It is greater for a thing to exist in the mind and in reality than in the mind alone. A recursive rule is one that refers to itself, and hence it can be applied to its own output ad infinitum. What are they? Without Y, there can be no X. Thus the analogy (X is to great beauty as great beauty is to small beauty) is not proportionate. Lucinda is, pure and simple, a wondrous creature, with adoration her due and Cass's avocation. Only God could have assigned a transcendent destiny to the Jews. Reply A: This is not really a naturalistic explanation of religious belief. The universe, understood in terms of the Theory of Everything, exists necessarily and explains itself (from 6). But that doesnt mean the argument is cogent. It genuinely is difficultnot to speak of disheartening to conceive of oneself not existing! God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values and duties in the world. 5. Things are not the way theyre supposed to be. In fact, the Bible tells us that Gods existence is so
Even if different people's consciences tell them to do or avoid totally different things, there remains one moral absolute for everyone: never disobey your own conscience. God must have been caused the universe to exist (from 3 & 4). There was no person showing them the way. And of course, if there were no actual drunks, there would be nothing to understand. To say that the universe is so ordered by chance is therefore unsatisfactory as an explanation of the appearance of design around us. Rather it is the condition of there being something there
Therefore, these things must have had a non-human designer (from 3 & 4). 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. from experience., Atheist: Unfortunately, your personal experiences are not open to
7. He taught at Villanova University from 1962-1965, and has been at Boston College since 1965. properties. Each human life has a purpose (from 1 & 2). God, not for logical reasons, but for psychological reasons. 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. That effect precedes cause? Your newsletter signup did not work out. Logic points to the existence of God. 4. But it can be an incentive for us to search for God, to study and restudy the arguments that seek to show that there is Something -- or Someone -- who is the ultimate explanation of the universe and of my life. through any choice, but simply through its being. Then we can ask ourselves: Is it credible to suppose that we inhabit a small island of order surrounded by a vast sea of chaos -- a sea which threatens one day to engulf us? 3. Cass Seltzer has become the unlikely poster boy for this misunderstood group. But that does not mean you have no obligation to ponder these arguments. This affirms that supposedly answered prayers are actually just the rarer cases of natural recovery. in mind that the unbelievers problem is not simply an emotional issue, but
You exist if something else right now exists. 2. But X is maximally great only if X has maximal excellence in every possible world. both precede and follow itself. 3. Should I believe that the resurrected prophet Moroni dictated the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith? dead. If the Darwinian theory has shown anything, it has shown, in a general way, how species may have descended from others through random mutation; and how survival of these species can be accounted for by natural selection -- by the fitness of some species to survive in their environment. laws possible. However, the atheist cannot account for laws of logic. But we dont punish the lion! So we arrange some things in terms of more and less. 4. Frankly, that is incredible. 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 somethingoutsideof mathematical reality must explain the existence of mathematical reality. We would find the laws of nature of any lawful universe beautiful. 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. There can be a point to human existence only if God exists (from 6 & 7). The atheist uses a merely material thing to explain a spiritual thing. But this seems a bit backward. 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. The atheist cannot account
(we make them up) Objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore the universe is the product of an intelligent Designer. For Godnotto exist, every one of the arguments for his existence must be false, which is extremely unlikely (from 4 ). It isn't becoming in America's favorite atheist, who is, at this moment, Cass Seltzer, who is, somehow or other,just this here. 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." This argument can be read out of William James's classic essay "The Will to Believe." In other words, the universe began to exist. 29. knowledge as well: knowledge that the universe is created; knowledge that right
These epiphanies seem toannouncethemselvesto us, as if they came from an external guide: another example of the Projection Fallacy. Philosophers who have provided arguments against the existence of God include Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell . What is meant by "outside" here? You exist, and you are, in part at least,
Our question has been: which account of the way things really are best makes sense of the moral rules we all acknowledge -- that of the believer or that of the non-believer? 3. 1. Evolution is powered by random mutations and natural selection. Yet we know them and ourselves. Well it certainly
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. We make moral progress as we do scientific progress, through reasoning, experimentation, and the rejection of failed alternatives. a cause, how do you know that the cause of the universe is God? beings can possibly know about them or their properties. 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. investigation; I have only your word for it. 4. 7. But it might fairly be put as follows. The Christian philosopher Anselm (1033-1119) contributed three arguments for the existence of God. Nor can the system as a whole explain its own existence, since it is made up of the component parts and is not a separate being, on its own, independent of them. 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. We are justified in believing that God exists (from 5 & 6). Why could there not simply be an endless series of things mutually keeping each other in being? Hes not being illogical. that this cause is not personal: that it has given rise to the universe, not
God has been replaced by science which gives a satisfactory answer for everything.". the latter as already existing in order to operate, and would thus have to
At the time, three and a half years ago, no one was using the phrase "the new atheists". They can give being only so long as they are given being. 20. They have an independence, and therefore an ability to harm, that nothing can
Question 1: Suppose I deny that God exists in the mind? of the universe is the creative act of a Giver -- A Giver transcending all material
