Existence of God and philosophical arguments

¶ … God Exist?

The question of whether or not God (or gods) exist is probably as old as the concept of divinity itself. The different ways of answering this question, however, developed over different periods of time. The three main ways of looking at this question are through revealed theology, natural theology, and the philosophy of religion. The first of these theories is the simplest to explain and understand, and possibly the oldest, making it a good place to start.

Of the three theories mentioned above, revealed theology is the most closely aligned with pure faith.

The basic tenet of revealed theology is that the existence of God can be proven only through special revelations such as the Bible and the Koran. Faith in the veracity of these texts -- or, more often, a particular text -- is central to the idea of reveled theology. Logic, on the other hand, is largely antithetical to the idea of revealed theology, as the texts are taken as the true word of God or his trusted emissaries at face value, and any probing of these texts would therefore be sacrilegious. According to this theory, God's word is proof of his existence.

Natural theology takes much different view of the subject. The term "natural" refers to the use of pure rationality -- man's "natural" resource of logical thought -- to determine the existence of God. No special revelations or any other evidence is considered by natural theology, but only the use of reason is applied to the question of God's existence. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, this route can provide more certain knowledge of God's existence, but it cannot provide the "saving knowledge" that the revealed theology of Christianity (and many other religions) promises. To him, then, the use of pure reason in the consideration of God was not fully adequate. For others, though, this rationality was even more widely applicable.

The philosophy of religion is very similar to natural theology in that it, too, relies solely on the human faculties of reason to determine and demonstrate its conclusions. Unlike natural theology and revealed theology, however, the philosophy of religion is not concerned only with the existence or non-existence of God, but with a wide range of other issues that religion raises and is connected to, such as life after death, ethics, and moral behavior. The application of rationality to these other areas of religion raises other philosophical questions as well.

One type of theory used by religious philosophers (or natural theologists) are cosmological arguments. These attempt to prove the existence of God by logically proving that the universe must have had a cause or "prime mover," and this cause, then, is God (or gods). Aristotle's three point sum up the groundwork for most cosmological arguments: 1) something cannot be the cause of itself; 2) something cannot come from nothing; and 3) there cannot be an infinite series of causes and effects. If these arguments are taken as true, cosmological arguments attest that the existence of God as causer, the something from which things come, and the beginner of all causes and effects. The problem with the cosmological argument is its explanation of where God came from, if he could nt have come from nothing.