One of the central issues in religious philosophy is whether or not God exists. It is a subject that a lot of philosophers feel extremely passionate about, so no definitive answer can ever be presented. I for one enjoy this subject a lot, so that's why I've included it in its own page.
Right. I'll present proofs in favor for god first, paired with their counter-arguments. Lets start with my favorite: The Teleological Proof.
This is sometimes called the watchmaker proof, or even the Babel Fish argument. The gist of this argument is that a watch is so complex it had to have been made by a watchmaker- it couldn't have manifested by nature- which is similar to how the universe is so complex it, too, had to have been made by a watchmaker. This secondary watchmaker is, of course, God.
This argument is pretty simple, and there are a number of flaws in the logic. Let's examine the most famous ones. Darwin- the evolution guy- states the main flaw with the Teleological Proof is that design and order are two very different things. But the universe was not necessarily designed, it is orderly. Order is a natural state, like how pebbles layer themselves from heaviest on the bottom to lightest on the top. The pebbles were not designed, they just happened.
The other big argument is Hume's. This fellow blatantly stated that the analogy of watchmaker to creator of the universe is downright STUPID. He says that a watch and a watchmaker have an empirical relation (based purely on observation with sense data). We can infer that a watchmaker made the watch because we already knew that watchmakers make watches even before we saw the watch.
The second of Hume's arguments is related to a sandpile. If you look at a pile of sand, you'd see it as random, but the way the particles of sand are organised is actually very orderly. Not only do the heaviest particles go to the bottom, the pile is in a triangle shape because that is how thing naturally go. Orderly is in the eye of the beholder. The Teleological guy would say that the Universe is very orderly, so it had to have been made by someone, but a different dude would say that everything is random and unpredictable. So there.
As for why this is called the Babel Fish argument.... Have you ever read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? I invite you to watch the video on the left, there are a lot of similarities.
Fun fact! I wrote my Philosophy IA on how the Babel Fish both proves and denies the existence of God simultaneously. Once I'm done with this year, maybe I'll post it.
Woot! Done with the teleological argument! It's kinda like pulling teeth, isn't it?
Next on my list of proofs to discuss is my LEAST favorite of the proofs, the Cosmological Proof.
The main guy to remember with the cosmological argument is good old Thomas Aquinas. The proof is relatively simple, it goes after God with a posteriori standpoint. Here it is:
Every event is caused by something prior to it. Either the series of causes is infinite or every cause goes back to the first cause, which is uncaused. An infinite series of causes is impossible, though, so the first cause had to be God.
As with the Teleological Proof, this is a slightly flawed argument. Sorry, Aquinas. Hume once again argued the snot out of this, because why not? He criticized the causal nature of the universe by saying that we can never know if an infinite amount of causes is impossible or not. It might be, it might not be. He claims that humans constantly have a need to impose a "start" to everything, even though there might not be one. An infinite series of causes is not a self-contradicting statement.
Then we get into a "Which God are we talking about here?" when discussing Hume's rebuttal. Is it Aristotle's Narcissistic God or the Christian God we think Aquinas is referring to? Relatively pointless details, though, so we'll move on.
The last proof is the Ontological Proof. This tends to be the most popular one.
A commonly accepted definition of God as that of a perfect being. God is a perfect, omnipotent, omnipowerful being that has NO FLAWS. The Ontological Argument is where we might concoct a perfect being in our minds, but it is still not perfect, because it doesn’t exist in the physical world. Therefore, in order to be perfect, God must exist, because stating that “God does not exist” is self-contradicting. Thinking of God as not-existing is to think of an imperfect being, which would not be God.
Again, Hume found flaws with this argument. Something about how definitions are just words and are pretty imperfect anyway and have nothing to do with God whatsoever. Yes.... I don't actually understand it at all. Kant also argued with this, saying that something a hundred real dollars has not a penny more than a hundred possible dollars. I always found the conflicts with the Ontological Proof to be wickedly confusing, so I try to avoid this argument entirely and stick with the other two.
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