the design argument proves the existence of god essay

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.

Citation and Use

“Aquinas’s Five Proofs for the Existence of God.” In The Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth, Teacher Guide. © 2011 by Saint Mary’s Press.  https://www.smp.org/resourcecenter/resource/7061/

Permission to reproduce is granted. Document #: TX001543

Aquinas's Five Proofs for the Existence of God Copyright © 2020 by St. Mary's Press. All Rights Reserved.

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The Design Argument for the Existence of God

by James R. Beebe

Dept. of Philosophy

University at Buffalo

Copyright ã 2002

Outline of Essay :

I. The Analogical Version of the Design Argument

II. Criticisms of the Analogical Version

A. No Experience of Cosmic Beginnings: A Disanalogy

B. Evil: A Harmful Analogy

C. Full-Blown Anthropomorphism

D. Begging the Question

III. The Inference to the Best Explanation Version of the Design Argument

A. Inference to the Best Explanation

B. The Data

C. Explaining the Data

D. Conditional Probability

IV. Objections and Replies

A. The Anthropic Principle

B. “Sometimes the Improbable Happens”

C. Non-deductive Inference

            The design argument is the simplest, most straightforward argument for the existence of God.  Unlike the cosmological argument, the design argument can be stated in a few, easy-to-understand steps.  In a nutshell, the design argument claims that the fact that everything in nature seems to be put together in just the right manner suggests that an intelligent designer was responsible for its creation.  Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)—a strident critic of the design argument—recognized both its simplicity and its importance.  He wrote, "This proof always deserves to be mentioned with respect.  It is the oldest, the clearest, and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind" (Kant 1781/1965, A 623, B 651).

            In the first section of this essay I will describe the most famous version of the design argument—William Paley’s argument by analogy.  Analogical arguments are perhaps the weakest sort of arguments one can offer without committing an outright fallacy.  As we will see in section II, the analogical version of the design argument has come in for some heavy fire over the years.  A contemporary reformulation of the argument, which I will call the ‘Inference to the Best Explanation’ (IBE) version of the design argument, claims to be able to escape the criticisms that are leveled against the analogical version.  The IBE version will be explained in section III.  It eschews the analogical form of the first version and uses evidence from contemporary science to back up its claims.

            William Paley (1743-1805), an Anglican priest whose textbooks were required reading at Cambridge until the twentieth-century, put forward the most famous version of the design argument in his book Natural Theology: or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature .  In his autobiography, Charles Darwin (1876/1958, p. 19) cites Paley’s book as one of his favorite undergraduate texts:

In order to pass the B.A. examination, it was also necessary to get up Paley’s Evidences of Christianity , and his Moral Philosophy .  This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the Evidences with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley.  The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his Natural Theology , gave me as much delight as did Euclid.  The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which, as I then felt, and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind.  I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley’s premises; and taking these on trust, I was charmed and convinced by the long line of argumentation.

The only discussion of the design argument that might be more famous than Paley’s is David Hume’s (1711-1776) in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion .  In this work Hume subjects the argument to severe criticism. 

            Paley famously begins his version of the argument by comparing the universe to a watch.  Suppose, he says, that we come upon a watch while walking through the forest.

[W]hen we come to inspect the watch, we perceive... 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; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it....  This mechanism being observed,... 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; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.  (cited in Hick 1964, pp. 99-100)

Paley claims that the same can be said for the universe as a whole.  It seems to show evidence of an intelligent designer as well.  The parts of the universe have an order, complexity and simplicity that resemble the parts of a finely crafted, well-oiled machine.  It seems, then, that the universe was fashioned by some kind of Divine Watchmaker.

            To support the analogy between a finely crafted watch and the universe, defenders of the design argument typically put forward the following kinds of considerations.  Consider the fact that the universe is constructed in a way that is conducive to life.  There is just enough oxygen to support life on earth.  If there were even a little less, the Earth’s atmosphere would not be able to support life as we know it.  But if there were just a little bit more oxygen in the atmosphere, combustion would occur too easily and often and it would once again be difficult to sustain life in such conditions.  Moreover, the Earth is just the right distance from the sun.  If we were a little bit closer, the atmosphere would be too hot to sustain life; but if we were a little further away, plants would not receive enough energy from the sun to carry on photosynthesis—the primary process by which the sun’s energy is converted into life on Earth.  These and other “fine-tuning” aspects of the universe suggest that there was an intelligent mind that intentionally brought these features into being.  As Sir Isaac Newton put it, the “most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being” (from the General Scholium of Principia Mathematica ; cited in Leslie 1989, p. 25). 

            Defenders of the design argument need not rest content with pointing to large-scale features of the universe that suggest design.  They can also point to the apparent design of many kinds of objects in the world.  Take, for example, mammalian organs, such as the heart, kidney, brain or eye.  Each of these has been given a certain function to perform and each has an amazing capacity to carry out that function.

            We can summarize the analogical version of the design argument as follows: 

1) Human artifacts are the products of intelligent design.

2) The universe resembles human artifacts.

3) Therefore, the universe is probably a product of intelligent design.

4) Therefore, the author of the universe is probably an intelligent being.  (adapted from Plantinga 1990, p. 97)

We know that (1) is true on the basis of personal experience and testimony from reliable sources.  We know that machines are always put together to serve certain purposes and that it takes careful planning and construction to make sure that each of the parts of a complicated machine work properly.  So, when we see that mammalian organs—e.g., hearts, lungs, eyes, brains, etc.—have certain very specific functions that they perform by carrying rather complicated series of interactions, it is plausible to think that they, too, are the products of intelligent design. 

            The most famous criticisms of the analogical version of the design argument appear in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion .  According to Norman Kemp Smith (“Introduction” to Hume’s Dialogues, p. 3), “Hume’s destructive criticism of the argument was final and complete.”  Smith’s sentiments are shared by many.  As we will see, however, defenders of the IBE version of the design argument claim that Hume’s criticisms apply only to the analogical version of the argument and not to their own version.

            Most of Hume’s criticisms center on the analogical aspect of the traditional design argument.  The problem, according to Hume, is that the analogy in question is not as strong as it needs to be in order to succeed.  The more the universe resembles an artifact, the stronger the argument will be; but the less the universe is like an artifact, the weaker it will be. 

  A. No Experience of Cosmic Beginnings: A Disanalogy

            Hume points out there are many dissimilarities or disanologies that harm the theist’s case.  One of the first things he notes is that there is a disanalogy between the kind of experience we have with respect to artifacts and the kind of experience we have with respect to the universe.  We have a lot of experience with a wide range of artifacts, which includes a general idea about what kinds of artisans or craftspeople make artifacts.  We know that artifacts are made by intelligent designers because we have observed designers making a variety of things on many occasions.  However, we don’t know what usually makes universes.  We simply have no experience with this kind of thing.  As a result, Hume claims, we can’t be too confident that whatever was responsible for making the universe is going to be much like the designers we are familiar with. 

  B. Evil: A Harmful Analogy

            Hume also argues that there are analogies that are detrimental to belief in a designer.  He thinks the analogical design argument correctly notes that we generally infer properties about an artisan or manufacturer from properties we observe in their products.  But he claims the argument ignores important facts about our world.  For example, from the solid 24 karat gold, diamonds and precision timing of a Rolex watch, one can infer that the manufacturer has the highest commitment to quality.  When one is faced with a defective product, one draws analogous but opposite conclusions.  For example, I own a Soviet-era military watch with the KGB insignia on its face.  At noon and midnight, the two hands of the watch should both be pointing straight up, but there are five degrees of separation between them.  Moreover, it gains about eight minutes every day.  I have been led to form rather negative conclusions about Soviet-era craftsmanship from the properties of this watch. 

            Hume notes that there seem to be imperfections in nature: cancer, AIDS, heart disease, famines, plagues, floods, and countless other tragedies.  If God is a Divine Watchmaker, as Paley claimed, the world looks to be more like a Soviet watch than a Rolex.  In other words, if we are going to infer by analogy characteristics of the Creator from characteristics of the creation, it doesn’t seem we can conclude that the Creator had to be perfect because the world is anything but perfect.  In jest, Hume suggests that maybe the universe was created by a junior deity who is just learning the ropes of universe creation and didn’t get things quite right this time.

  C. Full-Blown Anthropomorphism

            Hume also asks, “While we’re in the business of arguing by analogy, what is to keep us from pursuing the analogy all the way to a full-blown anthropomorphism?”  The theist wants to argue that, since every highly ordered, complex contrivance we encounter has an intelligent designer behind it, we can conclude that the world also has a designer behind it.  Well, says Hume, every artifact we encounter also has a designer with toenails, a bellybutton, 46 chromosomes, teeth made out of calcium composites, a spleen, and bad breath in the morning.  What’s stopping us from concluding that the creator of the universe has all of these features as well?  Hume’s point is that the analogy upon which the traditional design argument is based supports other conclusions than the one the theist is seeking to support. 

  D. Begging the Question

            Kelly James Clark (1990, p. 30) echoes some of Hume’s worries when he claims,

The connection between the first premise, that the world appears designed, and belief in God is so tight that some contend that the argument from design simply assumes what it is trying to prove: to countenance apparent cosmic design is already to be committed to a design -er. 

Clark thinks that one must already believe in God before one can accept the first premise of the traditional design argument—viz., that the world appears to be designed.  If you don’t think there is a cosmic designer, then you’re probably not going to look at the world and think “This world appears to be designed.”  An argument that assumes from the start the very thing that is up for debate is said to ‘beg the question.’  Since Clark thinks the analogical design argument begs the question, he concludes that the argument fails to have any persuasive force.

            While I think Hume’s criticisms for the most part succeed in hitting their mark, I think that Clark’s does not.  Most (if not all) evolutionary theorists admit that biological organs appear to be designed, but they remain committed to the project of explaining apparent design without appealing to a designer.  In other words, they do not deny the first premise that Clark finds so worrisome; they merely deny the inferences theists wish to draw from it. 

            In any case, the objections put forward in this section have convinced many people that the design argument fails miserably.  However, in recent years there has been a renewal of interest in the design argument—from both philosophers and scientists—and this has led to an updated formulation of the argument.

            The design argument can be reformulated so that it is not an analogical argument.  Instead, it can be understood as an inference to the best explanation.  This form of inference is common to both science and ordinary life.  We start with a set of data that is initially surprising or unexplained, and we wonder what could explain it.  As possible explanations pop into our minds, we evaluate the initial plausibility and simplicity of each explanation and see how well the explanations make sense of the data.  J. P. Moreland (1994, p. 26) offers the following example of an ordinary inference to the best explanation.

Suppose I get a terrible stomachache.  Then it dawns on me that I just ate a gallon and a half of ice cream, two bags of popcorn and a lot of candy on an empty stomach.  A hypothesis suggests itself as the best explanation of the stomachache—it arose because of what I had just eaten.  Other hypotheses may also suggest themselves, but I should adopt the explanation that best solves the problems for which it was postulated. 

