). 7. We, as moral agents, are not subject to the laws of nature, in particular, the neural events in a genetically and environmentally determined brain (from 1 and 6). 8. Only a being who is apart from the laws of nature and partakes of the moral sphere could explain our being moral agents (from 7). 9. Only God is a being who is apart from the laws of nature and partakes of the moral sphere. 10. Only God can explain our moral agency (from 8 & 9). 11. God exists.

FLAW 1: This argument, in order to lead to God, must ignore the paradoxical Fork of Free Will. Either my actions are predictable (from my genes, my upbringing, my brain state, my current situation, and so on), or they are not. If they are predictable, then there is no reason to deny that they are caused, and we would not have free will. So they must be unpredictable, in other words, random. But if our behavior is random, then in what sense can it be attributable to us at all? If it really is a random event when I give the infirm man my seat in the subway, then in what sense is itme to whom this good deed should be attributed? If the action isn't caused by my psychological states, which are themselves caused by other states, then in one way is it really my action? And what good would it do to insist on moral responsibility, if our choices are random, and cannot be predicted from prior events (such as growing up in a society that holds people responsible)? This leads us back to the conclusion that we, as moral agents must be parts of the natural world-- the very negation of 7.

FLAW 2: Premise 10 is an example of the Fallacy of Using One Mystery to Pseudo-Explain Another. It expresses, rather than dispels, the confusion we feel when faced with the Fork of Free Will. The paradox has not been clarified in the least by introducing God into the analysis.

COMMENT: Free will is yet another quandary that takes us to the edge of our human capacity for understanding. The concept is baffling, because our moral agency seems to demand both that our actions be determined, and also that they not be determined.

19. The Argument from Personal Purpose

1. If there is no purpose to a person's life, then that person's life is pointless. 2. Human life cannot be pointless. 3. Each human life has a purpose (from 1 & 2). 4. The purpose of each individual person's life must derive from the overall purpose of existence. 5. There is an overall purpose of existence (from 3 and 4) 6. Only a being who understood the overall purpose of existence could create each person according to the purpose that person is meant to fulfill. 7. Only God could understand the overall purpose of creation. 8. There can be a point to human existence only if God exists (from 6 & 7). 9. God exists.

FLAW 1: The first premise rests on a confusion between the purpose of an action and the purpose of a life. It is human activities that have purposes—or don't. We study for the purpose of educating and supporting ourselves. We eat right and exercise for the purpose of being healthy. We warn children not to accept rides with strangers for the purpose of keeping them safe. We donate to charity for the purpose of helping the poor (just as we would want someone to help us if we were poor.) The notion of a person's entire life serving a purpose, above and beyond the purpose of all the person's choices, is obscure. Might it mean the purpose for which the person was born? That implies that some goal-seeking agent decided to bring our lives into being to serve some purpose. Then who is that goal-seeking agent? Parents often purposively have children, but we wouldn't want to see a parent's wishes as the purpose of the child's life. If the goal-seeking agent is God, the argument becomes circular: we make sense of the notion of "the purpose of a life" by stipulating that the purpose is whatever God had in mind when he created us, but then argue for the existence of God because he is the only one who could have designed us with a purpose in mind.

FLAW 2: Premise 2 states that human life cannot be pointless. But of course it could be pointless in the sense meant by this argument: lacking a purpose in the grand scheme of things. It could very well be the there is no grand scheme of things because there is no Grand Schemer. By assuming that there is a grand scheme of things, it assumes that there is a schemer whose scheme it is, which circularly assumes the conclusion.

COMMENT: It's important not to confuse the notion of "pointless" in Premise 2 with notions like "not worth living" or "expendable." It is probably confusions of this sort that give Premise 2 its appeal. But we can very well maintain that each human life is precious—is worth living, is not expendable—without maintaining that each human life has a purpose in the overall scheme of things.

20. The Argument from the Intolerability of Insignificance

1. In a million years nothing that happens now will matter. 2. By the same token, anything that happens at any point in time will not matter from the point of view of some other time a million years distant from it into the future. 3. No point in time can confer mattering on any other point, for each suffers from the same problem of not mattering itself (from 2). 4. It is intolerable (or inconceivable, or unacceptable) that in a million years nothing that happens now will matter. 5. What happens now will matter in a million years (from 4). 6. It is only from the point of view of eternity that what happens now will matter even in a million years (from 3). 7. Only God can inhabit the point of view of eternity. 8. God exists.

FLAW: Premise 4 is illicit: it is of the form "This argument must be correct, because it is intolerable that this argument is not correct." The argument is either circular, or an example of the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking. Maybe we won't matter in a million years, and there's just nothing we can do about it. If that is the case, we shouldn't declare that it is intolerable—we just have to live with it. Another way of putting it is: we should take ourselves seriously (being mindful of what we do, and the world we leave our children and grandchildren), but we shouldn't take ourselves that seriously, and arrogantly demand that we must matter in a million years.

21. The Argument from the Consensus of Humanity

1. Every culture in every epoch has had theistic beliefs. 2. When peoples, widely separated by both space and time, hold similar beliefs, the best explanation is that those beliefs are true. 3. The best explanation for why every culture has had theistic beliefs is that those beliefs are true. 4. God exists.

FLAW: 2 is false. Widely separated people could very well come up with the same false beliefs. Human nature is universal, and thus prone to universal illusions and shortcomings of perception, memory, reasoning, and objectivity. Also , many of the needs and terrors and dependencies of the human condition (such as the knowledge of our own mortality, and the attendant desire not to die) are universal. Our beliefs don't arise only from well-evaluated reasoning, but from wishful thinking, self-deception, self-aggrandizement, gullibility, false memories, visual illusions, and other mental glitches. Well-grounded beliefs may be the exception rather than the rule when it comes to psychologically fraught beliefs, which tend to bypass rational grounding and spring instead from unexamined emotions. The fallacy of arguing that if an idea is universally held then it must be true was labeled by the ancient logicians consensus gentium.

22. The Argument from the Consensus of Mystics

1. Mystics go into a special state in which they seem to see aspects of reality that elude everyday experience. 2. We cannot evaluate the truth of their experiences from the viewpoint of everyday experience (from 1) 3. There is a unanimity among mystics as to what they experience. 4. When there is unanimity among observers as to what they experience, then unless they are all deluded in the same way, the best explanation for their unanimity is that their experiences are true. 5. There is no reason to think that mystics are all deluded in the same way. 6. The best explanation for the unanimity of mystical experience is that what mystics perceive is true (from 4 & 5). 7. Mystical experiences unanimously testify to the transcendent presence of God. 8. God exists.

FLAW 1 : Premise 5 is disputable. There is indeed reason to think mystics might be deluded in similar ways. The universal human nature that refuted the Argument from the Consensus of Humanity entails that the human brain can be stimulated in unusual ways that give rise to universal (but not objectively correct) experiences. The fact that we can stimulate the temporal lobes of non-mystics and induce mystical experiences in them is evidence that mystics might indeed all be deluded in similar ways. Certain drugs can also induce feelings of transcendence, such as an enlargement of perception beyond the bounds of effability, a melting of the boundaries of the self, a joyful expansion out into an existence that seems to be all One, with all that Oneness pronouncing Yes upon us. Such experiences, which, as William James points out, are most easily attained by getting drunk, are of the same kind as the mystical: "The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness." Of course, we do not exalt the stupor and delusions of drunkenness because weknow what caused them. The fact that the same effects can overcome a person when we know what caused them (and hence don't call the experience "mystical") — is reason to suspect that the causes of mystical experiences also lie within internal excitations of the brain having nothing to do with perception.

FLAW 2: The struggle to put the ineffable contents of abnormal experiences into language inclines the struggler toward pre-existing religious language, which is the only language that most of us have been exposed to which overlaps with the unusual sensations of an altered state of consciousness. This observation casts doubt on Premise 7.See also The Argument from Sublimity, #34 below.

23. The Argument from Holy Books

1. There are holy books that reveal the word of God. 2. The word of God is necessarily true. 3. The word of God reveals the existence of God. 4. God exists.

FLAW 1: This is a circular argument if ever there was one. The first three premises cannot be maintained unless one independently knows the very conclusion to be proved, namely that God exists.

FLAW 2: A glance at the world's religions shows that there are numerous books and scrolls and doctrines and revelations that all claim to reveal the word of God. But they are mutually incompatible. Should I believe that Jesus is my personal savior? Or should I believe that God made a covenant with the Jews requiring every Jew to keep the commandments of the Torah? Should I believe that Mohammad was Allah's last prophet and that Ali, the prophet's cousin and husband of his daughter Fatima, ought to have been the first caliph, or that Mohammad was Allah's last prophet and that Ali was the fourth and last caliph? Should I believe that the resurrected prophet Moroni dictated the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith? Or that Ahura Mazda, the benevolent Creator, is at cosmic war with the malevolent Angra Mainyu? And on and on it goes. Only the most arrogant provincialism could allow someone to believe that the holy documents that happen to be held sacred by the clan he was born into are true, while all the documents held sacred by the clans he wasn't born into are false.

24. The Argument from Perfect Justice

1. This world provides numerous instances of imperfect justice — bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people. 2. It violates our sense of justice that imperfect justice may prevail. 3. There must be a transcendent realm in which perfect justice prevails (from 1 and 2). 4. A transcendent realm in which perfect justice prevails entails the Perfect Judge. 5. The Perfect Judge is God. 6. God exists.

FLAW: This is a good example of the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking. Our wishes for how the world should be need not be true; just because we want there to be some realm in which perfect justice applies does not mean that there is such a realm. In other words, there is no way to pass from Premise 2 to Premise 3 without the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking.

25. The Argument from Suffering

1. There is much suffering in this world. 3. Some suffering (or at least its possibility) is a demanded by human moral agency: if people could not choose evil acts that cause suffering, moral choice would not exist. 4.Whatever suffering cannot be explained as the result of human moral agency must also have some purpose (from 2 & 3). 5. There are virtues — forbearance, courage, compassion, and so on — that can only develop in the presence of suffering. We may call them "the virtues of suffering." 6. Some suffering has the purpose of our developing the virtues of suffering (from 5). 7. Even taking 3 and 6 into account, the amount of suffering in the world is still enormous — far more than what is required for us to benefit from suffering. 8. Moreover, there are those who suffer who can never develop the virtues of suffering--children, animals, those who perish in their agony. 9. There is more suffering than we can explain by reference to the purposes that we can discern (from 7 & 8). 10 There are purposes for suffering that we cannot discern (from 2 and 9). 11. Only a being who has a sense of purpose beyond ours could provide the purpose of all suffering (from 10). 12. Only God could have a sense of purpose beyond ours. 13. God exists.

FLAW: This argument is a sorrowful one, since it highlights the most intolerable feature of our world, the excess of suffering. The suffering in this world is excessive in both its intensity and its prevalence, often undergone by those who can never gain anything from it. This is a powerful argument against the existence of a compassionate and powerful deity. It is only the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking, embodied in Premise 2, that could make us presume that what is psychologically intolerable cannot be the case.

26. The Argument from the Survival of The Jews

1. The Jews introduced the world to the idea of the one God, with his universal moral code 2. The survival of the Jews, living for milliennia without a country of their own, and facing a multitude of enemies that sought to destroy not only their religion but all remnants of the race, is a historical unlikelihood. 3. The Jews have survived against vast odds (from 2). 4. There is no natural explanation for so unlikely an event as the survival of the Jews (from 3). 5. The best explanation is that they have some transcendent purpose to play in human destiny (from 1 and 4). 6. Only God could have assigned a transcendent destiny to the Jews. 7. God exists.

FLAW 1: The fact that the Jews, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, had no country of their own made it more likely, rather than less likely, that they would survive as a people. If they had been concentrated in one country, they would surely have been conquered by one of history's great empires, as happened to other vanished tribes. But a people dispersed across a vast diaspora is more resilient, which is why other stateless peoples, like the Parsis and Roma, have also survived for millennia, often against harrowing odds. Moreover, the Jews encouraged cultural traits — such as literacy, urban living, specialization in middleman occupations, and an extensive legal code to govern their internal affairs --that gave them further resilience against the vicissitudes of historical change. The survival of the Jews, therefore, is not a miraculous improbability.

COMMENT: The persecution of the Jews need not be seen as a part of a cosmic moral drama. The unique role that Judaism played in disseminating monotheism, mostly through the organs of its two far more popular monotheistic offshoots, Christianity and Islam, has bequeathed to its adherents an unusual amount of attention, mostly negative, from adherents of those other monotheistic religions.

27. The Argument from The Upward Curve of History

1. There is an upward moral curve to human history (tyrannies fall; the evil side loses in major wars; democracy, freedom, and civil rights spread). 2. Natural selection's favoring of those who are fittest to compete for resources and mates has bequeathed humankind selfish and aggressive traits. 3. Left to their own devices, a selfish and aggressive species could not have ascended up a moral curve over the course of history (from 2). 4.Only God has the power and the concern for us to curve history upward. 5. God exists.

FLAW: Though our species has inherited traits of selfishness and aggression, we have also inherited capacities for empathy, reasoning, and learning from experience. We have also inherited language, and with it a means to pass on the lessons we have learned from history. And so humankind has slowly reasoned its way toward a broader and more sophisticated understanding of morality, and more effective institutions for keeping peace. We make moral progress as we do scientific progress, through reasoning, experimentation, and the rejection of failed alternatives.

28. The Argument from Prodigious Genius

1. Genius is the highest level of creative capacity, the level which, by definition, defies explanation. 2. Genius does not happen by way of natural psychological processes (from 1). 3. The cause of genius must lie outside of natural psychological processes (from 2). 4. The insights of genius have helped in the cumulative progress of humankind — scientific, technological, philosophical, moral, artistic, societal, political, spiritual. 5. The cause of genius must both lie outside of natural psychological processes and be such as to care about the progress of humankind (from 3 and 4). 6. Only God could work outside of natural psychological processes and create geniuses to light the path of humankind. 7. God exists.

FLAW 1: The psychological traits that go into human accomplishment, such as intelligence and perseverance, are heritable. By the laws of probability, rare individuals will inherit a concentrated dose of those genes. Given a nurturing cultural context, these individuals will, some of the time, exercise their powers to accomplish great feats. Those are the individuals we call geniuses. We may not know enough about genetics, neuroscience, and cognition to explain exactly what makes for a Mozart or an Einstein, but exploiting this gap to argue for supernatural provenance is an example of The Fallacy of Arguing from Ignorance.

FLAW 2: Human genius is not consistently applied to human betterment. Consider weapons of mass destruction, computer viruses, Hitler's brilliantly effective rhetoric, or those criminal geniuses (for example electronic thieves) who are so cunning that they elude detection.

29. The Argument from Human Knowledge of Infinity

1. We are finite, and everything with which we come into physical contact is finite. 2. We have a knowledge of the infinite, demonstrably so in mathematics. 3. We could not have derived this knowledge of the infinite from the finite, from anything which we are and come in contact with (from 1). 4. Only something itself infinite could have implanted knowledge of the infinite in us ( from 2 and 3). 5. God would want us to have a knowledge of the infinite, both for the cognitive pleasure it affords us and because it allows us to come to know him, who is himself infinite. 6. God is the only entity both that is infinite and that could have an intention of implanting the knowledge of the infinite within us (from 4 & 5). 7. God exists.

FLAW: There are certain computational procedures governed by what logicians call recursive rules. A recursive rule is one that refers to itself, and hence it can be applied to its own output ad infinitum. For example, we can define a natural number recursively: 1 is a natural number and if you add 1 to a natural number, the result is a natural number. We can apply this rule an indefinite number of times and thereby generate an infinite series of natural numbers. Recursive rules allow a finite system (a set of rules, a computer, a brain) to reason about an infinity of objects, refuting Premise 3.

COMMENT: I n 1931 the young logician Kurt Gödel published a paper proving a result called the Incompleteness Theorem (actually there are two). Basically, what Gödel demonstrated is that recursive rules cannot capture all of arithmetic. So though the flaw discussed above is sufficient to invalidate Premise 3 , it should not be understood as suggesting that all of our mathematical knowledge is reducible to recursive rules.

30. The Argument from Mathematical Reality

1. Mathematical truths are necessarily true. (There is no possible world in which, say, 2 plus 2 does not equal 4, or in which the square root of 2 can be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers.) 2. The truths that describe our physical world, no matter how fundamental, are empirical, requiring observational evidence. (So, for example, we await some empirical means to test string theory, in order to find out whether we live in a world of eleven dimensions.) 3. Truths that require empirical evidence are not necessary truths. (We require empirical evidence because there are possible worlds in which these are not truths, and so we have to test that ours is not such a world.) 4. The truths of our physical world are not necessary truths (from 2 and 3). 5. The truths of our physical world cannot explain mathematical truths (from 1 and 4). 6. Mathematical truths exist on a different plane of existence from physical truths (from 5). 7. Only something which itself exists on a different plane of existence from the physical can explain mathematical truths (from 6). 8. Only God can explain mathematical truths (from 7). 9. God exists.

Mathematics is derived through pure reason — what the philosophers call a priori reason — which means that it cannot be refuted by any empirical observations. The fundamental question in philosophy of mathematics is: how can mathematics be true but not empirical? Is it because mathematics describes some trans-empirical reality — as mathematical realists believe — or is it because mathematics has no content at all and is a purely formal game consisting of stipulated rules and their consequences? The Argument from Mathematical Reality assumes, in its third premise, the position of mathematical realism, which isn't a fallacy in itself; many mathematicians believe it, some of them arguing that it follows from Gödel's incompleteness theorems (see the COMMENT in The Argument from Human Knowledge of Infinity, #30 above). This argument, however, goes further and tries to deduce God's existence from the trans-empirical existence of mathematical reality.

FLAW 1: The inference of 5, from 1 and 4, does not take into account the formalist response to the non-empirical nature of mathematics.

FLAW 2: Even if one, Platonistically, accepts the derivation of 5 and then 6, there is something fishy about proceeding onward to 7, with its presumption that something outside of mathematical reality must explain the existence of mathematical reality. Lurking within 7 is the hidden premise: mathematical truths must be explained by reference to non-mathematical truths. But why? If God can be self-explanatory, as this argument presumes, why then can't mathematical reality be self-explanatory — especially since the truths of mathematics are, as this argument asserts, necessarily true?

FLAW 3: Mathematical reality — if indeed it exists — is, admittedly, mysterious. But invoking God does not dispel this puzzlement; it is an instance of "The Fallacy of Using One Mystery to Pseudo-Explain Another." The mystery of God's existence is often used, by those who assert it, as an explanatory sink hole.

31.The Argument from Decision Theory (Pascal's Wager)

1. Either God exists or God doesn't exist. 2. A person can either believe that God exists or believe that God doesn't exist(from 1). 3. If God exists and you believe, you receive eternal salvation. 4. If God exists and you don't believe, you receive eternal damnation. 5. If God doesn't exist and you believe, you've been duped, have wasted time in religious observance, and have missed out on decadent enjoyments. 6. If God doesn't exist, and you don't believe, then you have avoided a false belief. 7. You have much more to gain by believing in God than not believing in him, and much more to lose by not believing in God than believing in him (from, 3, 4, 5, & 6) 8. It is more rational to believe that God exists than to believe that he doesn't exist (from 7).

Believe

Eternal salvation

You've been duped, missed out on some sins

Eternal damnation

You got it right

This unusual argument does not justify the conclusion that "God exists." Rather it argues that it is rational to believe that God exists, given that we don't know whether he exists.

FLAW 1: The "believe" option in Pascal's wager can be interpreted in two ways.

One is that the wagerer genuinely has to believe, deep down, that God exists; in other words, it is not enough to mouth a creed, or merely act as if God exists. According to this interpretation, God, if He exists, can peer into a person's soul and discern the person's actual convictions. If so, the kind of "belief" that Pascal's wager advises — a purely pragmatic strategy, chosen because the expected benefits exceed the expected costs — would not be enough. Indeed, it's not even clear that this option is coherent: if one chooses to believe something because of the consequences of holding that belief, rather than being intuitively convinced of it, is it really a belief, or just an empty vow?

The other interpretation is that it is enough to act in the way that traditional believers act: say prayers, go to services, recite the appropriate creed, and go through the other motions of religion.

The problem is that Pascal's wager offers no guidance as to which prayers, which services, whichcreed, to live by. Say I chose to believe in the Zoroastrian cosmic war between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu to avoid the wrath of the former, while the real fact of the matter is that God gave the Torah to the Jews, and I am thereby inviting the wrath of Yahweh (or vice-versa). Given all the things I could "believe" in, I am in constant danger of incurring the negative consequences of disbelief even though I choose the "belief" option. The fact that Blaise Pascal stated his wager as two stark choices, putting the outcomes in blatantly Christian terms — eternal salvation and eternal damnation — reveals more about his own upbringing than they do about the logic of belief. The wager simply codifies his particular "live options," to use William James's term, for the only choices that seem possible to a given believer.

FLAW 2: Pascal's wager assumes a petty, egotistical, and vindictive God who punishes anyone who does not believe in him. But the great monotheistic religions all declare that "mercy" is one of God's essential traits. A merciful God would surely have some understanding of why a person may not believe in him (if the evidence for God were obvious, the fancy reasoning of Pascal's wager would not be necessary), and so would extend compassion to a nonbeliever. (Bertrand Russell, when asked what he would have to say to God if, despite his philosophical atheism, he were to die and face his Creator, responded, "Oh, Lord, why did you not provide more evidence?') The nonbeliever therefore should have nothing to worry about — falsifying the negative payoff in the lower-left-hand cell of the matrix.

FLAW 3: The calculations of expected value in Pascal's wager omit a crucial part of the mathematics: the probabilities of each of the two columns, which have to be multiplied with the payoff in each cell to determine the expected value of each cell. If the probability of God's existence (ascertained by other means) is infinitesimal, then even if the cost of not believing in him is high, the overall expectation may not make it worthwhile to choose the "believe" row (after all, we take many other risks in life with severe possible costs but low probabilities, such as boarding an airplane). One can see how this invalidates Pascal's Wager by considering similar wagers. Say I told you that a fire-breathing dragon has moved into the next apartment and that unless you set out a bowl of marshmallows for him every night he will force his way into your apartment and roast you to a crisp. According to Pascal's wager, you should leave out the marshmallows. Of course you don't, even though you are taking a terrible risk in choosing not to believe in the dragon, because you don't assign a high enough probability to the dragon's existence to justify even the small inconvenience.

32. The Argument from Pragmatism

(William James's Leap of Faith)

1. The consequences for the believer's life of believing should be considered as part of the evidence for the truth of the belief (just as the effectiveness of a scientific theory in its practical applications is considered evidence for the truth of the theory). Call this the pragmatic evidence for the belief. 2. Certain beliefs effect a change for the better in the believer's life — the necessary condition being that they are believed. 3. The belief in God is a belief that effects a change for the better in a person's life. 4. If one tries to decide whether or not to believe in God based on the evidence available, one will never get the chance to evaluate the pragmatic evidence for the beneficial consequences of believing in God (from 2 and 3). 5. One ought to make 'the leap of faith' (the term is James's) and believe in God, and only then evaluate the evidence (from 1 and 4).