There is nothing that islessprobable than a miracle, since it constitutes a violation of a law of nature (see The Argument from Miracles, #11, below). No one has ever found one case of an innate desire for a nonexistent object. Reply: Remember that we are seeking for a cause of spatio-temporal being. This means that the setting of a supposed miracle is crucially important. 6. Why? But what is impossible does not vary from world to world. The universe cannot be the cause of itself (from 3). 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. They are thus vulnerable to the same flaws pointed out in The Argument from Miracles. is better -- and so a greater thing -- for you that the disease is not real. 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. For example, we think of the lighter as approaching the brightness of pure white, and the darker as approaching the opacity of pitch black. Now suppose that all seven of them
3. Everything requires something else for its existence, and cannot sustain itself without them. and spiritual limitations. But apart from the assumption
And when the animal or human dies, the molecules remain, but the body no longer moves because the desire or will is no longer present to move it. 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. That is why morality has absolute and unchangeable binding force on our conscience. And this "unknown" is God. The capacity for reverence and worship certainly seems to belong to us by nature. The vertical lines represent correct beliefs, the diagonals represent incorrect beliefs. 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. 6. 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 same with morality. What Is the Best Argument for the Existence of God? 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. Or that Ahura Mazda, the benevolent Creator, is at cosmic war with the malevolent Angra Mainyu? all the other parts -- the whole system already in place -- to match its own relational
But this is impossible, for God is "that than which a greater cannot be thought.". ", 4. There is a sense in which this argument recalls The Argument from the Improbable Self. We've examined five traditional arguments for the existence of God in light of modern philosophy, science, and mathematics: 1. the cosmological argument from contingency 2. the kalam cosmological argument based on the beginning of the universe 3. the moral argument based upon objective moral values and duties Arguments for the Existence of God otherwise. 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. It has come to be known as Pascal's Wager. One of the ideas we have is the idea of God -- an infinite, all-perfect being. The fallacy of arguing that if an idea is universally held then it must be true was labeled by the ancient logiciansconsensus gentium. Some suffering has the purpose of our developing the virtues of suffering (from 5). universe and the people within it are simply accidents of nature? There must be a transcendent realm in which perfect justice prevails (from 1 and 2). Granted that the problem boggles the mind, but waving one's hands in the direction of God is no solution. 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. That realization is not itself an argument for God's existence; in fact, in the light of it you would probably say that there is no need for arguments. This
This is clearly absurd: we could use this line of reasoning to prove that any figment of our imagination exists. 8. Conscience is thus explainable only as the voice of God in the soul. For every desire will spring from the same ultimate source -- purposeless, pitiless matter. That is why morality is essentially unchangeable. That means it will never form an actually completed infinite series. In contrast, the ontological argument relies on pure reasoning. To deny premise 1 of this argument is to assert that things can pop into being from nothing. Consequently, there must be a First Mover that creates this chain reaction of motions. It is most reasonable to believe that God really is there, given such widespread belief in him -- unless atheists can come up with a very persuasive explanation for religious belief, one that takes full account of the experience of believers and shows that their experience is best explained as delusion and not insight. will be convinced upon hearing it. 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. The truths that describe our physical world, no matter how fundamental, are empirical, requiring observational evidence. Cass knows he needs to tamp down his tendencies toward the transcendental. 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). This utterly fails to account for why it is always wrong to disobey or change the rules. can occasionally predict the future. It is, perhaps, the most controversial proof for the existence of God. But this amounts to an admission that neither I nor anyone else is really obliged to feed the hungry -- that, in fact, no one has any real obligations at all. We are therefore likely to attribute magical powers to them. Question 2: How do we know that the cause of the universe still exists? The Original Replicator is complex (from 4). information in the DNA. There is more suffering than we can explain by reference to the purposes that we can discern (from 7 & 8). It may take time for them to even understand
see how the universe could be anything but infinitely old, since all the conditions
"I would believe in God if he showed himself to me. that can be "thought," it means that there are various perfections or qualities
The rest of the outline and a power point are available in the power point section of the web site. And if all being is like that, then how could anything still exist after the passage of an infinite time? God is purely rational, in reality, they are strongly motivated to reject the
So we cannot infer from the existence of genuine, ongoing science that there must be a God. If God never existed, neither did this relationship. 17. 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. Teleological and cosmological arguments, for instance, demonstrate how the existence of God best explains apparent design in nature and the nature of causality, respectively. "Here I am," Cass is saying, standing on Weeks Bridge and talking aloud into the sublimely indifferent night. 7. now believe., Christian: The living creatures of this world clearly exhibit design. One can see how this invalidates Pascal's Wager by considering similar wagers. He offers me his love and his life, and I reject it. For all of us, there can be nothing more significant than the lives we are living. 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. is contingent), we need some explanation of why it does. That is to say: the way they. 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). It can not explain how anything began, let alone life. It is more rational to believe that God exists than to believe that he doesn't exist (from 7). The Argument from Motion: Our senses can perceive motion by seeing that things act on one another.
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