Existence Of God Essays (Examples)

God vs Evil Forces

There is a major problem in the question of the existence of God as well as the presence of the evil forces. If God is almighty, loving and omnipresent how could there be suffering and evil forces in this world? With all the power God has, He could eliminate each and every evil making the world a peaceful and a beautiful place to live for the people. This argument raises the question that whether God exists in reality or not? The God and the evil can, however, be reconciled; God with all his goodness has the potential to bring out the good in evil as well, but when He does not use his power to bring out the good from evil He definitely has a better plan in store for his people (Hofer, 2011). With the suffering in the world, God has inculcated in us the…

In most religious texts, "God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and all-good (righteous, loving, benevolent)" (Wolf 2011). According to this view, apart from being the source of all that is good, God has the ability to know and do everything -- including stamping out all evil. However, there still exists so much suffering and evil in the world. Calamities of every nature do occur occasionally leading to death, displacement and suffering of thousands of human beings. Further, human beings continue to suffer as a result of diseases, death and wars. If God is truly loving, why does he allow those he has created to experience pain, despair and other forms of suffering? Further, if God is all powerful, why does he not stop the occurrence of pain, despair or any kind of suffering from taking place? In general terms, how does evil and an all loving and powerful God coexist.…

Existence of God

The philosophical questions I will try to answer and why they are of particular interest to me. Opinions that ordinary people tend to have on the issue

The great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam profoundly influenced Western philosophy. In all of these religions, the existence of God is a central claim. For nearly a millennium from 500 S.D to about 1500 A.D., Western philosophy was the handmaiden of Christian theology. (Jordan, 567) During this period, the issue of existence of God seemed to be of paramount importance. Proofs were needed to convince infidels and beretics and to retain the faithful. In the more secular world since the enaissance, these arguments for the existence of God have been severely challenged.

The current essay will discuss the arguments for and against the existence of God. The author has in particular discussed the views of Bertrand ussell on…

If something happens, then it is a belief that somebody caused that thing to happen the way it did, and it is an effect of some kind of action. If then several actions take place one after the other, then the earlier/older happening caused the later event thus, "the first cause is the cause of all things and itself had no cause since it always existed." (Trigilio, and Brighenti 5). This is true as through the Holy Scriptures, an ordinary person cannot create life, but a Supreme Being is able, and through belief, I know this is God and He exists.

Thirdly, necessity is another factor that according to Aquinas as illustrated in Trigilio, and Brighenti, that reality is the divine fact and anything else's failure to exist has nothing to do with the existing of reality (5). Thus, the source of the causes is the purpose cause that makes…

Indeed, Russell does not say there is no God, he merely says he is not convinced the Christian God is the correct version of an absolute beginning and end. s a philosopher, Russell finds much to be convinced about the moral validity of Christ. but, if in Christ we have the epitome of morality and goodness, then are there not universals of quality that are imbedded in other great people: Buddha, Lao-Tse, etc. If Christ is the Church, why are Christ's principles not universally practiced?

For Copleston, though, the world cannot exist without a first cause, and although that first cause is unpredictable, only the existence of God makes sense of human's moral and religious experiences and drive for understanding. The idea of God is based not just on empirical proof -- but on results. Thus, one must have faith in order to believe; faith is individual and is not…

There is in this premise an implied idea that God's goodness and perfection constitute an obligation that he create and maintain a good and perfect world, or, to quote Mackie, that "good is opposed to evil in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can."

Mackie refers to this implied argument as a "quasi-logical rule."

The truth of this assumption, however, is not self-evident.

The other premise open to debate is also the weakest point of the overall argument: the premise that the suffering of animals is evil. It is tempting to categorize suffering as evil because it is unpleasant. This is essentially the argument that William owe makes in his essay "The Problem of Evil." owe claims that intense suffering is inherently evil regardless of the moral justifiability of its outcome.

But if an evil can exist as "evil" and still be…

6 Is there any comfort in these? None. There is no comfort in believing that one's existence -- joys and sufferings included -- is meaningless. If it were so, then there's no point in doing good rather than evil. If there is no immortality with God, then there is no Judgment and Hitler won't be any less of a saint than Mother Theresa. In a world without God, morality loses its value and we cannot condemn crime and war as evil or say that love and peace are good.6 Everything becomes subjective and we can do as we please. This leads to chaos, and there is no comfort in chaos. Further, if the Universe is doomed, then it doesn't matter whether the Big Bang and Evolution theories are true or not. It doesn't matter if we can make the earth more sustainable or to seek ways to cure cancer or…

Therefore, it becomes evident that Commander of these laws is definitely more powerful and more authoritative than the command itself. Moreover, moral commands are such that they have a link with the ultimate authority and these laws have to be obeyed anywhere and everywhere irrespective of what the circumstances are. The authority of these moral rules is superior to all the rules, regulations and authority of the human beings. Therefore, the authority of the one who has given these commands is superior to the combined authority of the human beings.

