The Mystery of God's Existence
The mystery of God's existence has been a crucial element of many religious studies and traditions. Who is God? What is God? Where is God? To effectively discuss the existence of God, it is necessary to illustrate the notion of faith. People of faith believe that God does exist, and that relationship with God gives meaning to their lives. Others who are skeptical point to God as an obsolete hope of an ignorant human race. People today live in a world distinguished by sophisticated technology in which modern science has been a strong agent in questioning the existence of God.
Although many cannot articulate their reasons for believing in the existence of God, their faith is nonetheless definite and true. An individual's faith in God is drawn through their personal experiences and the experiences of the community to which they belong. Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth century theologian, used his experiences of the world to develop his proofs of the existence of God. His five proofs, which depend on natural reason, include a belief that there ...
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.
The Question of God is divided into two parts. The first part, titled: “What Should We Believe” seeks to answer the first half of the questio...
Since the beginning of time, society has been plagued by questions stemming past the grasp of human understanding. In attempt to explain such bewilderment, mankind formed a principle belief regarding their presence as the workings of a more capable being, God. As time has progressed, distinguished and scholarly members of society have come forward with ideas regarding some distinct understanding into the complex subject that is god. To this day, students are taught theories that have managed to stand the test of time and interpretation, theories that are highly respected by the top scholars of this century. Throughout this paper, I will thoroughly outline, discuss, and analyze Paley’s argument on the existence of God. Paley’s use of earthly inferences to explain the existence of a higher being has been challenged by many, but his emphasis on purpose and goal-orientation is both well-conceived and logical.
Theology is an intentionally reflective endeavor. Every day we reflect upon the real, vital, and true experience of the benevolent God that exists. We as humans tend to be social beings, and being so we communicate our beliefs with one another in order to validate ourselves. Furthermore atheism has many forms, three of the most popular atheistic beliefs include: scientific atheism, humanistic atheism and the most popular one being protest atheism. Scientific atheism is the idea that science is the answer for everything and god is not existent. The humanistic approach states that society is self-sufficient; therefore God is not needed for survival. Therefore how could he exist? The position that I will argue in this paper is the pessimistic idea of protest atheism.
Truth, what is truth? This question itself has a thousand answers, no person can ever be sure of what truth is rather, truth can be justified, it can checked for reliability with strong evidences and logic. If the evidence proves to be accurate then it can be established that a certain answer is the truth. However, have we ever tried to think about what intrigues us to seek the truth? To think about a question and set foot firmly on the path of knowledge. Definitely it has! That was the very cause itself which is why this world has witnessed some of the greatest philosophers like Aristotle, Plato and Socrates etc. along with the school of thought. The ability to think and reason is one of the greatest ability humans have, it is what distinguishes us from the animals. It is what gives us free will, the ability to control our own outcomes. However, it is that ability to ‘think’ itself which has caused men to rebel with the myths and statements established about the unseen and natural forces since the beginning of time. It gave rise to questions such as: Do aliens exist? Is there a world of the unseen? Life after Death and the most popular question since the beginning of times, Does God exists? And the answer is ‘yes’. Here is how I will justify my stance.
He further elaborates the topic by speaking on the idea that God is a Necessary being who has no cause but He is the cause of everything and He is the one who sustained this universe. In conclusion of the chapter, Rachels stated that idea of the existence of God will always remain in the contemplations of religious people and arguments used in this chapter needs more convincing evidence to prove the existence of God in this Universe. The chapter commenced by the most thought-provoking argument that “Is it Reasonable to Believe in God?”. The author to explicit this argument gives the result of Gallop polls and the polls conducted by Pew research center, which indicates that the underdeveloped countries are more religious than the developed countries and specifically in United states only 56% of the people consider religion as the most important part of their lives. Furthermore, the author discussed that no one detects the God existence by ordinary means, however, some people can have the sensation that God is somewhere around them no matter if they cannot see, heard or touch Him.
Instinctually, humans know that there is a greater power in the universe. However, there are a few who doubt such instinct, citing that logically we cannot prove such an existence. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, wrote of five proofs for the existence of God. The Summa Theologica deals with pure concepts; these proofs rely on the world of experience - what one can see around themselves. In these proofs, God will logically be proven to exist through reason, despite the refutes against them.
The existence of God is quite controversial issue. God has different names in the world, and a lot of people, strongly believe in his existence. While, on the other hand, there are also people who don’t believe in his existence. In their discussion entitled “Does God Exist?” William Lane Craig, who is the supporter of the idea of existence of God, debates with Austin Dacey, who is an atheist, on the idea of existence of God. They provide the strong arguments and their debates are quite interesting, and innovative (not similar to those arguments, we usually read about in book). These are the fresh views on the question of existence and non-existence of God.
The role of faith has been debated among many theologians, scientists, and philosophers. It has been greatly discussed and depicted throughout history as whether faith is logical when it comes to religion or whether faith is completely absurd. In this essay, I will focus on the role of faith through the lenses of Christian philosophers Sorean Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich. Faith plays an important role in Kierkegaard and Tillich theology; I will critically examine their depiction of faith and compare and contrast their passages. Kiergarrd view of faith is that it is completely absurd where as Ti
existence to those who could not accept or believe God on faith alone. Aquinas’ first way
Lonegran states that being human means having an unlimited number of questions regarding life and the universe; in order to answer these questions many turn to religion. Religion has traditionally been a major force in humanity’s search for meaning. Religi...
This essay provides a conclusive look at the problems and contradictions underlying a belief in God and the observable traits of the world, specifically the Problem of Evil. The analysis will address the nature of God and the existence of evil in the world, as well as objections such as the "sorting" into heaven and hell objection, God's "mysterious ways" objection, the inscrutability of God objection, values presupposing pain objection, inherent contradictions in "God's freewill," and non-human objections. omnipotent. 2) Evil exists. 3)
In today’s modern western society, it has become increasingly popular to not identify with any religion, namely Christianity. The outlook that people have today on the existence of God and the role that He plays in our world has changed drastically since the Enlightenment Period. Many look solely to the concept of reason, or the phenomenon that allows human beings to use their senses to draw conclusions about the world around them, to try and understand the environment that they live in. However, there are some that look to faith, or the concept of believing in a higher power as the reason for our existence. Being that this is a fundamental issue for humanity, there have been many attempts to explain what role each concept plays. It is my belief that faith and reason are both needed to gain knowledge for three reasons: first, both concepts coexist with one another; second, each deals with separate realms of reality, and third, one without the other can lead to cases of extremism.
Being a devout Christian, Thomas Aquinas naturally believed in God, but he wanted to prove God's existence to those who could not accept things on faith alone. As a result he made five proofs, which he claims, prove the existence of God. With each proof there is always a beginning, a starting point, Aquinas claims it must be God that is the beginning of each. The first proof does not do complete justice to Aquinas’s claim that God exist, while the fifth proof could be used alone to prove Gods existence.
Thomas Aquinas was a teacher of the Dominican Order and he taught that most matters of The Divine can be proved by natural human reason, while “Others were strictly ‘of faith’ in that they could be grasped only through divine revelation.” This was a new view on the faith and reason argument contradictory to both Abelard with his belief that faith should be based on human reason, and the Bernard of Clairvaux who argued that one should only need faith.