The media often seem to portray those with faith in God as
people driven by wishful thinking, while atheists are heroes of reason and
independently minded. This belies the
essential rationality of belief in a creator of reality to which one relates
through faith, as opposed to one who denies the creation of reality and lives
in a fog of illusion. We all need support to live fully, whether it is food or
drink or air or God. Food, drink and air exist, so does God. A society that
denies the reality of God ultimately destroys itself.
So to me, as one who believes that, ultimately, peace on
earth cannot be realised without the peace of God, it is refreshing to find such
a programme being broadcast on a mainstream channel.
There are other classic proofs of the existence of God,
referred to as the cosmological, teleological and moral arguments (there are
additional proofs but these are enough for me!). I find these easier to understand and
more difficult to attack than the ontological argument, which seems to stand or
fall on whether a maximally great god is a coherent and rational concept. Few
would deny this. Even Dawkins seems to think that there is a small possibility
of God existing. This means he cannot be an atheist, but is by definition an agnostic.
The ontological argument took me a long time ‘to get my head
around’ but here it is in case you want to follow it:
/1/ A maximally great being, God, could, in principle, exist – one that is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.
/2/ A maximally great being is able to exist in all possible worlds or realities, otherwise it would not be maximally great. Note that all possible worlds would not include ones in which there were square circles or parents younger than their children. They all have to be feasible worlds.
/3/ The world we live in is one of those possible realities, therefore God exists.
The philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) accepted the soundness of the onotological argument. His agnosticism was driven by emotion arising from the problem of apparently unjustified or unnecessary suffering. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) , the French philosopher, developed the argument in relation to the Christian concept of God.
However, this criticism is invalid. A maximally great
unicorn is not an equivalent concept to a maximally great God. It lacks
coherence. For example, a unicorn could not be omnipresent, otherwise it would
not be a unicorn. By definition a unicorn would have to have finite dimensions
and a shape. It could not exist simultaneously everywhere even in one world and
still be a unicorn. Only parts of it would exist in any one place.
In future posts I will give the cosmological, teleological
and moral arguments. They can all be found on the web or in books but should
you wish to learn or revisit these arguments you may find it convenient to have them gathered on this blog
in concise form. And as one who has no training in, or even special aptitude
for, philosophy, I would welcome the challenge of explaining them.
For an academic exposition on the existence of God by W.L.Craig (a brillliant Christian philosopher who is also an expert on cosmology, quantum mechanics and elementary particle physics) listen to the podcasts on this website. The students ask searching questions, ones which you may ask yourself, and he attempts to deal with them.