The argument of existence of moral laws gives the conclusion that a being exists whose authority is superior to the authority of any of the human beings and whose rules are superior to the rules that have been created by the authorities of this world.

As a whole these arguments have been very successful in proving that God exists, who…

According to French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, there is not much difference between an atheist and one that believes in God. The difference only becomes evident as the atheist would not be saved, if a God does presumably exist, while the believer would be saved, in spite of his sinful life.

Both Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had tried to bring arguments to support the existence of God, but their theories had not provided solid facts to prove that God does exist, but only that the two had different concepts of God.

Karl Marx had been certain that the concept of God had only been an invention of demoralized people so that all hope would not be lost. Marx had insisted that people would be saved if they abandoned their hope in God.

Friedrich Nietzsche had wanted to show people that God had been man's invention, and that the…

existence or non-existence of God forms a very central basis to the philosophies of some thinkers. This paper examines the philosophies of Descartes, Kant and Sartre in order to determine the significance and connection of belief in existence and non-existence of God with their respective philosophies.

DESCATES, KANT AND SATE

The existence of God, the necessity of assuming that God exists, or the non-existence of God play a crucial role in the philosophies of either of the thinkers, namely, Descartes, Kant and Sartre. The existence of God is central to the philosophies presented by Descartes in the sense that he can explain away the questions that do not have simple answers with the existence of God. As a result, he does not have to provide absolute logic for questions whose answers might be out of human grasp anyway; instead he focuses on the intangible proof to state that God does…

Existence of God Speech

Oh my God - Speech

Entry: be sure to have a quiet, sober audience before you begin.

Oh. My. God." By popular vote, the favorite exclamation of a dozens of different languages. One web site lists exactly one hundred and twelve translations, ranging from Old Irish ("Eala, min Hlaforde!") to Star Trek Klingon ("toH, HIvqa' Qun'a'wIj!")

(www.yamara.com).Ironically, religious proponents often view the phrase as sacrilegious -- "taking the Lord's name in vain," a Christian would say -- and as many atheists use the expression as theists.

The reason for this ubiquity is that religion is very much a part of culture. Man's experience is that the world, for all its diversity, often offers variations on a common theme, or permutations of common properties. As Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, "There is nothing new under the sun" (Holy Bible). There is a natural impulse, therefore, to look for some…

According to these arguments, God does not have a beginning in time, nor is he contingent. Therefore he is in a position to have created the universe.

The moral argument (Hick 28), in contrast to those above, focuses on the existence of human beings within contemporary society, and how morals are manifest in this society. According to this argument, the moral facts could only be as they are and in fact exist on the basis of God's presence. There are several moral arguments, two of which include the formal moral argument and Kant's moral argument.

The formal moral argument holds that morality is implicit in divinity. According to this argument, morality exists only because God exists. In other words, God created morality in the human heart. The basis for this lies in the fact that morality is prescriptive, giving guidance on how to live. Proponents of this argument then uses…

Existence of God

This report has the difficult task of trying to prove the existence of God. But there is a silver lining in this challenge -- we have ancient philosophy to help. By using the beliefs, works and philosophies of Saint Anselm and Descartes, this report will have the benefit of using ontological argument to assist in the task. The main idea of the paper is to prove that God exists by trying to use the opinions of the philosophers Saint Anselm and Descartes. Descartes has been credited with one of the most interesting but also one of the least understood arguments in regard to the existence of god. Fascination with his argument comes from the fact that his effort to prove God's existence was a very simple premise. Saint Anselm's goals was to prove the existence of God with logical and philosphical understanding which in modern times has…

convince my audience that God exists

Although God cannot be seen, heard or touched in a real sense, he exists as a real entity.

There is something that we use every single second of our lives which we cannot see, hear or touch.

This is something that drives our life force, and allows us to live.

ithout it, we would die a painful death within a matter of minutes!

Every living creature on this planet requires it to continue its existence

This thing that I am talking about is oxygen!

Until the 18th century, no one knew what oxygen was, nor could they define it. Yet we still use it in every single breathe that we take.

ithout the use of scientific instrumentation we cannot see, hear or touch oxygen yet we all assume that it exists nonetheless.

The average person cannot hear, see, or touch God and yet fully…

Is it possible that four or five billion people could be mistaken when it comes to believing in the existence of God?

For the most part, organized religion was created by human beings who found it necessary to construct a belief system in order to control human society and the actions of men upon the Earth. ut if the atheist is correct, then all organized religion and their related principles and tenets are nothing more than devices for the control of man and his mind. Some may say, "If God does not exist, then what is the point of existence?" The answer to this question is very difficult to answer, yet it appears that man, due to the influence of organized religion, has been conditioned since ancient times to fear death and the consequences of his actions if they go against the laws and codes of God. To sum up,…

Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

The simplest definition of the cosmological argument for the existence of God is that the cosmological argument is "the argument that the existence of the world or universe is strong evidence for the existence of a God who created it." The difference between the Ontological Argument and the Cosmological Argument is that the latter proceeds a posteriori, starting from a very simple, causal affirmation.

