Prompted by questions raised in the public arena concerning the validity of arguments for the existence of God based on “design” in the universe, I explore a traditional teleological argument for the existence of God. Using the arguments offered by Thomas Aquinas as fairly representative of this classical line of argumentation going back to Aristotle, I attempt to uncover the hidden premises and construct arguments for the existence of God which are deductive in nature. To justify (...) the premises of Aquinas’s argument, I begin by presenting an argument to justify the existence of “final causes,” with a focus on answering questions about the biological implications of these causes for evolutionary theory. Then, I attempt to construct two teleological proofs for the existence of God. Finally, I offer some implications of this reasoning for the contemporary disputes over ID/evolution in education. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of “psychological” argument for the existence of God of Viktor Nesmelov, professor of Kazan Theological Academy, represented in his fundamental work “Science of Man”. The main interpretations of this argument, formulated both contemporaries of Nesmelov ) and modern researchers of his legacy are considered. The basic prerequisites and origins of Nesmelov’s anthropological doctrine are analyzed. The main of them were V. Snegiryov’s psychological doctrine and anthropological ideas of St. Gregory of Nyssa. The (...) main ideas of Nesmelov’s Christian anthropology, related directly to his formulation of “the idea of God”, etc.) are revealed. Besides that, Nesmelov’s criticism of the main existing arguments for the existence of God is analyzed. The main conclusion based on the analysis of Nesmelov’s anthropological system is made: his argument for the existence of God represents rather a methodological program for creating such argument in the future. The base of this argument should be made of not only by an “ abstract knowledge”, but the “living worldview” and the “living unity of God and man”. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914 – 1969) and Georg Henrik von Wright (1916 – 2003) both attended a conference in England sometime in the spring of 1956, after which they corresponded on Anselm’s ontological argument. Prior had at the conference presented a formal treatment of the ontological argument. Based upon notes from the Prior archive at the Bodleian Library, and correspondence with von Wright, we here presents Prior’s and von Wrights’ discussion of Anselm’s argument in light of Prior’s published, as (...) well as unpublished writings on the ontological argument. Three versions of the ontological argument from Prior’s unpublished as well as published papers is presented: a non-modal, an argument from possible existence and finally a modal version. While Prior dismissed the first on the basis of a meta-theorem for proof in argumentation, the second on the basis of a fallacious commutation of operators, he argued that a valid version of the ontological argument can be proven from the distinctive S5 thesis of Lewis modal logic. While Prior gave reasons for a rejection of those distinct S5 thesis, in favour of Lewis S4 system, he also provided a novel argument in favour of accepting the S5 thesis for necessity and possibility. Finally we relate Prior’s work to Plantinga (1974) and consider objections raised by Oppy (2012) and Gale (2007) toward the modal versions of the ontological argument. (shrink)

Suhrawardī has presented arguments to support the existence of wājib al-wujūd in many of his works. One of the most fundamental of these arguments, which also has a forward-looking feature, is the one he presents in his books al-Talwīḥāt and Ḥikmah al-Ishrāq. To prove the existence of God, Suhrawardī devised three arguments in al-Talwīḥāt and one argument in Ḥikmah al-Ishrāq, all of which are interpretations of the ṣiddīqīn argument. In this article four of Suhrawardī’s arguments, three of them (...) in al-Talwīḥāt and one of them in Ḥikmah al-Ishrāq are reviewed. the main aim of this study is to analyze and explain Suhrawardī’s arguments, due to their importance in philosophy and theology, with the descriptive-analytical method and using library-based collecting data. The arguments presented in the al-Talwīḥāt are succinct, and what made these claims essential was the evaluation of their robustness and content. The significance of his first and third arguments in this book is that they do not require the denial of the vicious circle as a precondition, and by assuming the likelihood of both the vicious circle and infinite regress, the necessity of existence is demonstrated. On the other hand, his argument in Ḥikmah al-Ishrāq, which, like his second argument, is based on the refutation of the vicious circle and infinite regress, includes innovative features and should be investigated thoroughly. (shrink)

I. Immanuel Kant claims that the existence of God cannot be proved by speculative theology, yet that speculative theology is the only means by which the existence of God can definitively be proved. All knowledge, Kant argues, including that of God’s existence, must be based on the forms of possible experience or deduced from premises known to be true: in the case of the existence of God, however, the former is impossible because God transcends experience, (...) and the latter is impossible because the premises themselves, to be known to be true, would have to be grounded in possible experience, while, by the very nature of the question, possible experience has been excluded. Thus, the existence of God cannot be known in the usual sense, that is, by means of the theoretical employment of reason. (shrink)