In what follows I will present an array of scientific data that, according to defenders of the IBE design argument, cries out for explanation.  The facts described are extraordinarily improbable and unlikely to be the result of chance.  After presenting the data, we will examine the suggestion that the best explanation for these unlikely occurrences is that a personal, transcendent Being of tremendous power and intelligence is directly responsible for purposefully bringing them about. 

1.         We can begin by considering the fact that the energy the Earth receives from the Sun is precisely the amount required to nurture life.  According to Richard Brennan (1997, pp. 244-245),

The term used in science for this energy is the solar constant , which is defined as 1.99 calories of energy per minute per square centimeter.  If Earth received much more or less than 2 calories per minute per square centimeter, the water of the oceans would be vapor or ice, leaving the planet with no liquid water or reasonable substitute in which life could evolve.  It is only because Earth is 93 million miles away from a Sun that produces 5,600 million, million, million, million calories per minute that life is possible.

2.         Brennan (1997, p. 245) continues,

For another example, it has been calculated that if Earth were just 5 million miles closer to the Sun, the intensity of the Sun’s rays would have broken apart water molecules in the atmosphere and eventually turned the planet into a dry and dusty wasteland.  If Earth were only 1 million miles farther from the Sun, the cold would have frozen the ocean solid. 

3.         For there to be enough carbon around to support life, the strong nuclear force (the force that holds quarks together to form protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons together to form the nuclei of atoms) can be no more than 1% stronger or weaker than it is.  Increasing its strength by 2% would block the formation of protons, so that there would either be no atoms at all or else stars would burn a billion billion times faster than our sun, thereby making it difficult to have an environment friendly to living organisms (Leslie 1989, p. 4).  Increasing its strength by only 1% would result in all carbon being burned into oxygen (Leslie 1989, p. 35). 

4.         Decreasing the strong nuclear force by 5% would make it impossible for stars to burn (Leslie 1989, p.4).

5.         If the force of electromagnetism were somewhat stronger, the amount of light given off by stars would be significantly lower.  Main sequence stars (i.e., stars like our sun in the stable phase during which they spend most of their lifetimes and have their interior heat and radiation provided by nuclear fusion reactions near their centers) would be too cold to support life and would not contain any elements heavier than iron.  It would also make protons repel one another strongly enough to prevent the existence of atoms (Leslie 1989, p. 4).

6.         If the force of electromagnetism were slightly weaker, all main sequence stars would be very hot and short-lived blue stars.  According to the physicist, P. C. W. Davies, changes in either electromagnetism or gravity by only one part in 10 40 would spell catastrophe for stars like the sun (Leslie 1989, p. 37).

7.         Some of the basic forces of the universe also need to be finely-tuned to each other.  Gravity is roughly 10 39 times weaker than electromagnetism.  If it had been only 10 33 times weaker, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster (Leslie 1989, p. 5).  If gravity were ten times less strong, stars and planets could probably not form at all (Leslie 1989, p. 39).

8.         The opposite charges of electrons and protons perfectly balance each other.  They are identical magnitudes.  If there had been a difference between their charges even as small as one part in ten billion, scientists have calculated that no solid bodies could weigh more than one gram (Leslie 1989, p. 45).

9.         The difference in mass between protons and neutrons is twice the mass of the electron, which is itself a very small quantity.  If this were not so, then

all neutrons would have decayed into protons or else all protons would have changed irreversibly into neutrons.  Either way, there would not be the couple of hundred stable types of atom on which chemistry and biology are based. (Leslie 1989, p. 5) 

If all protons were changed irreversibly into neutrons, the universe would consist of nothing but neutron stars and black holes.  (A neutron star is a kind of collapsed star that is immensely dense and is made mostly of neutrons.  It is not the sort of star that could support life as we know it.)

10.       According to William Lane Craig (Strobel 2000, p. 77), P. C. W. Davies concluded that the odds against the initial conditions being suitable for the formation of stars is a one followed by at least a thousand billion billion zeroes.

11.       Davies also estimated that if the strength of gravity or of the weak force were changed by only one part in a ten followed by a hundred zeroes, life could never have developed (ibid.).

12.       Craig (1990, p. 143) writes,

[Astronomer Fred] Hoyle and his colleague Wickramasinghe calculated the odds of the random formation of a single enzyme from amino acids anywhere on the earth’s surface as one in 10 20 .  But that is only the beginning: “The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10 20 ) 20,000 = 10 40,000 , an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.”  And of course, the formation of enzymes is but one step in the formation of life.  “Nothing has been said of the origin of DNA itself, nothing of DNA transcription to RNA, nothing of the origin of the program whereby cells organize themselves, nothing of mitosis and meiosis.  These issues are too complex to set numbers to.”  In the end, they conclude that the chances of life originating by random ordering of organic molecules is not sensibly different from zero.

13.       J. P. Moreland (1987, p. 53) claims, “If the mass of a proton were increased by 0.2 percent, hydrogen would be unstable and life would not have formed.” 

14.       Brennan (1997, p. 246) writes,

If something called the fine structure constant (the square of the charge of the electron divided by the speed of light multiplied by Planck’s constant) were slightly different, atoms would not exist.

15.       The fact that all of this fine tuning is distributed across enormous ranges makes it even more amazing that they should be found in just the right proportions.  The strong nuclear force is roughly 100 times stronger than electromagnetism.  Electromagnetism is itself some 10,000 billion billion billion times stronger than gravity (Leslie 1989, p. 6).

            None of the foregoing evidence of the “fine-tuning” of the universe depends upon acceptance of the Big Bang theory of the origin of (the present state of) the universe and the cosmic timeline (spanning 15 billion years) that goes with it.  Theists who think that the Big Bang is identical to the event of divine creation, however, can avail themselves of further evidence of the fine-tuning of the universe, some of which is described below.  According to defenders of the IBE design argument, this evidence shows that even the theory of cosmic origin most widely accepted by atheist scientists strongly suggests that there was and is an Intelligent Designer behind the controls of the universe. 

16.       The rate of expansion of the universe immediately after the Big Bang had to be finely tuned.  According to William Lane Craig (Strobel 2000, p. 77), Stephen Hawking, the world’s most famous living physicist, has calculated that if the rate of the universe’s expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have collapsed into a fireball.

17.       If the rate of expansion were decreased by only one part in a million when the Big Bang was a second old, the universe would have recollapsed before temperatures fell below 10,000 degrees (i.e., before it could cool off enough for life to be able to form) (Leslie 1989, p. 29).

18.       An increase of only one part in a million in the rate of the early universe’s expansion would have meant that the kinetic energy of expansion would have so dominated gravity that stars could not form (Leslie 1989, p. 29). 

19.       Had the weak nuclear force been slightly stronger, the Big Bang would have burned all hydrogen to helium.  There would then be neither water nor long-lived stable stars, which are hydrogen-burning (Leslie 1989, p. 4). 

20.       The weakness of the weak force results in our sun burning its hydrogen slowly and gently for billions of years instead of blowing up like a bomb (Leslie 1989, p. 34). 

21.       Making the weak nuclear force slightly weaker would have destroyed all of the hydrogen, and the neutrons formed during the earliest stages of the universe would not have decayed into protons (Leslie 1989, p. 4).  Without this neutron-decay, the universe would be made up of nothing but helium (Leslie 1989, p. 34). 

22.       P. C. W. Davies ( Other Worlds , London, 1980, pp. 168-169; cited in Leslie 1989, p. 28) claims that, because of all the parameters that had to be perfectly set before the Big Bang, the odds against a universe filled with stars is “one followed by a thousand billion billion zeros, at least.” 

            What should we make of all these facts?  John Leslie (1989, p. 25) responds, “Our universe does seem remarkably tuned to Life’s needs.”  Craig (1990, p. 143) writes,

The point is that within the wide range of universes permitted by the actual laws of physics, scarcely any are life-permitting, and those that are require incredible fine-tuning of the physical constants and quantities.  In fact, Donald Page of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study has calculated the odds against the formation of our universe as one out of 10,000,000,000 124 , a number that exceeds all imagination.

To get a handle on how large this number is, consider the fact that there are estimated to be only 10 80 elementary particles in the universe (Craig 1990, p. 159).  A universe that is inhospitable to life is extraordinarily more likely to have arisen than the one that we, in fact, find ourselves in.  Craig (1990, p. 143) claims that the fine-tuning of the universe “cries out for explanation.”  And an explanation immediately suggests itself: maybe this improbable “cosmic accident” wasn’t an accident after all.  Keith Parsons (1990, p. 181), who is quite skeptical of the design argument, summarizes the conclusion of the argument nicely as follows.

[A] “finely tuned” universe is much more likely if there is a God than if there is not.  In other words, it is implied that the cosmic “coincidences” that make possible a universe such as ours are extremely improbable unless they are the product of conscious design.  Presumably, the conclusion is that since a “finely tuned” universe does in fact exist, its existence strongly confirms the existence of a conscious Designer—that is, God. 

In other words, scientific discoveries of the infinitesimally small margin of error allowed in creating a universe capable of sustaining life support the central claim of theism: the universe was purposefully constructed by a personal, transcendent Being of tremendous power and intelligence. 

  D. Conditional Probability

            Let me introduce some ideas from probability theory that can make clearer how the IBE version of the design argument is supposed to work. 

1. Let ‘P(A ½ B)’ mean “the probability of A, given B.” 

2. Let A = “You will die of cancer in the next ten years.”

3. Let B = “You are 20 years old, do not smoke, have no family history of cancer, and are very healthy.”

The value of ‘P(A ½ B)’ is called a ‘ conditional probability ’ value because we are asking what the probability is that A is true, on the condition that B is true.  We are not simply asking what the probability of A is.  We are asking about A’s likelihood in light of certain background assumptions. 

            According to the stipulations above, P(A ½ B) is the probability that you will die of cancer in the next ten years, given that you are 20 years old, do not smoke, have no family history of cancer, and are very healthy.  The probability of that happening should be very low.  Let’s replace B with the following conditions and see how the resulting probability values differ.

4. Let C = “You are a chain-smoking, 55-year old male.” 

5. Let D = “You are a chain-smoking, 55-year old male who has been working in an asbestos factory for 35 years.”

Consider the value of P(A ½ C).  It will obviously be a lot higher than P(A ½ B).  And it’s a good bet that P(A ½ D) will be even higher.

            In each of these cases, A remained the same.  The only thing that changed was the set of background assumptions we used to determine the conditional probability value in question.  We are now in a position to use the idea of conditional probability to achieve a better understanding of the IBE version of the design argument.

6. Let F = “There exists a finely-tuned, life-permitting universe.”

7. Let T = “There exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God who created the universe.”

8. Let Not-T = “There does not exist an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God who created the universe.”

Now consider the following probabilities.