The Cosmological Argument is made up of a reasonably simple syllogism. According to this syllogism, everything that exists has a cause of existence. The universe exists, hence, the universe has a cause of its existence. If that is true, then that cause is God. Hence, God exists.

However, there may arise the question on whether God himself has a cause of his existence. If he did, then the cosmological argument is not enough to prove that God exists, because…

Aquinas 'prove' the existence of God? Are you satisfied with his arguments?

In the theory of philosophy Aquinas five arguments for the existence of God builds the ground for the existence of upcoming theories. However, due to emerging logical, ethical and philosophical theories more and updated research is coming forward. In relation to the basics of existence of God Aquinas very simply combines the existence of God with the cognitive ability of human being to understand, realize and make judgments about the presence of usual things happening around (Suto). hereas, Aquinas following theism and being a priest as well can be biased in his arguments about existence of God, there can be perspectives such as atheism and agnosticism continuously targeting the perspective of theism. Moreover, all of the perspectives have their own concepts and tends to build arguments themselves.

Aquinas gave five arguments as a proof for existence of God.…

Anselm argumentation is known as the a priori proof for the existence of God or the ontological argument. In his work "Proslogion," chapters 2 and 3, "That God Really Exists" and "That God Cannot be Thought Not to Exist," are the key to the entire Anselmian philosophy on the existence of God. He uses a reduction ad absurdum argumentation to prove God's existence.

Indeed, he starts from the concept of "a being than which no greater can be conceived"

In his work, he says, referring to God, that we believe He is "something greater than which cannot be thought"

Further more, this something greater than can be conceived may exist in someone's thought, but, on the other hand, it cannot exist only in one's thought, but also in reality ("certainly that greater than which cannot be understood cannot exist only in thought, for if it exists only in thought it…

Classical Ontological Argument: Anselm

The Christian philosopher Anselm's argument for the existence of God, often called the classical ontological argument, is that given that God is defined as a being that by definition is the greatest thing imaginable ("which nothing greater can be conceived") therefore God must exist since to conceive of a being greater than God is impossible; if someone conceived of something greater than that being would be God (Anselm 292). If it is impossible that God cannot be "conceived not to exist" and if a mind could conceive something to exist greater than the Creator, that mind would "rise above the Creator," which Anselm regards as "absurd" and therefore only a "fool" says that God does not exist (Anselm 292).

However, this argument seems to be tautological by defining God as a being greater than anything that can be conceived and therefore purporting the existence of God…

God Exist?

The Case for God's Existence

Anselm

Thomas Aquinas

Other Arguments

The Case Against the Existence of God

My Assessment

Many people go to churches, mosques, and synagogs each week to worship God and to pray. ut does God hear those prayers? Does he exist? The debate over God's existence has gone on for centuries and is alive and well in our time. Philosophers, theologians, scientists, and ordinary people have weighed in on the argument. Theologians such as Aquinas and Anselm argued for the existence of God in the Middle Ages, but even in that time, others disputed their contentions. Even some who believe in God argue that proving God's existence through logic, science, or reasoning is impossible because even hard evidence has nothing more than faith behind it. Are the people who worship God wasting their time then? Does God impact their lives? That question can be difficult…

1. Using the language of possible worlds, explain what it means to say that ‘p is consistent with q.’
The idea that p is consistent with q is a logical premise that supposes there is a world in which p and q can both be true. This premise contrasts with the premise that p is contradictory of q, which states that if p is true, q must be false and there can be no possible world in which both are true and neither can there be one in which both are false. The idea here is that when p is consistent with q, the world in which such a premise could be true is one in which there may be a conjunctive proposition underlying the concept or there may simply be a nullification of the linguistic theory of necessary truth.
2. What is P.S.R. (The Principle of Sufficient Reason), and…

If it cannot be effectively proven that God does not exist, then God apparently does exist. In fact, the lack of proof for atheism can be used as direct proof in the existence of God. "It is much easier to be persuaded that ontological arguments are no good than it is to say exactly what is wrong with them," (Oppy).

The apparent manifest multiplicity of the universe is further proof of the necessity of God. "Abstract objects depend on God for their existence, and abstract objects exist in every world; therefore, God exists in every world," (Davidson). The crux of the necessary existence of God theory is that God is most certainly not a being that could have conceivably not existed. The fact that the thought of God exists illuminates the existence of God, and thus, the necessity of God.

Central to the theory of the necessity of God is…

The Cosmological Argument: This argument begins with the tenet that for the Universe to exist something outside the universe must have created it. Also refereed to as the First Cause or the Uncaused Cause theory, here God exists as the prime mover that brought the universe into existence. The universe is a series of events, which began with God who must exist apart from the universe, outside of time and space as well. (Martin) the detractors of this theory say that if everything has a creator than God must also have a creator and that perhaps an infinite series of creators and universes exist as well. Also if God is an uncaused cause than why could not the universe be one as well.

