my evidence for a divine entity through philospohy...
Why I believe in God.
Here are a few reasons why I believe that there is a being outside of our own tangable perception that ultimately governs our existence. this is in reply to plornive's question about why I believe.
I will chose to employ cosmological and psychological arguments to support my belief. (note, I am not using the Bible)
I have included just some of my philosophical arguments for the existence of a transcendant, omnipotent being.
Here they are:
1) the argument of change.
The material world, as we know it, changes. Oak trees grow for example. When something comes to be in a certain state, like a mature tree, that ‘state’ cannot bring itself to being. For it only is when it comes to that point. Mature or older. It would not exist otherwise. If it does not exist , it cannot cause anything. We can deduce that it has the potential for maturity.
Nothing changes itself. Animal bodies are moved by will – something other than mere molecules. When it dies the molecules remain. But the animal no longer moves because the desire is no longer present to move it. No matter how many things there are in the series, each one needs something outside itself to actualize its potentiality for change.
The universe is the sum total of all these moving things, however many. The whole universe is in the process of change. We’ve seen that change requires an outside force. Therefore there is some force outside the universe, some real being transcendent to the universe.
This being is outside matter, space, and time. It is the unchanging source of change.
2) Efficient Causality
We notice that some things cause other things to be. A guitar resonates sound because someone is strumming it. When the strumming stops so does the sound. There must be something that all things that need a cause of being are dependent on.
3) Degrees of perfection
An intelligent being is better than an unintelligent one. A being able to give and receive love is better than one that cannot. Our way of being is better, richer, and fuller than that of a stone.
If the degree of perfection pertain to being and being is caused in finite creatures, then there must exist a ‘best’. A source and real standard of all the perfections that we recognize belong to us beings.
Perfection of all perfections is – a higher power.
4) intelligent design
The universe displays a staggering amount of intelligibility, both within the things we observe and in the way these things relate to others outside themselves. The way they exist and coexist displays an intricately beautiful order. Even chemical elements are ordered to combine with other elements in certain ways and under certain conditions.
Chance is simply not credible. For we can only understand chance only against a background of order. To say that something happened by chance implies that it didn’t turn out like we expected it to. But expectation is not possible without order. We cannot comprehend chance without order.
5) argument from contingency
If something exists, there must exist what it takes for that thing to exist.
The universe – the collection of beings in space and time – exist.
Therefore, there must exist what it takes for the universe to exist.
What it takes for the universe to exist cannot exist within the universe or be bound by space and time.
Therefore it must transcend space and time.
6) the world is an interacting whole
the world is a dynamic ordered system of many active components. Their natures are ordered to interact with each other in stable, reciprocal relationships which we call physical laws.
With such an intricately interconnected system, each component is defined by its relation to the whole.
If parts only make sense in the whole, and neither the whole or the part can explain it’s existence, then such a system as our world requires a unifying efficient cause to posit it in existence as a unified whole. An intelligent cause.
7) We have a conciousness
When we experience and witness the intelligibility and order of the universe, we are experiencing something intelligence can grasp. Intelligence is part of what we find in the world. But the universe itself is not intellectually aware. As great as the forces of nature are, they don’t know themselves. Yet we know them AND ourselves. The presence of intelligence amidst unconcious material process, and the conformity of those processes to the structure of conscious intelligence supports my previous proposal for DESIGN.
8) my argument for truth
Our limited minds can discover eternal truths about being.
Truth properly resides in a mind.
But the human mind is not eternal.
Therefore there must exist an eternal mind in which these truths reside.
9) the origin of the idea of God
This argument is made famous by Rene Descartes, FYI.
We have ideas of many things.
These ideas must arise either from us or things outside us.
One of these ideas is the idea of God – an infinite, all-perfect being.
This idea could not have been caused by ourselves because we are limited and imperfect, and NO EFFECT CAN BE GREATER THAN THE CAUSE.
Therefore the idea must have been caused by something outside us that has nothing less than the qualities contained in the idea of God.
But only God has those qualities.
Therefore he must be the cause of our idea of him. (I choose to use ‘he’ as a simple reference)
Therefore God exists.
One can argue that all we have to do is realize the degrees of perfection and just project the scale upwards and outwards to infinity. Bam! You have an idea of God originating from a finite mind. But realize this about my previous point about perfection. We can only know perfection if there is a standard in thought that makes that recognition possible. A STANDARD that is unchanging and independent of finite thought.
10) the moral argument
Real moral obligation is a fact. We are really, truly, objectively obligated to do good and avoid evil.
Either the atheistic view of reality is correct or the ‘religious’ one.
But the atheistic one is incompatible with there being moral obligation.
The religious view of reality seems to be probable.
Moral values or obligations themselves,- and not merely the belief in moral values – are OBJECTIVE facts.
Moral obligation can hardly be rooted in a material motion blind to purpose.
The most compatible view is one that sees real moral obligation as grounded in its creator, that sees moral obligation as rooted in the fact that we have been created with a purpose and for an end.
11) argument for aesthetic experience
There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (sp?)
There must be a God.
You either see this one or you don’t.
12) pascal’s wager
Some of my notable ‘others’ is religious experience, common consent, desire, argument for conscience.etc…
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