"If God does not exist to prove its existence is nonsense, but if God exists, prove its existence is a blasphemy."
Many arguments about the existence of God had been proposed by philosophers, theologians and other thinkers. This entry lists some of the most common arguments (pro and against), and in particular those falling in the area of \u200b\u200bphilosophy of religion, and using philosophical terminology, introduces the schools of thought on epistemology of the ontology of God
What is God? (Definition of the existence of God)
One way to establish the validity of any argument for the existence of God is to examine the characteristics of God that this amounts to asking "What is God?"
One approach to this problem, following the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, would be to extract a definition of "God" from the way in which this particular word is used. How we use the word "God" or "gods"? This line of reasoning immediately encounters problems when trying to write a universal notion of "God" as this word (and its equivalent in other languages) has been used in very different ways throughout the course of human history.
Today in the West, the word "God" typically refers to the concept of a monotheistic Supreme Being, a being that is unlike any other. A common definition in this tradition says that God possesses every possible perfection, including qualities such as omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect benevolence. However, this definition is not the only possiblile.
polytheistic religions use the word "god" for many things, that are all believed to exist. Some myths, like those of Homer and Ovid, portray these gods who argue, deceive and fight one another. The time period in which these conflicts occur (eg, the ten years of the Trojan war), means that none of these deities is omnipotent, nor particularly sympathetic.
According to Hindu metaphysics
In the Hindu context, the philosophy of the monist schools of Advaita Vedanta, the reality will ultimately be seen as an individual, without quality, immutable, eternally happy and complete, called Brahman (or Brahman nirguna, that is Brahman without attributes). Brahman Although immanent in the whole event, is seen as something that is beyond human understanding, because there can be no cognitive tools suited to understand the Brahman within any form of dual existence: the only way to understand Brahman, Brahman is to be rediscovered. What we ordinarily perceive, that a world composed of many aspects (from coarser to finer), is due to illusion, and it is difficult if not impossible to emancipate and develop the illusion nirguna Brahman. To make them accessible to man, the birth of the universe is manifested as Ishvara (or Saguna Brahman, or Brahman with attributes), ie the appearance personal God, the God with a personality and attributes, which shows her devotees in myriad forms. A Ishvara, in turn, are ascribed qualities such as omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence.
The problem of the supernatural
A problem immediately posed by the question of the existence of a god is that traditional beliefs often attribute to God the various supernatural powers. Supernatural beings may be able to hide or reveal themselves for their own purposes, such as in the story of Philemon and Baucis.
supernatural abilities of God are often offered to explain the inability of empirical methods to investigate their existence. In the philosophy of science Karl Popper, the assertion of the existence of a supernatural God is not a falsifiable hypothesis, liquids and closed scientific investigation.
Proponents of intelligent design believe that there is empirical evidence to suggest the existence of an intelligent creator, even if their claims are often disputed by the scientific community. Since intelligent design relies on a restricted set of topics related to the problem of fine tuning, which have not yet been resolved with natural explanations. The creator meant by intelligent design is equivalent to the negative connotation of God empty.
The logical positivists like Rudolph Carnap and AJ Ayer, see any discussion about the gods as a real nonsense. For the logical positivists and their members in similar schools of thought, religion or other statements about the transcendent experience may not have a truth value, and are considered as meaningless.
Epistemology
You can not say "know" something just because you believe. Knowledge is distinct from justification through faith.
Knowledge, in the sense of "understanding of a fact or truth" can be distinguished in a posteriori knowledge, based on experience or a deduction (see methodology), and a priori knowledge derived from introspection, from axioms or dall'autoevidenza. Knowledge can also be described as a psychological state, since strictly speaking there can never be a true a posteriori knowledge (see relativism). Much of the disagreement about the "evidence" of God's existence is due to differing viewpoints, not just the word "God", but also of "test", "truth" and "knowledge." Belief resulting from the revelation or illumination (satori), falls in the second type of knowledge, that a priori.
different conclusions about the existence of God is often based on different criteria in deciding which methods are appropriate for deciding whether something is true or not. Examples are:
logic counts as evidence regarding the quality of life?
subjective experience counts as evidence for objective reality?
can the logic or evidence to admit or exclude the supernatural?
Arguments for the existence of God
a dispute arose as to whether there are many proofs of the existence of God or if not all parts of a single test. While all of these tests should have the same conclusion, affirming the existence of God, but do not start from the same point. Thomas Aquinas calls viae with competence: Pathways to learning God's leading all on the same highway.