The Moral Argument: This is perhaps one of the most interesting arguments for the existence of God. Basically it states that since man perceives a moral law,…

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,…

Answer to an Atheist

e are mortals and cannot possible know the will of God. God does perform miracles in our lives, if we only stop to pay heed to them. If one takes a bunch of parts and random parts and pieces, gives them to a chimpanzee, and asks them to assemble a car from them, an Atheist would have one believe that eventually they would do it through random chance. There is another similar argument that if you placed 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters they would eventually come up with a Shakespeare play. Just as the Atheist argument claims that there is no proof that God exists because no on has ever seen him, there is also no proof that the monkeys will ever make a car or type Shakespeare. It has never been done and no one has ever proven that it will actually happen. At the…

Sartre rejected such Platonic idealism, and as an atheist who revered human thought, he also rejected the idea that human beings are like hammers. Humans are unique in their capacity, Sartre believed, for premeditated thought. But that thought must be developed, it is not something we are 'given' at birth -- we have the responsibility to craft that sense of autonomy with our own free will. "There is no given human nature common to everyone because there is no God to give it in the first place. Human beings exist, that much is clear, but it is only after they exist that some 'essence' that can be called 'human' may develop (Cline 2009). Sartre believed that human beings should develop this capacity for 'essence' or higher thought, but without existence there is no essence.

orks Cited

Cline, Austin. "Existence Precedes Essence." April 18, 2009.

http://atheism.about.com/od/existentialistthemes/a/existence.htm

God on Trial: Movie Analysis and Review

The Holocaust of orld ar II spawned many tragedies, one of which was the crisis of faith it precipitated amongst European Jews. The film God on Trial depicts the inhabitants of a concentration camp literally putting God on trial for his crimes against humanity as they wait to be "sorted out" into groups of who will live and who will die at Auschwitz. The film begins set in the present, where various tourists to the concentration camp are shown gawking at the premises. They can hardly believe the horror was once real and then slowly, there is a shift as the camera pans away to reveal a change of time and the viewer is taken back to orld ar II. The event is based upon an apocryphal incident in which the residents of Auschwitz were said to have staged such a mock court,…

God's Activity In Men's Lives

God's Active Role

How many people look for God's activity in their lives, and never come up with the evidence? Yet, in the lives of Mary Rowlandson, and Ben Franklin, they recognized the working of The Almighty in their every day circumstances. Maybe it was that they didn't look for God to prove himself to them, but they acknowledged that the Almighty God is always at work. Maybe it was their colonial upbringing which emphasized that God is active in the lives of his children which taught them to see the Hand of God in everyday situations.

What could be said with a measure of certainty is that these two did not have a pre-determined list of what they expected god to do for them. In the two readings, Ben Franklin recognized God's hands in protection and providential care throughout his lifetime which grew from…

God Given Rights:

Understanding America's Equality and Freedom

The poem "On Being Brought to America" by Phillis Wheatley and The Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson share similarities on the ideals that America possesses. Each of these writings argues for their God given rights, claiming every person is equal. Each must start new: One as a Christian, the others as a government. It is the bravery and the challenge in these writings that fascinate readers and help them understand America's growth process into the country it now proudly is.

Wheatley writes a poem discussing the introduction to both America and the Christian faith. The author feels as though she was brought to America out of kindness, and is thankful for the introduction to Christianity. She continues on to discuss the social factors, asking why her race is good enough for God, but not for the other Americans. When asking,…

The Implicate Order and Explicate Order can be compared to a piece of holographic film and the image it produces. The film corresponds to the enfolded, or hidden, Implicate Order. The image, or hologram, (what is humanly perceived) is the Explicate Order. Thus, the tangible "reality" of our everyday lives is a kind of holographic image being projected from the "film" or source -- the Implicate Order (Dunlap, 2000).

The flow of time is part of the dynamic process of enfolding and unfolding. "As the present unfolds and becomes part of the past, it does not cease to exist, but simply returns to the cosmic storehouse of the implicate" (Talbot, 1990, p. 200). The event we call death is another example of what he is saying. Death is not the end -- it is simply moving out of the Explicate and into the Implicate.

Bohm (1987) suggests that consciousness flows…

DESCARTES' BELIEVE IN GOD

Descartes Believe in God

Descartes' Believe in God

Science attempts to prove how God did or does things. The assessment is heavily disputed by archaic religious doctrines. The traditional conflict between science and religion is entirely based on the dominion and not what is right or wrong. Rene Descartes' belief in God is not based on atheistic principles, but on blasphemy as seen from the way he investigates God's functions. hilst examining Descartes' belief in the existence of God, it establishes that Descartes does not dispute the existence of God, but has a different opinion (parallel from the religion). A scientific argument proving Descartes' arguments and a reflection on his presumptions are provided.