9. P(F ½ T)

10. P(F ½ Not-T)

According to the scientists cited above, a conservative estimate of P(F ½ Not-T) is 1/10,000,000,000 124 .  In other words, it is extraordinarily unlikely that the fine-tuning of the universe could have been brought about without the conscious planning of an intelligent designer. 

            Now think about the value of P(F ½ T).  You can make an estimate of this probability, regardless of whether you are a theist or an atheist (or neither).  I am simply asking what you think the probability of there being a a finely-tuned, life-permitting universe would be IF there were an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God who created the universe.  Although I can’t give a precise number, it seems that the probability of P(F ½ T) would be extremely high.  If there were a supremely powerful and intelligent God, that being could easily create a finely-tuned universe if he so desired.  So, the difference between P(F ½ T) and P(F ½ Not-T) is enormous. 

            Why is this fact significant?  Parsons (1990, pp. 193-194) writes,

It is the consequence of Bayes’ theorem [a theorem of probability theory that undergirds the currently accepted view about the confirmation of scientific theories]… that a given piece of evidence e confirms a hypothesis h if and only if e is more probable on h than on not- h .  Hence, where h is theism and not- h is atheism and e comprises all of the “finely tuned” features of the universe, the “finely tuned” features of the universe confirm theism if and only if those features are more likely if God exists than if God does not exist.

In other words, since P(F ½ T) is tremendously higher than P(F ½ Not-T), facts about the fine-tuning the universe provide confirmation of the existence of God.  The defender of the IBE version of the design argument concludes that it is more reasonable to believe that the universe was created by an Intelligent Designer than to believe that it spontaneously arose through chance. 

            The Inference to the Best Explanation version of the design argument sometimes encounters the following objection.

We should not be surprised that the universe is life-permitting.  If it weren’t life-permitting, we wouldn’t be here to contemplate it.  The fact that we are indeed here to contemplate it shows that it obviously must be life-permitting.  Consequently, expressions of surprise at the fact that our universe is well suited for living things are inappropriate. 

Part of this objection is obviously true, but another part of it is mistaken.  The trivially true part is the claim that if our universe were not life-permitting, we living human beings would not be around to contemplate it.  But it is a mistake to think that this fact neutralizes the need to explain why the universe is life-permitting. 

            Let me use the following example to make the point.  Suppose I were brought before a firing squad made up of one hundred professional marksmen and that each of them was instructed to shoot one dozen rounds of ammunition at me.  Now suppose that, after the smoke clears, it becomes evident that all 1200 bullets fired at me have missed their intended target.  After a brief moment of elation, I will begin to wonder why I am still alive.  Suppose I said to myself, “If they hadn’t all missed me then I shouldn’t be contemplating the matter so I mustn’t be surprised that they missed” (Leslie 1989, p. 108).  Would that thought thoroughly satisfy my curiosity?  Not by a long shot [sic].  I would begin to wonder whether they really intended to harm me.  Were they instructed to miss me on purpose?  Did someone load all of their rifles with blanks?  Was this just a cruel birthday joke perpetrated by my wife?  I might start looking around for the cameras from Spy TV or Candid Camera. 

            Similarly, merely pointing out that if the universe were not life-permitting, we would not be around to contemplate it does not satisfy our curiosity about the fine-tuning of the universe.  We can still ask for an explanation of why these amazing and unlikely facts came to be. 

  B. “Sometimes the Improbable Happens”

            A second objection that is often raised against the Inference to the Best Explanation version of the design argument goes like this:

Sometimes the improbable happens.  For example, the fact that it is extraordinarily unlikely that any single person will win the Powerball lottery does not mean that no one will ever win.  In fact, people whose odds of winning are vanishingly small win the Powerball lottery on a regular basis.  Our reaction to the existence of an improbable, “finely-tuned,” life-permitting universe should be the same as our reaction to the news that somebody won the latest Powerball lottery: an uninterested yawn.

The defender of the IBE design argument will claim: a) that there is a confusion lurking behind these remarks; and b) once we clear up the confusion we will see that there are important disanalogies between the Powerball case and the case of a fine-tuned universe. 

            Suppose that in a certain lottery there are 100 million tickets sold and that one of these tickets will be chosen at random.  If it is a fair lottery, then every ticket has an equal chance of winning.  So, the probability that any particular ticket will bring riches to its bearer is 1/100,000,000.  Now consider the probability that at least one of the 100 million lottery tickets that were sold will win.  That probability is 1 (probabilities come in ranges of continuous values between zero and one).  In other words, there is a 100% chance that one of the 100 million tickets sold will win. 

            According to the defender of the IBE design argument, we need to distinguish between the following two kinds of probability judgments:

1) The probability that a particular ticket will win.

2) The probability that some (i.e., at least one) ticket will win.

The value of (1) is 1/100,000,000.  The value of (2) is 1.  The reason we are unsurprised that somebody (or other) won the latest Powerball lottery is that the probability of somebody (or other) winning is 1.  It’s a sure bet.  But that doesn’t mean that we would not not be surprised if we held the winning ticket.  We be very surprised because of the enormous odds against our winning. 

            Our winning, however, would not be completely mysterious to us.  It’s not as if we would have no idea about how to explain how we won.  Our knowledge of how lotteries work includes the knowledge that somebody has to win.  We also know that winners in a fair lottery are selected through some kind of random process that gives everybody a fair shot.  Knowledge of this process—even if it is vague and unspecific—keeps the fact of our winning from being an utterly mysterious, unexplainable fact.

            The defender of the IBE design argument will maintain that the central problem with the current objection is that we do not know that the following is true:

4) The initial conditions of the present universe—e.g., the strengths of the four fundamental forces (the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity), the masses of the fundamental particles, etc.—were the result of some kind of cosmic lottery.  Out of the indefinitely large number of possible universes that could have been brought into being, ours was the one that just so happened—by pure chance—to be selected.  If other universes had been selected, they would have collapsed into fireballs just a few seconds after being formed, while others would have been composed of only neutron stars and black holes.  Still others would have consisted of nothing but electromagnetic radiation.  Fortunately for us, none of these cosmic options were selected.

If we knew: a) that each possible universe had an equal probability of being actualized; b) that the probability that any particular universe would be selected was extremely small; and c) that at least one of them had to be selected; then it seems that we should show the same lack of surprise at the existence of our improbable but life-permitting universe that we do at the news of the latest lottery winner.  The problem, however, is that we don’t know that our universe was the winner of a perfectly fair cosmic lottery.  Lack of surprise is appropriate only when we have this knowledge.  The fact that a life-permitting universe is extraordinarily improbable raises the suspicion that our universe wasn’t randomly selected after all. 

            Consider the following unlikely events and the “explanations” offered of these events. 

i) The stones in one garden are randomly strewn about.  In another garden the stones spell “Welcome to Wales by British Railways.”  Regarding this example William Dembski (1998, p. xi) writes, “In both instances the precise arrangement of stones is vastly improbable.  Indeed, any given arrangement of stones is but one of an almost infinite number of possible arrangements.”  When asked for the best explanation of why one set of stones spells out an English sentence, someone replies, “Sometimes the improbable happens.” 

ii) On several occasions during the last week, large pieces of scrap metal have fallen from above and nearly killed me.  After each “accident” I turn around and see hurrying away from the scene one of my colleagues who has only a temporary contract with LSU but whose chances of being permanently hired by LSU would be greatly increased if I were out of the way.  When detained and questioned by the police about why he always seemed to be present when pieces of scrap metal were falling near my head, my colleague simply replies “Sometimes the improbable happens.” 

iii) I am brought before a firing squad made up of one hundred professional marksmen, each of whom is instructed to shoot one dozen rounds of ammunition at me.  All 1200 bullets fired at me miss their intended target.  When I ask someone for an explanation of this unlikely phenomenon, someone replies “Sometimes the improbable happens.” 

iv) A silk merchant who, while trying to sell a silk gown, keeps his thumb over a hole in the silk the entire time his customer is looking at the gown.  When his ruse is found out and he is asked to account for his behavior, he replies, “Every thumb must be somewhere.  While it is improbable that my thumb should cover the hole the entire time, it is equally improbable that my thumb should be at any other location on the gown.  Sometimes the improbable happens.” 

v) The winner of January’s state lottery was the nephew of the Lottery Commissioner.  The winner of the February lottery was the niece of the Lottery Commissioner.  The winner of the state lottery in March was the Lottery Commissioner’s brother.  The winner in April was the Lottery Commissioner’s ex-wife who, it is well known, has been trying to sue him for everything he’s got.  When asked to account for this highly improbable string of events the Lottery Commissioner replies, “Sometimes the improbable happens.” 

In none of these cases is the offered explanation even remotely satisfying or convincing.  When we lack the positive knowledge that an event is the outcome of a fair lottery (or its probabilistic equivalent), we find ourselves unable to accept the answer that “Sometimes the improbable happens.”  Our minds immediately turn to more likely scenarios that would explain the events in question.  We automatically assume that British Railways intentionally arranged the set of stones to be a greeting.  We think it highly likely that my colleague wants to bump me off so he can take my position.  We think the firing squad must be a sham that serves some unseen purpose.  We believe beyond any reasonable doubt that the location of the silk merchant’s thumb is due to greed and dishonesty rather than chance.  And no one, I take it, would believe the Lottery Commissioner’s claim to innocence. 

            Recall the fine-tuned features of the universe cited above.  The fact that all of these life-permitting features have come together is exceedingly improbable.  The defender of the IBE design argument claims that this situation is more similar to the five cases listed above than to a fair lottery.  As in the five cases above, they think we should be led to seek an explanation that does not appeal to mere chance.  That explanation, they suggest, is that the universe was purposefully created by an Intelligent Designer. 

            A third objection to the Inference to the Best Explanation version of the design argument stems from the fact that the conclusion of the argument is not necessitated by its premises.  Neal Gillespie (1979, pp. 83-84) has stated the objection as follows.

It has been generally agreed (then and since) that Darwin’s doctrine of natural selection effectively demolished William Paley’s classical design argument for the existence of God.  By showing how blind and gradual adaptation could counterfeit the apparently purposeful design that Paley... and others had seen in the contrivances of nature, Darwin deprived their argument of the analogical inference that the evident purpose to be seen in the contrivances by which means and ends were related in nature was necessarily a function of mind.

Although Gillespie’s objection is aimed at Paley’s analogical version of the design argument, it can be modified  to apply to the IBE version as well.  Gillespie takes the design argument to task for thinking that the apparent design of the universe “was necessarily a function of [an intelligent, creative] mind.”  But neither version of the design argument claims that the fine-tuned features of the universe are necessarily the product of intelligent design. 