This argument can be read out of William James's classic essay "The Will to Believe." The first premise , as presented here, is a little less radical than James's pragmatic definition of truth in general, according to which a proposition is true if believing that it is true has a cumulative beneficial effect on the believer's life. The pragmatic definition of truth has severe problems, including possible incoherence: in evaluating the effects of the belief on the believer, we have to know the truth about what those effects are, which forces us to fall back on the old-fashioned notion of truth. To make the best case for The Argument from Pragmatism, therefore, the first premise is here understood as claiming only that the pragmatic consequences of belief are a relevant source of evidence in ascertaining the truth, not that they can actually be equated with the truth.

FLAW 1: What exactly does effecting "a change for the better on the believer's life" mean? For an antebellum Southerner, there was more to be gained in believing that slavery is morally permissible than in believing it heinous. It often doesn't pay to be an iconoclast or revolutionary thinker, no matter how much truer your ideas are than the ideas opposing you. It didn't improve Galileo's life to believe that the earth moved around the sun rather than that the sun and the heavens revolve around the earth. (Of course, you could say that it's always intrinsically better to believe something true rather than something false, but then you're just using the language of the pragmatist to mask a non-pragmatic notion of truth.)

FLAW 2: The Argument from Pragmatism implies an extreme relativism regarding the truth, because the effects of belief differ for different believers. A profligate, impulsive drunkard may have to believe in a primitive retributive God who will send him to Hell if he doesn't stay out of barroom fights, whereas a contemplative mensch may be better off with an abstract deistic presence who completes his deepest existential world view. But either there is a vengeful God who sends sinners to Hell or there isn't. If one allows pragmatic consequences to determine truth, then truth becomes relative to the believer, which is incoherent.

FLAW 3: Why should we only consider the pragmatic effects on the believer's life? What about the effects on everyone else? The history of religious intolerance, including inquisitions, fatwas, and suicide bombers, suggests that the effects on one person's life of another person's believing in God can be pretty grim.

FLAW 4: The pragmatic argument for God suffers from the first flaw of The Argument from Decision Theory (#31 above) — namely the assumption that the belief in God is like a faucet that one can turn on and off as the need arises. If I make the leap of faith in order to evaluate the pragmatic consequences of belief, then if those consequences are not so good, can I leap back again to disbelief? Isn't a leap of faith a one-way maneuver? "The will to believe" is an oxymoron: beliefs are forced on a person (ideally, by logic and evidence); they are not chosen for their consequences.

33. The Argument from the Unreasonableness of Reason

1. Our belief in reason cannot be justified by reason, since that would be circular. 2. Our belief in reason must be accepted on faith (from 1). 3. Every time we exercise reason we are exercising faith (from 2). 4. Faith provides good rational grounds for beliefs (since it is, in the final analysis, necessary even for the belief in reason — from 3). 5. We are justified in using faith for any belief that is so important to our lives that not believing it would render us incoherent (from 4). 6. We cannot avoid faith in God if we are to live coherent moral and purposeful lives. 7. We are justified in believing that God exists (from 5 & 6). 8. God exists.

Reason is a faculty of thinking, the very faculty of giving grounds for our beliefs. To justify reason would be to try to give grounds for the belief: "We ought to accept the conclusions of sound arguments." Let's say we produce a sound argument for the conclusion that "we ought to accept the conclusions of sound arguments." How could we legitimately accept the conclusion of that sound argument without independently knowing the conclusion? Any attempt to justify the very propositions that we must use in order to justify propositions is going to land us in circularity.

FLAW 1: This argument tries to generalize the inability of reason to justify itself to an abdication of reason when it comes to justifying God's existence. But the inability of reason to justify reason is a unique case in epistemology, not an illustration of a flaw of reason that can be generalized to some other kind of belief — and certainly not a belief in the existence of some entity with specific properties such as creating the world or defining morality.

Indeed, one could argue that the attempt to justify reason with reason is not circular, but rather, unnecessary. One already is, and always will be, committed to reason by the very process one is already engaged in, namely reasoning. Reason is non-negotiable; all sides concede it. It needs no justification, because it is justification. A belief in God is not like that at all.

FLAW 2: If one really took the unreasonability of reason as a license to believe things on faith, then which things should one believe in? If it is a license to believe in a single God who gave his son for our sins, why isn't it just as much a license to believe in Zeus and all the other Greek gods, or the three major gods of Hinduism, or the angel Moroni? For that matter, why not Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? If one says that there are good reasons to accept some entities on faith, while rejecting others, then one is saying that it is ultimately reason, not faith, that must be invoked to justify a belief.

FLAW 3: Premise 6, which claims that a belief in God is necessary in order to have a purpose in one's life, or to be moral, has already been challenged in the discussions of The Argument from Moral Truth (#16 above) and The Argument from Personal Purpose (#19 above).

34. The Argument from Sublimity

1. There are experiences that are windows into the wholeness of existence — its grandeur, beauty, symmetry, harmony, unity, even its goodness. 2. We glimpse a benign transcendence in these moments. 3. Only God could provide us with a glimpse of benign transcendence. 4. God exists.

FLAW: An experience of sublimity is an aesthetic experience Aesthetic experience can indeed be intense and blissful, absorbing our attention so completely while exciting our pleasure that they seem to lift us right out of ourselves. Aesthetic experiences vary in their strength, and when they are overwhelming, we grope for terms like "transcendence" to describe the overwhelmingness. Yet for all that, aesthetic experiences are still, more than likely, internal excitations of the brain, as we see from the fact that ingesting recreational drugs can bring on even more intense experiences of transcendence. And the particular triggers for natural aesthetic experiences are readily explicable from the evolutionary pressures that have shaped the perceptual systems of human beings. An eye for sweeping vistas, dramatic skies, bodies of water, large animals, flowering and fruiting plants, and strong geometric patterns with repetition and symmetry, was necessary to orient attention to aspects of the environment that were matters of life and death to the species as it evolved in its natural environment. The identification of a blissfully aesthetic experience with a glimpse into benign transcendence is an example of The Projection Fallacy, dramatic demonstrations of our spreading ourselves onto the world. This is most obvious when the experience gets fleshed out into the religious terms that come most naturally to the particular believer, such as a frozen waterfall being seen by a Christian as a manifestation of the Christian trinity. One does not detract anything from the sublimity of aesthetic experiences by seeing them for what they are, namely sublime aesthetic experiences. Music, too, produces such experiences, though there we know exactly who the creators were.

35. The Argument from the Intelligibility of the World

(Spinoza's God)

1. All facts must have explanations. 2. The fact that there is a universe at all — and that it is this universe, with just these laws of nature — has an explanation (from 1). 3.There must, in principle, be a Theory of Everything that explains why just this universe, with these laws of nature, exists (from 2. Note that this premise should not be interpreted as entailing that we have the capacity to come up with a Theory of Everything; it may elude the cognitive abilities we have.) 4. If The Theory of Everything explains everything, it explains why it is the Theory of Everything. 5. The only way that the Theory of Everything could explain why it is the Theory of Everything is if it is itself necessarily true (i.e. true in all possible worlds). 6. The Theory of Everything is necessarily true (from 4 & 5). 7. The universe, understood in terms of the Theory of Everything, exists necessarily and explains itself (from 6). 8. That which exists necessarily and explains itself is God (a definition of "God"). 9. The universe is God (from 7 & 8). 10. God exists.

Whenever Einstein was asked whether he believed in God, he responded that he believed in "Spinoza's God." This argument presents Spinoza's God. It is one of the most elegant and subtle arguments for God's existence, demonstrating where one ends up if one rigorously eschews the Fallacy of Invoking One Mystery to Pseudo-Explain Another: one ends up with the universe, and nothing but the universe: a universe which itself provides all the answers to all the questions one can pose about it. A major problem with the argument, however, in addition to the flaws discussed below, is that it is not at all clear that it is God whose existence is being proved. Spinoza's conclusion is that the universe that is described by the laws of nature simply is God. Perhaps the conclusion should, rather, be that the universe is different from what it appears to be — no matter how arbitrary and chaotic it may appear, it is in fact perfectly lawful and necessary, and therefore worthy of our awe. But is its awe-inspiring lawfulness reason enough to regard it as God? Spinoza's God is sharply at variance with all other divine conceptions.

The argument has only one substantive premise, its first one, which, though unproved, is not unreasonable; it is, in fact, the claim that the universe itself is thoroughly reasonable. Though this first premise can't be proved, it is the guiding faith of many physicists (including Einstein). It is the claim that everything must have an explanation; even the laws of nature, in terms of which processes are explained, must have an explanation. In other words, there has to be an explanation for why it is these laws of nature rather than some other, which is another way of asking for why it is this world rather than some other.

FLAW: The first premise can be challenged. Our world could conceivably be one in which randomness and contingency have free reign, no matter what the intuitions of some scientists are. Maybe some things just are ("stuff happens"), including the fundamental laws of nature. Philosophers sometimes call this just- is-ness "contingency" and, if the fundamental laws of nature are contingent, then even if everything that happens in the world is explainable by those laws, the laws themselves couldn't be explained. There is a sense in which this argument recalls The Argument from the Improbable Self. Both demand explanations for just this-ness, whether of just this universe or just this me.

The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe fleshes out the consequences of the powerful first premise, but some might regard the argument as a reductio ad absurdum of that premise.

COMMENT: Spinoza's argument, if sound, invalidates all the other arguments, the ones that try to establish the existence of a more traditional God—that is, a God who stands distinct from the world described by the laws of nature, as well as distinct from the world of human meaning, purpose, and morality. Spinoza's argument claims that any transcendent God, standing outside of that for which he is invoked as explanation, is invalidated by the first powerful premise, that all things are part of the same explanatory fabric. The mere coherence of The Argument from The Intelligibility of The Universe, therefore, is sufficient to reveal the invalidity of the other theistic arguments. This is why Spinoza, although he offered a proof of what he called "God," is often regarded as the most effective of all atheists.

36. The Argument from The Abundance of Arguments

1. The more arguments there are for a proposition, the more confidence we should have in it, even if every argument is imperfect. (Science itself proceeds by accumulating evidence, each piece by itself being inconclusive.) 2. There is not just one argument for the existence of God, but many — thirty-five (with variations) in this list alone. 3. The arguments, though not flawless, are persuasive enough that they have convinced billions of people, and for millennia have been taken seriously by history's greatest minds. 4. The probability that each one is true must be significantly greater than zero (from 3). 5. For God not to exist, every one of the arguments for his existence must be false, which is extremely unlikely (from 4 ). Imagine, for the sake of argument, that each argument has an average probability of only .2 of being true. Then the probability that all 35 are flase is (1-0.2)^35 = .0004, an extremely low probability. 6. It is extremely probable that God exists (from 5).

FLAW 1: Premise 3 is vulnerable to t he same criticisms as the Argument from the Consensus of Humanity. The flaws that accompany each argument may be extremely damaging, even fatal, notwithstanding the fact that they have been taken seriously by many people throughout history. In other words, the average probability of any of the arguments being true may be far less than .2, in which case the probability that all of them are false could be high.

FLAW 2: This argument treats all the other arguments as being on an equal footing, distributing equal probabilities to them all, and rewarding all of them, too, with the commendation of being taken seriously by history's greatest minds. Many of the arguments on this list have been completely demolished by such minds as David Hume and Baruch Spinoza: their probability is zero.

COMMENT: The Argument from the Abundance of Arguments may be the most psychologically important of the thirty-six. Few people rest their belief in God on a single, decisive logical argument. Instead, people are swept away by the sheer number of reasons that make God's existence seem plausible — holding out an explanation as to why the universe went to the bother of existing, and why it is this particular universe, with its sublime improbabilities, including us humans; and, even more particularly, explaining the existence of each one of us who know ourselves as a unique conscious individual, who makes free and moral choices that grant meaning and purpose to our lives; and, even more personally, giving hope that desperate prayers may not go unheard and unanswered, and that the terrors of death can be subdued in immortality. Religions, too, do not justify themselves with a single logical argument, but rather set themselves up to minister to all of these needs and provide a space in people's lives where large questions that escape answers all come together and co-mingle, a co-mingling that, in itself, can give the illusion that they are being answered.

[Excerpted from 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, New York: Pantheon Books. Forthcoming, January, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. All rights reserved. Published with permission.]

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Philosophy of Religion: A Very Short Introduction

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3 (page 25) p. 25 Arguments for the existence of God

Published: February 2018
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Is it possible to prove that God exists? There is certainly no shortage of arguments that purport to establish God’s existence, but ‘Arguments for the existence of God’ focuses on three of the most influential arguments: the cosmological argument, the design argument, and the argument from religious experience. Before examining these arguments, it first considers the very enterprise of attempting to establish God’s existence. What should we expect from an argument for God’s existence? What would it take for such an argument to be successful? The attempt to justify claims about the nature and existence of God on the basis of commonly accepted truths is known as natural theology.

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Problems of Belief & Unbelief

Does god exist, william lane craig says there are good reasons for thinking that he does..

On April 8, 1966, Time magazine carried a lead story for which the cover was completely black except for three words emblazoned in bright, red letters against the dark background: “IS GOD DEAD?” The story described the so-called ‘Death of God’ movement then current in American theology. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, it seemed that the news of God’s demise was “greatly exaggerated.” For at the same time that theologians were writing God’s obituary, a new generation of young philosophers was re-discovering His vitality.

Back in the 1940s and ’50s it was widely believed among philosophers that any talk about God is meaningless, since it is not verifiable by the five senses. The collapse of this Verificationism was perhaps the most important philosophical event of the twentieth century. Its downfall meant a resurgence of metaphysics, along with other traditional problems of philosophy which Verificationism had suppressed. Accompanying this resurgence came something altogether unanticipated: a renaissance of Christian philosophy.

The turning point probably came in 1967 with the publication of Alvin Plantinga’s God and Other Minds , which applied the tools of analytic philosophy to questions in the philosophy of religion with an unprecedented rigor and creativity. In Plantinga’s train has followed a host of Christian philosophers, writing in professional journals and participating in professional conferences and publishing with the finest academic presses. The face of Anglo-American philosophy has been transformed as a result. Atheism, although perhaps still the dominant viewpoint in Western universities, is a philosophy in retreat. In a recent article, University of Western Michigan philosopher Quentin Smith laments what he calls “the desecularization of academia that evolved in philosophy departments since the late 1960s.” (‘The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism’, Philo , Vol 4, #2, at philoonline.org ). Complaining of naturalists’ passivity in the face of the wave of “intelligent and talented theists entering academia today,” Smith concludes, “God is not ‘dead’ in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.”

The renaissance of Christian philosophy has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in natural theology – that branch of theology which seeks to prove God’s existence without appeal to the resources of authoritative divine revelation – for instance, through philosophical argument. All of the traditional philosophical arguments for God’s existence, such as the cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological arguments, not to mention creative, new arguments, find intelligent and articulate defenders on the contemporary philosophical scene.

But what about the so-called ‘New Atheism’ exemplified by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens? Doesn’t it herald a reversal of this trend? Not really. As is evident from the authors it interacts with – or rather, doesn’t interact with – the New Atheism is, in fact, a pop-cultural phenomenon lacking in intellectual muscle and blissfully ignorant of the revolution that has taken place in Anglo-American philosophy. It tends to reflect the scientism of a bygone generation, rather than the contemporary intellectual scene.

Eight Reasons in Support of God’s Existence

I believe that God’s existence best explains a wide range of the data of human experience. Let me briefly mention eight such cases.

(I) God is the best explanation why anything at all exists.

Suppose you were hiking through the forest and came upon a ball lying on the ground. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If your hiking buddy said to you, “Forget about it! It just exists!” you would think he was either joking or just wanted you to keep moving. No one would take seriously the idea that the ball just exists without any explanation. Now notice than merely increasing the size of the ball until it becomes coextensive with the universe does nothing to either provide, or remove the need for, an explanation of its existence.

So what is the explanation of the existence of the universe (by ‘the universe’ I mean all of spacetime reality)? The explanation of the universe can lie only in a transcendent reality beyond it – beyond space and time – the existence of which transcendent reality is metaphysically necessary (otherwise its existence would also need explaining). Now there is only one way I can think of to get a contingent entity like the universe from a necessarily existing cause, and that is if the cause is an agent who can freely choose to create the contingent reality. It therefore follows that the best explanation of the existence of the contingent universe is a transcendent personal being – which is what everybody means by ‘God’.

We can summarize this reasoning as follows:

1. Every contingent thing has an explanation of its existence.

2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is a transcendent, personal being.

3. The universe is a contingent thing.

4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.

5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe is a transcendent, personal being.

– which is what everybody means by ‘God’.

(II) God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe.

We have pretty strong evidence that the universe has not existed eternally into the past, but had a beginning a finite time ago. In 2003, the mathematician Arvind Borde, and physicists Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe which has, on average, been expanding throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past, but must have a past spacetime boundary (i.e., a beginning). What makes their proof so powerful is that it holds so long as time and causality hold, regardless of the physical description of the very early universe. Because we don’t yet have a quantum theory of gravity, we can’t yet provide a physical description of the first split-second of the universe; but the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem is independent of one’s theory of gravitation. For instance, their theorem implies that the quantum vacuum state which may have characterized the early universe cannot have existed eternally into the past, but must itself have had a beginning. Even if our universe is just a tiny part of a so-called ‘multiverse’, composed of many universes, their theorem requires that the multiverse itself must have had a beginning.

Of course, highly speculative physical scenarios, such as loop quantum gravity models, string models, even closed timelike curves, have been proposed to try to avoid this absolute beginning. These models are fraught with problems, but the bottom line is that none of these theories, even if true , succeeds in restoring an eternal past for the universe. Last year, at a conference in Cambridge celebrating the seventieth birthday of Stephen Hawking, Vilenkin delivered a paper entitled ‘Did the Universe Have a Beginning?’, which surveyed current cosmology with respect to that question. He argued that “none of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal.” Specifically, Vilenkin closed the door on three models attempting to avert the implication of his theorem: eternal inflation, a cyclic universe, and an ‘emergent’ universe which exists for eternity as a static seed before expanding. Vilenkin concluded, “ All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

But then the inevitable question arises: Why did the universe come into being? What brought the universe into existence? There must have been a transcendent cause which brought the universe into being – a cause outside the universe itself.

We can summarize this argument thus far as follows:

1. The universe began to exist.

2. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a transcendent cause.

3. Therefore, the universe has a transcendent cause.

By the very nature of the case, that cause of the physical universe must be an immaterial (i.e., non-physical) being. Now there are only two types of things that could possibly fit that description: either an abstract object like a number, or an unembodied mind/consciousness. But abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations to physical things. The number 7, for example, has no effect on anything. Therefore the cause of the universe is an unembodied mind. Thus again we are brought, not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its Personal Creator.

(III) God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world.

Philosophers and scientists have puzzled over what physicist Eugene Wigner called “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.” How is it that a mathematical theorist like Peter Higgs can sit down at his desk and, by pouring over mathematical equations, predict the existence of a fundamental particle which, thirty years later, after investing millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours, experimentalists are finally able to detect? Mathematics is the language of nature. But how is this to be explained? If mathematical objects like numbers and mathematical theorems are abstract entities causally isolated from the physical universe, then the applicability of mathematics is, in the words of philosopher of mathematics Mary Leng, “a happy coincidence.” On the other hand, if mathematical objects are just useful fictions, how is it that nature is written in the language of these fictions? The naturalist has no explanation for the uncanny applicability of mathematics to the physical world. By contrast, the theist has a ready explanation: When God created the physical universe He designed it in terms of the mathematical structure which He had in mind.

We can summarize this argument as follows:

1. If God did not exist, the applicability of mathematics would be just a happy coincidence.

2. The applicability of mathematics is not just a happy coincidence.

3. Therefore, God exists.

(IV) God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

In recent decades scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the initial conditions of the Big Bang were fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life with a precision and delicacy that literally defy human comprehension. This fine-tuning is of two sorts. First, when the laws of nature are expressed as equations, you find appearing in them certain constants, such as the gravitational constant. The values of these constants are independent of the laws of nature. Second, in addition to these constants, there are certain arbitrary quantities which define the initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate – for example, the amount of entropy (disorder) in the universe. Now these constants and quantities fall into an extraordinarily narrow range of life-permitting values. Were these constants or quantities to be altered by less than a hair’s breadth, the life-permitting balance of nature would be destroyed, and life would not exist.

There are three live explanatory options for this extraordinary fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design.

Physical necessity is not, however, a plausible explanation, because the finely-tuned constants and quantities are independent of the laws of nature. Therefore, they are not physically necessary.

So could this fine-tuning be due to chance? The problem with this explanation is that the odds of all the constants and quantities’ randomly falling into the incomprehensibly narrow life-permitting range are just so infinitesimal that they cannot be reasonably accepted. Therefore the proponents of the chance explanation have been forced to postulate the existence of a ‘World Ensemble’ of other universes, preferably infinite in number and randomly ordered, so that life-permitting universes like ours would appear by chance somewhere in the Ensemble. Not only is this hypothesis, to borrow Richard Dawkins’ phrase, “an unparsimonious extravagance,” it faces an insuperable objection. By far, the most probable observable universes in a World Ensemble would be worlds in which a single brain fluctuated into existence out of the vacuum and observed its otherwise empty world. So, if our world were just a random member of the World Ensemble, by all probability we ought to be having observations like that. Since we don’t, that strongly disconfirms the World Ensemble hypothesis. So chance is also not a good explanation. Thus,

1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.

2. The fine-tuning of the universe is not due to physical necessity or chance.

3. Therefore, the fine-tuning of the universe is due to design.

Thus, the fine-tuning of the universe constitutes evidence for a cosmic Designer.

(V) God is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness.

Philosophers are puzzled by states of intentionality . Intentionality is the property of being about something or of something. It signifies the object-directedness of our thoughts. For example, I can think about my summer vacation, or I can think of my wife. No physical object has intentionality in this sense. A chair or a stone or a glob of tissue like the brain is not about or of something else. Only mental states or states of consciousness are about other things. In The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (2011), the materialist Alex Rosenberg recognizes this fact, and concludes that for atheists, there really are no intentional states. Rosenberg boldly claims that we never really think about anything. But this seems incredible. Obviously, I am thinking about Rosenberg’s argument – and so are you! This seems to me to be a reductio ad absurdum of his atheism. By contrast, for theists, because God is a mind, it’s hardly surprising that there should be other, finite minds, with intentional states. Thus intentional states fit comfortably into a theistic worldview.

So we may argue:

1. If God did not exist, intentional states of consciousness would not exist.

2. But intentional states of consciousness do exist.

(VI) God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties.

In our experience we apprehend moral values and duties which impose themselves as objectively binding and true. For example, we recognize that it’s wrong to walk into an elementary school with an automatic weapon and shoot little boys and girls and their teachers. On a naturalistic view, however, there is nothing really wrong with this: moral values are just the subjective by-products of biological evolution and social conditioning, and have no objective validity.

Alex Rosenberg is brutally honest about the implications of his atheism here too. He declares, “there is no such thing as… morally right or wrong.” ( The Atheist’s Guide to Reality , p.145); “Individual human life is meaningless… and without ultimate moral value.” (p.17); “We need to face the fact that nihilism is true.” (p.95). By contrast, the theist grounds objective moral values in God, and our moral duties in His commands. The theist thus has the explanatory resources to ground objective moral values and duties which the atheist lacks.

Hence we may argue:

1. Objective moral values and duties exist.

2. But if God did not exist, objective moral values and duties would not exist.

(VII) The very possibility of God’s existence implies that God exists.