Does Descartes believe in God?

As a philosopher and mathematician, Descartes dedicated his work entirely on writing and researching. His arguments combined humanism, science, and religion to arrive on the much-aggrandized assumptions of…

moral and not belief in God?

Humanity encompasses all aspects about exemplification of life and the utmost being. The origin of man is detrimental to the subsequent behaviours and codes of living among these human beings. In most cases, many researchers have shown that human existence is based on the origin and existence of God. God is regarded as a supreme being who gives and takes life. Nonetheless, human behaviour and character is dictated by what takes place in the multilingual conglomerates and thoughts within the human mind. In fact, humanity is obviously inexistent without the existence and intervention of God. Nonetheless, I support the opinion that believing in God changes human characters and behaviours. The impairment of morals and sensible approaches of handling life come with assurance of living in the presence of God. With God being an assurance to a moral sustenance of human life, one can be…

The material cause refers to that substance out of which a thing is constructed. The formal cause is the idea of the thing in the mind of the creator who sets about creating that particular thing. The efficient cause is the Agent - or the being that creates the thing. The final cause is the purpose for which the thing has been created.

Mere potentiality does not exist on its own, but enters into the creation of all things - except for the Supreme Cause. Mere potentiality thus stands at one pole of reality, while the Supreme Cause - or God - is at the other. oth of these entities are real. Materia prima contains the most attenuated reality, as it is pure indeterminateness. God, on the other hand, contains the highest, most complete reality, as God is on the highest level of determinateness. One of the central tasks of…

morality still exist if God did not exist?

Is something pious because it is loved by the gods -- or do the gods love all that is pious? This is the central question asked in Plato's dialogue the Euthyphro (Ross 2012). The dialogue revolves around a young man who has elected to bring charges against his father for killing a slave. To complicate matters still further, the slave was accused of murder himself before he was killed. The question is never answered in the dialogue, but this raises the question: if something is only moral because the gods approve of it, what if there is no God? Is there then no morality?

Socrates seems to suggest that morality is intrinsic to actions themselves, given his largely deflationary view of traditional myths of the Greek gods. This is one of the reasons that he was charged with impiety under Athenian law.…

reason, God and religion with reference to ancient philosophers. These philosophers gave us some interesting views on the subject of God, which may prove helpful in understanding the nature of good in a world where evil often dominates.

PHILOSOPHY

Socrates maintained that 'reason' must dominate every community and its beliefs or else the world would turn into a chaotic, poorly organized unit. He was of the view that with reason comes knowledge, which further helps the statesmen in acting virtuously. Virtue is then the most important product of reason, which is needed to save a society. Here it is important to keep in mind that Socrates wasn't concerned with reason for its own sake but because of the notion that it could give birth to knowledge and virtue. It is also critical to know that for Socrates, reason was not connected with an ability to separate right from wrong. Instead…

God Personal

Defining "Personal"

etween the belief that God is a person and the belief that God is personal which one is essential to Christian faith? My stand is that the belief that God is a person is a hindrance to Christian faith. Interestingly, some recent religious philosophy writers have however made the assumption that believing in God is believing in a person. Richard Swinburne is one such influential advocate of this concept. It is clear from his works that Richard Swinburne understands that God is like "a bodiless person, a spirit who can do anything, is all knowing, free, without fault, eternal and the creator of the universe.

That God is a person or personal is one of the fundamental claims believers have continuously made about God. God is represented like a person in Vishnu, Hinduism, rahma and Shiva. In the bible, the Old Testament, You can read about…

Admittedly, we do not know how it that anything (such as a physical universe) exists, let alone exactly how it came about that life came into existence. It is often suggested that there must be a God since it is impossible for anything to come into existence spontaneously through "self-creation" and equally impossible that anything existed forever in the past. Regardless of how elementary the very first particle of matter (or energy) and regardless how long ago it first emerged, it must have come from somewhere and through some process.

In the minds of many people, the only logical explanation for the existence of the universe and (especially) of life is that it must have been created by a God. However, there are serious logical problems with that belief. First, it necessarily relies on completely circular reasoning: either spontaneous existence from nothing is possible or it is impossible; it cannot…

Thomas Aquinas Argument on the Existence of God

Thomas Aquinas had an argument of the existence of God. Providing this argument in a logical way to parishioners in a homily or during an RCIA would be challenging but possible. Thomas has based his argument on five major elements that form the premises of the argument conclusion. The audience needs to be alerted on each of the premises leading to the decision made. There is motion in the world. This motion exists in terms of potential motion, which made to be a real motion by action. Action leads to the motion. There is no stagnation in the universe, which is a sign of things moving. God must be the mover, as no one understands it. The existence of God can be perceived from the efficiency perspective (Thomas & Regan, 2012).

Nothing can exist before the creator. God must be an initial…

High God

Christians, Muslims and Jews world over practice their belief that God is the Supreme Being, absolutely perfect, Who is responsible for creating all the things we have in today's world and for continuing to keep them in existence.