            The IBE version merely claims that the hypothesis of intelligent design provides the best explanation for those features.  In other words, the design argument does not purport to be a deductive argument, in which the truth of the premises necessitates the truth of the conclusion.  Instead, it claims to offer a strong non-deductive argument for the hypothesis of intelligent design.  Pointing out that the premises of a non-deductive argument do not necessitate its conclusion is like pointing out that Einstein’s general theory of relativity does not explain how to make a great Cabernet.  That was never its intended purpose. 

            When dealing with non-deductive inferences, such as inferences to the best explanation, we must ask ourselves how much likelihood or palusibility is conferred upon the conclusion by the premises.  If the IBE design argument is strong, then the facts about fine-tuning make the conclusion about an Intelligent Designer highly probable.  If the argument is weak, then these facts do not make the Intelligent Design conclusion very probable at all.  The key point is that, when dealing with non-deductive arguments, the issue is always one of probability rather than necessity .  Strong, inductive arguments purport to make their conclusions probable.  They do not claim to necessitate their conclusions.  So, pointing out that they do not necessitate their premises cannot count as an objection against them.  The IBE design argument is an inference to the best explanation; not an inference to the only possible explanation.

  References

Brennan, Richard. 1997. Heisenberg Probably Slept Here: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Physicists of the 20th Century . New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Clark, Kelly James. 1990. Return to Reason: A Critique of Enlightenment Evidentialism and a Defense of Reason and Belief in God . Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Craig, William Lane. 1990. “In Defense of Rational Theism.” In J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen (Eds.), Does God Exist? The Great Debate . Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Darwin, Charles. 1876/1958. Autobiography . Francis Darwin (Ed.). New York: Dover.

Dembski, William A. 1998. The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gillespie, Neal. 1979. Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hick, John. 1964. The Existence of God . New York: Macmillan.

Hume, David. 1779/1947. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , edited with an introduction by N. K. Smith. New York: Macmillan.

Kant, Immanuel. 1781/1965. Critique of Pure Reason , trans. N. K. Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Leslie, John. 1989. Universes . London: Routledge.

Moreland, J. P. 1987. Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity . Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Moreland, J. P. 1990. “Yes! A Defense of Christianity.” In J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen (Eds.), Does God Exist? The Great Debate . Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Moreland, J. P. 1994. “Introduction.” In J. P. Moreland (Ed.), The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer . Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Parsons, Keith. 1990. “Is There a Case for Christian Theism?” In J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen (Eds.), Does God Exist? The Great Debate . Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Plantinga, Alvin. 1990. God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God , paperback edition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Strobel, Lee. 2000. The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity . Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Design Arguments for the Existence of God

“Design Arguments for the Existence of God,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (James Fieser, ed.); Internet

20 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2015

Kenneth Einar Himma

University of Washington - School of Law

Date Written: July 9, 2015

Design arguments are empirical arguments for God’s existence. These arguments typically, though not always, proceed by identifying various empirical features of the world that constitute evidence of intelligent design and inferring God’s existence as the best explanation for these features. This article explains and evaluates a number of classic and contemporary versions of the argument: (1) Aquinas’s “fifth way’; (2) the argument from simple analogy; (3) Paley’s watchmaker argument; (4) the argument from guided evolution; (5) the argument from irreducible biochemical complexity; (6) the argument from biological information; and (7) the fine-tuning argument.

Keywords: design argument, arguments for God's existence, teleological argument, fine-tuning argument, intelligent design argument

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Kenneth Einar Himma (Contact Author)

University of washington - school of law ( email ).

William Gates Hall Seattle, WA 98195-3020 United States

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Design Arguments for the Existence of God

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An “argument from design” for the existence of God is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, for an intelligent creator based on perceived evidence of deliberate design in the natural world ("Teleological Argument" 2019). Design arguments are popular and multi-conceptual arguments for the existence of God which, again, rely on complex features of the world to generate an inference for the existence of God or some intelligent creator/designer.

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argument from design

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• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Teleological Arguments for God's Existence
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Design Arguments for the Existence of God

argument from design , Argument for the existence of God . According to one version, the universe as a whole is like a machine; machines have intelligent designers; like effects have like causes; therefore, the universe as a whole has an intelligent designer, which is God. The argument was propounded by medieval Christian thinkers, especially St. Thomas Aquinas , and was developed in great detail in the 17th and 18th centuries by writers such as Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) and William Paley . It was powerfully criticized by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion . Immanuel Kant also rejected the argument. In the late 20th century the argument was revived as the doctrine of intelligent design . See also creationism .

6.3 Cosmology and the Existence of God

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe teleological and moral arguments for the existence of God.
• Outline Hindu cosmology and arguments for and against the divine.
• Explain Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.
• Articulate the distinction between the logical and evidential problems of evil.

Another major question in metaphysics relates to cosmology. Cosmology is the study of how reality is ordered. How can we account for the ordering, built upon many different elements such as causation, contingency, motion, and change, that we experience within our reality? The primary focus of cosmological arguments will be on proving a logically necessary first cause to explain the order observed. As discussed in earlier sections, for millennia, peoples have equated the idea of a first mover or cause with the divine that exists in another realm. This section will discuss a variety of arguments for the existence of God as well as how philosophers have reconciled God's existence with the presence of evil in the world.

Teleological Arguments for God

Teleological arguments examine the inherent design within reality and attempt to infer the existence of an entity responsible for the design observed. Teleological arguments consider the level of design found in living organisms, the order displayed on a cosmological scale, and even how the presence of order in general is significant.

Aquinas’s Design Argument

Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways is known as a teleological argument for the existence of God from the presence of design in experience. Here is one possible formulation of Aquinas’s design argument:

• Things that lack knowledge tend to act toward an end/goal.
• It is obvious that it is not by chance.
• Things that lack knowledge act toward an end by design.
• If a thing is being directed toward an end, it requires direction by some being endowed with intelligence (e.g. the arrow being directed by the archer).
• Therefore, some intelligent being exists that directs all natural things toward their end. This being is known as God.

Design Arguments in Biology

Though Aquinas died long ago, his arguments still live on in today’s discourse, exciting passionate argument. Such is the case with design arguments in biology. William Paley (1743–1805) proposed a teleological argument, sometimes called the design argument, that there exists so much intricate detail, design, and purpose in the world that we must suppose a creator. The sophistication and incredible detail we observe in nature could not have occurred by chance.

Paley employs an analogy between design as found within a watch and design as found within the universe to advance his position. Suppose you were walking down a beach and you happened to find a watch. Maybe you were feeling inquisitive, and you opened the watch (it was an old-fashioned pocket watch). You would see all the gears and coils and springs. Maybe you would wind up the watch and observe the design of the watch at work. Considering the way that all the mechanical parts worked together toward the end/goal of telling time, you would be reluctant to say that the watch was not created by a designer.

Now consider another object—say, the complexity of the inner workings of the human eye. If we can suppose a watchmaker for the watch (due to the design of the watch), we must be able to suppose a designer for the eye. For that matter, we must suppose a designer for all the things we observe in nature that exhibit order. Considering the complexity and grandeur of design found in the world around us, the designer must be a Divine designer. That is, there must be a God.

Often, the design argument is formulated as an induction:

• In all things we have experienced that exhibit design, we have experienced a designer of that artifact.
• The universe exhibits order and design.
• Given #1, the universe must have a designer.
• The designer of the universe is God.

Think Like a Philosopher

Read “ The Fine-Tuning Argument for the Existence of God ” by Thomas Metcalf.

Evaluate the arguments and counterarguments presented in this short article. Which are the most cogent, and why?

Moral Arguments for God

Another type of argument for the existence of God is built upon metaethics and normative ethics. Consider subjective and objective values. Subjective values are those beliefs that guide and drive behaviors deemed permissible as determined by either an individual or an individual’s culture. Objective values govern morally permissible and desired outcomes that apply to all moral agents. Moral arguments for the existence of God depend upon the existence of objective values.

If there are objective values, then the question of “Whence do these values come?” must be raised. One possible answer used to explain the presence of objective values is that the basis of the values is found in God. Here is one premise/conclusion form of the argument:

• If objective values exist, there must be a source for their objective validity.
• The source of all value (including the validity held by objective values) is God.
• Objective values do exist.
• Therefore, God exists.

This argument, however, raises questions. Does moral permissibility (i.e., right and wrong) depend upon God? Are ethics an expression of the divine, or are ethics better understood separate from divine authority? To explore this topic further, students will find a helpful overview and updated references in the Stanford Encyclopedia article, " Moral Arguments for the Existence of God ."

Write Like a Philosopher

Watch “ God & Morality: Part 2 ” by Steven Darwall.

Darwall’s argument for the autonomy of ethics may be restated as follows:

• God knows morality best (1:44).
• God knows what is best for us (2:12).
• God has authority over us (2:48).

How does Darwall refute the conclusion? What is the evidence offered, and at what point within the argument is the evidence introduced? What does his approach suggest about refutational strategies? Can you refute Darwall’s argument?

As you write, begin by defining the conclusion. Remember that in philosophy, conclusions are not resting points but mere starting points. Next, present the evidence, both stated and unstated, and explain how it supports the conclusion.

The Ontological Argument for God

An ontological argument for God was proposed by the Italian philosopher, monk, and Archbishop of Canterbury Anselm (1033–1109). Anselm lived in a time where belief in a deity was often assumed. He, as a person and as a prior of an abbey, had experienced and witnessed doubt. To assuage this doubt, Anselm endeavored to prove the existence of God in such an irrefutable way that even the staunchest of nonbelievers would be forced, by reason, to admit the existence of a God.

Anselm’s proof is a priori and does not appeal to empirical or sense data as its basis. Much like a proof in geometry, Anselm is working from a set of “givens” to a set of demonstrable concepts. Anselm begins by defining the most central term in his argument—God. For the purpose of this argument, Anselm suggests, let “God” = “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” He makes two key points:

• When we speak of God (whether we are asserting God is or God is not), we are contemplating an entity who can be defined as “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
• When we speak of God (either as believer or nonbeliever), we have an intramental understanding of that concept—in other words, the idea is within our understanding.

Anselm continues by examining the difference between that which exists in the mind and that which exists both in the mind and outside of the mind. The question is: Is it greater to exist in the mind alone or in the mind and in reality (or outside of the mind)? Anselm asks you to consider the painter—for example, define which is greater: the reality of a painting as it exists in the mind of an artist or that same painting existing in the mind of that same artist and as a physical piece of art. Anselm contends that the painting, existing both within the mind of the artist and as a real piece of art, is greater than the mere intramental conception of the work.

At this point, a third key point is established:

Have you figured out where Anselm is going with this argument?

• If God is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived (established in #1 above);
• And since it is greater to exist in the mind and in reality than in the mind alone (established in #3 above);
• Then God must exist both in the mind (established in #2 above) and in reality;
• In short, God must be. God is not merely an intramental concept but an extra-mental reality as well.

