Reason and Religious Belief

Answer

  Arguments in the Existence of God.

            According to Burger (2008) people have a desire to believe in something that has sufficient evidence. However, what they end up believing in goes beyond the existing evidence. Naturally, it is common to hold a religious belief without any proof. William (1897) ascertains that human view to life is usually guided by their passion or natural preference. This tends to guide most convictions that they hold towards events and entities. The argument on the existence of God is one of the most fascinating arguments that ever existed. There exist different versions of arguments namely the cosmological, ontological and teleological argument. This essay aims at evaluating the most justifiable argument on God’s existence.

            Saint Thomas (1274) who was a priest and philosopher had a very interesting approach towards existence of God. The first approach was about the motion of entities. He argues that things cannot move on their own and that the initial item to move must have had a mover. This simply depicts that there was an initial powerful unmoved mover called God. The other argument was on causation of things to exist. That things did not just happen out of chance but that a powerful being somewhere caused the existence of all things The other view would be the existence of necessary things and the contingency. This explains about existence of things that are dependent on others in order for them to exist. The final analogy is about perfection, that there was a powerful force that thought out a perfect picture of how everything should turn out to be, a God of perfection. (William 1897). For the law of nature to balance with the physical laws, then an intelligent being had to think this picture out and create seamless existence. The extremely intelligent being is God. This sums up the Cosmological argument of God’s existence.

            St. Anselm (1109) the arch-bishop of Canterbury was known to be the author behind the ontological arguments of God’s existence. This argument seeks to give a different perspective on whether God exists or not by giving factual reasons and not being abstract. There are several attempts that have been fronted to explain this argument. Anselm acknowledges that it is a great experience for him to the whole picture of God’s existence since everything existing must be investigated to understand how it came into being. Whether it is tiny insects, bacteria or even viruses. This can be done using experimental methods. This argument, is therefore very outstanding amongst other arguments as it sticks to get to the bottom of the matter and extracts the truth underlying the purported theory. However, crucial criticism comes from a monk ca of Marmoutier called Gaunilo. He asserts that Anselm’s works don’t explain how an entity that exists has to be pinned down on certain idea and make sure in doing so that the two correspond. Simply put, he says that everything has to be defined into existence, and this is deemed as an impossibility(MacKie,1955).

Paley’s argument on God’s existence reflects a Teleological Argument since it puts into consideration end purpose of supernaturally created features. It equally defines a form of Design Argument by deriving relevant facts to support God’s existence through definition of different creational designs and their coexistence. William Paley’ book on Natural Theology of Existence and Attributes of the Deity retrieved from Nature Appearances back in 1802 has brought out concepts on application of Natural Theology in philosophical arguments. He believed in true existence of a supernatural being by bringing out arguments on the fact that universe did not create its own self, a significant proof of a true existence of an intelligent designer. Equally, the universe itself reflects an intricate design basing on the position of the Earth from sun alongside the coexisting molecular structure of ice. Teleological arguments pose strong beliefs in true existence of God as a supernatural being, obvious enough to tell watches did not coincidentally coexist. There are a number of evidences that Paley bases on in his argument regarding God’s operational universe regulatory system. Every creation has properly been designed to fulfilling a fixed function like flower pollination by bees, existence of a symbiotic relationship in tickbirds and the fixed functional nature of human eye. Paley believes that there must have been a designing creator behind such ideologies. Design qua Regularity poses supportive claims since the Universe operates in accordance to a certain defined rules like the Keplar’s three laws regarding planetary motion and the Newton’s laws of motion which clearly points out to a co-existing mechanical universe.

            I my opinion, Cosmological argument offers credible explanation to the existence of God. It captures the fact that nothing happened by chance, that everything from our existence to everything occurring in our day today life was well thought by a being more powerful, more intelligent, extremely creative, more organized that anything else that ever existed and that this being was actually there in the very beginning. That this powerful entity is the author of mankind and everything in the universe, that he formed but was not formed, that he envisioned perfection and he, himself is perfect in his own rights. This argument is also the most believable because unlike the other arguments, it received least to minimal criticisms from other originators of existence arguments.

Short Response Question.

            There is a mounting response to the logical problem of evil that purports that god does not really exist Suffering and evil acts are on the rise in the world over and is seemingly posing a grave test to the faith in a God who is perfect. (Michael et al,2012). They argue that if God is really all-knowing, He would know about all the horrible things that are happening in the world over. Peterson (1998) argues that the stalemate is the question on why and how God can allow many bad things to happen to the people he claims to care about. He argues that if God was that powerful as claimed then he would be able to stop calamities and evil from happening or affecting the human race. He adds that if God is morally upright then he would surely get rid of the evil people who erode the goodness in the society. 

 These truths concerning suffering and evil in the world tend to go against what the theists paint as a loving caring perfect God, who prevents all evil from attacking his loved ones. This challenge to the Theism belief by the orthodox church has come to be known as the logical problem of evil (MacKie,1955).