God has made everything that we have in the universe today; the list is infinite but it includes mankind, animals, plants, planets, etc. God keeps everything alive, if He were to stop giving life to all that exists today, everything would vanish faster than we could blink our eyes. Think about it, without God there could be nothing in this Universe.

In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). "In him were created all things" (Col. 1:16). "It is he who gives to all men life and breath and all things" (Acts 17:25).

Not a single nation doubts the existence of God because they have an…

"

Defenses against it may be equally inconclusive, but in their fertility they at least promise a solution some day.

Bibliography

dams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Belliotti, Raymond a. Roman Philosophy and the Good Life. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009.

DeRose, Keith. "Plantinga, Presumption, Possibility, and the Problem of Evil," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1991), 497-512.

Draper, Paul. "Probabilistic rguments from Evil," Religious Studies 28 (1992), 303-17.

Dueck, a.C. Between Jerusalem and thens: Ethical Perspectives on Culture, Religion, and Psychotherapy. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995.

Ferreira, M. Jamie. "Surrender and Paradox: Imagination in the Leap." In Kierkegaard Contra Contemporary Christendom, edited by Daniel W. Conway, 142-67. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Griffin, David Ray. God, Power, and Evil: Process Theodicy. Louisville: Westminster Press, 2004.

Hick, John. "The 'Vale of Soul-Making' Theodicy." In the Problem of Evil: Reader, edited by Mark…

Judaism and Christianity both have fairly common as well as totally contrasting religious concepts. In spite of the apparent differences and divisions it has to be understood that both these religions are like different streams of water merging in the ocean of god.

Christianity and Judaism are both religions of abrahamic origin. There are many similarities and differences between the two religions. Since Christianity originated from Judaism, it lends to the thought that both the religions are very closely related. However, in spite of their common origin, they differ considerably in some of the important issues while at the same time exhibit resemblance in many aspects. Even the monotheistic belief, which both these religions stand for, is quantified by entirely different perception of the attributes of godhead. Similarly, in the understanding of the messianic concept there is a significant contradiction giving us a hint of the vastly different nature of…

B-Theory, one need not fear death?

There is a common assumption that all atheists fear death, given that the atheist lacks the comfort of a world which exists after this one. However, according to Robin Le Poidevin's essay "Should the Atheist Fear Death?" this is not necessarily the case. First of all, Le Poidevin points out that not all theists believe in a concrete conception of the afterlife (643). Secondly, the question arises as to why we are so fearful of the "attenuation of the effects of our life after we die" and why we "fear being forgotten" (643). Le Poidevin implies that a theist conception of the universe is in part why we regard such an eventuality as an awful thing.

Over the course of his essay, Le Poidevin makes a contrast between what he calls the A-theory and B-theory of time. The A-theorist conceives of time as being…

Human Soul and the Existence of Life After Death

The presence of the human soul and the existence of life after death are questions that have plagued people for centuries, perhaps since the beginning of human life. Specifically, fear and concern over death of the physical and metaphysical permeate human life and culture. While there is no concrete proof of the existence of life after death, most people do believe in it as we are spiritual beings connected to something greater than the physical body and life. By altering our perception of death -- learning not to fear it and understanding it as a beginning, not an end -- we can alter our lives.

Almost all religions of the world have concerned themselves with the questions of life after death. While religious leaders, prophets of God, emphasized the concept of life after death, followers usually came to odds with this…

Lewis's The Message Of The Living God: His Glory, His People, His World

The first point that Peter Lewis makes in his book The Message of the Living God is that God does not speak to us on our own terms, the way that Woody Allen would want Him to speak.[footnoteRef:1] No, God speaks to us in His own language, though He uses our words: it is the language of spiritual love, expressed through ancient covenants described in the Old and New Testaments. It is a language that we must look for if we are desirous to know God. This is the thesis of Lewis's work -- and thus the book takes a foray into the Scriptures so that the reader might better understand the God Whom he seeks. Lewis connects this idea with that of Calvin, who also began his teaching from the basis of "knowing" God rather than…

Philosophy and Theology

Philosophy is the study of wisdom while theology is the study of God. Some of the earliest and best known classical philosophers are Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. They essentially laid the foundation for Western philosophy by examining such concepts as truth, goodness, virtue, and the meaning of life. Socrates made the claim that God and Truth are basically one and the same: in fact, for Socrates, God, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Virtue were all united and of the same essence (Plato, 2010). Theology, on the other hand, largely came into being in Middle Ages in the West thanks to Church Fathers like Augustine and Aquinas. Aquinas basically codified the science of theology in his Summa Theologica -- the Sum of Theology. This was the scholastic view of theology or of how the Medieval world thought of God: it was based on reason and on the philosophical tenets…