Hindu Cosmology

One of the primary arguments for the existence of God as found within Hindu traditions is based on cosmological conditions necessary to explain the reality of karma. As explained in the introduction to philosophy chapter and earlier in this chapter, karma may be thought of as the causal law that links causes to effects. Assuming the doctrine of interdependence, karma asserts that if we act in such a way to cause harm to others, we increase the amount of negativity in nature. We therefore hurt ourself by harming others. As the self moves through rebirth ( samsara ), the karmic debt incurred is retained. Note that positive actions also are retained. The goal is liberation of the soul from the cycle of rebirth.

Maintenance of the Law of Karma

While one can understand karmic causality without an appeal to divinity, how the causal karmic chain is so well-ordered and capable of realizing just results is not as easily explainable without an appeal to divinity. One possible presentation of the argument for the existence of God from karma could therefore read as follows:

• If karma is, there must be some force/entity that accounts for the appropriateness (justice) of the karmic debt or karmic reward earned.
• The source responsible for the appropriateness (justice) of the debt or reward earned must be a conscious agent capable of lending order to all karmic interactions (past, present, and future).
• Karmic appropriateness (justice) does exist.
• Therefore, a conscious agent capable of lending order to all karmic interactions (past, present, and future) must exist.

Physical World as Manifestation of Divine Consciousness

The cosmology built upon the religious doctrines allows for an argument within Hindu thought that joins a version of the moral argument and the design argument. Unless a divine designer were assumed, the moral and cosmological fabric assumed within the perspective could not be asserted.

Hindu Arguments Against the Existence of God

One of the primary arguments against the existence of God is found in the Mīmāmsā tradition. This ancient school suggests that the Vedas were eternal but without authors. The cosmological and teleological evidence as examined above was deemed inconclusive. The focus of this tradition and its several subtraditions was on living properly.

Problem of Evil

The problem of evil poses a philosophical challenge to the traditional arguments (in particular the design argument) because it implies that the design of the cosmos and the designer of the cosmos are flawed. How can we assert the existence of a caring and benevolent God when there exists so much evil in the world? The glib answer to this question is to say that human moral agents, not God, are the cause of evil. Some philosophers reframe the problem of evil as the problem of suffering to place the stress of the question on the reality of suffering versus moral agency.

The Logical Problem of Evil

David Hume raised arguments not only against the traditional arguments for the existence of God but against most of the foundational ideas of philosophy. Hume, the great skeptic, starts by proposing that if God knows about the suffering and would stop it but cannot stop it, God is not omnipotent. If God is able to stop the suffering and would want to but does not know about it, then God is not omniscient. If God knows about the suffering and is able to stop it but does not wish to assuage the pain, God is not omnibenevolent. At the very least, Hume argues, the existence of evil does not justify a belief in a caring Creator.

The Evidential Problem of Evil

The evidential problem considers the reality of suffering and the probability that if an omnibenevolent divine being existed, then the divine being would not allow such extreme suffering. One of the most formidable presentations of the argument was formulated by William Rowe :

There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. (Therefore) there does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. (Rowe 1979, 336)

Western Theistic Responses to the Problem of Evil

Many theists (those who assert the existence of god/s) have argued against both the logical and evidential formulations of the problem of evil. One of the earliest Christian defenses was authored by Saint Augustine. Based upon a highly Neo-Platonic methodology and ontology, Augustine argued that as God was omnibenevolent (all good), God would not introduce evil into our existence. Evil, observed Augustine, was not real. It was a privation or negation of the good. Evil therefore did not argue against the reality or being of God but was a reflection for the necessity of God. Here we see the application of a set of working principles and the stressing of a priori resulting in what could be labeled ( prima facie ) a counterintuitive result.

An African Perspective on the Problem of Evil

In the above sections, the problem of evil was centered in a conception of a god as all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing. Evil, from this perspective, reflects a god doing evil (we might say reflecting the moral agency of a god) and thus results in the aforementioned problem—how could a “good” god do evil or perhaps allow evil to happen? The rich diversity of African thought helps us examine evil and agency from different starting points. What if, for example, the lifting of the agency (the doing of evil) was removed entirely from the supernatural? In much of Western thought, God was understood as the creator. Given the philosophical role and responsibilities that follow from the assignment of “the entity that made all things,” reconciling evil and creation and God as good becomes a problem. But if we were to remove the concept of God from the creator role, the agency of evil (and reconciling evil with the creator) is no longer present.

Within the Yoruba-African perspective, the agency of evil is not put upon human agency, as might be expected in the West, but upon “spiritual beings other than God” (Dasaolu and Oyelakun 2015). These multiple spiritual beings, known as “Ajogun,” are “scattered around the cosmos” and have specific types of wrongdoing associated specifically with each being (Dasaolu and Oyelakun 2015). Moving the framework (or cosmology) upon which goodness and evil is understood results in a significant philosophical shift. The meaning of evil, instead of being packed with religious or supernatural connotations, has a more down-to-earth sense. Evil is not so much sin as a destruction of life. It is not an offense against an eternal Creator, but an action conducted by one human moral agent that harms another human moral agent.

Unlike Augustine’s attempt to explain evil as the negation of good (as not real), the Yoruban metaphysics asserts the necessity of evil. Our ability to contrast good and evil are required logically so that we can make sense of both concepts.

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

Introduction, general overviews.

• Anthologies
• Assessing Arguments
• Anselm’s Proslogion
• Modal Ontological Arguments
• Gödel’s Ontological Argument
• Aquinas’s Five Ways
• Arguments from Sufficient Reason
• Arguments from Contingency
• Kalām Cosmological Arguments
• Biological Arguments for Design
• Cosmological Fine-Tuning Arguments for Design
• Moral Arguments
• Arguments from Religious Experience
• Arguments from Miracles
• Arguments from Consciousness
• Arguments from Reason
• Aesthetic Arguments
• “Cumulative” Arguments
• Pascal’s Wager

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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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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

The Fine-Tuning Argument for the Existence of God

Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Philosophy of Religion Word count: 987

Here’s a simple experiment to help test whether God exists:

Hold a refrigerator magnet about one inch above a paperclip. If the magnet picks up the paperclip, then that tiny magnet was able to overcome the gravity of an entire planet . [1]

How might this provide evidence that God exists?

Well, if gravity had been as strong as magnetism is now, then you wouldn’t be reading this article, because you never would have existed. The entire universe might just be a huge black hole.

It’s fortunate for us, then, that the physical constants , such as the strength of gravity, have the values they do. Similarly, there are laws of nature that appear to be necessary for our existence. [2]

And a third example of the universe’s being suited for us is its initial conditions , for example, that the universe began in a state with lots of usable energy. [3] Some philosophers and scientists estimate that some of these constants, forces, and conditions couldn’t have varied by more than one part in 10 60 (i.e., a one with sixty zeros after it) and still permitted life.

Therefore, perhaps, we should very strongly expect that a universe in which the constants, laws, and conditions formed mindlessly and purposelessly would be one in which life was almost certainly impossible: not just human life, but anything remotely resembling conscious life as we know it. [4] It’s difficult to imagine how any conscious life could be composed of hydrogen alone, or could live in a black hole. And if these facts about the universe are truly universal constants and laws, then if life is impossible anywhere (because of these features), then it’s impossible everywhere .

Arguably, if God exists, then he would intentionally fine-tune a universe’s laws, constants, and conditions so that they permit life like us. [5] A morally perfect God would value life, especially embodied human beings with free will, and so ensure the universe’s physical laws, constants and initial conditions allowed for our existence. [6] This is the basic reasoning behind the Fine-Tuning Argument for God’s existence. [7]

We can summarize the argument as follows: [8]

• If God does not exist, then it was extremely unlikely that the universe would permit life.
• But if God exists, then it was very likely that the universe would permit life.
• Therefore, that the universe permits life is strong evidence that God exists.

Even if that argument is cogent, it doesn’t prove that God exists or that belief in God is justified. For that, we’d need to take into account all the other evidence for or against the existence of God. But the argument does allege to provide powerful evidence for theism.

Critics of the Fine-Tuning Argument, however, have challenged both premises.

1.      The Probability of a Life-Permitting Universe, Given Atheism

The first challenge argues that a life-permitting universe isn’t improbable, even if there isn’t a God . The three most-popular ways to make this case are as follows. [9]

1.1. The Anthropic Principle

Some objectors argue that it’s not improbable that we would find ourselves in a life-permitting universe, because that’s the only sort of universe we could find ourselves in—otherwise, we wouldn’t exist at all. [10]

One reply: If you were to survive being shot at by a firing-squad of ten expert sharpshooters, you should still be surprised that you survived, even though if they’d killed you, you wouldn’t have been around to notice. [11] So we can still say that something is unlikely, even when, if it had not happened, we wouldn’t have been alive to observe its not happening.

1.2. A Deeper, Fundamental Law

Some suggest that the probability of a life-permitting universe, given atheism, might be much higher than we thought. Perhaps all these constants, laws, and initial conditions are all determined by some deeper, fundamental law, which can only take on a few values. [12]

One reply: Other than this objection’s being a speculative hypothesis, this deeper, fundamental law seems to need its own fine-tuning. [13] Why did we happen to live in a universe that had this deeper, fundamental law at all, instead of having a slightly different deeper, fundamental law, with life- forbidding sets of constants, laws, and initial conditions?

1.3. A Multiverse

Perhaps we live in a multiverse: a set of parallel universes with differing laws, constants, and initial conditions. If so, then it’s not improbable, even given atheism, that at least one of those universes would permit life. And surely if one universe permits life, then we’ll exist in that universe. [14]

One reply: The existence of a multiverse doesn’t raise the probability that this universe (that we’re in right now) would permit life, so it doesn’t really help explain why we would live in such a universe. [15] Think back to the Sharpshooter Analogy: Even if you knew that all over the world, there were many other firing squads shooting at prisoners at the same time, you should still be surprised that you survived. So, the existence of a multiverse doesn’t make it any more likely that our universe would permit life, given atheism.

2. The Probability of Our Universe, Given Theism

The second sort of challenge argues that it’s not really very likely that God would have created a life-permitting universe like ours. Maybe there’s no reason for an omnipotent God to create fragile creatures like us: why not create disembodied minds, and not worry about whether the universe’s constants, laws, and initial conditions permitted physical life? [16]

One reply: perhaps there is something particularly good about the existence of embodied moral agents, who can affect each other’s lives and well-being in predictable ways. Perhaps only physical beings can be seriously harmed and so their acts of free-will are morally significant. [17]

3. Conclusion

There is widespread debate about whether the facts of fine-tuning are evidence for theism. But if the evidence from fine-tuning is a strong as proponents of the argument say it is, then only very powerful evidence against the existence of God could outweigh it.

[1] Collins 2012: §2.3.2.

[2] Ibid ., §2.2.

[3] Ibid ., §2.4.

[4] Cf. Collins (2012: § 7.4).

[5] Collins 2012: § 5.2.

[6] Swinburne (2004: 168-169).

