Many arguments have been given throughout history for the existence or non-existence of a supreme being (God), or in philosophical terms a Greatest Possible Being. Over time these have gradually coalesced into a small number of basic arguments that have been debated, with slight variation, over time.
Each argument assumes 4 basic ideas of what is required in order to be a Greatest Possible Being (GPB). It is generally accepted that, for something to be the Greatest Possible Being i.e. a being greater than which nothing else can be or can be imagined the 4 required qualifications are:
Omnipotent: The being must be all-powerful
Omniscient: The being must be all-knowing (or know all that is possible to know)
Omnibenevolent: All Good/Without Evil
Existent (A thing that exists is greater than a thing which does not exist!)
For each of the below arguments:
Write the argument in standard form (state premises and conclusion), and then
Label it as a deductive argument (seeking to establish that God logically must or must not exist), or an inductive argument (seeking to establish that it is likely that God does or does not exist).
(note: Feel free to look up more on these arguments to help you make sense of them)
Arguments:
1: The Cosmological Argument
The question of why anything at all exists is the most profound question of philosophy. The philosopher Derek Parfit says, “No question is more sublime than why there is a universe, why there is anything rather than nothing.” Typically atheists have answered this question by saying that the universe is just eternal and uncaused. But there are good reasons, both philosophically and scientifically, to think that the universe began to exist.
Philosophically, the idea of an infinite past seems absurd. Just think about it: If the universe never began to exist, that means that the number of past events in the history of the universe is infinite. But mathematicians recognize that the existence of an actually infinite number of things leads to self-contradictions. For example, what is infinity minus infinity? Well, mathematically you get self-contradictory answers. This shows that infinity is just an idea in your mind, not something that exists in reality
As Anthony Kenny of Oxford University urges, “A proponent of the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing.” But surely that doesn’t make sense. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So why does the universe exist, instead of just nothing, where did it come from?
There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being. Now as the cause of space and time, this being must be an uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial being of unfathomable power.
Moreover, it must be personal as well. Why? Because the cause must be beyond space and time, therefore it cannot be physical or material. Now there are only two kinds of things that fit that description: either an abstract object, like numbers, or else a personal mind. But abstract objects can’t cause anything. Therefore it follows that the cause of the universe is a transcendent, intelligent mind. Thus the cosmological argument gives us a personal creator of the universe.
2: Argument from Evil
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
-Epicurus
3: Teleological Argument
In recent decades scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the initial conditions of the Big Bang were fine tuned for the existence of intelligent life with a precision and delicacy that literally defied human comprehension. This fine tuning is of two sorts: first, when the laws of nature are expressed as mathematical equations, you find appearing in them certain constants like the gravitational constant. These constants are not determined by the laws of nature. The laws of nature are consistent with a wide range of values for these constants. Second, in addition to these constants there are certain arbitrary quantities put in as initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate. For example, the amount of entropy or the balance between matter and antimatter in the universe.
Now all of these constants and quantities fall into an extraordinarily narrow range of life-permitting values. Were these constants or quantities to be altered by less than a hair’s breath, the balance would be destroyed and life would not exist. To give just one example: The atomic weak force, if it were altered by as little as one part out of 10 to the 100th power would not have permitted a life-permitting universe
It therefore follows logically that the best explanation is design. Thus the teleological argument gives us an intelligent designer of the cosmos.
4: The Moral Argument
If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist. By objective moral values I mean moral values which are valid and binding whether we believe in them or not. Many theists and atheists agree that if God does not exist then moral values are not objective in this way.
Michael Ruse, a noted philosopher of science, explains, “The position of the modern evolutionist is that morality is a biological adaptation, no less than our hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when someone says, ‘love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is illusory.”
Like Professor Ruse, I just don’t see any reason to think that in the absence of God, the morality which has emerged among these imperfectly evolved primates we call Homo sapiens is objective, and here Mr. Hitchens seems to agree with me. He says moral values are just innate predispositions, ingrained into us by evolution. Such predispositions, he says, are inevitable for any animal endowed with social instincts.
On the atheistic view then an action like rape is not socially advantageous and so in the course of human development has become taboo, but that does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is really morally wrong. On the atheistic view there’s nothing really wrong with raping someone. But the problem is that objective values do exist and deep down we all know it.
In moral experience we apprehend a realm of objective moral goods and evils. Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren’t just socially unacceptable behavior, they’re moral abominations. Some things, at least, are really wrong. Similarly love, equality, and self-sacrifice are really good. But then it follows logically and necessarily that God exists.
5: Anti-Teleological Argument
Paley, who had the [] watchmaker theory of design [] which briefly suggests that if an aborigine is walking along a beach and finds a gold watch ticking, he knows not what it’s for, or where it came from, or who made it, but he knows it’s not a rock, he knows it’s not a vegetable, he knows it must have had a designer.
The Paley analogy held for most Christians for many years because they were willing to make the assumption that we were mechanisms and that, therefore, there must be a watchmaker. But now that it’s been [] rather painstakingly and elaborately demonstrated to the satisfaction of most people [] that we are not designed as creatures, but that we evolved by a rather laborious combination of random mutation and natural selection into the species that we are today.
It is, of course, open to the faithful to say that all this was, now that they come to know it, now that it becomes available to everybody, now that they think about it, and now that they’ve stopped opposing it or trying ban it, then they can say, “Ah, actually, on second thought the evolution was all part of the design.” Well, as you will recognize, ladies and gentlemen, there are some arguments I can’t be expected to refute or rebut because there’s no way around that argument. I mean, if everything, including evolution, which isn’t a design, is nonetheless part of a divine design than all the advantage goes to the person who’s willing to believe that. That cannot be disproved but it does seem to be a very poor, very weak argument because the test of a good argument is that it is falsifiable not that it’s unfalsifiable.
[] In other words everything can, in due time, if you have enough faith, be made to fit. And you too are all quite free to believe that a sentient creator deliberately, consciously put himselfa being, put himself or herself or itself to the trouble of going through huge epochs of birth and death of species over eons of time in which 99%in the course of which at least 99.9% of all species, all life forms, ever to have appeared on earth have become extinct, as we nearly did as a species ourselves.
I invite you to look up the very alarming and beautiful and brilliant account by the National Geographic’s coordinator of the genome project. [] there came a time, probably about 180,000 years ago, when, due to a terrible climatic event, probably in Indonesia, an appalling global warming crisis occurred and the estimate is that the number of humans in Africa went down to between forty and thirty thousand. This close, this closethink about fine tuningthis close to joining every other species that had gone extinct. And that’s our Exodus story is that somehow we don’t know how because it’s not written in any Scripture, it’s not told in any book, it’s not part of any superstitious narrative but somehow we escaped from Africa to cooler latitudes was made, but that’s how close it was.
You have to be able to imagine that all this mass extinction and death and randomness is the will of a being. You are absolutely free to believe that if you wish. And all of this should happen so that one very imperfect race of evolved primates should have the opportunity to become Christians or to turn up at this gym tonight that all of that was done with us in view.
It’s a curious kind of solipsism, it’s a curious kind of self-centeredness. I was always brought up to believe that Christians were modest and humble, they comported themselves with due humility [] there’s a certain arrogance to this assumption [] all of this extraordinary development was all about us and we were the intended and the desired result and everything else was in the discard.
The tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it [and then just to say] never mind at least we’re here and we can be people of faith. It doesn’t work for me, I have to simply say that and I think there may be questions of psychology involved in this as well. Believe it if you can, I can’t stop you.
6: Anselms Ontological Argument
[Even a] fool, when he hears of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality. – Anselm of Canterbury
