Many religions have come and gone over the centuries and there have been countless theological and philosophical arguments and debates for such deities. Arugments over monotheism or polytheism, deities or no deities, and their possible stances by being benevolent, indifferent, or malevolent. I 'll be focusing on the arguments for a deity and their faults, why evil still exists, and Pascal 's Wager. The Cosmological Argument is one of the oldest defenses for a God. It rests on the assumption that everything that exists is caused to exist by something else, and that if everything that exists is caused to exist by something else then that "something" is God. When I first heard this I wondered why God was an exemption. Why did God not need a first cause for him to exist. Nagel explained, that if the God didn 't need a first cause and was instead self-caused, then why can 't the world or even the universe be self-caused? This is the major flaw in the Comoslogical Argument. The Ontological …show more content…
Pascal says that it would be better to believe in God and reap the maximum benefits like heaven, you go to hell for not believing, or if there is no God, you have lost nothing. He says that your inability to believe is the thing causing you to not believe in his wager or God, so you should just assimilate and slowly start to believe. I find it silly as it 's set up as if we know there is something out there, and that we have a choice. If you were to believe in God through this wager, would your belief be genuine just by wishing it, most likely not. You have to question the wager when you take into consideration how many deities there are, and which one would be right using this theory we would expand his matrix many times over. Then there is even the fact that your justification for choosing some beliefs over others is irrational when they are just as possible in the
belief is not to produce true belief. Instead theistic belief allows the believer to avoid
It is evident that McCloskey’s arguments in an attempt to disprove the existence of God lacks evidence. He disputes the existence of God based on a lack of undisputable evidence, but he provides no undisputable evidence to counter this existence. He dismisses the idea of a creator by theory of evolution. Although he may have a valid argument for evolution he still does not account for the start of the world. Everything must come from something. The cause cannot be unlimited, there was a cause that had to be free of all other causes, and this points us to creation.
Within William Rowe’s Chapter two of “The Cosmological Argument”, Rowe reconstructs Samuel Clark's Cosmological Argument by making explicit the way in which the Principle of Sufficient Reason, or PSR, operates in the argument as well as providing contradictions of two important criticisms from Rowe’s argument.
-Pascal’s wager was meant to show that while not believing in God will only have loss of some things, believing in God will allow you to gain everything.
When I was at school in Vermont, one of my teachers explained to me Pascal's Wager. According to this teacher, the philosopher and mathematician Pascal had tried to establish the costs and benefits of believing in God. He saw it in this way: you can either believe in God or not. If you do believe in God, and there is in fact no God, then you will perhaps have spent some extra energy unnecessarily abstaining from certain pleasures and wasting your Sunday mornings in Church, but overall you did not give up too much. And, it could be argued, you may have actually treated your fellow men more kindly then you would have otherwise. If, however, there is a God, and you believed in him, then you get eternal salvation.
The controversial topic involving the existence of God has been the pinnacle of endless discourse surrounding the concept of religion in the field of philosophy. However, two arguments proclaim themselves to be the “better” way of justifying the existence of God: The Cosmological Argument and the Mystical Argument. While both arguments attempt to enforce strict modus operandi of solidified reasoning, neither prove to be a better way of explaining the existence of God. The downfall of both these arguments rests on commitment of fallacies and lack of sufficient evidence, as a result sabotaging their validity in the field of philosophy and faith.