An ancient argument attributed to the philosopher Carneades is presented that raises critical questions about the concept of an all-virtuous Divine being. The argument is based on the premises that virtue involves overcoming pains and dangers, and that only a being that can suffer or be destroyed is one for whom there are pains and dangers. The conclusion is that an all-virtuous Divine (perfect) being cannot exist. After presenting this argument, reconstructed from sources in Sextus Empiricus and Cicero, this (...) paper goes on to model it as a deductively valid sequence of reasoning. The paper also discusses whet her the premises are true. Questions about the possibility and value of proving and disproving the existence of God by logical reasoning are raised, as well as ethical questions about how the cardinal ethical virtues should be defined. (shrink)

Basing his argument for the existence of God on the continuous nature of the temporal world, Braine here posits that the philosophy of religion cannot be continued as a separate discipline: the solution of its problems will be the fruit of the correct telesis of the problems of general philosophy in their complex interrelationships.

I offer a new deductive formulation of the Moral Argument for the existence of God which shows how one might argue for the conclusion that, if one affirms moral realism (traditionally understood as a metaethical view which acknowledges the existence of objective moral truths), one should affirm theism. The new formulation shows that these objective moral truths are either brute facts, or they are metaphysically grounded in an impersonal entity, a non-divine personal entity, or a divine personal entity (...) i.e., God. I illustrate how the alternatives to God can in principle be excluded based on the essential characteristics of those alternative hypotheses and of certain objective moral truths. I demonstrate that my deductive formulation is better than other formulations, and that it is helpful for future work on the Moral Argument. (shrink)

The anticipated third book from New York Times bestselling author and respected Intelligent Design scholar Stephen C. Meyer makes a compelling argument for the existence of God based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology.

The global reality of suffering and death has always demanded an authentic theological response and impelled debate concerning Gods relationship to suffering, as well as the conceivability of the suffering of God. The scope and impact of this suffering in the last century have driven this debate to an acute pitch, demanding to know how one can speak rightly of God in view of the suffering that is inherent and inflicted in the cosmos. While in former ages, some looked (...) to an omnipotent and impassible deus ex machina in answer to this question, many contemporary theologians have revised their understanding of God in relation to the world. With these theologians, Gloria Schaab proposes that a viable response to cosmic suffering is the recognition that the triune Christian God participates in the very sufferings of the cosmos itself. She sets her argument within theology and science dialogue and specifically within the work of scientist-theologian Arthur Peacocke. Informed by the understandings of evolutionary science, grounded within a panentheistic paradigm of the God-world relationship, and rooted within the Christian theological tradition, this work contends that the understanding of the Triune God as intimately involved with the suffering of the cosmos is viable and efficacious in view of the suffering of the cosmos and its creatures. It develops a female procreative model of the creative suffering of the Triune God, an ecological ethics based on the midwife model of care, and a pastoral model of threefold differentiation of suffering in God as steps toward Christian praxis in response to the mystery of God within the pain, suffering, and death of cosmic existence and human experience. (shrink)

Kant and Sidgwick agree that genuine ethical principles must be sourced in reason rather than divine commands. Yet, despite sharing this secular starting point, both philosophers ultimately conclude that the assumption of God’s existence is necessary for the complete viability of practical reason (including principles of morality) within human beings. This mutual reintroduction of God is especially surprising given that Kant and Sidgwick advocate divergent moral theories. The central claim of this chapter is that, despite their philosophical differences, Kant’s (...) and Sidgwick’s respective appeals to the moral necessity of God have a common cause. Both philosophers perceive a deep human need to believe in cosmic justice (i.e., universal harmony between duty and happiness), and their shared hedonic account of well-being colors their conception of what such justice must involve. After explaining how these ideas give rise to the ostensible moral need for faith, I provide a brief defense of an alternative view based on the Stoic belief that the universe is ultimately just, despite the lack of a reliable connection between moral virtue and hedonic well-being. (shrink)

