Religion and God are personal beliefs and depend upon whether individuals believe in the existence of God. Nils Rauhut asserts that belief in God should be accompanied by devotion “through prayer” “religious rituals” and readings of “the holy books like Bible or Koran” (Pg. 173). On the other hand, disbelief in God would be accompanied by the dismissal of religious activities and the acceptance of the idea that humans are “finite beings who live in a universe without ultimate meaning or purpose” (Pg. 173). This paper aims to analyze the arguments and facts which support the belief that God exists by exploring the premises on which the cosmological, design, and ontological arguments asserting the existence of God are based.
The cosmological argument for the existence of God is deduced by the logical statement that “If there is no God, then there can be no world” and since “the world exists, God exists” (Pg. 182). The author asserts the argument that God exists through the Big Bang theory and the important question that if the world started with the “Big Bang” then “What caused the Big Bang?” This question appears flawed because scientifically “the Big Bang cannot be caused by anything” yet is an accepted fact by modern physicians (Pg. 184). Since events cannot simply occur out of nowhere, it seems unlikely that magnanimous events like the Big Bang can just happen “by chance” and there ought to be suitable explanations and answers for such occurrences and those like “radioactive decay” where modern physics knows that the decay of uranium has occurred but not “when as individual molecule (atom) will lose its neutron” (Pg. 184).
The only way these natural occurrences can be explained is by “cosmological argument” “with reference to God”.
According to Design Arguments which is “one of the most popular theistic arguments” it becomes easy to reason the existence of God through the argument that since the earth has been intelligently designed with “plants and animals” as “carefully arranged and organized entities”, it is “most likely’ that they have been designed by “an intelligent designer” who “must have been present on earth” and “This intelligent designer is God” therefore “God exists” (Pg. 187). Additionally, “thinkers prefer intelligent design” theory due to the fossil records which have been found and are believed to be “incomplete” implying that “during the Cambrian era” “new species seem to have come into existence all of a sudden” which are believed to be “signs that a conscious designer was at work” (Pg. 194).
A third “intriguing and puzzling” argument to confirm God’s existence is the ontological argument which is based on the premise that individuals who doubt or do not believe in the existence of God involve themselves “in a contradiction” because God either exists or does not exist and “since the claim that God does not exist is self-contradictory and thus false, therefore God exists” (Pg. 195). The argument is based on the logic of negative claims according to which atheists do not know the “kind of being God is supposed to be”, hence they cannot claim that God does not exist (Pg. 195). For instance, if a person asserts that Goblins do not exist but have no idea of what Goblins are or look like, it is absurd that they can make a negative claim (Pg. 195). Thus, in order to make a claim that something does not exist, it is necessary to know the kind of creatures they are, and if people do not what God is, they cannot claim them not to exist (Pg. 195).
In conclusion, there are several claims and arguments to confirm the existence of God and enable atheists to take a particular stance. The cosmological argument asserts the existence on the premise that there can be no world without the existence of God since many of the occurrences of the world cannot be explained scientifically. On a similar note, the design argument is based on the premise that there is an intelligent design in the creation of the world and all things such as plants, animals, birds, etc., which implies that God as an intelligent being created the world. The third argument is slightly confusing and is based on the premise that those who do not believe in God cannot affirm that God does not exist since, in order to refute God’s existence, they should be aware of the “kind of being” God is. Whatever the premise and the argument, it should be noted that God has and continues to signal existence in this world through innumerable ways and humans must understand these signals and accept the fact that God Exists.
Works Cited
Rauhut, Nils CH. Ultimate Questions: Thinking About Philosophy. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson, 2007.