Traditional arguments for God's existence

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How about the evolutionary explination. That says that human kind evolved to believe in a god.

I never really liked any of these arguments, but I think Teleo is the crappiest. Though, oddly, I do like Teleo most, because it seems so laid-back and dreamy. I picture someone who uses that argument as lying down on the grass, looking up at the sky.
It's still crappy, though.

To the cosmological argument I would say this:
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Whatever caused the universe, if we can even think of it that way which is debatable, can only be proven to be equal to the universe not greater than the universe. Also, you can't prove from this argument that this equal and opposite cause of the universe is in anyway sentient, personal, or intelligent.

To the teleological argument I would say this:
The reason we see so much order and harmony in the universe is because we are looking at it in retrospect. We really have no idea how the natural laws and order we marvel at today came to exist. Their coming into existence could have been completely chaotic and random without any design or intent, but it would still look nice an tidy to us now in retrospect.

To the ontological argument I would say this:
Pegasus is the horse greater that which no horse can be imagined. It is greater to exist than not to exist. Thus, by definition, Pegasus exists.

To the moral argument I would say this:
People have an inner sense of right and wrong (although people may desensitize themselves or rationalize certain actions.) People, when hearing of an injustice (e.g. murder, adultery, etc), have a need for justice to be done. The source of this inner sense is due to our survival instincts that we have honed over countless generations.

In conclusion, I do believe in God, but none of these arguments do it for me. I think that God's existence is purposefully unprovable because it would be terribly problematic if we could attain belief in God via our own reasoning.

Since I don't buy any of these arguments, asking which one of these is "best" is like asking for the lesser of four evils.

Prove that everything in the universe has a "cause". And while you're at it, please define what you mean by "cause" because I don't buy that you can make this assumption. I have also yet to see a valid argument that says this cause is God and not something else.



Science has not found such a conclusion, nor is there evidence that points to the cause being God. You may as well give up science though and simply concede that you have no idea what the cause is, so you say "God did it". Believe me, I am very familiar with that crutch of an argument.



That's mere sophistry. The first sentence implies that God is the "greatest", and the second says that existence is greater than non existence, but there is no reason to assume that we are speaking of the same "greatness". The greatness used to describe God is an absolute that describes that nothing is greater than God, and the second "greatness" is a comparison between existence and non existence, and the use of these two words for "great" are simply not related.



Everybody has a different sense of right and wrong, and cannot be unified under one God. This assumption is also unsupported.

I don't know. These arguments are all pretty crappy.

I merely listed the categories with my own constructions so I wouldn't be breaking copyrights. I'm glad you proved I'm a poor writer, look up the arguments yourself if you are really interested. If not, be happy with yourself.

You are not a poor writer. The summaries you wrote were accurate. You cannot shrug off the objections we've made to these arguments, of which I am very familiar, by being self deprecating.

Last edited by spdjeanne on 25 Nov 2007, 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Disclaimer: It seems like you are being sarcastic in saying that his argument is convincing. If you were serious, disregard what I'm about to say.

It seems like you have a double standard on proof. You site your personal experience of God as proof of God's existence but turn around and suggest that a lack of personal experience cannot be proof of God's non-existence to someone else.

Lack of experience as proof is the same as Appeal to Ignorance.

So that is sarcasm? Ok, I can work with that. Thanks.

In my cosmology 'God' is something rather different, and hence nigh on impossible to disprove the existence of.

Take as a foundation the assumption that god is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient:

To be omnipresent there can be no part of the universe that is not God. If any thing is godless, God is not omnipresent.

To be omnipotent is to be capable of doing or becoming anything. The one thing that fits this criteria is an absolute nothingness (so absolute that the human mind cannot comprehend it. The very existence of a mind negates the nothingness). One way to look at this is to consider this nothingness to have infinite potential and ability. It could become anything.

To be omniscient one must have experienced everything, or have foreknowledge (be capable of imagining) everything. When the whole becomes every different person/animal/thing, it experiences everything that occurs to them. Every occurrence is the result of all that has happened previously, and is a kind of perfect memory/prescience, as if you could know the state of everything at one point in time, you could trace forward and back through the entirety of time, by following the mathematical laws of physics (assuming you had them all)

If you take the universe as a whole, removing from it the human perception of time, so that it contains all possible events and states that occur within that infinite time, including the absolute nothingness many consider the beginning, that is my God. It's very logical/mathematical and is really just some insanely complex fractal equation, but still has attributes like love/justice within that framework as absolute mathematical concepts..

All of these arguments for god's existence suck.

The burden of proof is on the those attempting to argue the existence and they lack any credible evidence. Sad...really!

well, after looking again at this, the title says "Traditional" not "Scientific". But of course, a scientific approach would be more convincing than a traditional one.

From my theology textbook:



Besides your wacky theology your statement doesn't make sense. Godless is a character trait of someone who doesn't believe in God. Also if you are trying to say "godless" is the lack of God's presence then your statement becomes a tautology.

I agree with your favoring of teleology.

The problem with this, for me, is that you can take the evidence both ways. You could say that people evolved to believe in God because there is a God to believe in. However, you could also say that people evolved to believe in God and therefore God is a product of the human mind.