The efforts to prove God's existence in the history of thought have been one of the fundamental problems of philosophy and theology, and even the most important one. The evidences put furword to prove the existence of God constitute the center of philosophy of religion’s problems not only philosophy of religion, but also the disciplines such as theology-kalam and Islamic philosophy are also seriously concerned. When we look at the history of philosophy, it is clear that almost all (...) philosophers are interested in the evidence in favour of and against the existence of God. Especially in recent times, religious experience has often been regarded as evidence of the existence of God. Studies in the field of religious and mystical experience have put forward many arguments concerning the use of religious experience as evidence. However, this study has been limited to experience of sense and pure consciousness claims rather than examining all of these arguments. In this study firstly, the analogy between experience of sense and religious experience will be deal with, and then claims that conciousness can be emptied by a number of methods which are defended by mystics. In addition, it will be tried to defend the opinion that the mystical experiences which are the common point of the two approaches are valid. The main emphasis of the article will be that these arguments can be used as evidence for the existence of God.Summary: Religious experience - which has not been considered as one of the classical evidences regarding the existence of God before being popular by recent studies – is started to be called one of the arguments. The most important reason for not arguing religious experience among the evidences of God’s existence is that it is a personal experience and therefore contains subjective perspectives. However, many researchers, who refuse to accept the criticism raised against religious experience with restricting to subjectivity, emphasized the importance of religious experience by highlighting the objective aspects of such experiences. This emphasis was not only on its significance, but also on the fact that it had a cognitive feature and thus it could provide evidence for the existence of God. The argument of religious experience is generally defined as an effort for demonstrating to existence of God with reference to several feelings such as spiritual experiences of human in face of creator and sacred Being, encounter with God, uniting, and annihilating selfness in Him. The emergence of such efforts, especially after the XVIIIth century, indicates that the history of the evidence does not go back much earlier. However, even if notas evidence, it is possible to extend the traces of religious and mystical experience to the history of religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Considering a great amount of the previous literature focused on religious experience in the West, It is easily seen that such research is still new. The main purpose in addressing such a controversial issue is to make the argument on the religious experience more current and to show whether the religious experience would be able to use as evidence for the existence of God.First title of this study comprises many different claims such as Walter T. Stace’s The Argument from Unanimity Richard Swinburne’s The Principle of Credulity, William P. Alston’s Perceiving God, John Hick’s Experience-as. However, instead of briefly giving out very different claims, the study chooses to focus on two arguments which are less discussed and can be given in more detail. The first is the argument based on the analogy between the religious experience and the sense experience. The fundamental point of this argument is sense experience. With reference to the similarities between the sense experience and the religious experience, it can be argued that religious experience is also cognitive and may function as an evidence for the existence of God. In other words, being perceptual and noetic, namely cognitive, of sense experience is addressed as a similar side of religious experience. Whether it is imaginary or real, eventually, it is necessary for an experience to have an object and being experience of something. Therefore, the religious experience includes the perception of a Transcendent Being that is beyond and in excess of the individual who experiences. Perception of the sense experience will definitely be different from the perception of religious experience. Researchers who think that the five sense organs do not run the perception of Sacred Beings, identified broader and various meanings for the perception. Thereby, in this approach, where the semantic field of perception is expanded, it was contended that human beings were able to perceive the transcendent, eternal, and unlimited God, and this can be explained in the epistemological sense. In order to use religious experiences as an evidence for the existence of God, it is necessary to determine whether such experiences are caused by God rather than something else. This raises the issue of the validity of religious experience. The researchers in this area have propounded various criteria to identify whether religious experience is existed or not. Experiences, which do not meet the criteria, are not considered existed even if they claim to be religious experience.The second is the argument that discusses whether it is possible to suggest an evidence for the existence of God by utilizing pure consciousness events. In general, this argument claims that the consciousness gets clear, and thus, mystic or Sufi experiences the Divine One with pure consciousness by discharging consciousness from all sensual contents and removing it from secular desire and wishes. The argument, which claims the experience of Divine One is direct, therefore uninterpretable, and experienced by pure consciousness, believes clearing the consciousness of mystics from sensual qualities such as seeing, hearing, and tasting. It is stated that it is possible for mystics to empty their sensory images and get rid of them, and thus, their desires and wishes could be lost. Especially, the thinkers who are connected with the philosophy of perennialism and defend this approach, thought that people, who have distinct religion, culture, and beliefs in different parts of the world and in various time periods, had the same experience and considered such experiences were universal by suggesting that this similarity could be called as common essence.Even though the claim which offers that the events of pure consciousness are the same everywhere have been criticized in many respects, the advocates of this approach have argued that the experience has the common essence, but the interpretation is different. This relationship, which was tried to be established between experience and commentary, caused a lot of work for both the thinkers who put forward the claims of pure consciousness and the researchers who opposed it. However, examining the relationship between experience and interpretation requires serious studies in socio-psychological, cultural and religious fields. Therefore, in order not to exceed the limits of the article, the relationship between experience and interpretation is briefly mentioned.While discussing two arguments, the main claims of the arguments were addressed, and the criticisms directed to this argument were not discussed as much as possible. However, some fundamental criticisms have been mentioned shortly for a better understanding of the discussion. Since such western-oriented claims mostly were deployed in a western context, the study excluded the comparison of the claims across different cultures. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss Leibniz's interpretation of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. In particular, I consider whether Leibniz's position on this point was developed partly in reference to Spinoza's position. First, I analyze Leibniz's annotations from 1676 on Spinoza's Letter 12. The traditional cosmological argument, as found in Avicenna and Saint Thomas for example, relies on the Aristotelian assumption that an actual infinite is impossible and on the idea that there can be no effect without (...) a cause. From these premises, the argument concludes that God must be the uncaused first cause of all things. In Letter 12, Spinoza follows Chasdai Crescas and rejects this proof. Instead, he develops a variant of the cosmological argument which depicts God as the self-caused ground of all causes or things. In his annotations, Leibniz agrees with Spinoza about the inadequacy of the traditional argument, but remains ambiguous as to Spinoza's conception of God as a self-caused being. Next, I turn to Leibniz's comments from 1678 on Spinoza's Ethics. Here, Leibniz develops an original interpretation of the cosmological argument based entirely on the consideration of conceptual relations. Leibniz's argument depicts God as an uncaused being conceived through itself which is the condition of conceivability of all things. I argue that Leibniz developed this argument in deliberate opposition to Spinoza's conception of God as the self-caused ground of all causes or things. (shrink)