Arguments The metaphysical
metaphysical arguments for God's existence trying to show the logical necessity of a being with at least one attribute that only God can have.
The cosmological argument, which argues that God must exist at the start of things to be the "first cause".
the ontological argument, based on arguments about 'being such that, we can not conceive of anything greater. " The pantheistic
argument that defines God as All; similar to monism and panentheism cosmology.
empirical argument
Other arguments make use of definitions and axioms. For example, some of These arguments require only that assumes that there is a non-random universe able to support life. Among these are:
The teleological argument, which contends that the order and complexity of the universe show signs of a will (telos), and that must have been designed by an intelligent designer with properties that can have only one God.
The anthropic argument focuses on basic facts, such as our existence, to show God
The moral argument states that the objective morality exists and that God exists then
The transcendental argument for God's existence, which supports that logic, science, ethics and other things that we take seriously, make sense if there is no God therefore atheistic arguments must eventually refute themselves, if pressed with rigorous consistency. On the other hand there is also a transcendental argument of non-existence of God
inductive argument
The inductive arguments supporting their conclusions through inductive reasoning.
Another set of philosophers argues that the evidence of the existence of God have a fairly high probability, though not absolutely certain. A number of dark spots, they argue, is always there. In order to overcome these difficulties, or there is necessarily an act of will, a religious experience or discernment the misery of the world without God, so that eventually the heart to make a decision. This view is supported, among others, by the British statesman Arthur Balfour in his book The Foundations of Belief (1895). The views carried on this work were taken to France by Ferdinand Brunetière, editor of Revue des Deux Mondes. Many orthodox Protestants express themselves in the same way, such as Dr. E. Dennert, president of the Society Kepler, in his work Ist Gott tot?
subjective arguments
The arguments rely primarily on subjective experience or testimony of certain witnesses, or the propositions of a specific religion revealed.
The argument gives credibility to the testimonies of the witnesses personally, contemporary or historical. A variation is the claim of miracles, which relies on the testimonies of supernatural events to establish the existence of God or religious
The Christological argument is specific to religions such as Christianity, and argues for example that the life of Jesus, as written in the New Testament, establish credibility, and therefore we believe in the truth of his statements about God An example of this is the trilemma by CS Lewis in Mere Christianity.
The argument of the majority argues that people of all ages and in different places have believed in God, therefore it is unlikely that there is.
Arguments based on personal experience
The Scottish School led by Thomas Reid teaches that the fact of God's existence is accepted by us without knowledge of the reasons, but simply a natural impulse. That God exists, says this school is one of the fundamental metaphysical principles, we accept not because they are self-evident or because they can be proven, but because common sense obliges us to accept them.
The argument of a base that supports their faith in God is "properly basic", ie, similar to statements like "I see a chair" or "I feel pain." These beliefs are non-falsifiable and therefore can be neither proven nor disproven, these are perceptual beliefs or mental states indisputable.
In Germany, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi School taught that our reason is able to perceive the supersensible. Jacobi distinguished three faculties: sense, reason, and understanding. Just as the senses have an immediate perception of material things, the reason has a perception of the immaterial inmmediata while understanding brings these perceptions to our awareness and brings them together with each other. The existence of God, therefore, can not be proven - Jacobi, like Kant, rejected the absolute value of the principle of causality - it must be felt by the mind.
In his Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that when our understanding ponders the existence of God, he encounters nothing but contradictions. The impulses of our hearts, however, have more value than the understanding, and this clearly proclaims the truths of natural religion, or the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.
The same theory was supported in Germany by Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834), which took on a religious sense by which we feel internal religious truths. According to Schleiermacher, religion is only in this internal perception, and the doctrines dogmtiche are not essential [5].
Many modern Protestant theologians following in the footsteps of Schleiermacher, and teach that God's existence can not be proved, and the certainty of this truth comes only from our inner experience, feelings and perception.
The modern Christianity denies the provability of the existence of God According to this, we can know something of God only by vital immanence, namely that, under favorable circumstances, the need for divine sleeping in our subconscious becomes conscious and awakens the religious feeling or experience in which God reveals himself to us. In condemnation of this view, the Oath against modernism formulated by Pope Pius X said: "... natural Deum rationis lumine quae facta sunt, for and, hoc est for visibility creationis work, tanquam causam for certain effectus cognosco adeoque demostrari etiam posse, profiteor. "(" I declare that natural light of reason, God can certainly be known and therefore its existence can be demonstrated by things done or seen through the work of creation, because the case is known by its effects. ")
Arguments against the existence of God
Each of these topics is to show that some particular conceptions of God are inherently meaningless , inconsistent or contradictory scientific facts or historical note, and then described as a god does not exist.
empirical argument
The empirical arguments are based on empirical data to prove their conclusions.