In order to understand this argument, you need to understand what philosophers mean by ‘possible worlds’. A possible world is just a way the world might have been. It is a description of a possible reality. So a possible world is not a planet or a universe or any kind of concrete object, it is a world-description. The actual world is the description that is true. Other possible worlds are descriptions that are not in fact true but which might have been true. To say that something exists in some possible world is to say that there is some consistent description of reality which includes that entity. To say that something exists in every possible world means that no matter which description is true, that entity will be included in the description. For example, unicorns do not in fact exist, but there are some possible worlds in which unicorns exist. On the other hand, many mathematicians think that numbers exist in every possible world.

Now with that in mind, consider the ontological argument , which was discovered in the year 1011 by the monk Anselm of Canterbury. God, Anselm observes, is by definition the greatest being conceivable. If you could conceive of anything greater than God, then that would be God. Thus, God is the greatest conceivable being – a maximally great being. So what would such a being be like? He would be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, and He would exist in every logically possible world. A being which lacked any of those properties would not be maximally great: we could conceive of something greater – a being which did have all these properties.

But this implies that if God’s existence is even possible , then God must exist. For if a maximally great being exists in any possible world, He exists in all of them. That’s part of what it means to be maximally great – to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good in every logically possible world. So if God’s existence is even possible, then He exists in every logically possible world – and therefore in the actual world.

1. It is possible that a maximally great being (God) exists.

2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.

3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.

4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.

5. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.

6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.

7. Therefore, God exists.

It might surprise you to learn that steps 2-7 of this argument are relatively uncontroversial. Most philosophers would agree that if God’s existence is even possible, then He must exist.

So the question is, is God’s existence possible? Well, what do you think? The atheist has to maintain that it’s impossible that God exists. That is, he has to maintain that the concept of God is logically incoherent , like the concept of a married bachelor or a round square. The problem is that the concept of God just doesn’t appear to be incoherent in that way. The idea of a being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good in every possible world seems perfectly coherent. Moreover, as we’ve seen, there are other arguments for God’s existence which at least suggest that it’s possible that God exists. So I’ll just leave it with you. Do you think, as I do, that it’s at least possible that God exists? If so, then it follows logically that He does exist.

(VIII) God can be personally known and experienced.

This isn’t really an argument for God’s existence; rather it’s the claim that you can know God exists wholly apart from arguments, by personally experiencing him. Philosophers call beliefs grasped in this way ‘properly basic beliefs’. They aren’t based on some other beliefs; rather they’re part of the foundation of a person’s system of beliefs. Other properly basic beliefs would be the belief in the reality of the past or the existence of the external world. When you think about it, neither of these beliefs can be proved by argument. How could you prove that the world was not created five minutes ago with built-in appearances of age like food in our stomachs from the breakfasts we never really ate and memory traces in our brains of events we never really experienced? How could you prove that you are not a brain in a vat of chemicals being stimulated with electrodes by some mad scientist to believe that you are reading this article? We don’t base such beliefs on argument; rather they’re part of the foundations of our system of beliefs.

But although these sorts of beliefs are basic for us, that doesn’t mean that they’re arbitrary. Rather they’re grounded in the sense that they’re formed in the context of certain experiences. In the experiential context of seeing and feeling and hearing things, I naturally form the belief that there are certain physical objects which I am sensing. Thus, my basic beliefs are not arbitrary, but appropriately grounded in experience. There may be no way to prove such beliefs, and yet it’s perfectly rational to hold them. Such beliefs are thus not merely basic, but properly basic. In the same way, belief in God is for those who seek Him a properly basic belief grounded in their experience of God.

Now if this is so, then there’s a danger that philosophical arguments for God could actually distract your attention from God Himself. The Bible promises, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8) We mustn’t so concentrate on the external arguments that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our hearts. For those who listen, God becomes a personal reality in their lives.

In summary, we’ve seen eight respects in which God provides a better account of the world than naturalism: God is the best explanation of

(I) Why anything at all exists.

(II) The origin of the universe.

(III) The applicability of mathematics to the physical world.

(IV) The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

(V) Intentional states of consciousness.

(VI) Objective moral values and duties.

(VIII) God can be personally experienced and known.

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology, California, and founded the organization Reasonable Faith (please visit reasonablefaith.org ). His book, A Reasonable Response , is due out soon, answering questions unbelievers and believers often pose.

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Overview – Does God Exist?

A level philosophy looks at 4 arguments relating to the existence of God . These are:

The ontological argument
The teleological argument
The cosmological argument

The problem of evil

There are various versions of each argument as well as numerous responses to each. The key points of each argument are summarised below:


Yes	Yes	Yes
God must exist by definition	The universe must be designed	There must be a first cause	If God existed, there wouldn’t be evil

Ontological arguments

The ontological arguments are unique in that they are the only arguments for God’s existence that use a priori reasoning. All ontological arguments are deductive arguments .

Versions of the ontological argument aim to deduce God’s existence from the definition of God. Thus, proponents of ontological arguments claim ‘God exists’ is an analytic truth .

Anselm’s ontological argument

“Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. […] Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.” – St. Anselm, Proslogium , Chapter 2

Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was the first to propose an ontological argument in his book Proslogium .

His argument can be summarised as:

By definition, God is a being greater than which cannot be conceived
We can coherently conceive of such a being i.e. the concept is coherent
It is greater to exist in reality than to exist only in the mind
Therefore, God must exist

In other words, imagine two beings:

One is said to be maximally great in every way, but does not exist.
The other is maximally great in every way and does exist.

Which being is greater? Presumably, the second one – because it is greater to exist in reality than in the mind.

Since God is a being that we cannot imagine to be greater, this description better fits the second option (the one that exists) than the first.

Descartes’ ontological argument

Descartes offers his own version of the ontological argument:

I have the idea of God
The idea of God is the idea of a supremely perfect being
A supremely perfect being does not lack any perfection
Existence is a perfection
Therefore, God exists

This argument is very similar to Anselm’s , except it uses the concept of a perfect being rather than a being greater than which cannot be conceived .

Descartes argues this shows that ‘God does not exist’ is a self-contradiction . Hume uses this claim as the basis for his objection to the ontological argument.

Gaunilo’s island

Gaunilo of Marmoutiers (994-1083) argues that if Anselm’s argument is valid, then anything can be defined into existence. For example:

The perfect island is, by definition, an island greater than which cannot be conceived
We can coherently conceive of such an island i.e. the concept is coherent
Therefore, this island must exist

The conclusion of this argument is obviously false.

Gaunilo argues that if Anselm’s argument were valid, then we could define anything into existence – the perfect shoe, the perfect tree, the perfect book, etc.

Hume: ‘God does not exist’ is not a contradiction

The ontological argument reasons from the definition of God that God must exist. This would make ‘God exists’ an analytic truth (or what Hume would call a relation of ideas , as the analytic/synthetic distinction wasn’t made until years later).

The denial of an analytic truth/relation of ideas leads to a contradiction. For example, “there is a triangle with 4 sides” is a contradiction.

Contradictions cannot be coherently conceived . If you try to imagine a 4-sided triangle, you’ll either imagine a square or a triangle. The idea of a 4-sided triangle doesn’t make sense.

So, is “God does not exist” a contradiction? Descartes (and Anselm) certainly thought so.

But Hume argues against this claim. Anything we can conceive of as existent , he says, we can also conceive of as non-existent . This shows that “God exists” cannot be an analytic truth/relation of ideas, and so ontological arguments must fail somewhere.

A summary of Hume’s argument can be stated as:

If ontological arguments succeed, ‘God does not exist’ is a contradiction
A contradiction cannot be coherently conceived
But ‘God does not exist’ can be coherently conceived
Therefore, ‘God does not exist’ is not a contradiction
Therefore, ontological arguments do not succeed

Kant: existence is not a predicate

Kant argues that existence is not a property (predicate) of things in the same way, say, green is a property of grass .

To say something exists doesn’t add anything to the concept of it.

Imagine a unicorn. Then imagine a unicorn that exists . What’s the difference between the two ideas? Nothing! Adding existence to the idea of a unicorn doesn’t make unicorns suddenly exist.

When someone says “God exists”, they don’t mean “there is a God and he has the property of existence”. If they did, then when someone says “God does not exist”, they’d mean, “there is a God and he has the property of non existence” – which doesn’t make sense!

Instead, what people mean when they say “God exists” is that “God exists in the world” . This cannot be argued from the definition of God and could only be proved via ( a posteriori ) experience. Thus the ontological argument fails to prove God’s (actual) existence.

Norman Malcolm’s ontological argument

Kant’s objection to the ontological argument is generally considered to be the most powerful argument against it.

So, in response, some philosophers have developed alternate versions that avoid this criticism.

Malcolm accepts that Descartes and Anselm (at least as presented above) are wrong.

Instead, Malcolm argues that it’s not existence that is a perfection, but the logical impossibility of non-existence ( necessary existence , in other words).

This (necessary existence) is a predicate, so avoids Kant’s argument above. Malcolm’s ontological argument is as follows:

Either God exists or does not exist
God cannot come into existence or go out of existence
If God exists, God cannot cease to exist
Therefore, if God exists, God’s existence is necessary
Therefore, if God does not exist, God’s existence is impossible
Therefore, God’s existence is either necessary or impossible
God’s existence is impossible only if the concept of God is self-contradictory
The concept of God is not self-contradictory
Therefore, God’s existence is not impossible
Therefore, God exists necessarily

Malcolm’s argument essentially boils down to:

God’s existence is either necessary or impossible (see above)
God’s existence is not impossible
Therefore God’s existence is necessary

Possible response:

We may respond to point 8, as discussed in the concept of God section , that the concept of God is self-contradictory.

Alternatively, we may argue that the meaning of “necessary” changes between premise 4 and the conclusion (10) and thus Malcolm’s argument is invalid. In premise 4, Malcolm is talking about necessary existence in the sense of a property that something does or does not have. By the conclusion, Malcolm is talking about necessary existence in the sense that it is a necessary truth that God exists. But this is not the same thing. We can accept that if God exists , then God has the property of necessary existence, but deny the conclusion that God exists necessarily.

Teleological arguments

The teleological arguments are also known as arguments from design.

These arguments aim to show that certain features of nature or the laws of nature are so perfect that they must have been designed by a designer – God.

Hume’s teleological argument

In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , Hume considers a version of the teleological argument (through the character Cleanthes ), which he goes on to reject (through the character of Philo ).

“The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori , and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.” – Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 2

Hume’s argument here draws an analogy between things designed by humans and nature:

The ‘fitting of means to ends’ in human design (e.g. the fitting of the many parts of a watch to achieve the end of telling the time) resemble the ‘fitting of means to ends’ in nature (e.g. the many parts of a human’s eye to achieve the end of seeing things)
Similar effects have similar causes
The causes of human designs (e.g. watches) are minds
So, by analogy , the cause of design in nature is also a mind
And, given the ‘grandeur of the work’ of nature, this other mind is God .

William Paley: Natural Theology

William Paley (1743-1805) wasn’t the first to propose a teleological argument for the existence of God, but his version is perhaps the most famous.

The reason for this is that a watch, unlike the stone, has many parts organised for a purpose. Paley says this is the hallmark of design:

“When we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose , e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day.” – William Paley, Natural Theology, Chapter 1

Nature and aspects of nature, such as the human eye, are composed of many parts. These parts are organised for a purpose – in the case of the eye, to see .

So, like the watch, nature has the hallmarks of design – but “ with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more” . And for something to be designed, it must have an equally impressive designer .

Paley says this designer is God.

Hume: problems with the analogy

Hume (as the character Philo) points out various problems with the analogy between the design of human-made objects and nature, such as:

We can observe human-made items being designed by minds , but we have no such experience of this in the case of nature. Instead, designs in nature could be the result of natural processes (what Philo calls ‘generation and vegetation’).
The analogy focuses on specific aspects of nature that appear to be designed (e.g. the human eye) and generalises this to the conclusion that the whole universe must be designed.
Human machines (e.g. watches and cars) obviously have a designer and a purpose. But biological things (e.g. an animal or a plant, such as a cabbage) do not have an obvious purpose or designer – they appear to be the result of an unconscious process of ‘generation and vegetation’. The universe is more like the latter (i.e. a biological thing) than the former (i.e. a machine) and so, by analogy, the cause of the universe is better explained by this unconscious processes of ‘generation and vegetation’ rather than the conscious design of a mind.

An argument from analogy is only as strong as the similarities between the two things being compared (nature and human designs). These differences weaken the jump from human-made items being designed to the whole universe being designed.

Hume: Spatial dis order

Hume (as the character Philo) argues that although there are examples of order within nature (which suggests design), there is also much “vice and misery and disorder” in the world (which is evidence against design).

If God really did design the world, Hume argues, there wouldn’t be such disorder. For example:

There are huge areas of the universe that are empty, or just filled with random rocks or are otherwise uninhabitable. This suggests that the universe isn’t designed but instead we just happen, by coincidence, to be in a part that has spatial order.
Some parts of the world (e.g. droughts, hurricanes, etc.) go wrong and cause chaos. Hume argues that if the world is designed , these chaotic features suggest that the designer isn’t very good.
Animals have bodies that feel pain and that could have been made in such ways that they could have happier lives. If God designed animals and humans, you would expect He would make animals and humans in this way so that their lives would be easier and happier.

These features are examples of spatial dis order – features that wouldn’t make sense to include if you designed the universe.

Hume argues that such examples of disorder show that the universe isn’t designed. Or, if the universe is designed, then the designer is neither omnipotent nor omnibenevolent (as God is claimed to be).

Hume: causation

Hume famously argues that we never experience causation – only the ‘constant conjunction’ of one event following another. If this happens enough times, we infer that A causes B.

For example, experience (ever since you were a baby) tells you that if one snooker ball hits another (A), the second snooker ball will move (B). You don’t actually experience A causing B, but it’s reasonable to expect this relationship to hold in the future because you’ve seen it and similar examples hundreds of times.

But imagine that you take a sip of tea and at the same time your friend coughs. Would it be reasonable to infer that drinking the tea caused your friend to cough based on this one instance? Obviously not. The point is: You cannot infer causation from a single instance.

Applying this to teleological arguments, Hume (as the character Philo) argues that the creation of the universe was a unique event – we only have experience of this one universe. And so, like the tea example, we can’t infer a causal relationship between designer and creation based on just one instance.

Hume: finite matter, infinite time

“Instead of supposing matter to be infinite, as Epicurus did, let us suppose it to be finite and also suppose space to be finite, while still supposing time to be infinite. A finite number of particles in a finite space can have only a finite number of transpositions; and in an infinitely long period of time every possible order or position of particles must occur an infinite number of times.” – Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 8

Hume’s objection here assumes the following:

Time is infinite
Matter is finite

Given these assumptions, it is inevitable that matter will organise itself into combinations that appear to be designed.

It’s a bit like the monkeys and typewriters thought experiment:

Given an infinite amount of time, a monkey will eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare.

This is the nature of infinity. It’s inevitable that the monkey will write something that appears to be intelligent, even though it’s just hitting letters at random.

The same principle applies to the teleological argument, argues Hume: Given enough time, it is inevitable that matter will arrange itself into combinations that appear to be designed , even though they’re not.

Darwin: evolution by natural selection

Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) theory of evolution by natural selection explains how complex organisms – complete with parts organised for a purpose – can emerge from nature without a designer.

Competition for food is tough
An animal that cannot acquire enough food will die before it can breed and produce offspring
An animal with a (random genetic mutation for a) neck that’s 1cm longer than everyone else’s will be able to access 1cm more food
This competitive advantage makes it more likely to survive and produce offspring
The offspring are likely to inherit the gene for a longer neck, making them more likely to survive and reproduce as well
Longer necked-animals become more common as a result
The environment becomes more competitive as more and more animals can reach the 1cm higher leaves
An animal with a neck 2cm longer has the advantage in this newly competitive environment
Repeat process over hundreds of millions of years until you have modern day giraffes

The key idea is that – given enough time and genetic mutations – it is inevitable that animals and plants will adapt to their environment, thus creating the appearance of design.

This directly undermines Paley’s claim that anything that has parts organised to serve a purpose must be designed.

Swinburne: The Argument from Design

Swinburne’s version of the teleological argument distinguishes between:

Examples of order in nature ( spatial order )
And the order of the laws of nature ( temporal order )

Swinburne accepts that science, for example evolution , can explain the apparent design of things like the human eye (i.e. spatial order) and so Paley’s teleological argument does not succeed in proving God’s existence. However, Swinburne argues, we can’t explain the laws of nature (i.e. temporal order) in the same way.

For example, the law of gravity is such that it allows galaxies to form, and planets to form within these galaxies, and life to form on these planets. But if gravity had the opposite effect – it repelled matter, say – then life would never be able to form. If gravity was even slightly stronger, planets wouldn’t be able to form. So how do we explain why these laws are the way they are?

Unlike spatial order, we can’t give a scientific explanation of why the laws of nature are as they are. Science can explain and predict things using these laws – but it has to first assume these laws. Science can’t explain why these laws are the way they are. In the absence of a scientific explanation of the laws of nature, Swinburne argues, the best explanation of temporal order is a personal explanation.

We give personal explanations of things all the time – for example, ‘this sentence exists because I chose to write it’ or ‘that building exists because someone designed and built it’. Swinburne argues that, by analogy, we can explain the laws of nature (i.e. temporal order) in a similarly personal way: The laws of nature are the way they are because someone designed them.

In the absence of a scientific explanation of temporal order, Swinburne argues, the best explanation is the personal one: The laws of nature were designed by God .

Multiple universes

Hume’s earlier argument (finite matter, infinite time) can be adapted to respond to Swinburne’s teleological argument.

But instead of arguing that time is infinite, as Hume does, we could argue that the number of universes is infinite.

This idea of multiple universes is popular among some physicists, as it explains various phenomena in quantum mechanics.

But anyway, if there are an infinite number of universes (or even just a large enough number), it is likely that some of these universes will have laws of nature (temporal order) that support the formation of life. Of course, when such universes do exist, it is just sheer luck. If each universe has randomly different scientific laws, there will also be many universes where the temporal order does not support life.

Is the designer God?

Both Hume and Kant have argued that even if the teleological argument succeeded in proving the existence of a designer , this designer would not necessarily be God (as defined in the Concept of God section).

For example:

God’s power is supposedly infinite ( omnipotence ), yet the universe is not infinite
Designers are not always creators. Designer and creator might be two separate people (e.g. the guy who designs a car doesn’t physically build it)
The design of the universe may be the result of many small improvements by many people
Designers can die even if their creations live on. How do we know the designer is eternal , as God is supposed to be?

Cosmological arguments

cosmological argument for the existence of the universe

The Kalam Argument

The Kalam argument is perhaps the simplest version of the cosmological argument in the A level philosophy syllabus. It says:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause
The universe began to exist
Therefore, the universe has a cause

Aquinas: Five Ways

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) gave five different versions of the cosmological argument. A level philosophy requires you to know these three:

Argument from motion

Argument from causation.

Contingency argument

Aquinas’ first way is the argument from motion .

“It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion… It is [impossible that something] should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover… Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.” – Aquinas, Summa Theologica , Part 1 Question 2

A summary of this argument:

E.g. a football rolling along the ground
E.g. someone kicked the ball
If A is put in motion by B , then something else ( C ) must have put B in motion, and so on
If this chain goes on infinitely, then there is no first mover
If there is no first mover, then there is no other mover, and so nothing would be in motion
But things are in motion
Therefore, there must be a first mover
The first mover is God

Aquinas’ second way – the argument from causation – is basically the same as the argument from motion, except it talks about a first cause rather than a first mover:

E.g. throwing a rock caused the window to smash
C is caused by B , and B is caused by A , and so on
If this chain of causation was infinite, there would be no first cause
If there were no first cause, there would be no subsequent causes or effects
But there are causes and effects in the world
Therefore, there must have been a first cause
The first cause is God

Argument from contingency

Aquinas’ third way relies on a distinction between necessary and contingent existence. It’s a similar distinction to necessary and contingent truth from the epistemology module.

Things that exist contingently are things that might not have existed.

For example, the tree in the field wouldn’t exist if someone hadn’t planted the seed years ago. So, the tree exists contingently. Its existence is contingent on someone planting the seed.

So, using this idea of contingent existence, Aquinas argues that:

Everything that exists contingently did not exist at some point
If everything exists contingently, then at some point nothing existed
If nothing existed, then nothing could begin to exist
But since things did begin to exist, there was never nothing in existence
Therefore, there must be something that does not exist contingently, but that exists necessarily
This necessary being is God

Descartes’ Cosmological Argument

Descartes’ version of the cosmological argument is a lot more long-winded than the Kalam argument or any of Aquinas’ .

The key points are along these lines:

I can’t be the cause of my own existence because if I was, I would have given myself all perfections (i.e. I would have caused myself to be omnipotent, omniscient, etc. In other words, I would have made myself God).
I can’t always have existed, because then I would be aware of this. Plus, there has to be something that sustains my existence – the fact that I existed a moment ago does not at all guarantee that I should continue existing.
Whatever is the cause of its own existence is God.
So, this only leaves option 4: God is the ultimate cause of my existence .

Leibniz: Sufficient reason

Note: This is another cosmological argument from contingency , like Aquinas’ third way above

Leibniz’s argument is premised on his principle of sufficient reason. The principle of sufficient reason says that every truth has an explanation of why it is the case (even if we can’t know this explanation).

Leibniz then defines two different types of truth:

Truths of reasoning: this is basically another word for necessary or analytic truths
Truths of fact: this is basically another word for contingent or synthetic truths

The sufficient reason for truths of reasoning (i.e. analytic truths) is revealed by analysis. When you analyse and understand “3+3=6”, for example, you don’t need a further explanation why it is true.

But it is more difficult to provide sufficient reason for truths of fact (i.e. contingent truths) because you can always provide more detail via more contingent truths. For example, you can explain the existence of a tree by saying someone planted a seed. But you could then ask why the person planted the seed, or why seeds exist in the first place, or why the laws of physics are the way they are, and so on. This process of providing contingent reasons for contingent facts goes on forever.

“Therefore, the sufficient or ultimate reason must needs be outside of the sequence or series of these details of contingencies, however infinite they may be.” – Leibniz, Monadology , Section 37

So, to escape this endless cycle of contingent facts and provide sufficient reason for truths of fact (i.e. contingent truths), we need to step outside the sequence of contingent facts and appeal to a necessary substance. This necessary substance is God , Leibniz says.

Is a first cause necessary?

Most of the cosmological arguments assume something along the lines of ‘there can’t be an infinite chain of causes’ (except the cosmological arguments from contingency ). For example, they say stuff like there must have been a first cause or a prime mover .

But we can respond by rejecting this claim. Why must there be a first cause? Perhaps there is just be an infinite chain of causes stretching back forever.

infinite chain of causes cosmological argument

An infinite chain of causes would mean an infinite amount of time has passed prior to the present moment
If an infinite amount of time has passed, then the universe can’t get any older (because infinity + 1 = infinity)
But the universe is getting older (e.g. the universe is a year older in 2020 than it was in 2019)
Therefore an infinite amount of time has not passed
Therefore there is not an infinite chain of causes

Hume’s objections to causation

Another assumption (or premise) of many of the cosmological arguments above (not so much the contingency ones) is something like ‘everything has a cause’.

But Hume’s fork can be used to question this claim that ‘everything has a cause’:

Relation of ideas: ‘Everything has a cause’ is not a relation of ideas because we can conceive of something without a cause. For example, we can imagine a chair that just springs into existence for no reason – it’s a weird idea, but it’s not a logical contradiction like a 4-sided triangle or a married bachelor.
Matter of fact: ‘Everything has a cause’ cannot be known as a matter of fact either, says Hume. We never actually experience causation – we just see event A happen and then event B happen after. Even if we see B follow A a million times, we never experience A causing B, just the ‘constant conjunction’ of A and B.