Armand Nicholi's The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life is a downright unusual book. It places in counterpoint the thought and writings of two men who never met, spoke, or engaged in any important way with each other's writings -- in fact they had little in common apart from both living in Great Britain at the same time for a period of about fourteen months. These men are the Oxford don, C.S. Lewis, an authority on Renaissance literature and a novelist and Christian polemicist, and the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, still famous as a doctor and theoretician who posited the existence of such concepts as the Oedipus complex, the unconscious, and polymorphous perversity. Freud never read a word that C.S. Lewis wrote, and while it is extremely unlikely that Lewis could have escaped exposure to the widely disseminated ideas of…

Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was summarily concerned with the compatibility of faith and reason. In The Summa Against the Gentiles (Summa Contra Gentiles) and the Summa of Theology in particular, Aquinas presents his arguments for the synthesis of faith and reason. Aquinas offers a rather ironic glimpse at the nature of reason, which is both capable of intellectual comprehension of God but simultaneously insufficient for understanding God. Thus, Aquinas argues that God can be ascertained and even logically proven via the use of reason, but that the experience of God is a transcendent, spiritual, and emotional one that requires faith. Faith also fulfills the goals of reason, which is truer and greater understanding of God. hereas faith fails to provide the means by which to perceive the mundane world, reason is unable to offer a genuine proof or understanding of God.

One of the ways Aquinas reconciles faith and reason is…

God

What is the image of God? This is an important theological question. Depending upon what a person believes the image of God to be, and man's relation to that image, the whole rest of that person's theological belief system will be affected and slanted by it. The Bible gives some good guidelines as to what the image of God is, and what man's relation to that image is. Noted theologian Henry Theissen discusses it in his lecture series, as well. This paper discusses the idea of the image of God and man's relation to that image using contemporary theological research.

The Bible tells us that man was created in the image of God. This seems pretty straightforward. On first reading, one might reasonably assume that man was created to look like God. This would mean that God looks like us. This is a very comforting thought for most people,…

Since this simplifies and organizes our experience of the world, it is wiser to accept the value of truth of this belief.

If Russell questioned the existence of matter, Aristotle was concerned with its nature. According to him, all the things which come into existence must come from a substratum (which is the very nature of matter). Nevertheless, should this underlying matter of the universe come from another, already-existing underlying matter, this judgement results self-contradictory. On the other hand, nothing can be generated ex-nihilo, therefore, it can only be concluded that in order to exist, matter needs to be possible. However, possibility can not exist in itself, but must be conceived as residing in something else. And here one could bring Spinoza's conceptions into discussion. In his opinion things can exist or in themselves or in something else. Since God is the only one who can exist through himself and…

God, and the ord was God. So reads the first verse of the book of John, just two in a handful of bible verses I was made to memorize and recite before I was able to read. These verses and the ones preceding and following them were read to me nightly -- and often in the mornings as well -- by my mother, grandmother and grandfather in our home in the small Southern Baptist community of Perry, Georgia. In addition to the bible, I was read bible stories in books with colorful illustrations meant to engage children. The illustrations helped me to associate meaning with the words on the page, while the words themselves struck me as just another way of painting a picture. hen I was asked to recite the verses or stories read to me, remembering the picture the words described often helped me to remember the requested…

DNA instructs the cell. DNA is a three-billion-lettered program telling the cell to act in a certain way" [what authorized and created that system, if not God?] and e) "e know God exists because he pursues us… constantly initiating / seeking for us to come to him… [and] keep the question of His existence constantly before us" (Morse, 2010, p. 2).

Meanwhile Oxford professor Anthony Flew argues against those who say that because of the big bang God is proven to exist. Did God cause the big bang, or was it just "popped" into existence, Flew asks. And why only two possibilities? Only a physicist can explain that, Flew asserts. Okay then, Flew explains that if God is truly "omnipotent and omniscient" and wants people to "behave in a certain way, why couldn't he accomplish this? If you were omnipotent wouldn't you expect results and expect people to do exactly…

She was struggling with a bag of dog food and I helped her get it in the car. She was surprised by my wanting to help her, but very appreciative. As I was bringing my cart back to the location for carts, I grabbed another that was taking up a parking space and I brought it with me to the cart location. I thought someone would want to park there and wouldn't be able to because of the cart.

While I walked on the sidewalk during the middle of the day I also saw a homeless man with a cup for money. I was going into Starbucks and I didn't have any change or cash on me and so I asked him if I could buy him something to eat or drink. He said that he would love a hot coffee and something sweet to eat. I bought him a…

existence of tastes among groups of people is essential to many fields, which include psychology, sociology, demography, politics, and marketing. Such studies allow us to establish mean tastes and preferences, whether we want to analyze a correlation in order to understand cognitive behavior better, or generate revenue models that will cater to the buying power of the greatest number of people. In this assignment, I will develop two studies that may be used to determine in one case the correlation between certain religious beliefs and mental instability and in another whether successful students prefer different beverages than unsuccessful ones.

Are certain types of religious beliefs associated with mental instability?