Einstein argued in his latter years that the intelligibility of the world was in the nature of a miracle, and that in no way could one have expected a priori such a high degree of order; this is why he rejected the atheist, positivist standpoint, and believed in a Spinozist God. Einstein's argument, however, is essentially a form of the ?argument from design? for a personal God based on the existence of beautiful, mathematically simple laws of nature; that (...) physical order is a unique, improbable alternative compared to the infinite number of chaotic universes that might have existed. Einstein, in his early manhood, was a Humean, but in later years, as he moved toward Spinoza, from phenomenalism to noumenalism, he clearly rejected Hume's restriction of probable inferences to observed sequences. Darwin's arguments against biological design did not apply to Einstein's argument, because the laws of physics are not the outcome of any cumulative struggle for existence and natural selection. Perhaps the beautiful simplicity of basic physical laws helps account for the fact that relatively more physicists than biologists or psychologists hold to a theistic standpoint. Einstein's finite universe would have seriously weakened the argument that life, though infinitely improbable, would have been realized in an infinite world. But in any case, Einstein would have regarded ?emergence? theories of life as irrational. In accordance with the principle of identity of Emile Meyerson, the epistemologist whom he most respected, it would have followed that the occurrence of consciousness and intelligence was grounded in a God with those attributes, and that theism was consequently the basis for scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The Hegel Lectures Series Series Editor: Peter C. Hodgson Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts (...) and manuscripts. Lectures from specific years are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources. Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God Hegel lectured on the proofs of the existence of God as a separate topic in 1829. He also discussed the proofs in the context of his lectures on the philosophy of religion (1821-31), where the different types of proofs were considered mostly in relation to specific religions. The text that he prepared for his lectures in 1829 was a fully formulated manuscript and appears to have been the first draft of a work that he intended to publish and for which he signed a contract shortly before his death in 1831. The 16 lectures include an introduction to the problem of the proofs and a detailed discussion of the cosmological proof. Philipp Marheineke published these lectures in 1832 as an appendix to the lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with an earlier manuscript fragment on the cosmological proof and the treatment of the teleological and ontological proofs as found in the 1831 philosophy of religion lectures. Hegel's 1829 lectures on the proofs are of particular importance because they represent what he actually wrote as distinct from auditors' transcriptions of oral lectures. Moreover, they come late in his career and offer his final and most seasoned thinking on a topic of obvious significance to him, that of the reality status of God and ways of knowing God. These materials show how Hegel conceived the connection between the cosmological, teleological, and ontological proofs. All of this material has been newly translated by Peter C. Hodgson from the German critical editions by Walter Jaeschke. This edition includes an editorial introduction, annotations on the text, and a glossary and bibliography. (shrink)