[7] This is an example of a Design Argument for the existence of God. For a general discussion of such arguments, see Thomas Metcalf’s “ Design Arguments for the Existence of God .”

[8] For two of the most-important recent presentations, see Collins (2012) and Swinburne (2004: 172 ff .).

[9] Here I set aside the ‘no probability’ objection (cf. McGrew et al. 2001), according to which we cannot meaningfully assign probabilities when there is only one example (one universe), or when there are infinitely many possible variations between strengths of constants and forces. My reply is that we’re discussing epistemic probabilities, which report the degree to which a person is justified in believing or expecting something. Collins (2012: § 3.1).

[10] See, e.g., Leslie (1989: Ch. 6) and Collins (2012: § 6.1).

[11] Ibid .

[12] Cf. Collins (2012: § 7.2).

[14] Cf. Landsman (2015).

[15] See e.g. White (2000: 271). See also Metcalf (2018) for a more-detailed criticism of the Multiverse Objection.

[16] For example, Philipse (2012: 157) questions both why God would want to create any other minds at all, and why he would want to create physically embodied minds. Here, compare Dougherty and Poston (2008), which examines the interesting relationship between the Fine-Tuning Argument and other design arguments. Metcalf (2018: § VI) considers this objection and argues that it doesn’t seriously threaten the Fine-Tuning Argument.

[17] For this reply, see Collins (2012: § 5.2). See also Swinburne (2004: 99 ff.) for discussion of the value of these embodied moral-agents.

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.

Dougherty, Trent and Poston, Ted. “ A User’s Guide to Design Arguments. ” Religious Studies 44 (2008): 99-110.

Hacking, Ian. An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Landsman, Klaas. “The Fine-Tuning Argument: Exploring the Improbability of Our Existence.” In Landsman, Klaas and van Wolde, Ellen (eds.), The Challenge of Chance: A Multidisciplinary Approach for Science and the Humanities (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2016), 111-130.

Leslie, John. Universes . Oxon, UK and New York, NY: Routledge.

McGrew, Timothy, McGrew, Lydia, and Vestrup, Eric. “ Probabilities and the Fine-Tuning Argument: A Skeptical View .” Mind 110 (2001): 1027-38.

Metcalf, Thomas. “ Fine-Tuning the Multiverse .” Faith and Philosophy 35 (January 2018): 3-32.

Metcalf, Thomas. “ Design Arguments for the Existence of God .” 1000 Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. (February 28, 2018).

Philipse, Herman. God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God , 2 nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

White, Roger. “ Fine-Tuning and Multiple Universes .” Noûs 34 (2000): 260–76.

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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. Website: http://shc.academia.edu/ThomasMetcalf

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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.

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."