"In the frame of scientific rationalism leads to a belief in the nonexistence of God, not because of some knowledge, but due to a scale decresente methods. At one extreme, we can confidently reject the personnel of the creationists on solid empirical basis: the science is sufficient to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that there has never been a flood and that the planetary sequence evolution of the universe does not follow any of the two versions of Genesis. However, the more we move toward a deistic God and inconsistently defined, more scientific rationalism digs in his box styling tools and shifts from empirical science to logical philosophy informed by science. Ultimately, the most convincing arguments against a deistic God are the words of Hume and Occam's razor. These are philosophical arguments, but are also the foundation of all knowledge, and therefore can not be dismissed as non-scientific. The reason why we put our trust in these two principles is because their application in the empirical sciences has led to spectacular successes over the last three centuries. "
The argument of inconsistent revelations denies the existence of the biblical deity called God Middle East as depicted in the scriptures, as the Jewish Tanakh, the Christian Bible or the Muslim Koran, identifying the contradictions between different scriptures, those within a single write, or contradictions between scripture and known facts.
The problem of evil (or theodicy) in general, and the evidential and logical arguments of evil in particular, deny the existence of a god who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolo, arguing that such a god would not allow the existence of evil or of perceived pain, which can easily be demonstrated to exist. This argument is also called moral argument: if God existed it would be non-moral point of view of human understanding, so useless as a reference. The argument does not relate closely to the existence of any god, so is also supported by theists and atheists as well as by other groups.
The argument of the insufficient design challenges the idea that God created life, based on the fact that life forms show little or malevolent design, which can be easily explained using evolution or naturalism.
The argument of unbelief denies the existence of an omnipotent God who wants humans to believe in him, arguing that such a god would do a better job of gathering believers. This argument is disputed by the claim that God wants to test people to see who has more faith. However, this assertion is rejected by the arguments related to the problem of evil.
deductive arguments
The deductive arguments try to prove their conclusions by deductive reasoning from true premises.
The paradox of omnipotence and other theological paradoxes, are one of the many arguments that contend that the definitions or descriptions of God are logically contradictory, and thus demonstrate its non-existence.
The argument of free will deny the existence of an omniscient God has free will, arguing that the two properties are contradictory.
The transcendental argument of non-existence of God denies the existence of an intelligent creator, demonstrating that such employees would be logical and moral, which is incompatible with the presuppositional statement that they are necessary, and contradicts the effectiveness of science. A more general line of argument based on the argument of transcendental non-existence of God, try to generalize this argument to all the necessary features of the universe and all concepts of god. The counter
cosmological argumentation (the chicken or the egg ") states that if the universe was created by God because he had to have a creator, then God, in turn, should have been created by another god, and so on. This attacks the premise that the universe is the "secondary cause" (After God, claimed to be the "first cause"). A common response to this is that God exists outside of time and the universe [8], and therefore does not require a cause. However, that statement ricondurrebbe to Occam's razor, making sure the case with the first empirical argument: the logical model causal pù would not be beneficial, depending on an item without cause, and then, more than in necessary. The non-cognitivism
theological, as used in the literature, usually seeks to disprove the concept of God shows that it is unverifiable and meaningless.
inductive argument
The inductive arguments supporting their conclusions through inductive reasoning.
The atheist-existentialist argument of non-existence of a sentient being perfect, says that since the existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a sentient being can not be complete or perfect. The issue is approached by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness. According to Sartre, God would pour-soi [a being in itself, a conscious being] which is also en-soi [a being in itself, a thing]: which is a contradiction in terms. This argument is echoed in the novel by Salman Rushdie, Grimus: "What is complete is also dead."
The argument of "no reason" tries to show that an omnipotent being perfect or has no reason to act in any way, including through the universe, why would not you want to, because the concept of desire and humans. Since the universe exists, there is a contradiction, and therefore, an omnipotent God can not exist. This argument is married to Scott Adams in his book God's Debris.
Conclusions The conclusions on the existence of God can be roughly divided into two camps: theistic and atheistic. Both fields can be further divided into two groups each, based on the belief that their position is or is not definitively proven by the arguments.
for atheism there is no necessary or sufficient grounds to affirm the existence of God or the existence of God is impossible from a logical point of view.
for agnosticism does not have or can not have an absolute answer to the problem of the existence of God
for theism, there are sufficient reasons to believe in the existence of God or gods.
Source: wikipedia.org