Freud first observed that many of his patients that suffered from various neuroses also maintained somewhat compulsive religious beliefs. However, a determination could be made between expressing obsessive behavior and applying it to religious matters and maintenance certain specific religious beliefs…

The scene is reminiscent of Egyptian burial chambers; the walls were covered with brilliantly painted images of deities in animal form, including Anubis, the jackal-headed god who weighed the soul of the dead. This second phase of the prophet's vision of Jerusalem illustrates a number of important points with respect to the state of religion in the capital city. The nation's leadership was actively engaged in the pursuit of evil. hen the integrity of the nation's leadership is lost, there is no hope for its people.. It is already clear from the first part of the prophet's vision that the worship of the temple had become sadly debased; a pagan altar had been set up in the temple's outer court. So why, with a public altar outside was there a secret worship of the other false gods inside? Probably, there were two forms of the false religion? The open altar…

God's Existence And Evil Existence

God's existence and the existence of evil

hen considering illiam Paley's Argument from Design, St. Thomas Aquinas's Cosmological Argument, and St. Anselm's Ontological Argument, one can only come to one conclusion. As superficial as this might seem for some believers, the conclusion is not that God exists. Sometimes it is better to be superficial, as this provides a person with the ability to see matters from a general perspective. Considering the complexity of things can lead to serious dilemmas, taking into account that as long as someone wants to believe that God exists, the respective individual can go through great efforts with the purpose to come up with a theory that can convince many to accept it. This is exactly what happened in the cases of Paley, Aquinas, and Anselm. These people devised ingenious theories that are hard to contradict by simply relating to the…

In fact, there is a sense here in which the will to do good deeds restores God to the universe as the fountainhead of morality, with the famous "categorical imperative" substituting for specific divine commandments. However, those who are not already convinced that moral truths are possible -- who are not already "morally certain" -- tend to find this argument circular (Palmer 259).

For the rest of us, it is a very different proposition to develop and defend a moral framework in the absence of religious certainty. e can simply reframe our notions of good and evil in terms of personal responsibility, as Kierkegaard does when he defines wrongdoing (sin) as the very absence of certainty itself. In this approach, human nature is split between conviction (or faith) on the one hand and anxiety on the other. "The anxiety of sinfulness manifests itself either as an anxiety about evil or…

It can be argued that they have no way of knowing the outcome of their reactions. And indeed, nor does Chris. What differentiates Chris from the rest of the crew is the love he feels for Rheya. Love in the end is the essential force that enables him to forgive both Rheya and himself, and in the end love both redeems and kills him. This dichotomy furthers the ineffability of both death and the god force symbolized by Solaris.

Chris chooses to remain on the doomed station rather than face further life without Rheya on earth. He has no way of knowing what the outcome will be and most likely believes that he will simply die. His "redemption" is therefore not based upon faith, but rather upon the love emotion. Emotion in this case takes the place of faith in redemptive force. Furthermore, his "afterlife" entails life with his love…

God:

Review of Karen Armstrong's "History of God"

The History of God" by Karen Armstrong reads more like a quest for God amongst the annals of Man's history. It relates the transition of the nature of God as perceived by His human subjects, catering to the ideological differences amongst followers of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. y highlighting the influences that led Armstrong to embark on this quest for illumination as well as providing a summary of the book, this paper endeavours to explore the central theme that the definition of God is subject to conventionality. It is continuously being modified, abandoned, revived and reiterated in accordance with Man's realistic and pragmatic challenges as opposed to philosophical reverie.

efore providing an analysis of the book's core theme, it is necessary to study the influences that drove Armstrong to write this book. Armstrong's interest in religion was cultivated at an early age,…

This may cause a rift between individuals, even if they are on the same side, so to speak. While one individual may follow a belief system wholeheartedly, another may only partially follow through with it, which raises the question as to whether or not someone must commit themselves one hundred percent or if they can take what they believe and implement the most important parts into their lives and beliefs.

One can see how wise each argument is. If an individual is going to claim that they believe in specific belief systems, it stands to reason that that individual would follow through with these beliefs in everything they do, even if they question some of those beliefs. Many would argue that if you fully believe, you should not question anything. Others take a more realistic point-of-view and understand that there will be many questions surrounding their belief system. Following most…

Problem of Evil

Natural Evil vs. Moral Evil

Natural evil is a term that embraces theodicy, in the sense that there are devastating earthquakes, and tornados, tsunamis, and hurricanes, and other terrible weather situations that harm people and communities (Philosophy of Religion). God created the planet and in doing so He never promised to always have fair weather with puffy white clouds and rays of sunshine every day. The planet is a natural world reality, and besides the frightening weather events, natural evil could also be seen in a child's birth defects, in a mother's breast cancer; one could argue that a woman got breast cancer from eating too much red meat or other foods that are not recommended, but nevertheless when she is stricken with this deadly disease, it can be considered a natural evil that has caused her pain -- and maybe taken her life as well.

On…