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.] What's Related Beyond Edge By Hardcover Conversations at Edge TOP CATEGORIES AS and A Level University Degree International Baccalaureate Uncategorised 5 Star Essays Study Tools Study Guides Meet the Team Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics) Existence of God Examine the design argument for the existence of God. (a) Examine the design argument for the existence of God. In this essay, I will be focusing on the different variations of the design argument, as expressed by Paley, as well as the version expressed by Hume, through Cleanthes, and its modern version in the form of the Anthropic Principle. I will describe the ideas of design ‘qua regularity’ and design ‘qua order’; explaining what each means. I will also attempt to deconstruct the design argument and identify both its strengths and weaknesses, though this will form part (b) of my essay. I will then draw my own conclusion in response to the design argument.  The design argument is also known as the teleological argument.  This argument attempts to prove the existence of God, using analogy. The teleological argument is that of an a posteriori  nature, as its basic form comes from the idea that we can deduce knowledge from what we know or have sense of, in this case, the existence of the universe. Even before the Greek philosophers, people have presumed that the natural order of the universe – and the way in which it works, i.e.the changing season, the intricacy of an eyeball, the complexity of the human brain – serves as evidence of a designer (who is often asserted to be God). The design argument has been expressed in two ways – ‘design qua regularity ’, and ‘design qua purpose ’. Firstly, we will focus on design qua regularity. This aspect looks at design in relation to the order and regularity in the universe. Philosophers who support the argument would believe that it is evident that there is some sort of order in the universe - for example, the rotation of the planets – and that it cannot have occurred by random chance. This therefore suggests existence of a creator: God. St. Thomas Aquinas  argues from design qua regularity in the fifth of his five ways, identifying that the way in which ‘natural bodies’ act in a regular fashion provides the evidence for the existence of a creator: ‘…there must be some intelligent being who directs all things to the purpose for which they exist. This being we call god.’  The other part of the argument – design qua purpose – looks at the evidence of design in relation to the complexity of everything in the universe and that things work because they have a purpose. This is used as evidence for a designer (God), as a purpose would imply that something or someone has given an object that purpose. I will begin by outlining William Paley’s version of the design argument. Paley   puts forward the most famous form of the design argument, using analogy . Paley presented the following situation; in order to consolidate his argument: ‘…In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that for any thing I knew to the contrary it had lain there forever…But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before give, that for any thing I knew the watch might have always been there…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…’ . The first part of Paley’s argument is design qua purpose – and is to show that there must be a purpose. Paley’s analogy attempts to compare the universe to a watch; and states that the watch is so complex – it has parts that all work together and it itself works and is in motion (much like the universe) and because the watch is so complex and is in motion; it is logical to ask who or what created this machine; and we can presume that there was a designer – or shall we say, a watchmaker. Paley used the idea that   like effects have like causes, and therefore came to the conclusion that the universe had a universe-maker – asserted, by Paley, to be God. But Paley also mentions a stone – and that questioning where the stone came from is different – as the stone has no complexity, does not change, is not in constant motion, and seems to have no purpose; therefore, it is acceptable to presume that the stone had existed forever. This is a preview of the whole essay The second part of the argument for the existence of God is design qua regularity – Paley used evidence from astronomy and Newton’s laws of motion and gravity to prove that there is design in the universe. The universal laws, such as gravity and the rotation of the planets, were for Paley, evidence that the universe had not been an accident; as they provide the universe with order and regulation. Paley argues that this order and regulation is so complex that the universe can’t have come about by chance; and that it implies a universe-maker in the same way that the watch had a watch-maker. This universe-maker can be called God. Consider this diagram.         I will now rehearse the design argument as expressed by David Hume , through Cleanthes, using analogy. Hume follows Plato’s method and writes in the form of a debate between two main characters: Cleanthes and Philo. Cleanthes is used to put forward the argument; and Philo is then used to put forward the critique and demonstrate that Cleanthes is wrong.         Hume’s argument is simply based from analogy and relies heavily on a posteriori deductions – assumptions that we are able to make using our knowledge of the universe and the way things work now. However, because Hume’s argument has no initial evidence to prove or disprove his theories and beliefs; it is obviously very easy to pick flaws within it. These flaws are identified by the character Philo (as mentioned above) and will be described further in part (b) of the essay. Hume, or rather, Cleanthes , basically argued that we can observe material things in our world – for example, houses, paintings and machines – created by humans; and that these things have the common features of order and being produced by intelligent design. It is natural to conclude that orderly things are produced by intelligence. We know from scientific evidence that the universe is complex; and we know through our own experience that the universe exhibits the same kind of complex order that houses, paintings and machines do. Therefore; we can presume that the universe was produced by intelligent design (intelligence) also – which encourages us to believe in a creator – and this creator is asserted to be God. The teleological argument has recently been developed and from this recent development we are now aware of the theory of the Anthropic  Principle. The Anthropic Principle  is basically an argument which states that the chances of the universe existing – and existing in the way that it does (i.e. with human life) – are so remote, that there must have been a design built into the universe in order for this production to take place; in other words: ‘The Universe seems like a put up job.’  The Anthropic Principle claims that if there had been a minute change in the values of the strong nuclear force, or perhaps the charge of an electron – any life form would have been unlikely to develop. In its simplest form; the Anthropic Principle opposes the idea that there is any chain of coincidences that led to the evolution of human life; and again, because of the complexity of our life, and the infinitesimal chances of the universe and our planet evolving as it has done, believers in the Anthropic Principle would conclude that this serves as evidence that a creator has been at work – and that this creator is/was God. As aforementioned, the Anthropic Principle was developed by F. R. Tennant. Tennant believed that there were three types of evidence supporting the idea of a designer (God) (which he deduced from his knowledge of the world now  as opposed to factual evidence of events which occurred then ). These are: The fact that the world can be analysed in a rational manner The way in which the inorganic world has provided the basic necessities required to sustain life The progress of evolution towards the emergence of intelligent human life Basically, Tennant argues that because life is as it is – because we can see it for what it is and because we can survive in our universe as it is – there must have been a creator of this life and of the universe. ‘The fact is, we are here, and here by the grace of some pretty felicitous arrangements. Our existence cannot of itself explain these arrangements. One could shrug the matter aside with the comment that we are certainly very lucky that the universe just happens to possess the necessary conditions for life is flourish, but that this is a meaningless quirk of fate. Again, it is a question of personal judgement.’ Tennant also used the idea of aesthetic  appreciation to further consolidate his argument. He stated that humans have the ability to appreciate the beauty of our world – and things such as art, music and literature – and this aesthetic appreciation is not a necessity. Tennant argues that it is not vital to regard things as beautiful and certainly not necessary for evolutionary survival, and yet, humans do – so there must have been a ‘divine creator’ of the universe, who determined that humans would have specific attributes in addiction to those required for basic survival. Although Tennant regarded his argument as valid, it was not particularly appreciated by people at that time. It was the developments in cosmology, theoretical physics and pure mathematics, which urged philosophers – such as Richard Swinburne – to re-examine it.         Swinburne argues, using probability , that it is much more likely for the universe to have been created through design as opposed to having been created by random chance. Swinburne again reiterated that the complexity and the order of the universe support the theory that there must have been some form of design: and he concludes that this design’s simplest explanation is that of God.         In conclusion, I have discovered the design argument is built up of many points and has been varied several times, however, each of the variations seem very similar – and all come down to the same one point: that the universe is so very complex that there must have been a creator – however, as the argument is basically based around probability, it seems easy to argue against it and/or disprove such a theory. These critiques, along with any strengths of the argument, will form part (b) of my essay. (b) What are the strengths of the design argument? Comment on some of the criticisms raised against the design argument. After describing the Design Argument, and the Anthropic Principle, I now intend to focus on the strengths of the argument, and then I will comment on the criticisms of the argument, as put forward by various philosophers. I will consider various points of view and not hesitate to incorporate some of my own ideas. I will begin by considering the strengths of the argument. We know that the design argument is an a posteriori argument (using evidence of the world now to create theories of past activity) and therefore the evidence provided is obvious to humankind – as we can witness it and understand it and deduce things from it. This is a strong point, I think, as we know that the world does exist and we know that our world is complex. The argument is strong in the way that it uses analogy to consolidate the basic idea – we can witness the complexity of our own beings, or of different material things – and can easily connect this back to the idea of our universe – observing the possible likenesses between the two. The argument itself does follow an order, and initially the argument seems valid – and the argument involving the analogy of a watch is thorough and easy to comprehend. In fact, Immanuel Kant has described the argument as the oldest, clearest and most reasonable argument for the existence of God, even though he himself found it unconvincing. Even science cannot be used to disprove the design argument – in fact; it can be used to support it. There is nothing to say that the process of evolution is not the way in which God decided to create his design. However, there are many arguments against the design argument as well as arguments against the anthropic principle. I will begin by examining and commenting on the flaws and criticisms of the design argument. To begin with, the whole idea of the design argument and its basis mainly on probability weakens the argument. It is probable  that there was a God – this is because of the order and complexity of the universe. However, probability does not serve as substantial evidence for a God. The universe could in fact be the result of a committee of Gods, if you will: the comparison of the world to a building supports this idea – many buildings are designed by one person, and yet, constructed by many others. Paley used analogy to make comparisons between a watch and the universe. However, this analogy may not appear valid – how can two things of perhaps different laws and time be compared in such a way? And even though the analogy stands, we can still not presume that the same laws or laws of our space and time can be applied to it: just because the watch had a creator, it does not necessarily follow that the universe had a creator. We cannot make assumptions using our knowledge, as we have no knowledge of anything before our existence. David Hume  specifically emerged as a major opponent of the design argument, and found several flaws with Paley’s version. Hume argued that: We do not have sufficient knowledge of the creation of the universe to conclude that there was only one creator; and humans only have the experience of what it is for humans to create, not what it is for a creator to create or what it is to create the universe If the human experience of design was valid, the design argument would be valid, but prove that the universe had a designer, not that the designer was the God of Classical Theism. It cannot be believed that the Theistic God created the universe because there is the problem of evil The very existence of evil in the universe would therefore suggest a designer who is not the omnipotent, omniscient and/or omnipresent God With regards to the analogy put forward by Paley: if we are going to use the analogy of a manufactured object (the watch) then this would suggest many creators (many Gods) as opposed to one creator (one God) as it is more usual for a machine to be designed and created by many hands The analogy of the watch is weak and, the universe would be better compared to a vegetable – something that grows of its own accord as opposed to something made by hand that does not evolve erratically (leads back to problem of evil) So, if the design argument is to be considered as valid, then, Hume states, God cannot have the attributes he is given, he cannot be all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful, because of the problem of evil. Surely an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God would be able to prevent evil and suffering in the world – and though this maybe argued against with the idea that evil is in the world because we have free will, surely natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes would be prevented by a God who is all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful. In any case, if there was a God, Hume argues that he could not be the God of Theism or else there would not be evil in the universe. I will now comment on the criticisms of the Anthropic Principle. The basic criticism of the Anthropic Principle is concerning the basis of the argument – probability. I don’t think that the probability of something happening is evidence enough for a designer: although it is probable  that when I roll a dice, I will get a number less than 6, this is not a certainty – and I could well get a 6, although the chances are smaller than me getting a 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1. This may be argued against by the fact that the chances of the universe forming as it has done were infinitesimal; however, do we actually have the knowledge to predict that if the slightest thing had changed, the whole universe would be entirely different? Or that perhaps human life wouldn’t have evolved at all? If there was a God who created the world for us to appreciate things such as aesthetics, what were his  motives? What did he want of humans? What is the meaning of life? The truth is, the Anthropic Principle causes us to ask more questions: what sort of God created humankind? And there is no logical explanation as to why there was a single, personal, transcendent God with qualities such as being omnipotent, omniscient etc. To make that much of a presumption without justification cannot be valid – where is any evidence for such a being? In conclusion, I think both the Design Argument and the Anthropic Principle – although based upon probability rather than reality or evidence – can be understood and accepted by most philosophers and humans: the universe really is complex, and how is it so that our universe may have just fallen into place in such a precise way? It seems unlikely; and the universe now – in its current form – certainly points to the idea of a designer. However, whether this designer was/is God is another argument and personally I find the way in which Paley, for example, manages to jump from the idea of a designer to the idea of God rather illogical. How can there be a Theistic God when it is evident that we have suffering in the world? ... ‘This world, for all he knows, is very faulty and imperfect compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it.” Bibliography AS Design sheets –       Mr Hickman Philosophy of Religion for A Level        Anne Jordan, Neil Lockyer, Edwin Tate An Introduction To Philosophical Analysis (third edition) -       John Hospers Design Argument RIP -         A Critique of the Design Argument – Trevor Stone Argument for the Existence of God -   The Design Argument –       http://saif_w.tripod.com/explore/i4wm/02k.htm       http://www.aish.com/spirituality/philosophy/The_Design_Argument.asp   The Greek word teleos can be translated as ‘end’ or ‘purpose’.   Meaning ‘at the end’ – something that is known to be true through our own experience of it.   The Christian theologian and philosopher (1225-1274) who put forward his ‘Five Ways’ to prove the existence of God.   St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica   (1743-1805) A British philosopher-theologian. Paley was an apologist – meaning that he tried to demonstrate from human reason that Christianity (and the existence of God) was true.   Arguing by analogy is to argue that since things are alike in some ways, they will probably be alike in others also.   William Paley, Natural Theology   (supposing that our arrows mean creator of)   (1711-1776) regarded as Britain’s greatest philosopher   Meaning to be linked to the science and study of mankind.   First developed by F. R. Tennant (1866-1957) and followed by philosophers (i.e. Swinburne) and cosmologists (i.e. Davies). ‘Anthropos’ is a Greek word, translating as ‘man’ in the generic sense.   Sir Fred Hoyle, cosmologist   Bullet points taken from Philosophy of Religion: Anne Jordan, Neil Lockyer, Edwin Tate, p 77   The Mind of God, Paul Davies, Penguin, 1993, p 204   Having an appreciation of beauty  the extent to which something is probable; the likelihood of something happening or being the case   deconstructed the design argument in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)   not meaning to give God a gender (not meaning he  as male)   (in response to Paley’s Design Argument). David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1779 Document Details Word Count 3498 Page Count 7 Subject Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics) Related Essays Examine the design argument for the existence of god. Featured Essay The Love of God An essay by Sam Storms Read Now Faithfulness of God Saving Grace Adoption by God Most Popular Gender Identity Trusting God The Holiness of God See All Essays Best Commentaries Featured Essay Resurrection of Jesus An essay by Benjamin Shaw Read Now Death of Christ Resurrection of Jesus Church and State Sovereignty of God Faith and Works The Carson Center The Keller Center New City Catechism Publications Read the Bible TGC Pastors U.S. Edition Arts & Culture Bible & Theology Christian Living Current Events Faith & Work As In Heaven Gospelbound Post-Christianity? The Carson Center Podcast TGC Podcast You're Not Crazy Churches Planting Churches Help Me Teach The Bible Word Of The Week Upcoming Events Past Conference Media Foundation Documents Regional Chapters Church Directory Global Resourcing Donate to TGC To All The World The world is a confusing place right now. We believe that faithful proclamation of the gospel is what our hostile and disoriented world needs. Do you believe that too? Help TGC bring biblical wisdom to the confusing issues across the world by making a gift to our international work. 