Further, in the specific case of the creation of the universe, we only ever experience event B (i.e. the continued existence of the universe) and never what came before (i.e. the thing that caused the universe to exist).

This all casts doubt on the premise of cosmological arguments that ‘everything has a cause’.

Russell: Fallacy of composition

Bertrand Russell argues that cosmological arguments fall foul of the fallacy of composition . The fallacy of composition is an invalid inference that because parts of something have a certain property, the entire thing must also have this property. Examples:

Just because all the players on a football team are good, this doesn’t guarantee the team is good. For example, the players might not work well together.
Just because a sheet of paper is thin, it doesn’t mean things made from sheets of paper are thin. For example, a book with enough sheets of paper can be thick.

Applying this to the cosmological argument, we can raise a similar objection to Hume’s above : just because everything within the universe has a cause, doesn’t guarantee that the universe itself has a cause.

Or, to apply it to Leibniz’s cosmological argument : just because everything within the universe requires sufficient reason to explain its existence, doesn’t mean the universe itself requires sufficient reason to explain its existence. Russell says: “the universe is just there, and that’s all.”

Ok, but everything within the universe exists contingently
And if everything within the universe didn’t exist, then the universe itself wouldn’t exist either (because that’s all the universe is: the collection of things that make it up)
So the universe itself exists contingently, not just the stuff within it
And so the universe itself requires sufficient reason to explain its existence

Is the first cause God?

Aquinas’ first and second ways and the Kalam argument only show that there is a first cause . But they don’t show that this first cause is God .

So, even if we accept that there was a first cause, it doesn’t necessarily follow that God exists – much less the specific being described in the concept of God .

So, even if the cosmological argument is sound, it doesn’t necessarily follow that God exists.

This objection doesn’t work so well against Descartes’ version because he specifically reasons that there is a first cause and that this first cause is an omnipotent and omniscient God .

Similarly, you could argue that any being that exists necessarily (such as follows from Aquinas’ third way and Leibniz’s cosmological argument ) would be God.

The problem of evil uses the existence of evil in the world to argue that God (as defined in the concept of God ) does not exist.

These arguments can be divided into two forms:

The logical problem of evil is a deductive argument that says the existence of God is logically impossible given the existence of evil in the world
The evidential problem of evil is an inductive argument which says that, while it is logically possible that God exists, the amount of evil and unfair ways it is distributed in our world is pretty strong evidence that God doesn’t exist

And evil can be divided into two types of evil:

evil	evil
Evil acts committed by	Suffering as a result of
E.g. torture, murder, genocide, etc.	E.g. earthquakes, tsunamis, volcano eruptions, etc.

One final definition: a theodicy is an explanation of why an omnipotent and omniscient God would permit evil.

The logical problem of evil

“Epicurus’s old questions have still not been answered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then where does evil come from?” – Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 10

J.L. Mackie: Evil and Omnipotence

Inconsistent triad.

The simple version of Mackie’s argument is that the following statements are logically inconsistent – i.e. one or more of them contradict each other:

God is omnipotent
God is omnibenevolent
Evil exists

Mackie’s argument is that, logically, a maximum of 2 of these 3 statements can be true but not all 3. This is sometimes referred to as the inconsistent triad .

He argues that if God is omnibenevolent then he wants to stop evil. And if God is omnipotent, then he’s powerful enough to prevent evil.

But evil does exist in the world. People steal, get murdered, and so on. So either God isn’t powerful enough to stop evil, doesn’t want to stop evil, or both.

In the concept of God , God is defined as an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being. If such a being existed, argues Mackie, then evil would not exist. But evil does exist. Therefore, there is no omnipotent and omnibenevolent being. Therefore, God does not exist.

Reply 1: good couldn’t exist without evil

People often make claims like “you can’t appreciate the good times without experiencing some bad times”.

This is basically what this reply says: without evil, good couldn’t exist.

Mackie’s response

Mackie questions whether this statement is true at all. Why can’t we have good without evil?

Imagine if we lived in a world where everything was red. Presumably, we wouldn’t have created a word for ‘red’, nor would we know what it meant if someone tried to explain it to us. But it would still be the case that everything is red, we just wouldn’t know.

It’s a similar story with good and evil.

God could have created a world in which there was no evil. Like the red example, we wouldn’t have the concept of evil. But it would still be the case that everything is good – we just wouldn’t be aware of it.

Reply 2: the world is better with some evil than none at all

You could develop reply 1 above to argue that some evil is necessary for certain types of good. For example, you couldn’t be courageous (good) without having to overcome fear of pain, death, etc. (evil).

We can define first and second order goods:

First order good: e.g. pleasure
Second order good: e.g. courage

The argument is that second order goods seek to maximise first order goods. And second order goods are more valuable than first order goods. But without first order evils, second order goods couldn’t exist.

Let’s say we accept that first order evil is necessary for second order good to exist. How do you explain second order evil ?

Second order evils seek to maximise first order evils such as pain. So, for example, malevolence or cruelty are examples of second order evils.

But we could still have a world in which people were courageous (second order good) in overcoming pain (first order evil) without these second order evils. So why would an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God allow the existence of second order evils if there is no greater good in doing so?

Reply 3: we need evil for free will

We can develop the second order evil argument above further and argue that second order evil is necessary for free will. And free will is inherently such a good and valuable thing that it outweighs the bad that results from people abusing free will to do evil things.

So, while allowing free will brings some suffering, the net good of having free will is greater than if we didn’t. Therefore, it’s logically possible that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would allow evil (both first order and second order) for the greater good of free will.

An omnipotent God can create any logically possible world
If it’s logically possible to freely choose to act in a way that’s good on one occasion, then it’s logically possible to freely choose to act in a way that’s good on every occasion
So, an omnipotent God could create a world in which everyone freely chooses to act in a way that’s good

In other words, there is a logically possible world with both free will and without second order evils.

This, surely, would be the best of both worlds and maximise good most effectively: you would have second order goods, plus the good of free will, but without second order evils. This is a logically possible world – the logically possible world with the most good.

So, why wouldn’t an omnipotent and omniscient God create this specific world? Second order evils do not seem logically necessary, and yet they exist.

Alvin Plantinga: God, Freedom and Evil

Plantinga argues that we don’t necessarily need a plausible theodicy to defeat the logical problem of evil. All we need to show is that the existence of evil is not logically inconsistent with an omnipotent and omnibelevolent God.

So, even if the explanation of why God would allow evil doesn’t seem particularly plausible, as long as it’s a logical possibility then we have defeated the logical problem of evil .

Free will defence

(The free will theodicy is also known as the Augustinian theodicy after St. Augustine).

Even Mackie himself admits that God’s existence is not logically incompatible with some evil (first order evil). But his argument is that second order evil isn’t necessary .

Plantinga argues, however, that it’s logically possible (which is all we need to show to defeat the logical problem of evil) that God would allow second order evil for the greater good of free will . His argument is as follows:

A morally significant action is one that is either morally good or morally bad
A being that is significantly free is one that is able to do or not do morally significant actions
A being created by God to only do morally good actions would not be significantly free
So, the only way God could eliminate evil (including second order evil) would be to eliminate significantly free beings
But a world that contains significantly free beings is more good than a world that does not contain significantly free beings

In short, this argument shows that it’s at least logically possible that God would allow second order evil for the greater good of significant freedom.

Perhaps God could have created the world where everyone chose to only do morally good actions ( as Mackie describes above ) – but such a world wouldn’t be significantly free. Free will is inherently good and so significant free will could outweigh the negative of people using that significant free will to commit second order evils.

Natural evil as a form of moral evil

The free will defence above explains why an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would allow moral evil. But it doesn’t explain natural evil.

When innocent people are killed in natural disasters, it doesn’t seem this is the result of free will. So, even if an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would allow moral evil, why does this kind of evil exist as well?

Plantinga argues that it’s possible natural evil is the result of non-human actors such as Satan, fallen angels, demons, etc. This would make natural evil another form of moral evil, the existence of which would be explained by free will.

Even if this doesn’t sound very plausible , it’s at least possible . And remember, Plantinga’s argument is that we only need to show evil is not logically inconsistent with God’s existence to defeat the logical problem of evil.

Soul-making

The Irenaean theodicy below (what Hick calls soul-making) can also serve as a possible explanation of why God allows evil: We need evils in order to overcome them and freely develop spiritual virtues.

The evidential problem of evil

Unlike the logical problem of evil , the evidential problem of evil can allow that God’s existence is possible .

However, it argues the amount and distribution of evil in the world provides good evidence that God probably doesn’t exist.

Innocent babies born with painful congenital diseases
The sheer number of people currently living in slavery, extreme poverty or fear
The millions of innocent and anonymous people throughout history killed for no good reason

We can reject the logical problem of evil and accept that God would allow some evil. But would an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God allow so much evil? And to people so undeserving of it?

The evidential problem of evil argues that if God did exist, there would be less evil and it would be less concentrated among those undeserving of it.

Free will (again)

Sure, God could have made a world with less evil. But this would mean less free will. And on balance, having free will creates more good than the evil it also creates.

OK, maybe God would allow some evil for the greater good of free will. But it seems possible – simple, even – that God could have created a world with less evil than our world without sacrificing the greater good of free will.

For example, our world exactly as it is, with the same amount of free will, but with 1% less cancer. God could have created this world, so why didn’t He?

The evidential problem of evil could insist that the amount of evil – or unfair ways it is distributed – could easily be reduced without sacrificing some greater good, and so it seems unlikely that God exists, in this world, given this particular distribution of evil.

John Hick: Evil and the God of Love

Soul making.

(The soul making theodicy is also known as the Irenaean theodicy after St. Irenaeus).

Hick argues that humans are unfinished beings. Part of our purpose in life is to develop personally, ethically and spiritually – he calls this ‘soul making’.

As discussed above , it would be impossible for people to display (second order) virtues such as courage without fear of (first order) evils such as pain or death. Similarly, we couldn’t learn virtues such as forgiveness if people never treated us wrongly.

Of course, God could just have given us these virtues right off the bat. But, Hick says, virtues acquired through hard work and discipline are “good in a richer and more valuable sense”. Plus, there are some virtues, such as a genuine and authentic love of God, that cannot simply be given (otherwise they wouldn’t be genuine).

Soul making explains why God might allow some evil – i.e. it deals with the logical problem of evil. But there are some evils that don’t seem necessary for soul-making, such as pointless evils or animal suffering , and so the evidential problem remains. Hick’s responses are as follows:

Why God allows animals to suffer

The evidential problem of evil can ask Hick why God would allow animals to suffer when there is no benefit. After all, animals can’t develop spiritually like we can, so what greater good does their suffering serve?

Hick’s response is that God wanted to create epistemic distance between himself and humanity – i.e. a world in which his existence could be doubted . If God just proved he existed, we wouldn’t be free to develop a relationship with him. Also, we wouldn’t choose to do good for its own sake – we might just do good in expectation of being rewarded by God.

If animals didn’t exist or humans were clearly differentiated from animals, then it would be obvious that humans existed as part of a divine plan. However, humanity’s similarity with animals provides an alternative account of our existence that doesn’t require God (e.g. via evolution ) and thus creates epistemic distance where God’s existence can be doubted.

Why God allows such terrible evils

We might still ask why would God allow such terrible evils – e.g. torturing a baby or mass murder – when we could still achieve spiritual development with lesser evils?

Hick argues that it’s not possible for God to just get rid of terrible evil – e.g. baby torture – and leave only ordinary evil. The reason for this is that terrible evils are only terrible in contrast to ordinary evils. So, if God did get rid of terrible evils, then the worst ordinary evils would become the new terrible evils. If God kept getting rid of terrible evils then he would have to keep reducing free will and thus the development of personal and spiritual virtues ( soul making ).

Why God allows such pointless evils

Finally, we might ask why would God allow such pointless evils – e.g. an innocent child struck down with cancer at a young age.

Hick argues that such pointless evils must remain something of a mystery. But, paradoxically, this mystery actually helps the case for soul making: If every time we saw someone suffering we knew it was for some higher purpose (i.e. it wasn’t pointless), then we would never be able to develop virtues such as deep sympathy.

“It seems, then, that in a world that is to be the scene of compassionate love and self-giving for others, suffering must fall upon mankind with something of the haphazardness and inequity that we now experience. It must be apparently unmerited, pointless, and incapable of being morally rationalized. For it is precisely this feature… that creates sympathy between man and man and evokes the unselfish kindness and goodwill which are among the highest values of personal life.” – John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, Chapter 16 Part 6

Further, without seemingly unfair and pointless evil, we would never be able to develop virtues such as hope and faith – both of which require a degree of uncertainty. This again comes back to God maintaining epistemic distance and creating a world where his existence can be doubted.

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On proofs for the existence of god: aristotle, avicenna, and thomas aquinas.

1. Introduction

2. aristotle’s cosmological proof for the first mover, 3. avicenna’s metaphysical proof for necessary existence in itself, 4. thomas aquinas’s cosmological proof for the existence of god, 5. conclusions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

1	. Γ2, 1003a33-1003b19. I subscribe to the “focus-meaning” interpretation proposed by some interpreters; see ( , ) and ( ).
2	. B1, 995b13-15, 995b31-36; B2, 997a34-b3; Z2, 1028b27-32; M1, 1076a10-13), Aristotle asks whether there is a kind of substance other than sensible substance, i.e., intelligible substance. He rejects two possible answers by criticizing Plato’s ideas and classifying mathematical entities as quantities. The only intelligible substance that Aristotle truly recognizes is God. I will explain this point in due course.
3	. E1, 1026a27-29; K7, 1064b9-11; PA A1, 641a34-36.
4	. Ε1, 1026a29-31; Z11, 1037a13-17; K7, 1064b11-14; M1, 1076a8-15; Phys. B2, 194b9-15; PA A1, 641a36-b4.
5	. Λ1, 1069a36-b2; Λ10, 1075b130-14; K2, 1060a27-31.
6	. Λ1, 1069a30-36, Aristotle speaks of the three kinds of substances (οὐσίαι δὲ τρεῖς, 1069a30), natural things, heavenly bodies, and God. Aristotle is precise and correct in stating that natural things such as (human beings), animals, and plants are sensible and perishable substances (1069a30-32). However, the (four) elements appear in place of the heavenly bodies, representing sensible and imperishable substances (1069a32-33), and the ideas and mathematical entities appear in place of God, representing intelligible and immovable substances (1069a33-36). According to Aristotle’s doctrine of categories, mathematical entities are not substances, but belong to the category of quantity. Aristotle sharply criticizes Plato’s ideas and does not recognize them as substances. Although they are intelligible and immovable, Plato’s ideas and mathematical entities are not substances in the Aristotelian sense, so they should not appear here. Although he recognizes the four elements as substances in On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle does not discuss them in Metaphysics Λ, so they should not appear here. In this case, one might ask why Aristotle mentions the elements in Λ1, which he does not discuss here, and speaks of Plato’s ideas and mathematical entities, which he does not consider substances. I suppose that Aristotle introduces these into his discussion of substances because he uses the doxographical method. In order to express his own doctrine, Aristotle presents the doctrine proposed by pre-Aristotelian philosophers and argues with them. To present the doctrine of the four causes, in Metaph. A, Aristotle goes through all the pre-Socratics, Socrates and Plato, who discuss the related issues. Similarly, in Metaph. Λ, Aristotle refers to the pre-Aristotelian doctrines of substances, although he disagrees with some of them, in order to present his own doctrine of substances. After introducing the three kinds of substances in Λ1, Aristotle discusses them one by one. He presents natural things as sensible and perishable substances in Λ2-5, heavenly bodies as sensible and imperishable substances in Λ6-8, and God as intelligent and immovable substance in Λ6-9. In particular, in Λ6-8 Aristotle presents God as the First Unmoved Mover by relating Him to the moved heavenly bodies, and in Λ9 he presents God as a purely intelligent entity. Finally, Aristotle summarizes the relationships among these three kinds of substances in Λ10. Thus, in terms of the overall structure and content of Book Λ, Aristotle discusses the three kinds of substances: natural things, heavenly bodies, and God. For Aristotle’s discussion of these three substances, see also ( ).
7	. Γ2, 1003b17-19; Λ1, 1069a25-26. See also ( ).
8	( ).
9	. A1, 184a18-21; A5, 188b30-33, 189a4-9; APo. A1, 71b33-72a5; De An. B2, 413a11-13; Metaph. Δ11, 1018b29-34; Z3, 1029b3-12; NE A2, 1095a30-b4. See also ( ).
10	. Λ8, 1073b17-1074a14. ( ) thinks there are fifty-five heavenly bodies, while ( ) think there are ninety-four. I will not enter into this discussion here, because what is important for the cosmological proof is that there are many heavenly bodies, not one, and that there are finitely many, not infinitely many.
11	. Θ5, 256a13-14; H1, 242a49-50.
12
13	. Λ7, 1072a24-26; Phys. Θ5, 256a4-21; H1, 242a49-66.
14	686. 2–16.
15	( ): “Furthermore, says Theophrastus, if heaven is living like other living beings, its movement could be explained by the action of its soul, and would not need any unmovable mover.”
16	. Λ8, 1074a36-37; Phys. Θ5, 256a13-21; H1, 242a49-55.
17	( ).
18	. Λ7, 1072b18-30; Λ9, 1074b38-1075a10.
19	. Λ10, 1075a11-25; ( ).
20	I.6-7. Some scholars question the traditional interpretation and suggest that Avicenna does not prove God’s existence until Ilāhīyyāt VIII.1-3 ( ; ; , ).
21	; ), while others see it as metaphysical ( ; ).
22	; ) characterize Avicenna’s proof as ontological, I prefer to present it as metaphysical, so that Avicenna’s metaphysical proof is not confused with Anselm’s ontological proof.
23	, (2014, pp. 48–49); ( ).
24	( ): “Was Metaphysik von Gott erkennen kann, vermag sie nach Aristoteles nur im Ausgang von den Wirkungen zu erkennen. Ein solcher Leitfaden erlaubt aber nur eine Erkenntnis Gottes per accidens.”
25	. A6, 74b5-12, 75a12-14, 75a28-31; A7, 75a38-b6; A8, 75b21-24; A9, 76a4-15; A10, 76b11-16.
26	I.5, p. 22, lines 19-22. I refer to Marmura’s and Bertolacci’s translation with slight modification.
27	I.5, p. 22, lines 19-22; p. 23, lines 15–17; see also ( ).
28	( ): “As the fact of occurring at the very beginning of the Ilāhīyyāt witnesses, the articulation of Ontology constitutes, according to Avicenna, the main axis of metaphysics.”
29	, Aquinas defines metaphysics from three perspectives and gives it three names. Metaphysics is called first philosophy, which examines the primary causes of things; metaphysics is also called divine science or theology, which examines the intelligent being, completely separated from matter, both in reality and in the mind; and metaphysics is finally called transphysics, which examines the universal principles, being and its essential properties, such as one–many and potency–actualization (Metaphysica, inquantum considerat ens et ea quae consequuntur ipsum. Haec enim transphysica inveniuntur in via resolutionis, sicut magis communia post minus communia. [...] Unde et illa scientia maxime est intellectualis, quae circa principia maxime universalia versatur. Quae quidem sunt ens, et ea quae consequuntur ens, ut unum et multa, potentia et actus). In my opinion, Aquinas inherits the ontological conception of metaphysics from Avicenna, while he inherits the theological and aitiological conceptions of metaphysics from Aristotle.
30	. A4, 73b16-21; A10, 76b3-16; Avicenna, Ilāhīyyāt I.3; ( ; ).
31	( ) does not call Avicenna’s division diairesis, and I interpret his description and summary of Avicenna’s division as diairesis.
32	(al-Samā’al-ṭabī’ī, 2009, p. 39), Avicenna classifies power (quwwa, potentia, δύναμις) into four types ( ). I believe that Avicenna establishes the fourfold classification by means of cross-division. Avicenna constructs the cross-division by cross-combining the two pairs of attributes, i.e., single function–multiple function and without volition–with volition, with each other. The cross-combination of the two pairs of attributes results in the four pairs of combinations that characterize four kinds of things endowed with a certain power: the natural thing is single-function and acts without volition, the celestial soul is single-function and acts with volition, the vegetative soul is multifunction and acts without volition, and the animal soul is multifunction and acts with volition. I would also note that Lammer has also mentioned another cross-division made by Themistius, Philoponus, and al-Fārābī, such that the two pairs of attributes, i.e., relative–absolute and hypothesis–postulate, are cross-combined. In this way, the fourfold classification is established: relative hypotheses, relative postulates, absolute hypotheses, and absolute postulates ( ). Moreover, I observe that in Ilāhīyyāt I.2, Avicenna uses cross-division to divide mathematics into four subdisciplines and the subject of mathematics into four kinds. The subject of mathematics, quantity, is divided into two parallel pairs, continuous–discrete and abstraction from matter–existence in matter, and the two pairs are cross-combined, thus forming a cross-division that establishes four pairs of combinations that characterize four kinds of quantity. Through this cross-division, quantity, the subject of mathematics, is divided into four kinds, and accordingly, mathematics is divided into four subdisciplines as follows. Geometry studies the quantity that is continuous and abstract from matter (i.e., lines, surfaces, and bodies); astronomy studies the quantity that is continuous and exists in matter (i.e., heavenly bodies); arithmetic studies the quantity that is discrete and abstract from matter (i.e., numbers); and music studies the quantity that is discrete and exists in matter (i.e., notes). Based on what has been said, it is reasonable to assume that in Ilāhīyyāt I.6, Avicenna uses cross-division to make a fourfold classification of existent. Notably, Avicenna did not invent cross-division. Plato and Aristotle used cross-division extensively; in his commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, Porphyry notes Aristotle’s use of cross-division and calls it chiasmus (χιαστή). See ( ) Porphyrii Isagoge et In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium, 78.34-79.11; ( ). For Plato’s and Aristotle’s use of chiasmus and a detailed discussion of the difference between chiasmus and diairesis, see ( ).
33	( ), ( ) and ( ).
34	( ): “Avicenna defends (...) that metaphysics can have a theological goal precisely because it has an ontological starting point”.
35	( ), ( ), ( ), ( ) and ( ).
36	) but rather that something moved must be moved by something (ὑπό τινος). Although Aristotle’s aim is to infer an external mover from the moved heavenly bodies, his formulation and the possible use of κινεῖσθαι in the sense of medium indicate that Aristotle does not completely exclude the internal efficient cause and emphasize the external efficient cause, as Aquinas does. Thus, there is a slight difference between Aquinas’s imitation and Aristotle’s original formulation, although this difference does not affect the argument.
37	. Γ1, 201a10-11). In other words, motion is defined as the process from potentiality to actuality. At the beginning, the thing exists in potentiality, and motion does not begin; at the end, the thing achieves its goal and exists in actuality, and motion ends. Movement is neither beginning nor end, neither potentiality nor actuality, but the process from beginning to end and from potentiality to actuality. From the perspective of movement, it is illuminating that potentiality and actuality cannot coexist simultaneously. According to Aristotle, however, not only can moving and being moved coexist, but they must operate simultaneously for movement to occur (Phys. Γ3, 202a21-b5). For example, the moving hand and the moved stick operate simultaneously to lift the stick. The same reasoning applies to the movement of animals: the moving soul and the moved body work simultaneously for a human being to act. When there is movement, the moving and the moved work together at the same time. Therefore, I think the two sets, potentiality–actuality and moving–being moved, cannot be confused with each other.
38	I, c. 13 bears much resemblance to the argument established by Proclus in the Elements of Theology (abbreviated ET). In the seventeenth proposition, Proclus argues, “But if the mover is one part and the moved another, the whole will not in itself be self-moved, since it will be composed of parts that are not self-moved: it will have the appearance of being self-moved, but in essence it will not be so” (ET, Prop. 17. lines 5-8). I have slightly modified Dodd’s translation.
39	. Λ3, 1070a7-8; Phys. B1, 192b8-15, 27–30.
40	c. 3 (1999, p. 60): Causas autem accipit tam pro extrinsecis quam pro intrinsecis: Materia et forma dicuntur intrinsecae rei, eo quod sunt partes constituentes rem; efficiens et finalis dicuntur extrinsecae, quia sunt extra rem.
41	( ; ) emphasizes that in the second way, Aquinas places the hierarchical, vertical structure among the efficient causes in order to avoid infinite regression. ( ) further asserts that “all the proofs presume that the causes and effects appearing in them are arranged hierarchically”. Pasnau takes up this idea by claiming that in each of the five ways, Aquinas replaces the infinite horizontal series of causes going back in time with a vertical series, thus ending the infinite regression. See ( ) and ( ).
42	( ) also questions the validity of this deduction.
43	( ), ( ) and ( ).
44	( ) and ( ).
45	254b-260a.
46	. 595c-597e; Tim. 27c-31b, 39e-40d.
47	) “Via causalitatis; via negationis; via eminentiae (Weg der Ursächlichkeit; Weg der Negation; Weg des Übermaßes)”, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, pp. 1034–38.
48	, Prop. 8. lines 3-4: “If all beings desire the Good, it is evident that the First Good transcends [all] beings” (εἰ γὰρ πάντα τὰ ὄντα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἐφίεται, δῆλον ὅτι τὸ πρώτως ἀγαθὸν ἐπέκεινά ἐστι τῶν ὄντων). I have slightly modified Dodds’s translation.
49
50	( ) focuses on the first way, ( ) on the first and fourth ways. According to Wippel and Pawl, many scholars focus on the third way; see ( ) and ( ).
51	, ( ) summarizes the last two features common to the five ways as one characteristic by stating that “a second characteristic is that all the proofs presume that the causes and effects appearing in them are arranged hierarchically”. In other words, the second common feature is both causality and the hierarchical order between cause and effect. ( ) emphasizes the hierarchical order between cause and effect because only the hierarchy can end the infinite regression.
52	q. 7, a. 7; SCG I, c. 29-36.; ST I, q. 13, a. 5-6. For an interpretation of Aquinas’s analogy, see ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), and ( ).