Pascal’s Wager was a major strength of his theory on God and Religion. The argument made in Pascal’s Wager is an example of apologetic philosophy. It was written and published in Pensées by the 17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Pascal’s Wager claims that all humans must bet their lives on whether God exists. He argues that rational people should seek to believe in God. If God does not exist the loss is minimal, but if God does exist there is an infinite gain, eternity in Heaven. It was a ground-breaking theory because it utilized probability theory and formal decision theory. Pascal’s Wager is applicable both to atheists and theists. While other philosophies may
Pascal’s wager is the name given to an argument that was present by Blaise Pascal who was a French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. Pascal had a strong belief for God’s existence. The argument hypothesizes and attempts to prove that there is more to be obtained from venturing on the existence of God rather than the rejection of the existence of God. Pascal’s wager states that man loses nothing in believing in God instead of reason through a game of chance. “You must either believe of not believe that God is – which will you do?” (Bailey, 99). Here, Pascal argues that reason and intellect cannot decide the question of whether God exists or not. Therefore, it makes logical sense to choose the option that would benefit us most even if it were considered to be right. Pascal states four options: one may live a religious and moral life and be rewarded by eternal happiness; one may live a pleasure – seeking life and be denied eternal happiness; one may live a holy live but there is actually no God or eternal life; and one may live a pleasure-seeking but it makes no difference because there is no God. The first of these options is the most important one because it represents the maximum gain and loss. If the turn out proves that there is no God, then the sheer risk of deciding against such a possibility warrants that we should take that option (99).
... it cannot be explained scientifically, as this would imply the existence of antecedent determining conditions. Because there are no prior determining conditions, the cause of the universe must be personal and uncaused, for how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect? Moreover, the cause must transcend both matter and time to create matter and time. Finally, in order to create the universe ex nihilo, this cause must be enormously powerful, if not omnipotent. One is warranted in concluding that therefore, God exists.
The Main Strengths of the Cosmological Argument There are many strengths within the Cosmological Argument which have proven theories and ways to prove the existence of God. Many of these strengths have come from such scholars as; Copleston, Aquinas and Leibniz, all of which have put together major points to prove the existence of a non-contingent being. One of the main strengths of the Cosmological Argument is from Aquinas way I that was about motion. This would be a posteriori argument because you need to gather evidence from the world around you.
...ople to come back to Church and to believe in God but not out of self-interest. In order for the argument to accomplish this it must first be rewritten. It needs to define its terms (i.e. the use of the word God), it should not be based on chance or self-interest but rather to make known to the person that it is quite possible that God exists, and finally, it should include a fifth outcome where a person believes in God out of self-interest and is eternally damned anyway for lack of faith, love and for selfishness. Pascal’s Wager calls to mind a famous quote by Albert Camus: “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.” Until Pascal’s argument is solid and fully developed, one should not adopt the argument as a mean for conversion, evangelization or lifestyle.
The teleological argument says a complex world such as ours could not exist without having an original designer such as God. Since this world is in existence, there must be a God. Pascal’s wager suggests that as humans we do not have the mental capacity to understand the existence of God and so believing in God is our safest bet. These arguments are also both referencing a specific God.
Modern debates over religion, more specifically God, focus primarily on whether or not sufficient evidence exists to either prove or disprove the existence of a God. Disbelievers such as biologist Richard Hawkins tend to point to the indisputable facts of evolution and the abundance of scientific evidence which seem to contradict many aspects of religion. Conversely, believers such as Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith describe the controversial aspects of science, and how the only possible solution to everything is a supreme being. However, mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal refused to make either type of argument; he believed that it was impossible to determine God’s existence for certainty through reason. Instead, he suggested that rational individuals should wager as though God does indeed exist, because doing so offers these individuals everything to gain, and nothing to lose. Unfortunately, Pascal’s Wager contains numerous fallacies, and in-depth analysis of each one of his arguments proves that Pascal’s Wager is incorrect.
the first cause. He did not have to be caused as he was always there.
Cosmology is the study of the structure of the universe, and cosmogony is about the origin of the universe. Egyptian cosmology is established on consistent scientific and philosophical principles of the universe as a whole. In viewing the astronomical system of the Egyptians the question as to just what interpretation was placed upon it as regards the actual mechanical structure of the universe cannot be avoided. The entirety of the Egyptian civilizations was built upon an inclusive and specific understanding of universal laws that express the order and intent of the divine. The Sun and the Nile dominated the Egyptian worldview predominantly. The idea of godhood was flexible. Kings and noblemen could become gods. Even the common people could