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. Further Reading James N. Anderson, “Can We Prove the Existence of God?” The Gospel Coalition , April 16, 2012. Greg L. Bahnsen, “ The Crucial Concept of Self-Deception in Presuppositional Apologetics ,” Westminster Theological Journal 57 (1995): 1–32. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , Book I, Chapters 1-5. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland, eds, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). John M. Frame, Nature’s Case for God (Lexham Press, 2018). C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Fontana Books, 1955). Alvin Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief (Eerdmans, 2015). Cornelius Van Til, Why I Believe in God (Committee on Christian Education, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1966). Jerry L. Walls and Trent Dougherty, eds, Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God (Oxford University Press, 2018). Greg Welty, Why Is There Evil in the World (And So Much Of It)? (Christian Focus, 2018). This essay is part of the Concise Theology series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material. The Existence of God: Key Arguments Essay To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block As a source of information (ensure proper referencing) As a template for you assignment 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. Dao de Jing: Self-Improvement and Harmony The Work "Fear and Trembling" by Søren Kierkegaard Teleological Argument of William Paley Teleological Argument for God’s Existence According to Paley and Humes Critique “A Conversation with My Father” Story by Grace Paley Religions and Philosophical Currents The Views and Works of Dalai Lama and John Hick Postmodern Existentialism and Spirituality Augustine’s Spiritual Mentoring and Manichaeism Aspects of Religious Exclusivism Chicago (A-D) Chicago (N-B) IvyPanda. (2023, July 22). The Existence of God: Key Arguments. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-existence-of-god-key-arguments/ "The Existence of God: Key Arguments." IvyPanda , 22 July 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-existence-of-god-key-arguments/. IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Existence of God: Key Arguments'. 22 July. IvyPanda . 2023. "The Existence of God: Key Arguments." July 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-existence-of-god-key-arguments/. 1. IvyPanda . "The Existence of God: Key Arguments." July 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-existence-of-god-key-arguments/. Bibliography IvyPanda . "The Existence of God: Key Arguments." July 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-existence-of-god-key-arguments/. lauren's A level religious studies revision all of my A level revision for the religious studies 2016 OCR spec x the existence of god: arguments from observation introductory thoughts people have always tried to prove beyond doubt that god exists, but is it possible? the Vatican claimed it could be done through reason , but provided no proof of this. the fundamental problem is that god is not human or in the universe. we cannot compare him to anything, and we cannot say what proof we are even looking for. when we ask if god is real, we don’t know what we’re asking nor how to answer it. you can try and find this through reason, ontologically , or through the world. the same way you can tell things about an artist or author in their work, you should be able to tell about god through the world, his creation. this can be done teleologically , through design and order in the world, or cosmologically , through qualities of the universe like cause and effect .  teleological argument aquinas’ fifth way telos means a goal/end or purpose. aquinas follows this on from aristotle’s final cause . everything in nature has a purpose , and comes to it by a design . aquinas was concerned about what things are for, and that comes from the will of god. the most obvious problem is that maybe things do not all have a purpose, especially biologically . in evolution, things happen accidentally . maybe we see things as having purpose because this makes sense to us, we like reasons why . even if they do have a purpose, it may not be a good one. we have dock leaves to soothe nettle strings. but why have nettles? why would a perfect god create useless things? paley’s design argument this is most famous design argument . paley uses a mechanical model. he points to the complexity of the brain where so many cells work together. in the eye there are so many different pieces that work together in harmony . the wing , fin , seasons , and planets rotating are all also plausible examples. the order and harmony of all these things surely points to design. if you take a walk in the wild and find a rock, you can explain its existence: natural causes. instead, if you come across a watch, its intricate system would suggest someone made it, not natural causes or chance. it would be valid if you’d never seen a watch before, so it is different from rock. even if it is broken it is still obvious to deduce there is a watchmaker. it would be the same even if there were some parts we couldn’t explain the function of. however, there may have been a watchmaker who is no longer alive , or if he was helped etc. this only says there was a designer, nothing more . god could have designed the world and left or some other explanation. david hume’s criticisms these are most convincing criticisms of arguments like paley’s. it is important to note that he wrote these before paley wrote his theory but they are still applicable.  aptness of analogy the model used is very comparable with universe: many parts working together to achieve purpose . use a cabbage instead, it has a complex system of leaves that fit together and has a system of water and nutrients and suits our health. but we would not assume a cabbage maker. paley has already chosen his outcome by choosing the object that fits .  epicurean thesis the world has to fit together in order to continue existing. if it were chaos it would not be here. the epicurean thesis suggests this order does not need god because if we have infinite time, and a huge but finite number of particles, every possible combination would occur. at least one of these would be stable . our planet could be this one stable combination that happened randomly within that infinite time. use the example of a room full of monkeys at typewriters , smashing random letters down on to paper. if given infinite time, they would eventually write the combination of letters that makes up the bible or any famous novel. argument from effect to cause we cannot go from an effect to a thing greater than needed to produce the cause. if we have a set of scales and can only see one side, which is in the air, we assume the other side is heavier. we do not know by how much though, or what that thing that is heaver actually is . in the same way we cannot go from the evidence in this limited world to this idea of a transcendent god. we could be the work of an infant deity or a group of gods . we cannot be sure. other criticisms john stuart mill the amount of evil in the world points to a lack of creation. why create evil? if the world is flawed , the creator must be flawed too. a perfect god would only be able to create a perfect world , because perfection can only recreate perfection. natural evil was mill’s biggest issue: illness , plague , volcanoes , earthquakes . these are part of the design. i would not be a good shipbuilder if i built a leaky boat. it “leads to a god which is not more a source of good than a source of evil”. – Anthony Kenny darwin’s evolution theory the idea of natural selection disproves the creation for things as they are. they work perfectly because time, and many generations of survival of the fittest, led animal species and plants to develop a complex system that works perfectly. they were not made to fit in, they survive because they fit in. things do not survive if they do not adapt. if this is a design process, it is very wasteful and imperfect . modern design arguments (both arguably bad attempts) F.R. Tennant and the anthropic principle tennant argues that the world was made so perfectly for man to evolve and exist that it must have been planned. (seriously?) the chance of it being different so that we could not survive is incredibly large. but, the earth is a tiny dot within a vast universe, so the chances of this happening are increased. this principle seems to claim that our tiny dot is the reason the universe exists. where is the proof for design of the rest of the universe? if they do not have human inhabitants, or any inhabitants, are they purposeless ?  richard swinburne and simplicity this is the idea that so few elements exist yet the combinations are so vast and rich . swinburne argues that the simple explanation is that god planned it that way. this follows ockham’s razor , that the explanation with less hypothesis to prove is more likely to be true. just because it is more likely does not mean it IS true. there are many much more complex things in the universe like quantum theory. is god really a simple explanation? it is quite a claim. he does not fit any of our rules, how can he create them? aquinas’ cosmological argument the first three ways , or reasons for the existence of god, as written in Summa Theologica , are known as the cosmological argument. prime mover motion. things move and cannot move themselves , so they must be moved. this cannot go in infinite regress because there needs to be a first mover to have movement at all. this first mover must be god. first cause cause. things cannot cause themselves , they must be caused. cannot be in infinite regress because there needs to be a first cause . this must be god. ‘what caused god?’ makes no sense because the word god implies the lack of a cause. Hume said cause and effect does not exist because a cause is no longer a cause once the effect has happened and the effect is not an effect without a cause. cause in relation to god is not a scientific cause. he is a divine cause, but what is that if i have never experienced it, and can i claim it to be real just because it ‘makes sense’? if he is a new type of cause, we cannot understand it by any of our current means.  necessity and contingency everything in the universe could either exist or not. this means at one point nothing existed. something must be necessary to be the source of contingency . this is god. there is no reason for there to be a time when there was nothing . Bertrand Russell said you can’t speak of a necessary being because the word ‘ being’ implies contingency . this is a contradiction . appeal to imagination aquinas and others appeal to the problem of infinite regress. this idea that it would endlessly go back between cause and effect. they forget though, that just because we cannot imagine it being possible, does not mean is impossible. William Temple said ‘it is possible to imagine infinite regress, but not possible to conceive it’. it is logically possible. infinite does not contradict regress, the way that ‘square circle’ contradicts itself.  gottfried wilhelm leibniz and sufficient reason there must be a reason, because there is a reason for everything we have here. everything thing, event and truth has an explanation. there must be an external reason (cause) for everything here existing and it is god. a logical fallacy? there is a fallacy of composition here as argued by Russell and Hume. it is not true that just because something is true of its parts, it is true of the things as a whole. this does not follow through. we cannot go from the idea that because every human has a mother, the universe does too. just because we want an answer, doesn’t mean there is one.  is god really the end of the chain? the idea that ‘god did it’ raises more questions, it is not a satisfying answer. why? what for? why not something else? and because of the nature of god, we will never get answers. it is almost simpler to lack a creator or designer the problem of evil: why is there evil? this seems to undermine the christian god being the answer to the creation because an omnibenevolent god would not create a universe or even a world with evil. explanation: if no one can understand god, then no one can understand the explanation. is this really an explanation? explanations must be understood, and not be a mystery.  chance: we do not like a lack of an explanation. not knowing is hard. so we take an explanation that seems to fit.  leap to transcendent: too much of a leap from our world to something so much bigger than us. maybe we do not yet know, maybe they are an alien. cosmological argument strengths begins with things we can see no definitions that we must accept makes sense to most people that someone/thing started it science says the universe has a beginning cosmological argument weaknesses Russell: maybe the universe just is. shut up. maybe its always been here no logical issue with things existing without a cause hume said only analytic propositions can exist necessarily for revision what are the cosmological arguments? what are the design arguments? what is contingency? what is necessity? what is infinite regress? how does Paley develop his design argument? what is aquinas’ version of the cosmological argument? what are hume’s objections to causation? what are hume’s three reasons for rejecting design arguments? sample exam questions ‘there is no design in the universe’ discuss. to what extent is Aquinas’ first cause argument successful in proving that god exists? how true is it to say that only the existence of god would provide a sufficient explanation for the existence of the universe? ‘the universe is just there: it neither has nor needs an explanation.’ discuss. 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Subscribe Subscribed Copy shortlink Report this content View post in Reader Manage subscriptions Collapse this bar 201 IMAGES The Design Argument For The Existence Of God Essay Example ⇉Teleological Argument For The Existence Of God Essay Example What are the strengths of the design argument for the existence of God Paley’s Teleological Argument about the Existence of God Essay Example ⇉Argument for the Existence of God Essay Example The Design Argument for the Existence of God VIDEO How Math Proves the Existence of God Proving God's existence, a radical and NEW approach from Quran #03 Woman PROVES Jesus Is God using Mathematics! 🧮 Proving God's Existence: The Ontological Argument AtheistDebates Why The Design Argument For God Makes Sense #shortvideo #religion #inspiration COMMENTS Design Arguments for the Existence of God Design Arguments for the Existence of God Design Arguments for the Existence of God This essay introduces design arguments for the existence of God. 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: 2. The Argument from Design for the Existence of God One criterion in favor of the argument from design is its simplicity: Just taking a creator to exist can explain a wide range of different features of the world. The supporter of the "accidental existence" view, on the other hand, can point out that her view adheres to the advice of Ockham's Razor not to needlessly multiply entities. Aquinas's Five Proofs for the Existence of 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. Citation and Use "Aquinas's Five Proofs for the Existence ... The Design Argument for the Existence of God The Design Argument for the Existence of God DESIGN ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD Design arguments are popular and multi- conceptual arguments for the existence of God which, again, rely on complex features of the world to generate an inference for the existence of God or some intelligent creator/designer. Philosopher William Paley has a famous example about a watchmaker, and Philosopher Michael Behe has one about flagellum ... Design Arguments for the Existence of God Abstract. Design arguments are empirical arguments for God's existence. These arguments typically, though not always, proceed by identifying various empirical features of the world that constitute evidence of intelligent design and inferring God's existence as the best explanation for these features. Design Arguments for the Existence of God An "argument from design" for the existence of God is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, for an intelligent creator based on perceived evidence of deliberate design in the natural world ("Teleological Argument" 2019). Design arguments are popular and multi-conceptual arguments for the existence of God which, again, rely on complex features of the world to generate an ... Argument from design argument from design, Argument for the existence of God. According to one version, the universe as a whole is like a machine; machines have intelligent designers; like effects have like causes; therefore, the universe as a whole has an intelligent designer, which is God. The argument was propounded by medieval Christian thinkers, especially St ... 6.3 Cosmology and the Existence of God 6.3 Cosmology and the Existence of God 6.2.1 Teleological Arguments for the Existence of God 6.2.1 Teleological Arguments for the Existence of God Arguments for the existence of God Abstract. 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. Arguments for the Existence of God Introduction. 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 ... Anselm: Ontological Argument for God's Anselm: Ontological Argument for the God's Existence The Fine-Tuning Argument for the Existence of God This is the basic reasoning behind the Fine-Tuning Argument for God's existence.[7] We can summarize the argument as follows:[8] If God does not exist, then it was extremely unlikely that the universe would permit life. But if God exists, then it was very likely that the universe would permit life. Therefore, that the universe permits life is ... 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 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. The Design Argument for the Existence of God Essay The arguments attempt to prove God's existence from the meaning of the word God. The ontological argument was introduced by Anselm of Canterbury in his book Proslogion. Anselm's classical argument was based on two principals and the two most involved in this is St Anselm of Canterbury as previously mentioned and Rene Descartes. Examine the design argument for the existence of God I will also attempt to deconstruct the design argument and identify both its strengths and weaknesses, though this will form part (b) of my essay. I will then draw my own conclusion in response to the design argument. The design argument is also known as the teleological argument. This argument attempts to prove the existence of God, using analogy. The Existence of God The Existence of God The Existence of God: Key Arguments The Existence of God: Key Arguments Essay. 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 ... the existence of god: arguments from observation necessity and contingency. everything in the universe could either exist or not. this means at one point nothing existed. something must be necessary to be the source of contingency. this is god. there is no reason for there to be a time when there was nothing. Bertrand Russell said you can't speak of a necessary being because the word ... Arguments that Prove the Existence of God Platinga aimed to show that, by the possibility of certain concepts, God must exist. These two concepts are maximal excellence and maximal greatness. Maximal excellence, he argues, "entails omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection" (Plantinga, 1974: 108). That is, all the concepts one attributes to God. essay homework paper phd project resume review speech thesis