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The Existence of God: Key Arguments Essay

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The existence of God has been a big subject in philosophy, and attempts to prove or disprove his existence have been made since time immemorial. Famous philosophers such as Rene Descartes, St. Thomas Aquinas, and William Paley have all conceived arguments to prove the existence of God. Although there are many other arguments trying to prove the existence of God, nevertheless, the arguments proposed by the three above-mentioned thinkers have the most significance in philosophy. This essay is going to provide two arguments for the existence of God.

The anthropic principle is an argument of the existence of a reasonable plan for the structure of the Universe. According to this argument, only God may create the complex structure of nature, universe, and life on the Earth. Such phenomena as a fixed distance of Earth from the Sun, the presence of the Earth’s rotation, the existence of a satellite of certain sizes, minerals and resources could be created only under the control of someone mighty.

The cosmological proof of the existence of God was developed by the ancients (in particular, by Aristotle) and is most often found in the following form. Everything in the world and everything, the entire universe as a whole, has a reason for its existence. Furthermore, the argument states that it is impossible to continue this sequence, the chain of causes indefinitely – somewhere there must be a root cause that is already no other is conditioned (Reichenbach, 2022). Otherwise, everything turns out to be groundless, hanging in the air.

Finally, the transcendental proof of the existence of an ideal world and God was partially discovered by Kant and can be presented as follows. There is a world outside of space and time – the spiritual world, the world of intelligence, thought, and free will, which is proved by the presence in every person of thoughts. According to the argument, this world can relate to the past and the future, that is, ‘travel’ into the past and the future, as well as being instantly transported to any point in space.

Reichenbach, Bruce. (2022). Cosmological Argument. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Web.

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The Nature of God and Arguments for the Existence of God

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James F. Harris 2

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Theism is characterized by belief in a God that possesses a unique set of characteristics or attributes. The theistic conception of God that is formed by the combination of these attributes has been troublesome through the centuries and has given rise to many questions and criticisms — by theists and nontheists alike — both of the individual attributes and the collective set of attributes. These problems persisted throughout the twentieth century and intensified in the last few decades. Some of the issues concerning the attributes are old ones revisited in light of our changing knowledge of the natural world as a result of the development of science. Others are logical issues that have been given new “twists” by contemporary scholars, quite independently of contingent matters. The coherence of the attributes that comprise the concept of God is fundamental to theism since the viability of theism must begin with the viability of the concept of God. Sorting through the difficulties surrounding the traditional attributes of the theistic deity is such a fundamental problem that Richard Swinburne devotes approximately two-thirds of what many consider his seminal work, The Coherence of Theism , to an explanation and defense of the coherence of these attributes. Although there are many disagreements among theists that need to be explored, I shall take Swinburne’s view as typical of the traditional theistic concept of God: namely, “that there exists eternally an omnipresent spirit, free, creator of the universe, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and a source of moral obligation.” 1

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Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , Revised Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 99.

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I do not treat here the work of Charles Hartshorne, since his view of the divine attributes is so intimately connected with his process philosophy. See his Man’s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (New York: Harper and Row, 1941) and The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948).

Several of the exchanges have taken place in Philosophical Studies . See Richard LaCroix, “The Impossibility of Defining Omnipotence,” Philosophical Studies , Vol. 32, 1977, pp. 181–90; George Mavrodes, “Defining Omnipotence,” Philosophical Studies , Vol. 32, 1977, pp. 191–202; Richard LaCroix, “Failing to Define Omnipotence,” Philosophical Studies , Vol. 35, 1979, pp. 219–22; Joshua Hoffman, “Mavrodes on Defining Omnipotence,” Philosophical Studies , Vol. 35, 1979, pp. 311–15; and Bruce Reichenbach, “Mavrodes on Omnipotence,” Philosophical Studies , Vol. 37, 1980, pp. 211–14. Also see Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), Chapter Vil; Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983), Chapter 5; and Edward R. Wierenga, The Nature of God (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), Chapter 1. For Alvin Plantinga’s notion of omnipotence, see the discussion of his modal version of the ontological argument below.

Edward. R. Wierenga provides a summary and discussion of the different versions of the different qualifications in The Nature of God , p. 14–18.

Wade C. Savage, “The Paradox of the Stone,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 76, 1967.

In addition to the responses discussed here, see Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 168–73; Peter Geach, “Omnipotence,” Philosophy , Vol. 48, 1973, reprinted as Chapter 1 of Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and G. B. Keene, “A Simpler Solution to the Paradox of Omnipotence,” Mind , Vol. 69, 1960. For a critical discussion of different responses to the paradox of the stone, see Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983), Chapter 5.

George Mavrodes, “Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence,” Philosophical Review , 72, 1963, pp. 221–23. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings , edited by Michael Peterson et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), to which the page numbers here refer, p. 113.

lbid., p. 114.

Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , p. 158.

Harry Frankfurt, “The Logic of Omnipotence,” The Philosophical Review , Vol. 73, 1964, pp. 26263. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology , edited by Louis Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1998), to which the page numbers here refer.

Ibid., p. 282.

Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , p. 156.

Ibid., p. 161. For a discussion of temporal considerations in the notion of omnipotence as well as a distinction concerning different levels of omnipotence (“first-order” and “second-order” omnipotence), see J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind , Vol. 64, 1955, pp. 200–12.

There are other considerations involved here as well. For example, powers are sometimes distinguished from attributes that are distinguished from relations. I maintain that powers and attributes can best be analyzed in terms of relations, though I have not argued for this position here.

The terminology is sometimes confusing here since some scholars refer to the paradox of the stone as the paradox of omnipotence. I use the two different designations here to try and maintain the distinction between the two problems.

Originally in J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind , Vol. 64, 1955. Also in J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 160ff.

There has been some discussion of whether this is a genuine paradox or simply a difficult issue that forces a certain response from a theist depending upon whether or not God may have second-order omnipotence without ever exercising it. See Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , p. 160.

Ibid., pp. 161–62. Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense and Mackie’s criticisms are discussed at length in Chapter VI.

Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers , pp. 94–95.

Ibid., p. 96.

Ibid., pp. 97–98. There are other difficulties that cause further qualifications as well. Although God may possess the power to beget a son, he cannot possess the power to beget my son, and although God might possess the power to write a book, he cannot possess the power to write the book that I write.

See Richard Swinburne, “Tensed Facts,” American Philosophical Quarterly , Vol. 27, 1990, pp. 117–30.

Norman Kretzmann, “Omniscience and Immutability,” Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 63, 1966.

For responses to Kretzmann, see Nector-Neri Castaneda, “Omniscience and Indexical Reference,” Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 64, 1967, pp. 203–210, and Swinbume, The Coherence of Theism , 167–72. Castafieda argues that there is a propositional content to indexicals that can be known by other people, but Swinburne denies this.

Nelson Pike, “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 74, 1965, pp. 27–46. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings , edited by Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Bassinger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) to which the page numbers here refer, pp.117–18.

See Anthony Kenny, “Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom,” in Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays , edited by Anthony Kenny (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 255–270, as well as The God of the Philosophers , Chapter V.

Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , pp. 179–83.

Ibid., pp. 180–81.

See Harry Frankfurt, “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 66, 1969, pp. 829–39. For a discussion of Frankfurt’s attack on PAP and various responses as well as a defense of PAP, see Laura Waddell Ekstrom, Free Will: A Philosophical Defense (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999).

See Linda Zagzebski, “Foreknowledge and Human Freedom,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion , edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 294–96. Zagzebski accepts Frankfurt’s rejection of PAP but argues that PAP is not the important issue for the problem of divine foreknowledge.

Marilyn Adams, “Is the Existence of God a Hard Fact?” Philosophical Review , Vol. 76, 1967; Joshua Hoffman, “Pike on Possible Worlds, Divine Foreknowledge, and Human Freedom,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 88, 1979; Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers , pp. 51–87; John Martin Fischer, “Freedom and Foreknowledge,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 92, 1983; Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, “Hard and Soft Facts,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 93, 1984; William P. Alston, “Divine Foreknowledge and Alternative Conceptions of Human Freedom,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , Vol. 18, no. 1, 1985.

For a thorough discussion of William of Ockham and the contemporary Ockhamists, see Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), Chapter 3.

This summary is a synthesis of the treatments found in Zagzebski, ibid ., pp. 68–70, and Marilyn Adams, William Ockham (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), Chapter 27.

Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge , p. 18.

Nelson Pike, “Of God and Freedom: A Rejoinder,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 75, 1966, pp. 36979; John Turk Saunders, “Of God and Freedom,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 75, 1966, pp. 219–225; and Marilyn Adams, “Is the Existence of God a Hard Fact?”

Marilyn Adams, ibid ., pp. 493 and 494.

William L. Rowe, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1978), p.163. [Though the war between Japan and the United States ended in 1945 and lasted four years, I use Rowe’s original example to be true to his text.]

For example, Alvin Plantinga, “On Ockham’s Way Out,” Faith and Philosophy , Vol. 3, no. 3, July 1986, pp. 235–69.

John Martin Fischer, “Introduction: God and Freedom,” in God , Foreknowledge , and Freedom , edited by John Martin Fischer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 35–36. Also see Fischer’s “Freedom and Foreknowledge” (Chapter 4) in the same volume, originally published in The Philosophical Review , Vol. 92, no. 1, 1983, pp. 67–79. For a response to Fischer, see Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, “Hard and Soft Facts,” The Philosophical Review , Vol. 93, no. 3, 1984, pp. 41934, which is reprinted also in God , Foreknowledge , and Freedom , Chapter 7.

Zabzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge , pp. 74–76.

William Hasker, God , Time , and Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp.75–95.

I am here assuming that not all facts about God are soft simply because God is eternal.

See Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), Chapter 9, and Alfred Freddoso’s Introduction in On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia , Luis de Molina (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988).

Alvin Plantinga, God , Freedom , and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 66–73.

For a critical discussion of these criticisms, see Zabzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge , pp. 141ff.

William Hasker, God , Time , and Knowledge , pp. 39–52. For a lengthy response to Hasker and a defense of Plantinga, see Edward R. Wierenga, The Nature of God , pp. 150–160. Anthony Kenny also attacks Plantinga’s notion of middle knowledge in The God of the Philosophers , pp. 67ff.

Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 78, 1981. Reprinted in The Concept of God , edited by Thomas V. Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). p. 247.

Others have rejected this way of resolving the dilemma Kenny calls the timelessness of God “incoherent” while Swinburne denies that timelessness is consistent with other theistic beliefs about God.

Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 38-

Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy Vol. 78, 1981, pp. 429–58. The pages numbers here refer to the reprint in The Concept of God edited by Thomas V. Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 231.

For a critical discussion of the relationship of timelessness to these attributes, see Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), Chapter 3, and Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 219ff.

Stump and Kretzmann, ibid ., p. 247.

Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge , p. 41ff.

Hasker, God , Time , and Knowledge , p. 164.

Much of the following is drawn from James F. Harris, “An Empirical Understanding of Eternality,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , Vol. 22, 1987, pp. 165–83.

William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1893), Vol. IV, p. 606.

See Harris, “An Empirical Understanding of Eternality,” for more detailed discussion of the limits of the specious present, pp. 177ff.

Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness , Chapter 7.

Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , p. 228.

Using this distinction is more helpful, I think, than using “the Cambridge Criterion” introduced by Peter Geach, “What Actually Exists,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplemental Volume, Vol. 42, 1968, pp. 7–16.

It should be noted that several have criticized and rejected this distinction.

For a discussion of the notion that God has eternal intentions, see Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , pp. 221–22.

Dun Scotus notwithstanding. Although Scotus held that the incarnation was intended by God from all eternity and not as a result of original sin, this certainly has never been and is not now the dominant view.

Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , pp. 217ff; Nicholas Wolterstorff, “God Everlasting,” God and the Good: Essays in Honor of Henry Stob , edited by C. Orlebeke and L. Smedes (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 181–203. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings , edited by Michael Peterson et al., pp. 125–33; Stephen T. Davis, “Temporal Eternity,” from Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983). Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology , edited by Louis Pojman (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1998), pp. 235–42. Page references to both Wolterstorff and Davis refer to the reprinted versions.

Wolterstorff, “God Everlasting,” pp. 125–26.

Davis, “Temporal Eternity,” pp. 237ff.

If this is true, one might wonder why Aquinas, Boethius, and others have taken God to be timeless. To this question I have no definite answer, but Swinburne’s suggestion that attributing timelessness to God in Christian theology resulted from neo-Platonism seems very plausible. See Swinbume, The Coherence of Theism ,p. 225.

For a critical discussion of the history of impassibility (which focuses on Augustine and the Stoics) and its relation to the other divine attributes, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love,” in Philosophy and the Christian Faith , edited by Thomas V. Morris (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 196–237.

See Richard Creel, “Immutability and Impassibility,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion , edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 313ff, for a short discussion of impassibility and the other attributes of God. Also see, Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love,” pp. 217ff.

Richard Creel, Divine Impassibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 2.

Jung Young Lee, God Suffers for Us: A Systematic Inquiry into a Concept of Divine Passibility (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), p. 7. Lee is also quoted by Creel, ibid .

For a detailed discussion of different definitions and a critical survey of the literature, see Richard Creel, Divine Impassibility , pp. 3ff.

Richard Creel, “Immutability and Impassibility,” p. 313.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love,” p. 211. Charles Taliaferro also develops a theory of passibility in Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 315–33. I do not discuss his theory of passibility here, but I do discuss his theory of integrated dualism in some detail below.

Ibid., pp. 214–15 and pp. 224ff.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love,” in Philosophy and the Christian Faith , edited by Thomas V. Morris, pp. 196–237, and Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987).

Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son , pp. 80 and 81.

Richard Creel, Divine Impassibility , Chapters 2 and 7. Also see Kelly James Clark, “Hold Not Thy Peace at My Tears,” in Our Knowledge of God , edited by Kelly James Clark (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 173ff.

Many critics have objected that the claims about the personhood of God which have become so thoroughly ingrained in traditional theism are the confused result of a complete misunderstanding of the nature of persons originating in Cartesian dualism. Such criticism is found in Kai Nielsen, “God, Disembodied Existence and Incoherence,” Sophia , Vol. 26, no. 3, 1987, and Richard Rorty, “Mind as Ineffable,” in Mind in Nature , edited by Richard Q. Elvee (San Francisco: Macmillan, 1973). The most thorough discussion of the matter of dualism and its effect upon the traditional theistic conception of God is found in Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , Chapter 8.

Ibid., pp. 104ff. and p. 135. Derived from Arthur Danto, “Basic Actions,” American Philosophical Quarterly , Vol. 2, 1965, pp. 141–48.

Swinburne, ibid ., p. 141.

Swinburne argues that such a notion is meaningful. See ibid ., pp. 106ff. This issue is discussed in the context of the issue of immortality in Chapter VII.

Ibid., p. 105.

Ibid., p. 106.

William P. Alston, “God’s Action in the World,” in Evolution and Creation , edited by Ernan McMullin (Notre Dame, hid.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). Reprinted in William P. Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), to which the page numbers here refer, p. 198.

Ibid., pp. 199–207. Also see J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , pp. 161ff.

Alston, “God’s Action in the World,” p. 207.

Harry Frankfurt, “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 66, 1969, pp. 829–39.

Whether Frankfurt is right about the effect of this type of case on PAP and whether moral responsibility depends upon PAP have been the subject of some debate in the literature on free will. Peter van Inwagen, for example, agrees with Frankfurt that these cases show that PAP is false in An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 179–80, while Laura Ekstrom disagrees in Free Will: A Philosophical Study (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999), Chapter 6.

One fairly recent such example is Gary Legenhausen, “Is God a Person?” Religious Studies , Vol. 22, 1986, pp. 307–23.

Grace Jantzen, God’s World , God’s Body (Philadelphia, Pa.: The Westminster Press, 1984), Chapter 5.

For a critical (but ultimately negative) assessment of the different theological supports for incorporeality, see Jantzen, God’s World , God’s Body ,pp. 105–130. See also David Paulsen, “Must God Be Incorporeal?” Faith and Philosophy , Vol. 6, no. 1, 1989, pp. 76–87. For a rebuttal to Jantzen and Paulsen, see Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God , pp. 256–71.

For criticism of Jantzen on this score, see Taliaferro, ibid .,pp. 249ff., especially his note on p. 249 for further references.

Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God .

Ibid., pp. 233–34.

Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , pp. 101ff.

Patrick Sherry, “Spirits , Saints , and Immortality (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1984), p. 13. For a lengthy response to Sherry’s objection, see Taliaferro, ibid .,pp. 264ff.

Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God ,p. 266.

This issue is discussed at length in Chapter VII. Using some kind of replica body theory might help integrated dualism answer this question.

Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God ,pp. 335–36.

Taliaferro’s integrated dualism seems somewhat akin to Alfred North Whitehead’s consequent nature of God — a kinship that can only be noted here.

Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 29ff. 704 Ibid . p. 27.

It should be noted that Kant raises a number of different objections to the ontological argument, of which “existence is not a predicate” is just one. For a full discussion of Kant’s different objections, see Plantinga, ibid ., pp. 29ff., and J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , pp. 43ff.

Plantinga, God and Other Minds , pp. 30–31.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason , translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1963).

Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , p. 46. Mackie follows W. C. Kneale on this point. See W. C. Kneale, “Is Existence a Predicate?” in Readings in Philosophical Analysis , edited by Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars (New York: Appleton-Century-Croft, 1949).

Mackie, ibid ., pp. 46–47.

Plantinga, God and Other Minds , p. 32.

Some would say, following Quine, that the ontological question of what “really” exists is nonsensical and is replaced by the question of the ontological commitment of a particular language.

Ibid., p. 47.

Graham Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 33ff. This volume contains the most complete annotated bibliography on the ontological argument available, pp. 200ff.

Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , pp. 42–43. This is a modern-day version of Gaunilo’s objection that a perfect island would necessarily have to exist.

Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God , pp. 48–49.

For further discussion of the issue of whether existence can be a predicate, see the articles by Bertrand Russell and Jerome Shaffer in The Many-Faced Argument , edited by John Hick and Arthur McGill (London: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 219–45.

For example, a version of the ontological argument that is now receiving some attention is the one that was found in the unpublished papers of Kurt Gödel. Gödel’s original version appears in his Collected Works , Volume 3, edited by S. Feferman et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). For critical comments, see C. Anthony Anderson, “Some Emendations of Gödel’s Ontological Argument,” Faith and Philosophy , Vol. 7, 1990, pp. 291–303; Graham Oppy, “Gödelian Ontological Arguments,” Analysis , Vol. 56, 1996, pp. 226–30; and C. Anthony Anderson and Michael Gettings, “Gödel’s Ontological Proof Revisited,” in Lecture Notes in Logic 6: Gödel ‘86 , edited by Petr Hhjek (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996), pp. 167–72.

Charles Hartshorne, “The Necessarily Existent,” in Man’s Vision of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1941), pp. 229–341. Page numbers refer to reprint in The Ontological Argument , edited by Alvin Plantinga (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1965); The Logic of Perfection (LaSalle, ID.: Open Court, 1962); and Anselm’s Discovery (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1965). Norman Malcolm, “Anselm’s Ontological Arguments,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 69, no. 1, January 1960. Reprinted in Malcolm’s Knowledge and Certainty (Englewood, Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), to which the page numbers here refer.

Whether Anslem intended to present two different arguments in Chapter 3 or whether he intended to be exploring the attributes of the being whose existence he had established in Chapter 2 is an intriguing question of historical exegesis. However, the main substantive issue is not whether the modal version of the argument can be attributed to Anseem but whether a sound modal version of the argument can be formulated.

Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection , p. 58.

Hartshorne, “The Necessarily Existent,” p. 124.

Ibid., p. 135.

See Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection , pp. 50–51.

John Hick has objected that Anselm intended “necessary” to mean “ontological necessity” rather than “logical necessity.” See his “A Critique of the `Second Argument,”` in John Hick and Arthus C. McGill, The Many-Faced Argument (New York: Macmillan, 1967).

For an introduction to these modal systems, see G. E. Hughes and M. J. Creswell, An Introduction to Modal Logic (London: Methuen and Company, 1968).

Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection , p. 60.

Ibid., p. 46.

See ibid., p. 63.

Ibid., pp. 63ff.

Hartshorne thinks that admitting potentiality in God for future concrete states actually strengthens the case for regarding God’s existence as necessary. See ibid ., pp. 63–68.

Norman Malcolm, “Anselm’s Ontological Arguments,” p. 146.

As with Hartshorne, there is significant controversy over Malcolm’s interpretation of Anselm. See, for example, Clement Dore, Theism (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1984), pp. 144ff.

Ibid ., pp. 149–50.

Richard Gale takes Malcolm to be offering two different versions of Anselm’s “second” proof, but it seems more likely that Malcolm intended his comments to be simply elaborations of a single modal proof. At any rate, the differences are not great. For Gale’s formalizations of Malcolm’s modal proof(s), see his On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 209ff. Compare Keith E. Yandell, Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Religion (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1971), pp. 101ff.

Norman Malcolm, “Anselm’s Ontological Arguments,” pp. 149 and 150.

For criticisms of Malcolm on this point, see W. Baumer, “Anse1m, Truth, and Necessary Being,” Philosophy , Vol. 37, 1962, pp. 257–58, and Terrence Penelhum, “Some Recent Discussions of the Traditional Proofs — The Ontological Argument,” in Religion and Rationality (New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 365–72. For discussion of other responses, see Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God , pp. 211–12.

While modality may apply to other attributes of God, I take “modally perfect being” as shorthand for perfection solely in terms of existence.

For a detailed treatment of the relationship between the ontological and cosmological arguments for Hartshorne, see H. G. Hubbeling, “Hartshorne and the Ontological Argument,” in The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne , edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991), pp. 367ff.

Clement Dore, Theism , Chapter 6.

Norman Malcolm, “Anselm’s Ontological Arguments,” p. 159.

Dore, Theism , pp. 70ff.

Paul Henle, “Uses of the Ontological Argument,” Philosophical Review , Vol. 70, 1961, pp. 102ff.

For monotheists, it is crucial then to argue that there is one and only one necessarily existent being, a part of the argument that is frequently neglected. For a generalized version of Henle’s point, see R. Kane, “The Modal Ontological Argument,” Mind , Vol. 93, 1984, pp. 336–50. Kane shows that it is easy to use the modal argument to populate the universe with an infinite number of necessarily existent but slightly less than perfect beings. See Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God , pp. 171ff., for discussion of this development.

Dore, Theism , p. 74.

Ibid., pp. 74–75.

J. N. Findlay, “Can God’s Existence Be Disproved,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology , edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 47–75. This article is widely reprinted in different anthologies.

Ibid., p. 52.

Ibid., p. 54.

For a detailed and formalized treatment of Findlay’s disproof, see Bowman Clarke, “Modal Disproofs and Proofs for God,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , fall 1971, pp. 247–58. As Clarke notes, Findlay’s objection amounts to a modal extension of the Hume-Kant objection to Anselm’s version of the ontological argument.

See John Hick, “A Critique of the `Second Argument,”` p. 343.

See Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds , p. 174. Plantinga is correct that statements of mathematics are a priori for Kant, but they are not logically true in the sense that Malcolm and Hartshorne claim that “God exists” is logically true. While Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic statements does not map neatly onto contemporary uses of “necessarily true” and “logically true,” it seems that the modal versions of the ontological argument discussed so far would have us understand “God exists” as analytic a priori in the sense of analytic that depends upon essential predication. For further discussion, see Jerome Shaffer, “Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument,” in The Many-Faced Argument , edited by John Hick and Arthur McGill, pp. 244–45.

Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 213. This claim of Plantinga’s is ambiguous. What Hartshorne and Malcolm have shown is that a being necessarily exists (exists in all possible worlds) and that this same being has perfection in at least one possible world. So we should understand Plantinga’s claim to mean that while a necessarily existing being exists in this actual world, this world may not be the one in which it has perfection. The following description of Plantinga’s argument follows pp. 214–217.

Ibid., pp. 213–14.

See ibid ., pp. 220–21.

Michael Tooley, “Plantinga’s Defence of the Ontological Argument,” Mind , Vol. 90, 1981, p. 424.

Ibid., p. 425–26.

Richard Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God , pp. 227–28. L60 Ibid ., p. 229.

J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , pp. 57ff.

For Plantinga’s discussion of world-indexed properties, see The Nature of Necessity ,pp. 62ff.

Edwards’s introduction to this section (pp. 372ff.) is particularly illuminating. The debate is also reprinted in The Existence of God , edited by John Hick (New York: Macmillan, 1964).

J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , p. 60.

Kant, of course, argued just the converse, namely, that the cosmological argument depends upon the ontological argument.

For various forms of the cosmological argument, see William L. Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Liebniz (London: Macmillan, 1980).

William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 7; Richard Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God , Chapter 7; J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , Chapter 5.

Bertrand Russell and F. C. Copleston, “The Existence of God — A Debate,” a 1948 program of the British Broadcasting Corporation, reprinted in A Modern Introduction to Philosophy , edited by Paul Edwards and Arthur Pap (New York: The Free Press, 1957), p. 473. Edwards’s introduction to this section (pp. 372ff.) is particularly illuminating. The debate is also reprinted in The Existence of God ,edited by John Hick (New York: Macmillan, 1964).

This is essentially the same point made by Ronald W. Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox (London: Watts Publishing, 1958), pp. 167–68.

See William L. Rowe, “Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument,” The Monist , Vol. 54, no. 3, 1970. Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings , Third Edition, edited by William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright (Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1973). Page numbers refer to this reprint.

The most thorough discussion of PSR and examples of how different versions of the cosmological argument rely upon different versions of PSR are found in William L. Rowe, “The Cosmological Argument and the Principle of Sufficient Reason,” Man and World , Vol. 1, no. 2, 1968. Reprinted in William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument , pp. 60–114.

Compare J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , p. 82, and Rowe, ibid ., 145.

Bruce Reichenbach explicitly states the form of the PSR that he thinks the cosmological argument requires as one that says that all contingent beings require a sufficient explanation for their existence. See Bruce Reichenbach, The Cosmological Argument: A Reassessment (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1972), p. 68.

William L. Rowe, “Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument,” pp. 151ff.

Ibid., 152.

See William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument ,pp. 100–101.

There are other difficulties as well with Rowe’s defense of the PSR on this score. See Richard Gale, On the Existence and Nature of God , pp. 259ff.

Bruce Reichenbach, The Cosmological Argument: A Reassessment , p. 69, and J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , p. 85. Given Kant’s attack on the ontological argument, it is ironic that Reichenbach likens the PSR to the principle of causality and then gives a very Kantian defense of it.

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), Chapter 7.

Ibid., p. 130.

Swinburne also develops an inductive version of the teleological argument for the existence of God. These probabilistic arguments, along with miracles and religious experience, are parts of Swinburne’s “cumulative case” for the existence of God.

See, for example, J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism , pp. 95ff.

There are many scientific descriptions available of the big bang. The description here is a synthesis of the most commonly accepted current theories and draws primarily upon a popular college textbook for astronomy and cosmology, George Abell, David Morrison, and Sidney Wolff, Exploring the Universe, Fifth Edition, (Philadelphia, Pa.: Saunders College Publishing, 1987), Chapter 37, pp. 656–76. For a very lay-accessible account, see also James S. Trefil, The Moment of Creation (New York: Macmillan, 1983), Chapter 1. For descriptions of the big bang employed by philosophers of religion, see Quentin Smith, “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe,” and “Atheism, Theism, and Big Bang Cosmology,” in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, William Lang Craig and Quentin Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), and Kenneth Nelson, “Evolution and the Argument from Design,” Religious Studies, Vol. 14, 1978, pp. 427–28.

There are many explanations of this development for the layperson. A very popular recent source is Brain Greene, The Elegant Universe (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), pp. 82ff. Einstein later was to say that introducing the ad hoc adjustment to relativity theory to ensure a static universe was the biggest mistake of his life.

For a more detailed scientific description of the big bang, see Abell et al., Exploring the Universe, pp. 665ff. The version discussed here is what physicists call the “standard model” of the big bang.

An interesting point here involves the problem of the perspective of any theoretical observer that epistemologists (but probably not physicists) will find interesting. The common conception of the big bang where one imagines a bright flash of light in distant space will not work. Since all of the mass of the universe was contained in the original singularity, there was no “outside” to the big bang. The big bang occupied all of existing space and would have to be imagined more like a sudden bright flash of the entire visual field.

Abell et al., Exploring the Universe p. 247.

Planck time is named after Max Planck, who is credited with a major role in developing quantum theory.

Some physicists think that superstring theory is a candidate for a theory that will unify general relativity and quantum theory by piercing the Planck limit on the supermicroscopic level. However, even superstring theory is not proffered as a way of piercing the Planck limit in regards to the big bang. See Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe .

Stephen Hawking, `Breakdown of Predictability in Gravitational Collapse,“ Physical Review Vol. D14, 1976, p. 2460. Quoted by Quentin Smith in ”Atheism, Theism, and Big Bang Cosmology,“ in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology p. 198.

Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), p. 161.

For example, Stephen Hawking thinks that his oscillating view of the universe is preferable to the standard big bang model — in part, at least — because it has no beginning and thus, in contrast to the standard big bang model, does not leave a gap for the beginning of space-time, which allows an appeal to God. See Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York, Bantam Books, 1988).

See William Lane Craig, The Kalâm Cosmological Argument (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), and “The Caused Beginning of the Universe,” in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology . Craig borrows the name “kalâm” for his version of the cosmological from the movement in Islam comparable to natural theology in the Western, Judeo-Christian tradition.

William Lane Craig, “Scientific Confirmation of the Cosmological Argument,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology edited by Louis P. Pojman, pp. 38ff.

Ibid., p. 38.

Ibid., p. 39.

Paul Draper, “A Critique of the Kalâm Cosmological Argument,” in Louis P. Pojman, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology edited by Louis P. Pojman, pp. 42–47.

Quentin Smith, “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe,” in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, p. 123. For a full discussion concerning the caused vs. uncaused — the theistic vs. the atheistic — interpretations of the big bang theory, which space here does not permit, see the exchange between Craig and Smith in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology.

Craig, “Scientific Confirmation of the Cosmological Argument,” p. 39.

For a more detailed treatment of the notion of an uncaused big bang, see Quentin Smith, “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe,” pp. 125ff.

See above and Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God pp. 130–32.

See Smith, “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe,” pp. 201–202. Compare Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God pp. 145–51.

Parallel issues involve the cosmological argument as well. See John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1986), especially section 2.9, pp. 103ff.

The coining of the phrase “the anthropic principle” is usually attributed to Brandon Carter in 1974.

Alfred Russel Wallace, Man’s Place in the Universe (New York: McClure, Phillips and Co., 1903).

See Brandon Carter, “The Anthropic Principle and Large Number Coincidences,” in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observation edited by M. S. Longair (Dordecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishers, 1974).

John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Argument (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 16ff. This book provides the most complete account of the anthropic principle available.

For example, it is claimed that if the rate of expansion of the universe had been reduced by one part in a million million, the universe would have collapsed upon itself. For a discussion of this and other such conditions, see John Leslie, “Anthropic Principle, World Ensemble, Design,” American Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 19, no. 2, 1982, pp. 141ff. See also Barrow and Tipler, ibid . pp. 288ff.

Barrow and Tipler, ibid . p. 21.

M. A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1993), pp. 205–15. Corey gives significant weight to the fact that some scientists, such as Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies, allow for some notion of principle of design to account for the initial conditions of the universe. Compare Corey’s restrained comments about scientists with the exaggerated comments of William Craig, “Theism and Physical Cosmology,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro, p. 422.

Richard Swinbume, The Existence of God p. 138.

For further discussion of the probability of the set of initial conditions of the universe, see John Earman, “The SAP Also Rises: A Critical Examination of the Anthropic Principle,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol . 24, no. 4, 1987, pp. 309.

The notion of a world ensemble is now common and was first used by Brandon Carter, “The Anthropic Principle and Large Number Coincidences,” and G. Steigman, “Confrontation of Antimatter Cosmologies with Observational Data,” also in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data edited by M. S. Longair.

There are many discussions of the competing interpretations of quantum mechanics. For a very accessible account, see Paul Davies, Other Worlds (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), pp. 145ff. Also see M. A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology pp. 175ff. For a discussion of the less accepted many-worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett, according to which observers select the actual world in which they live by their presence from many actual worlds, see The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics edited by Bryce S. DeWitt and Neill Graham (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973).

Corey recognizes that intelligent observers might be whales or dolphins or “human-like” creatures on other planets. M. A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology p. 7.

John Farman, “The SAP Also Rises: A Critical Examination of the Anthropic Principle,” pp. 308 and 313.

FAP was first formulated by Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle p. 23. Their Ultimate Observer (p. 471) is reminiscent of Berkeley’s use of God as the Eternal Perceiver in his idealism. As a corollary to the effect of the observer in quantum physics, PAP was first suggested by John Wheeler, “Genesis and Observership,” in Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences edited by R. E. Butts and J. Hintikka (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel, 1977). For discussions of FAP and PAP. see Earman, ibid . pp. 312ff., and Corey, ibid., pp. 3–4, 167–68, and 185–88. Ignored in much of the discussion is Wheeler’s disclaimer that PAP is “too frail” to withstand criticism and Barrow and Tipler’s disclaimer that FAP and SAP are “quite speculative.”

John Earman, ibid . p. 313.

Martin Gardner, “WAP, SAP, FAP, and PAP,” New York Review of Books Vol. 33, no. 8, 1986, Pp. 22–25.

See Earman, “The SAP Also Rises: A Critical Examination of the Anthropic Principle,” pp. 309 and 313ff., for a discussion of anthropic explanation.

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God p. 138.

There is also the additional problem raised by Richard Gale of whether one can reasonably use argument to the best explanation to make a prediction about the past based upon evidence from that past’s own future. But there is a goose and gander problem here. If the use of argument to the best explanation is problematic for AP, then it is as well for a theistic explanation of the universe. See Richard Gale, “The Anthropic Principle,” Scientific American Vol. 245, 1981, pp. 157. Also see, M. A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology pp. 209ff.

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Harris, J.F. (2002). The Nature of God and Arguments for the Existence of God. In: Analytic Philosophy of Religion. Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0719-0_3

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Unit 2: Metaphysics

Aquinas’s Five Proofs for the Existence of God

St. Mary's Press

The Summa Theologica is a famous work written by Saint Thomas Aquinas between AD 1265 and 1274. It is divided into three main parts and covers all of the core theological teachings of Aquinas’s time. One of the questions the Summa Theologica is well known for addressing is the question of the existence of God. Aquinas responds to this question by offering the following five proofs:

1. The Argument from Motion: Our senses can perceive motion by seeing that things act on one another. Whatever moves is moved by something else. Consequently, there must be a First Mover that creates this chain reaction of motions. This is God. God sets all things in motion and gives them their potential.

2. The Argument from Efficient Cause: Because nothing can cause itself, everything must have a cause or something that creates an effect on another thing. Without a first cause, there would be no others. Therefore, the First Cause is God.

3. The Argument from Necessary Being: Because objects in the world come into existence and pass out of it, it is possible for those objects to exist or not exist at any particular time. However, nothing can come from nothing. This means something must exist at all times. This is God.

4. The Argument from Gradation: There are different degrees of goodness in different things. Following the “Great Chain of Being,” which states there is a gradual increase in complexity, created objects move from unformed inorganic matter to biologically complex organisms. Therefore, there must be a being of the highest form of good. This perfect being is God.

5. The Argument from Design: All things have an order or arrangement that leads them to a particular goal. Because the order of the universe cannot be the result of chance, design and purpose must be at work. This implies divine intelligence on the part of the designer. This is God.

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A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

Knowledge of God’s existence

OCR Christianity

Introduction

This topic is not about whether we can know God exists, that’s what you learn about in the philosophy topics (cosmological & teleological arguments, etc).

This topic is about what sort of knowledge Christian belief should be based on. The two main options are faith and reason.

Most theologians agree that faith should be the foundation for belief in God, but there is considerable debate over the appropriate place, if any, of reason when it comes to belief in God.

Natural theology is the theory that knowledge of God can be gained by the power of the human mind. It has two main forms:

Natural theology through reasoning about the natural world. God’s revelation is present in his creation and human reason has the ability to discover it. This resulting in knowledge of God based on reason. This is typically a catholic view.

Natural theology through sensing God is defended by some, including protestant theologians who are sceptical of the power of reason to know God.

Revealed theology is the theory that knowledge of God can be gained from God’s revelation to us e.g in Jesus and the Bible. This results in revealed knowledge which is based on faith that what is received is from God. Typically, both Catholics and protestants believe in revealed theology.

Aquinas’ Natural Theology

Aquinas accepted that human reason could never know or understand God’s infinite divine nature. However, he argued that human reason can gain lesser knowledge of God, including:

God’s existence: through the teleological (design) and cosmological arguments.
God’s moral law through natural law theory.
God’s nature by analogy, through the analogies of attribution and proportion.

This Aquinas a proponent of natural theology through reason, which he claimed could support faith in God.

Aquinas thought that reason could not provide an absolute proof that God existed, since that would make faith and revelation useless. He formulated a posteriori teleological and cosmological arguments which are only evidence for the Christian God that therefore support faith in God. The Bible doesn’t contain reasoned arguments for God like that.

Aquinas argued that meditating on God’s works in creation leads to us reflecting on God’s wisdom, admiring his power, having reverence for God in our hearts and love for God’s goodness in our souls. This is because if the goodness, beauty and wonder of creation, which represent a tiny proportion of God’s goodness, are so delightful to the human mind, then they will attract us even more strongly to God’s total goodness. So, natural theology can support faith.

This approach of viewing reason as a valid basis for supporting faith is typically a Catholic view:

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” – Pope John Paul II.

Augustine & Karl Barth on Original Sin vs Aquinas’ Natural Theology

Karl Barth was influenced by Augustine, who claimed that after the Fall our ability to reason become corrupted by original sin. This is a problem for natural theology which wants to make use of reason.

Barth’s argument is that is therefore dangerous to rely on human reason to know anything of God, including God’s morality. He said “the finite has no capacity for the infinite” , meaning our finite minds cannot grasp God’s infinite being. Whatever humans discover through reason is not divine, so to think it is divine is idolatry – putting earthly things on the level of God. Idolatry can lead to worship of nations and even to movements like the Nazis. After the corruption of the fall, human reason cannot reach God or God’s morality. Only faith in God’s revelation in the bible works.

Aquinas accepts that God’s infinite nature is beyond our understanding. He is trying to claim that reason can understand the natural law God created within our nature and that some necessary being or uncaused cause exists. Nonetheless, Barth claims that reason has ‘no capacity’, i.e., zero ability, to know anything whatsoever of God. It is corrupted by original sin and therefore Aquinas’ natural theology is dangerous for relying on it.

Aquinas defends his natural theology from original sin. Aquinas claims that pre-fall human nature contained three ‘goods’:

the properties of a human soul, e.g. rationality.
An inclination towards the good (telos) as a result of being rational.
Original justice/righteousness; perfect rational control over the soul.

Original sin completely destroyed original justice, which caused us to lose perfect rational control over our desires. Nonetheless, Aquinas argues that our rationality and its accompanying inclination towards the good was not destroyed by original sin.

Aquinas argues that only rational beings can sin. It makes no sense to say animals sin, for example. The doctrine of original sin claims that post-lapsarian humans are sinners, so, we can sin. It follows that we must still be rational beings to some degree. Our reason therefore still inclines us, through synderesis, towards goodness.

Furthermore, Aquinas diverges from Augustine, claiming that concupiscence can sometimes be natural to humans, in those cases where our passions are governed by our reason.

Aquinas concludes that original sin has not destroyed our orientation towards the good nor is our reason always corrupted. Original sin can at most diminish our inclination towards goodness by creating a habit of acting against it. Sometimes, with God’s grace, our reason can discover knowledge of God’s existence and natural moral law. So, natural theology is valid.

“Participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law”. – Aquinas

Arguably Aquinas has a balanced and realistic view, that our nature contains both good and bad and it is up to us to choose rightly.

However, Barth still seems correct that being corrupted by original sin makes our reasoning about God’s existence and morality also corrupted. Even if there is a natural law, we are unable to discover it reliably. The bad in our nature unfortunately means we cannot rely on the good. Whatever a weak and misled conscience discovers is too unreliable.

Humanity’s belief that it has the ability to know anything of God is the same arrogance that led Adam and Eve to disobey God. Humanity believing that it has the power to figure out right and wrong is what led to the arrogant certainty of the Nazis in their own superiority. This arrogance of natural theology is evidence of a human inability to be humble enough to solely rely on faith.

Karl Barth: Aquinas’ natural theology undermines faith by making revelation pointless

If natural theology was valid then humans would be able to know God’s existence or God’s morality through their own efforts. Barth argues that would make revelation unnecessary. Yet, God clearly thought revelation was necessary as he sent Jesus. It follows that natural theology cannot be valid.

However, Aquinas insists that his natural theology does not undermine faith but instead supports it. Aquinas’ arguments for God’s existence are only intended to show the reasonableness of belief in God. They at most show that there is evidence for some kind of God. This is nowhere near strong enough to actually replace faith. The Bible doesn’t contain reasoned arguments for God like that. This is partly why Aquinas rejected the Ontological argument, since as an a priori deductive argument it sought to prove God’s existence which Aquinas worried would cause it to replace faith.

Regarding natural law ethics, although the natural law is available to everyone, Aquinas still accepts that we need revelation to gain the divine law. Similarly, regarding arguments for God, a posteriori reasoning only provides evidence that a designer or necessary being exists. Aquinas still accepts that we need faith to know the Christian God in particular exists.

The knowledge we can gain from natural theology is not the same as revealed theology and therefore cannot not replace or undermine it. If reason only has this goal of supporting faith, then it cannot make revealed theology unnecessary.

Calvin’s Sensus Divinitatis

John Calvin believed that all humans have an innate sense of the divine. Natural theology usually deals with our other senses like sight which enable us to gain knowledge of the natural world but the sense of divinity allows us to sense God’s existence. Since what we sense is not based on faith, the sense of God is natural theology. Calvin thought there was no rational way to be an atheist because of this sense. Even “backward peoples” and those “remote from civilization” have a belief that there is a God due to this sense. Calvin argued that this suggests God exists and put this sense of himself “in the hearts of all people”.

Anthropological study of the religion of tribal people remote from civilisation actually shows that they believe in magical spirits of animals and ancestors.

The extent of the spread of atheism in the 21 st century suggests that this sense of God doesn’t exist. In Calvin’s time it may have been unimaginable that someone could rationally be an atheist since everyone in western societies was a believer. Even people from other countries, of whom westerners back then knew very little, believed in some sort of God. In modern times however, since David Hume there has been significant philosophical defence of atheism. In some places like northern Europe atheism is now the majority held view. Many atheists say they have no sense of God.

Plantinga defends the sensus divinitatis from the argument that not everyone has such a sense. He argues that sin has a noetic quality, meaning it changes someone’s ability to have knowledge and insight, which could block the sense of God.

Response to Plantinga: there are many atheists who are good people however. In fact, the countries with the lowest crime, the northern European countries are the most atheistic in the world. For a noetic quality of sin to explain why atheists lack a sense of God, atheists would have to sin more than Christians but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, the opposite is true.

St Paul: Romans 1:20

Romans 1:20 is a bible verse which seems to justify natural theology:

“Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his external power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” .

Paul here seems to suggest that God’s qualities can be understood from what he has made, i.e. the natural world. This is what inductive a posteriori arguments such as the cosmological and teleological (design) arguments do.

Calvin’s analysis of Romans 1:20

Calvin was influenced by romans 1:20 but attempted to explain how it justifies natural theology without using human reason, i.e. the sensus divinitatis.

However, what about the word ‘understood’ – doesn’t that imply reasoning rather than merely sensing? Furthermore, the verse seems to suggest that the understanding is gained from creation itself, which sounds like reasoned inference from the natural world rather than a sense of God which isn’t derived from ‘what has been made’; creation. Finally, the verse suggests that God’s qualities and nature can be understood – not just his existence, so it seems to go further than the sensus divinitatis in that regard also.

Barth’s analysis of Romans 1:20

Barth responds to the claim that Romans 1:20 justifies natural theology with an alternative interpretation of it as being against natural theology. He accepts that the passage shows that creation does indeed allow knowledge of God, but argues humans are too sinful to manage that. Barth points to Romans 1:25 where St Paul warned, regarding the Gentiles (a non-jew), that “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator”. Barth claims that Paul is showing that natural theology leads to idolatry – the worshiping of fake idols where, due to overlooking or misunderstanding the ‘qualitative distinction’ between humans and God, God is experienced in natural things like birds, and then in humans and half-spiritual things like Nation or Fatherland.

Grenz and Olson describe Barth’s view: “Any attempt to ground the truth of God’s Word in human reasoning, however devout and sincere, inevitably leads to theology being subverted by human, historical modes of thought and thus to ‘anthropocentric theology’. The evil against which Barth fought so hard.”

The ‘evil’ referred to here is Nazism, the influence of which on Christianity Barth resisted.

Who is capable of knowing God through his creation, if not us? The bible claims that knowledge is possible, so presumably there must be some being who can manage it. Barth claims that our reason is too corrupted and ‘fallen’ for it to apply to us, but arguably a better interpretation of the idolatry point from Romans 1:25 is that it is a warning that understanding God through the natural world can sometimes lead to idolatry and that we should be careful of that danger.

Furthermore, the final part of the passage: ‘so that people are without excuse’ clearly refers to us – people born after the fall. So, the passage must be about us.

Calvin’s revealed theology

Calvin was influenced by Augustine’s views on the fall and original sin. The garden of Eden is God’s intended design for the world as a paradise. The suffering brought into the world by the fall therefore disfigures the world to an extent, which makes it difficult for natural theology to reveal God since his original design is now mixed with disfiguring corruption. This means natural theology can only reveal the truth of God’s existence, but not the full revelation of God. However, Calvin is clear that knowledge of God is not simply a matter of knowing that God exists:

“We know God, not when we merely understand that there is a God but when we understand … what is conducive to his glory”.

This means we only truly know God when we know how to glorify God through worship and following God’s moral commands. Natural theology cannot achieve that knowledge. Jesus was God revealing himself and the Bible is a record of that revelation. We therefore require revealed theology; faith in Jesus and the Bible to have the full revelation of God’s existence. Calvin argued that people should see their mind as nothing more than a passive reception of the revelation of the Bible.

Calvin and Barth rely on the classic protestant argument that we should not rely on reason to understand anything about God or God’s morality because original sin has corrupted our reason. We should just have faith in the Bible and that should be our only source of knowledge about God’s existence or morality. This argument relies on a traditional view of original sin that goes back to Augustine, that human nature is corrupted, including our ability to reason.

Defending natural theology through reason against original sin

Natural theology through reason could be defended by denying the existence of original sin. Original sin being a totally false doctrine is very unpopular position in traditional Christianity but there are some serious theologians who hold that position, such as Pelagius and some liberal Christians. Liberal Christians would argue that the scientific evidence suggests that we cannot take the genesis story of creation, including the fall, as literal events. In that case, Augustine cannot be correct in claiming that humanity was cursed by original sin.

Note that this is not the approach taken to defending natural theology through reason by Aquinas or Bruner, whose approach instead is to attempt to reconcile original sin with natural theology.

However, many theologians who don’t agree with Augustine about a literal fall or original sin being inherited still hold to the doctrine of original sin. Augustine could be defended that his views on human nature can be derived from the evidence of his observations of himself and his society. For example, Augustine told a story about how, as a child, he stole a pear from a garden, not because he was hungry but just for the pleasure of sinning. He concluded even children desire to sin and so must be born that way. Concupiscence can also be observed: people have their own will overwhelmed by bodily desires, which Augustine takes to be evidence for original sin.

Pelagius: Augustine’s observations reflect his society, not human nature. Pelagius goes further than Aquinas and Brunner however and completely denies the Augustinian doctrine of original sin.

“T he long habit of doing wrong which has infected us from childhood and corrupted us little by little over may years and ever after holds us in bondage and slavery to itself, so that it seems somehow to have acquired the force of nature” . – Pelagius

Although it might appear that we have strong forces within us that incline us toward evil, Pelagius argues that could simply be because of the way we are raised and it only appears to be our nature because of how thoroughly corrupted we are by our upbringing, which Pelagius refers to as being “educated in evil”.

We could add contemporary historical and sociological evidence to Pelagius’ point. Humans have progressed since Augustine’s time. Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. Steven Pinker attributes to the power of human reason that violence has decreased, even considering the 20 th century. The average human life seems more secure than at any prior point in history. If Augustine were correct that original sin caused an irresistible temptation to sin, then human behaviour could not have improved, yet it has. Original sin is therefore a false doctrine and human reason is not corrupted.

Emil Brunner

Brunner a rgues that Augustine and Calvin are wrong to think that the fall destroyed the potential of human reason to gain knowledge of God’s existence. Brunner claimed the fall destroyed the material imago dei (Adam and Eve’s relationship with God) but not the formal imago dei , which is what separates us from animals and gives us language, reason and moral responsibility. This is corroborated by Psalm 8 which states humans are lower than the angels but higher than the animals. Humans still have rationality and language and are thus different to animals, so we must still have something of the formal imagio dei; it cannot have been completely destroyed by the fall.

The natural knowledge Brunner claims can be gained through reason is knowledge of preserving grace – that God continues to be active in maintaining creation, shielding it from the effects of sin. This can be known through the order in the universe; that the world is still spinning, and humans still existing reveals God’s gracious preservation of us. Brunner still thinks however that natural theology alone will always, due to our sinful state, result in a distorted knowledge of God. We need the special revelation of Christ to achieve full knowledge.

Barth claims that Brunner contradicts himself since Brunner admits every aspect of humanity is corrupted by sin, so it should follow that the formal image, including our reason, is corrupted, in which case arguably it cannot produce knowledge of God. Just because reason was not totally destroyed, it being corrupted still means it cannot be relied on to gain knowledge of God.

Possible exam questions for knowledge of God’s existence

Easy Can God be known through reason alone? Is faith sufficient for belief in God? Assess the possibility of natural knowledge of God’s existence. Assess whether revealed knowledge of God’s existence is the only valid type.

Medium Assess whether the Fall completely removed all natural human knowledge of God Is faith in God’s revelation in Jesus required to know God? ‘Human sin and finitude prevents natural knowledge of God’ – Discuss. Can God be known through his creation? Does God’s creation reveal his beauty, goodness, design and purpose?

Hard Is natural knowledge of God the same as revealed knowledge? Is belief in God’s existence sufficient to put one’s trust in him? What is the human intellect capable by itself of discovering about God?

Quick links

Year 12 Christianity topics: Augustine. Death & afterlife. Knowledge of God’s existence. Person of Jesus. Christian moral principles. Christian moral action.

Year 13 Christianity topics: Pluralism & theology. Pluralism & society. Gender & society. Gender & theology. Secularism. Liberation theology.

OCR Ethics OCR Philosophy OCR essay structure OCR list of possible exam questions

Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Existence — The Ontological, Cosmological, and Teleological Theories of the Existence of God

The Ontological, Cosmological, and Teleological Theories of The Existence of God

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Arguments for the Existence of God

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Gödel’s Ontological Argument
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Arguments for the Existence of God by Graham Oppy LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2020 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0040

Philosophical discussion of arguments for the existence of God appeared to have become extinct during the heyday of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy. However, since the mid-1960s, there has been a resurgence of interest in these arguments. Much of the discussion has focused on Kant’s “big three” arguments: ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, and teleological arguments. Discussion of ontological arguments has been primarily concerned with (a) Anselm’s ontological argument; (b) modal ontological arguments, particularly as developed by Alvin Plantinga; and (c) higher-order ontological arguments, particularly Gödel’s ontological argument. Each of these kinds of arguments has found supporters, although few regard these as the strongest arguments that can be given for the existence of God. Discussion of cosmological arguments has been focused on (a) kalām cosmological arguments (defended, in particular, by William Lane Craig); (b) cosmological arguments from sufficient reason (defended, in particular, by Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss); and (c) cosmological arguments from contingency (defended, in particular, by Robert Koons and Timothy O’Connor). Discussion of teleological arguments has, in recent times, been partly driven by the emergence of the intelligent design movement in the United States. On the one hand, there has been a huge revival of enthusiasm for Paley’s biological argument for design. On the other hand, there has also been the development of fine-tuning teleological arguments driven primarily by results from very recent cosmological investigation of our universe. Moreover, new kinds of teleological arguments have also emerged—for example, Alvin Plantinga’s arguments for the incompatibility of metaphysical naturalism with evolutionary theory and Michael Rea’s arguments for the incompatibility of the rejection of intelligent design with materialism, realism about material objects, and realism about other minds. Other (“minor”) arguments for the existence of God that have received serious discussion in recent times include moral arguments, arguments from religious experience, arguments from miracles, arguments from consciousness, arguments from reason, and aesthetic arguments. Of course, there is also a host of “lesser” arguments that are mainly viewed as fodder for undergraduate dissection. Further topics that are germane to any discussion of arguments for the existence of God include (a) the appropriate goals at which these arguments should aim and the standards that they should meet, (b) the prospects for “cumulative” arguments (e.g., of the kind developed by Richard Swinburne), and (c) the prospects for prudential arguments that appeal to our desires rather than to our beliefs (e.g., Pascal’s wager).

There are few works that seek to provide a comprehensive overview of arguments for the existence of God; there are rather more works that seek to give a thorough treatment of arguments for and against the existence of God. Mackie 1982 is the gold standard; its treatment of arguments for the existence of God remained unmatched until the publication of Sobel 2004 . Other worthy treatments of a range of arguments for the existence of God—as parts of treatments of ranges of arguments for and against the existence of God—include Gale 1991 , Martin 1990 , and Oppy 2006 . The works mentioned so far are all products of nonbelief; they all provide critical analyses and negative assessments of the arguments for the existence of God that they consider. Plantinga 1990 is an interesting product of belief that also provides critical analyses and negative assessments of the arguments for the existence of God that it considers, although in the service of a wider argument in favor of the rationality of religious belief; first published in 1967, this work was clearly the gold standard for analysis of arguments for the existence of God prior to Mackie 1982 . Of the general works that provide a more positive assessment of arguments for the existence of God, consideration should certainly be given to Plantinga 2007 and, for those interested in a gentle but enthusiastic introduction, Davies 2004 .

Davies, Brian. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Wide-ranging introduction to philosophy of religion that includes a discussion of ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, arguments from religious experience, arguments from miracles, and moral arguments. Good coverage of a range of arguments for the existence of God.

Gale, Richard. On the Nature and Existence of God . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Entertaining and energetic discussion of ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, arguments from religious experience, and pragmatic arguments (e.g., Pascal’s wager).

Mackie, John. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God . New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Superb presentation of cumulative case argument for atheism. Considers ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, moral arguments, arguments from consciousness, arguments from religious experience, arguments from miracles, and Pascal’s wager. Benchmark text for critical discussion of arguments for the existence of God.

Martin, Michael. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

Comprehensive cumulative case for atheism. Considers ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, arguments from miracles, arguments from religious experience, Pascal’s wager, and minor evidential arguments. Worthy contribution to the literature on arguments for the existence of God.

Oppy, Graham. Arguing about Gods . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511498978

Detailed discussion of cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, Pascal’s wager, and a range of other arguments. Discussion of ontological arguments that supplements Oppy 1995 (cited under Ontological Arguments ). Also includes some discussion of methodology: the mechanics of assessment of arguments for the existence of God.

Plantinga, Alvin. God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Groundbreaking discussion of cosmological arguments, ontological arguments, and teleological arguments. Instrumental in setting new standards of rigor and precision for the analysis of arguments for the existence of God. First published in 1967.

Plantinga, Alvin. “Appendix: Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments.” In Alvin Plantinga . Edited by Deane-Peter Baker, 203–228. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511611247

A collection of sketches or pointers to what Plantinga claims would be good arguments for the existence of God. Divided into (a) metaphysical arguments (aboutness, collections, numbers, counterfactuals, physical constants, complexity, contingency), (b) epistemological arguments (positive epistemic status, proper function, simplicity, induction, rejection of global skepticism, reference, intuition), (c) moral arguments, and (d) other arguments (colors and flavors, love, Mozart, play and enjoyment, providence, miracles).

Sobel, Jordan. Logic and Theism: Arguments for and against Beliefs in God . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Brilliant discussion of major arguments about the existence of God. Contains very detailed analyses of ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, and arguments from miracles. Brought new rigor and technical precision to the discussion of these arguments for the existence of God.

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[185.66.14.236]
185.66.14.236

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Design Arguments for the Existence of God

Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Philosophy of Religion Word count: 1000

The universe, or some of the objects in it, exhibit order, complexity, efficiency, and perhaps purpose. Many everyday objects with those features—e.g., watches and houses—were intentionally designed.

Should we conclude, therefore, that some of the “natural” objects in the universe, or the universe itself, was also intentionally designed?

If so, that designer might be God.

This essay introduces design arguments for the existence of God.

Photo from Astronaut Alexander Gerst Aboard The International Space Station

1. The Arguments

The standard ‘Design’ or ‘Teleological’ arguments for theism hold that there is evidence of design in nature and that this is evidence for the existence of God. [1]

There are three general versions of this argument:

‘Biological Design Arguments’ claim that God designed some or all of the biological organisms in the universe. [2]
‘Physical Design Arguments’ (or ‘Cosmic Design’ arguments) claim that God designed something about the large-scale structure and contents of the universe, or its laws of nature, or the small-scale structure of its components. [3]
‘Fine-Tuning Arguments’ claim that God intentionally chose the physical laws, fundamental constants, and initial conditions of the universe so the universe would permit complex, biological life. [4]

2. The Evidence

Biological organisms arguably exhibit interesting order, complexity, and purpose: e.g., the human eye. By analogy, if you were to find and examine a camera lying in a field somewhere, you would be irrational to conclude that it had formed mindlessly and naturally. You should instead notice that it has many parts, each serving a particular purpose, working together for a valuable, general function. But, of course, the human eye also has many parts, each serving a particular purpose, working together for a valuable, general function. [5]

One version of these arguments holds that some biological systems exhibit ‘irreducible complexity.’ This occurs when some system would not be adaptive or useful unless all of its parts were present simultaneously. [6] As a simplified analogy, suppose that your immune system has two subsystems: a subsystem that detects and identifies invaders, and a subsystem that kills invaders and infected cells. [7] If your immune system lacked the first type of subsystem, then it would either not kill invaders, or it would also kill your own, healthy cells. If your immune system lacked the second type of subsystem, then it wouldn’t do anything to the invaders it detected. Only if both types are present is the immune system adaptive. But surely—the proponent of the argument insists—it’s extremely unlikely that both subsystems should have independently evolved at the same time. Yet, of course, God could have created them both at once, thereby creating a well-functioning immune system.

The physical universe itself, in the large scale, may also exhibit evidence of design. [8] Perhaps the planets’ orbiting their stars, and the probability-clouds of electrons, are orderly enough to remind us of the carefully-planned motion of mechanical systems inside a human-designed machine. Of course, someone might object that the planets are simply following the laws of conservation of angular momentum and gravity, [9] but the proponent of the physical design-argument can reply that laws of nature are also evidence of a designer. [10] Last, scientists generally agree that if certain features of the universe were slightly different— say, if gravity were somewhat stronger or weaker—then living beings like us would be physically impossible. [11] And there are allegedly very many other examples of laws, constants, and initial conditions that must be delicately balanced for life to exist. Yet here we are. So, the argument goes, either we got extremely lucky—perhaps as lucky as winning the lottery several times in a row [12] —or God “fine-tuned” the universe to permit life like us.

3. Objections

While design arguments have skilled defenders, most philosophers have not yet been persuaded. [13]

One potential problem with biological design arguments is that we know of a powerful mechanism that can mindlessly produce order, complexity, and purpose: the mechanism of evolution by natural selection. [14] This might even explain “irreducible complexity.” [15] For example, a species might evolve to have a simple immune-system in which the same system both identifies and attacks invaders; and then evolve, in addition, a second kind of subsystem, which only identifies invaders (thereby enhancing the power of the general immune system); and then evolve a third kind, which only attacks; and then cease to have the original system that does both.

Another potential problem with biological design arguments is that living creatures may exhibit evidence of “poor design.” [16] For example, human beings might have been better-designed if we didn’t use the same tube both to breathe and to swallow food. And we are vulnerable to several tragic, untreatable genetic diseases, such as Tay-Sachs disease, [17] which chiefly affects young children. Given the hypothesis of a divine designer who is much-more-intelligent than we, it is puzzling that some creatures exhibit poor design.

The philosopher David Hume challenged biological and physical design arguments in various ways. For example, he wondered whether God himself needs a designer, and whether mindless motion and laws might produce the order and complexity we observe. One might also ask how much we can conclude about a designer when we only have one universe to examine, and we have no track record of having observed universe-designers. And design arguments, in general, might better-support the hypothesis that there is an imperfect designer, or that there were many designers —both of which hypotheses are incompatible with traditional monotheism. [18]

Last, fine-tuning arguments have been critiqued by arguing that life-permission isn’t so surprising, even given the hypothesis of atheism. Maybe we live in a multiverse of universes with varying laws and constants; maybe there is a more-fundamental, simpler principle that generates a life-permitting set of further laws; and maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that we— living beings—live in a life -permitting universe. [19] How could it be otherwise?

4. Next Steps

Some philosophers endorse design arguments, but few of these philosophers believe that these arguments prove the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect God. [20] Therefore, to decide whether God exists, we must consider other arguments for theism, and weigh the evidence from design against any evidence against the existence of God that we might have.

[1] For landmark examples, see Aquinas (2006 [1265-1274]: Ia, 2, 3); Hume (1998 [1779]: Part 2); and Paley (2006 [1802]).

[2] Other than the items cited in the previous note, see Behe (1996) and Dembski (1998) for biological design-arguments.

[3] Swinburne (2004), Chapter 8.

[4] Collins (2012).

[5] Paley (2006 [1802]), Chapter 3.

[6] Behe (1996), pp. 130-31.

[7] Cf. Janeway et al . 2001.

[8] Hume ( op. cit. ), Part 2.

[10] Swinburne (1968), p. 202.

[11] Collins (2012), §§ 2.2-2.4.

[12] For example, Collins (2012: § 2.3.2) argues that even the strength of gravity could not have varied by more than one part in 10 60 and allowed the universe to permit life. If you have a one-in-10 8 chance of winning a lottery, then mathematically, to win that lottery seven times in a row (assuming no cheating and independent trials) is still more probable than ending up with just the right strength of gravity among 10 60 possible strengths. And the strength of gravity is allegedly only one of the many constants that needed to be fine-tuned to permit life like us.

[13] See Bourget and Chalmers (2014), p. 476, for evidence that most philosophers have rejected arguments for the existence of God.

[14] See for example Dawkins (2015).

[15] Shanks and Joplin (1999).

[16] See Charles Darwin (1999 [1859]), Chapter 14. See also Gould (1980). Swinburne (1968, p. 201) notes that this may even be true in physical design-arguments

[17] Walker (2006).

[18] Hume ( op. cit .).

[19] Collins (2012), §§ 5-7. See The Fine-Tuning Argument for the Existence of God by Thomas Metcalf.

[20] Swinburne (1968), p. 199. Collins (2012) himself presents his argument as evidential.

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Questions on God , ed. Leftow, Brian and Davis, Brian. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [1265-1274].

Behe, Michael J. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution . New York, NY: Touchstone, 1996.

Bourget, David and Chalmers, David J. “What do Philosophers Believe?” Philosophical Studies 170 (3) (2014): 465-500.

Collins, Robin. “The Teleological Argument,” in Craig, William Lane and Moreland, J. P. (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2012), pp. 202-281.

Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species . New York, NY: Bantam Dell, 1999 [1859].

Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015.

Dembski, William A. The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Gould, Stephen Jay. The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History . New York, NY and London, UK: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1980.

Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , 2 nd ed., ed. Popkin, Richard H. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998 [1779].

Janeway, Charles et al. Immunobiology , 6 th ed. New York, NY: Garland Science Publishing, 2005.

Paley, William. Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006 [1802].

Shanks, Niall and Karl H. Joplin. “Redundant Complexity: A Critical Analysis of Intelligent Design in Biochemistry.” Philosophy of Science 66 (2) (1999): 268-82.

Swinburne, Richard. “The Argument from Design.” Philosophy 43 (165) (1968): 199-212.

Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God , 2 nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Walker, Julie. Tay-Sachs Disease . New York, NY: Rosen Publishing Group, 2006.

Related Essays

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About the Author

Tom Metcalf is an associate professor at Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He specializes in ethics, metaethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Tom has two cats whose names are Hesperus and Phosphorus. shc.academia.edu/ThomasMetcalf

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5 arguments for and against the existence of God

A depiction of Jesus surrounded by angels, affirming the existence of God.

Philosophers have debated over the existence of God since the beginning of philosophy.
Here are five arguments for and against the idea that at least one deity exists.
Each argument has earned at least as many detractors as supporters.

One of the most enduring problems of philosophy is whether God exists. It has attracted the attention of some of the greatest minds across every philosophical tradition. Here, we look at five of the major arguments both for and against the existence of God.

The cosmological argument

The cosmological argument is fairly straightforward. A modern version of it reads:

Whatever begins to exist must have a cause for its existence.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe must have a cause for its existence.

This line of reasoning generally continues until reaching the idea of an “uncaused cause” or “prime mover.”

Variations of the cosmological argument date as far back as Ancient Greece. Aristotle’s take is particularly influential, the Islamic philosopher Avicenna made a similar case, and St. Thomas Aquinas refined it. Its modern defenders include Robert Koons and William Lane Craig.

It certainly is intuitive. The idea of getting something from nothing — potentially including the entire cosmos — is unsatisfying. And until recently, philosophers viewed the idea of an infinite regress with extreme suspicion, further favoring the need for an uncaused creator. But like every other argument on this list, there are strong objections to this one.

David Hume argued that while we assume that everything in our lives has a cause, that assumption does not necessarily apply to the universe as a whole. If so, then there is no need for a prime mover. Bertrand Russell argued that if the universe’s proposed creator is exempted from needing a creator, then we can say the same for the universe itself. Others have pointed out that even if the cosmological argument has merit, it doesn’t tell us anything about any creator. For all we know, the universe might have been created by a group of depressed purple giraffes.

The problem of evil

The problem of evil is the most famous argument against the existence of an all-powerful and loving god. It’s also old. For example, it provides the central theme of the Book of Job in the Abrahamic traditions. But its best-known formulation came from the Greek philosopher Epicurus sometime around 300 BC.

In his words: “Is God willing to prevent evil but unable? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil?”

A modern variation by philosopher Paul Draper moves away from whether the problem renders a loving God logically impossible . His version leans toward the question of probability :

Gratuitous evils exist.
The hypothesis of indifference — that is, if there are supernatural beings, then they are indifferent to gratuitous evils — is a better explanation for the first point than theism.
Therefore, evidence prefers that no God, as commonly understood by theists, exists.

On a more personal level, the French Catholic priest Jean Meslier denounced his theism because he saw the problem of evil as one of many proofs that no God existed. American philosopher John Rawls abandoned Christianity after witnessing the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust. But it was Holocaust survivor Primo Levi who put it most succinctly: “There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.”

Of course, there are counterarguments to the problem of evil. The most famous is the argument from free will . Proponents of this take, such as St. Augustine, argue that the need for free will is great enough to allow certain evils to exist. These evils are caused primarily by the improper use of free will, and divine intervention against any evil caused by free will would be an even greater evil.

John Hick suggested that the existence of evil is necessary for the moral growth needed to develop a soul. Others have argued that evil, as an independent substance, does not exist, and still others claim that what evil does exist is the minimal amount logically possible.

It’s worth noting that the problem of evil only applies to certain conceptions of deities — notably all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent ones. The argument does not rule out the capricious Greek gods, Spinoza’s pantheism, or the disinterested God of the deists. The problem is less of a concern for many Eastern religions, too.

The teleological argument

Also known as “the argument from design,” the teleological argument claims the world’s complexity proves a designer exists. The argument is, again, rather straightforward:

Human-made objects were created with intention, by design, and for a purpose.
The universe resembles human-made objects in important ways.
Therefore, it is probable that the universe was created with intention, by design, for a purpose.
The universe is much more complex than human-made objects.
Therefore, it is probable that a powerful being designed the universe.

This argument dates back to at least Socrates; however, the Stoic philosophers developed the argument into the forms we still see today. The Islamic philosopher Averroes endorsed it, a story about Rabbi Meir makes a direct reference to it, and even Issac Newton supported it. But the most famous version of it was put forward by William Paley. In his “ watchmaker analogy ,” he imagines what we would say if we had to explain how a watch we found on the ground got there. As he puts it:

“The inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker — that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer …”

Of the arguments for the existence of a God, this one has perhaps the greatest connection to the parts of our lives outside of philosophy. It asks us to consider the world’s beauty, the depths of the mysteries of nature, the intricacies of the environment, and what those mean for how we understand the world and how it came to be.

Beautiful as that thought is, the teleological argument has still earned its detractors. As David Hume noted, this world is far from perfect, and if a deity made it, then that deity must be an “inferior” one. He also asserted that we cannot say if this universe is well designed as we haven’t seen any others. Voltaire pointed out that the designer in the argument doesn’t have to be a God. Meanwhile, other thinkers have argued that the analogy between man-made objects and the entirety of reality is invalid.

Russell’s teapot

One of the more whimsical arguments against the existence of any gods was put forward by Bertrand Russell. And like any member of the British aristocracy in good standing, the third Earl Russell invoked tea in his argument.

He asked his readers to suppose that he was seriously advancing the idea of a teapot floating in orbit around the sun. This teapot is also impossible to detect. The question then: Is it on you to disprove the impossibility of this teapot’s existence, or is it his responsibility to prove it is real?

Russell’s point was that anyone making such a claim is the one who must prove it — not the person objecting to it. And since nobody takes arguments of a space-faring teapot seriously, why then should we treat other such arguments as sacred? Perhaps the greatest legacy of the argument is its use as a tool to remind users where the burden of proof lies when an assertion is made. (And if you’re not into tea, Carl Sagan once made a similar point about the impossible-to-detect dragon living in his garage. )

The relevance of this analogy to existing religions has been debated. One common objection is it would be difficult to hide the evidence of sending a teapot to space. Another is that while no reasonable person is arguing that a star-trekking teapot exists, there are reasonable people who maintain there is a God.

The ontological argument

Our last argument is certainly the most abstract. It is also perhaps both the most interesting from a philosophical point of view and the easiest to dismiss as ridiculous. As Rene Descartes put it:

If there is a God, it is a perfect being.
A perfect being possesses all possible perfections.
Existence is a perfection.
Therefore, God necessarily possesses the quality of existence.

This is based on a similar argument advanced by St. Anselm. Avicenna made a related argument in the Islamic world, and the ancient Greek poet-philosopher Xenophanes authored similar ideas in some of the oldest extant philosophy. And in his younger years, Bertrand Russell was convinced by this argument — though, as you’ve probably guessed, he later rejected it.

The primary counterargument is that “existence” is not a part of the concept of something, a quality, or a predicate. This approach was first formulated by Immanuel Kant, a Christian himself. Russell came to agree with Kant, though he still found the original argument to be well structured.

St. Thomas Aquinas objected to Anselm’s version of the argument, as it more explicitly requires us to understand the essence of God. If this is impossible, as he and many subsequent thinkers maintained, the argument can’t prove anything. In modern times, William Rowe suggests that the argument presupposes the existence of God.

Guest Thinkers 42% of Dartmouth Seniors Say They Don’t Believe in God Today I received the latest issue of Dartmouth Alumni magazine to discover inside an interesting poll of graduating seniors at my alma mater. Long branded a conservative campus–with notable right […]

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The Existence of God

Other essays.

The existence and attributes of God are evident from the creation itself, even though sinful human beings suppress and distort their natural knowledge of God.

The existence of God is foundational to the study of theology. The Bible does not seek to prove God’s existence, but rather takes it for granted. Scripture expresses a strong doctrine of natural revelation: the existence and attributes of God are evident from the creation itself, even though sinful human beings suppress and distort their natural knowledge of God. The dominant question in the Old and New Testaments is not whether God is, but rather who God is. Philosophers both Christian and non-Christian have offered a wide range of arguments for God’s existence, and the discipline of natural theology (what can be known or proven about God from nature alone) is flourishing today. Some philosophers, however, have proposed that belief in God is rationally justified even without theistic arguments or evidences. Meanwhile, professing atheists have offered arguments against God’s existence; the most popular is the argument from evil, which contends that the existence and extent of evil in the world gives us good reason not to believe in God. In response, Christian thinkers have developed various theodicies, which seek to explain why God is morally justified in permitting the evils we observe.

If theology is the study of God and his works, then the existence of God is as foundational to theology as the existence of rocks is to geology. Two basic questions have been raised regarding belief in God’s existence: (1) Is it true ? (2) Is it rationally justified (and if so, on what grounds)? The second is distinct from the first because a belief can be true without being rationally justified (e.g., someone might irrationally believe that he’ll die on a Thursday, a belief that turns out by chance to be true). Philosophers have grappled with both questions for millennia. In this essay, we will consider what the Bible says in answer to these questions, before sampling the answers of some influential Christian thinkers.

Scripture and the Existence of God

The Bible opens not with a proof of God’s existence, but with a pronouncement of God’s works: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This foundational assertion of Scripture assumes that the reader not only knows already that God exists, but also has a basic grasp of who this God is. Throughout the Old Testament, belief in a creator God is treated as normal and natural for all human beings, even though the pagan nations have fallen into confusions about the true identity of this God. Psalm 19 vividly expresses a doctrine of natural revelation: the entire created universe ‘declares’ and ‘proclaims’ the glorious works of God. Proverbs tells us that “the fear of the Lord” is the starting point for knowledge and wisdom (Prov. 1:7; 9:10; cf. Psa. 111:10). Denying God’s existence is therefore intellectually and morally perverse (Psa. 14:1; 53:1). Indeed, the dominant concern throughout the Old Testament is not whether God is, but who God is. Is Yahweh the one true God or not (Deut. 4:35; 1Kgs. 18:21, 37, 39; Jer. 10:10)? The worldview that provides the foil for Hebrew monotheism is pagan polytheism rather than secular atheism.

This stance on the existence of God continues into the New Testament, which builds on the foundation of the uncompromising monotheism of the Old. In his epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul insists that God’s “eternal power and divine nature” are clearly perceived from the created order itself. Objectively speaking, there can be no rational basis for doubt about the existence of a transcendent personal creator, and thus there can be no excuse for unbelief (Rom. 1:20). Endued with a natural knowledge of our creator we owe God our honor and thanks, and our failure to do so serves as the primary basis for the manifestation of God’s wrath and judgment. The apostle’s robust doctrine of natural revelation has raised the question of whether anyone can truly be an atheist. The answer will depend, first, on how “atheist” is defined, and second, on what precisely Paul means when he speaks of people “knowing” God. If the idea is that all men retain some genuine knowledge of God, despite their sinful suppression of natural revelation, it’s hard to maintain that anyone could completely lack any cognitive awareness of God’s existence. But if “atheist” is defined as someone who denies the existence of God or professes not to believe in God, Romans 1 not only allows for the existence of atheists – it effectively predicts it. Atheism might then be understood as a form of culpable self-deception.

Paul’s convictions about natural revelation are put to work in his preaching to Gentile audiences in Lystra and Athens (Acts 14:15–17; 17:22–31). Paul assumes not only that his hearers know certain things about God from the created order but also that they have sinfully suppressed and distorted these revealed truths, turning instead to idolatrous worship of the creation (cf. Rom. 1:22–25). Even so, his appeals to general revelation are never offered in isolation from special revelation: the Old Testament Scriptures, the person of Jesus Christ, and the testimony of Christ’s apostles.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, the question of the existence of God is almost never explicitly raised, but rather serves as a foundational presupposition, an unquestionable background assumption. One exception would be the writer to the Hebrews, who remarks that “whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (11:6). In general, the New Testament is concerned less with philosophical questions about the existence of God than with practical questions about how sinners can have a saving relationship with the God whose existence is obvious. As in the Old Testament, the pressing question is never whether God is, but who God is. Is Jesus Christ the revelation of God in human flesh or not? That’s the crux of the issue.

Arguments for the Existence of God

Consider again the two questions mentioned at the outset. (1) Is belief in God true ? (2) Is it rationally justified ? One appealing way to answer both questions affirmatively is to offer a theistic argument that seeks to infer God’s existence from other things we know, observe, or take for granted. A cogent theistic argument, one assumes, would not only demonstrate the truth of God’s existence but also provide rational justification for believing it. There is a vast literature on theistic arguments, so only a sampling of highlights can be given here.

The first generation of Christian apologists felt little need to argue for God’s existence for the same reason one finds no such arguments in the New Testament: the main challenges to Christian theism came not from atheism, but from non-Christian theism (Judaism) and pagan polytheism. Not until the medieval period do we find formal arguments for the existence of God offered, and even then the arguments do not function primarily as refutations of atheism but as philosophical meditations on the nature of God and the relationship between faith and reason.

One of the most famous and controversial is the ontological argument of St. Anselm (1033–1109) according to which God’s existence can be deduced merely from the definition of God, such that atheism leads inevitably to self-contradiction. One distinctive of the argument is that it relies on pure reason alone with no dependence on empirical premises. Various versions of the ontological argument have been developed and defended, and opinion is sharply divided even among Christian philosophers over whether there are, or even could be, any sound versions.

Cosmological arguments seek to demonstrate that that the existence of the universe, or some phenomenon within the universe, demands a causal explanation originating in a necessary first cause beyond the universe. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) famously offered “Five Ways” of demonstrating God’s existence, each of which can be understood as kind of cosmological argument. For example, one of the Five Ways argues that any motion (change) has to be explained by some mover (cause). If that mover itself exhibits motion, there must be a prior mover to explain it, and because there cannot be an infinite regress of moved movers, there must be an original unmoved mover : an eternal, immutable, and self-existent first cause. Other notable defenders of cosmological arguments include G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716) and Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), and more recently Richard Swinburne and William Lane Craig.

Teleological arguments , which along with cosmological arguments can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, contend that God is the best explanation for apparent design or order in the universe. Simply put, design requires a designer, and thus the appearance of design in the natural world is evidence of a supernatural designer. William Paley (1743–1805) is best known for his argument from analogy which compares functional arrangements in natural organisms to those in human artifacts such as pocket watches. While design arguments suffered a setback with the rise of the Darwinian theory of evolution, which purports to explain the apparent design of organisms in terms of undirected adaptive processes, the so-called Intelligent Design Movement has reinvigorated teleological arguments with insights from contemporary cosmology and molecular biology while exposing serious shortcomings in naturalistic Darwinian explanations.

In the twentieth century, the moral argument gained considerable popularity, not least due to its deployment by C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) in his bestseller Mere Christianity . The argument typically aims to show that only a theistic worldview can account for objective moral laws and values. As with the other theistic arguments there are many different versions of the moral argument, trading on various aspects of our moral intuitions and assumptions. Since such arguments are typically premised on moral realism —the view that there are objective moral truths that cannot be reduced to mere human preferences or conventions—extra work is often required to defend such arguments in a culture where moral sensibilities have been eroded by subjectivism, relativism, and nihilism.

Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987) gained some notoriety for his forceful criticisms of the “traditional method” of Christian apologetics which capitulated to “autonomous human reason.” Van Til held that any respectable theistic argument ought to disclose the undeniability of the triune God revealed in Scripture, not merely a First Cause or Intelligent Designer. He therefore advocated an alternative approach, centered on a transcendental argument for the existence of God, whereby the Christian seeks to show that human reason, far from being autonomous and self-sufficient, presupposes the God of Christianity, the “All-Conditioner” who created, sustains, and directs all things according to the counsel of his will. As Van Til put it, we should argue “from the impossibility of the contrary”: if we deny the God of the Bible, we jettison the very grounds for assuming that our minds have the capacity for rational thought and for reliable knowledge of the world.

Since the renaissance of Christian philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century, there has been renewed interest and enthusiasm for the project of developing and defending theistic arguments. New and improved versions of the classical arguments have been offered, while developments in contemporary analytic philosophy have opened up new avenues for natural theology. In his 1986 lecture, “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments,” Alvin Plantinga sketched out an entire A to Z of arguments for God, most of which had never been previously explored. Plantinga’s suggestions have since been expanded into a book-length treatment by other philosophers. The discipline of Christian natural theology is thriving as never before.

Basic Belief in the Existence of God

Still, are any of these arguments actually needed? Does confidence about God’s existence have to be funded by philosophical proofs? Since the Enlightenment, it has often been held that belief in God is rationally justified only if it can be supported by philosophical proofs or scientific evidences. While Romans 1:18–21 has sometimes been taken as a mandate for theistic arguments, Paul’s language in that passage suggests that our knowledge of God from natural revelation is far more immediate, intuitive, and universally accessible.

In the opening chapters of his Institutes of the Christian Religion , John Calvin (1509–1564) considers what can be known of God apart from special revelation and asserts that a natural knowledge has been universally implanted in mankind by the Creator: “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity” ( Institutes , I.3.1). Calvin speaks of a sensus divinitatis , “a sense of deity,” possessed by every single person in virtue of being created in God’s image. This internal awareness of the Creator “can never be effaced,” even though sinful men “struggle furiously” to escape it. Our implanted natural knowledge of God can be likened in some respects to our natural knowledge of the moral law through the God-given faculty of conscience (Rom. 2:14-15). We know instinctively that it’s wrong to lie and steal; no philosophical argument is needed to prove such things. Similarly, we know instinctively that there is a God who made us and to whom we owe honor and thanks.

In the 1980s, a number of Protestant philosophers led by Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and William Alston developed a sophisticated defense of Calvin’s notion of the sensus divinitatis . Dubbed the “Reformed epistemologists,” they argued that theistic beliefs can be (and normally should be) properly basic : rationally justified even without empirical evidences or philosophical proofs. On this view, believing that God exists is comparable to believing that the world of our experience really exists; it’s entirely rational, even if we can’t philosophically demonstrate it. Indeed, it would be quite dysfunctional to believe otherwise.

Arguments Against the Existence of God

Even granting that there is a universal natural knowledge of God, there are unquestionably people who deny God’s existence and offer arguments in their defense. Some have attempted to exposed contradictions within the concept of God (e.g., between omniscience and divine freedom) thereby likening God to a “square circle” whose existence is logically impossible. At most such arguments only rule out certain conceptions of God, conceptions that are often at odds with the biblical view of God in any case.

A less ambitious approach is to place the burden of proof on the theist: in the absence of good arguments for God’s existence, one ought to adopt the “default” position of atheism (or at least agnosticism). This stance is hard to maintain given the many impressive theistic arguments championed by Christian philosophers today, not to mention the Reformed epistemologists’ argument that belief in God is properly basic.

The most popular atheistic argument is undoubtedly the argument from evil. The strong version of the argument maintains that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God. The more modest version contends that particularly horrifying and seemingly gratuitous instances of evil, such as the Holocaust, provide strong evidence against God’s existence. The problem of evil has invited various theodicies : attempts to explain how God can be morally justified in permitting the evils we encounter in the world. While such explanations can be useful, they aren’t strictly necessary for rebutting the argument from evil. It is enough to point out that given the complexities of the world and the considerable limitations of human knowledge, we are in no position to conclude that God couldn’t have morally justifying reasons for allowing the evils we observe. Indeed, if we already have grounds for believing in God, we can reasonably conclude that God must have such reasons, whether or not we can discern them.

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From Augustine to Anselm: Tracing the Roots of Arguments for God’s Existence

Table of Contents

Have you ever pondered the deep questions of existence, such as whether there’s a higher power orchestrating the universe? Philosophers have grappled with this question for centuries, formulating arguments that range from deeply intuitive to complex and abstract. Today, we embark on a journey through time, exploring the evolution of some of the most influential arguments for the existence of God, starting with Saint Augustine and leading up to ontological argument for God's existence">Saint Anselm .

Augustine’s search for eternal truths

Imagine a world without change, a realm of perfect forms and absolute truths. This is where our journey begins—with Augustine’s assertion that our understanding of these eternal truths points to the existence of God. Augustine believed that concepts like numbers and geometric shapes, which remain constant despite our worldly experiences, indicate a higher realm of truth.

Evidence of the soul: Augustine argued that our awareness of these truths manifests internally, within the soul, which he considered to be immaterial and immortal.
The soul’s pursuit of happiness: He observed that humans are in a perpetual quest for happiness, a state only achievable through unity with the divine, thus suggesting God’s existence as the ultimate source of joy.

Anselm’s ontological argument

Fast forward a few centuries, and we encounter Anselm’s revolutionary ontological argument. Anselm proposed a bold idea: the very concept of God implies His existence. He posited that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” and existing in reality is greater than existing merely in the mind.

Necessity of existence: According to Anselm, if God exists only as a concept, then a greater being—that which actually exists—can be imagined, contradicting the initial definition of God.
Existence is a perfection: Anselm also argued that existence must be a property of a perfect being, which God is presumed to be, thus existence is not just a concept but a reality for God.

Critiques and counterarguments

No argument goes without its critics, and the philosophical discourse around God’s existence is no exception. Augustine’s and Anselm’s arguments have faced various criticisms over the ages:

Subjective nature of happiness: Critics of Augustine’s view challenge the notion that happiness is evidence of the divine, arguing that happiness is subjective and can be derived from many sources, not necessarily implying a higher power.
Existence is not a predicate : Anselm’s argument was famously refuted by Immanuel Kant , who claimed that existence is not a predicate or a defining characteristic that can be attributed to a being, thereby questioning the logical structure of the ontological argument.

The lasting impact on theological discourse

The debates sparked by Augustine and Anselm’s arguments have left an indelible mark on the philosophy of religion. Despite the critiques, these arguments provided a foundation for later thinkers to build upon:

Foundational role: Their work has been a cornerstone for both theistic and atheistic philosophers, prompting an ongoing dialogue about the nature of belief and the rationality of faith.
Evolution of arguments: The objections raised against these early arguments have led to new, more refined approaches to defending or disputing the existence of God.

Reflections on the human condition

Ultimately, the historical discourse on God’s existence reveals just as much about human nature as it does about theology . It highlights our innate desire to understand the world and our place within it. Augustine’s internal proof and Anselm’s ontological argument demonstrate the timeless human quest to grapple with the unknown and seek answers to life’s existential questions .

The journey continues

The path from Augustine to Anselm shows a progression of thought that is both fascinating and complex. Their arguments continue to inspire and challenge, acting as a springboard for contemporary philosophy and theology. As we delve into this rich historical tapestry, we are reminded that the search for truth, whether it be about God or the nature of reality, is a journey that is both personal and universal.

From the internal certainties of Augustine to the logical deductions of Anselm, the arguments for the existence of God have shaped philosophical and theological thought for centuries. They have been met with fervent support and sharp criticism, reflecting the enduring human quest to understand the divine. As we reflect on these arguments, we are invited to consider our own beliefs and the reasons that underpin them.

What do you think? Are the arguments of Augustine and Anselm convincing in today’s context? How do these early philosophical inquiries influence your understanding of the possibility of a higher power?

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Philosophy of Religion

1 Definition and Scope of Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy as a Community Project
Philosophy and Science
Understanding Religion
Philosophy of Religion: Towards a Definition
Necessity of organized Religion
A Timely Qualification
The Three ‘C’s of organized Religion

2 Importance of the Philosophy of Religion

The Mystery of Religion
Making Sense of Life
Few Basic Definitions
Definitions of Religion
Philosophy and Religion
Evolution of God
Philosophy of Religion and Metaphysics

3 Philosophy of Religion and Other Disciplines

Three Sciences According to Aristotle
Myth Religion and Philosophy
Theology and Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Religion and Social Sciences
Neurotheology
The Anthropic Principle

4 History of Philosophy of Religion

God and/or The Sacred
The Sacred: Durkheim and Others
The Sacred: Soderblom and Others
The Masters of Suspicion
The History of Western Philosophy of Religion

5 Religious Experience

The need for religious experiences
Types of Religious Experiences
Factors Involved in Religious Experience
Methodic cultivation of Religious Experiences
Cases of Religious Experience

6 Religious Language

Univocal and Equivocal way
Analogical way
Logical Positivists and Wittgenstein
Verification Principle and Falsification principle
Responses to Verification and Falsification principle

7 Religious Structures and Institutions

Worship and Liturgy

8 Religious Tolerance

Religious Tolerance in Western World
Western Philosophers on Religious Tolerance
Religious Tolerance in Islam
Religious Tolerance in India

9 Introduction to Atheism/A-theism

Theism Atheism and A-theism
Atheism and its cousins
Varieties of atheism
The Philosophical Roots of Modern atheism
The Socio-cultural roots of Modern Atheism
The future of theism-atheism debate

10 Deism and Agnosticism

Deism – Its Origin and Definition
Deism – Various Facets
Agnosticism – Its Origin and Definition
Agnosticism – Various Dimensions

11 Materialism and Marxism

Introduction to Materialism
Materialism in Ancient Philosophy
Materialism in Modern Philosophy
Materialism and Marxian Philosophy

12 Problem of Evil

Types of Evils
Logical Argument from Evil
Typology of Evils
Theories of Evil: Western perspective
Problem of Evil: Indian Understanding

13 Introduction to Theism

Types of Theism
Kinds of Theism

14 Arguments for the Existence of God

Earlier Arguments on the Existence of God
Scholastic Arguments on the Existence of God
Other Arguments for Existence of God
Modern Philosophers on Existence of God

15 Prominent Theistic Philosophers of India

Sankara (788-820)
Ramanuja (1017-1137)
Madhva (1238-1317)
Nimbarka (1130-1200)
Aurobindo (1872-1950)
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886)
Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

16 Prominent Theistic Philosophers of the West

Ancient Western Philosophy
Medieval Western Philosophy
Modern Western Philosophy
Contemporary Western Philosophy

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Existence of God
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Moral arguments for God's existence form a diverse family of arguments that reason from some feature of morality or the moral life to the existence of God, usually understood as a morally good creator of the universe. ... The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, New York: Longmans Green and Co. Kahane, Guy, 2014 ...
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This essay is going to provide two arguments for the existence of God. Get a custom essay on The Existence of God: Key Arguments. The anthropic principle is an argument of the existence of a reasonable plan for the structure of the Universe. According to this argument, only God may create the complex structure of nature, universe, and life on ...
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