In this paper, we shall consider the question of whether, in a context such as that of Spain that is, a context where a particular religion has been historically dominant, and within the boundaries of political liberalism, it is possible to find a reasonable argument in favour of what is termed positive laicism . In order to do so, we must first brie fly clarify what this type of laicism consists of. Below we shall explore some of the arguments which (...) could be used to defend it. We shall attempt to demonstrate that the majority of these arguments are lacking in some relevant aspect. The only defence of positive laicism that seems reasonable is one based on reasons of a politico-cultural nature which, in the context mentioned, mean that said positive laicism must be asymmetric. (shrink)

In the previous lecture Professor Swinburne discussed arguments for the existence of God. I do not propose to put forward arguments for the non-existence of God, precisely. Rather I want to discuss the view that the whole enterprise of putting forward arguments for the existence of God is misguided. Moreover, I hold that it distorts the nature of religious belief. This in turn raises the question of the rationality of religious belief. A belief that cannot be (...) class='Hi'>based on argument, however broadly understood, does not seem to be a rational belief. Is religious belief, therefore, irrational, contrary to reason? We shall see. This, at least, is my programme. (shrink)

In the previous lecture Professor Swinburne discussed arguments for the existence of God. I do not propose to put forward arguments for the non-existence of God, precisely. Rather I want to discuss the view that the whole enterprise of putting forward arguments for the existence of God is misguided. Moreover, I hold that it distorts the nature of religious belief. This in turn raises the question of the rationality of religious belief. A belief that cannot be (...) class='Hi'>based on argument, however broadly understood, does not seem to be a rational belief. Is religious belief, therefore, irrational, contrary to reason? We shall see. This, at least, is my programme. (shrink)

A brief synopsis of the "contingency" version of the cosmological argument for theism, as developed by Samuel Clarke and explained/examined by William Rowe.

The Hegel Lectures SeriesSeries Editor: Peter C. Hodgson Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts and (...) manuscripts. The original lecture series are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources. Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of GodHegel lectured on the proofs of the existence of God as a separate topic in 1829. He also discussed the proofs in the context of his lectures on the philosophy of religion, where the different types of proofs were considered mostly in relation to specific religions. The text that he prepared for his lectures in 1829 was a fully formulated manuscript and appears to have been the first draft of a work that he intended to publish and for which he signed a contract shortly before his death in 1831. The 16 lectures include an introduction to the problem of the proofs and a detailed discussion of the cosmological proof. Philipp Marheineke published these lectures in 1832 as an appendix to the lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with an earlier manuscript fragment on the cosmological proof and the treatment of the teleological and ontological proofs as found in the 1831 philosophy of religion lectures. Hegel's 1829 lectures on the proofs are of particular importance because they represent what he actually wrote as distinct from auditors' transcriptions of oral lectures. Moreover, they come late in his career and offer his final and most seasoned thinking on a topic of obvious significance to him, that of the reality status of God and ways of knowing God. These materials show how Hegel conceived the connection between the cosmological, teleological, and ontological proofs. All of this material has been newly translated by Peter C. Hodgson from the German critical editions by Walter Jaeschke. This edition includes an editorial introduction, annotations on the text, and a glossary and bibliography. (shrink)

The anticipated third book from New York Times bestselling author and respected Intelligent Design scholar Stephen C. Meyer makes a compelling argument for the existence of God based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology.

This book re-examines Anselm's famous arguments for the existence of God in his Proslogion, and in his Reply. It demonstrates how he validly deduces from plausible premises that God so truly exists that He could not be thought not to exist. Most commentators, ancient and modern, wrongly located his argument in a passage which is not about God at all. It becomes evident that, consequently, much contemporary criticism is based on misreading and misunderstanding his text. It reconstructs his (...) reasoning through three distinct but logically connected stages. It shows that, even if Anselm's crucial premises are sceptically interpreted, his conclusions still follow. Properly understood, this argument is not vulnerable to the standard criticisms, including Gaunilo's 'Lost island' counter-example. (shrink)

In this paper, we shall consider the question of whether, in a context such as that of Spain that is, a context where a particular religion has been historically dominant, and within the boundaries of political liberalism, it is possible to find a reasonable argument in favour of what is termed positive laicism. In order to do so, we must first briefly clarify what this type of laicism consists of. Below we shall explore some of the arguments which could be (...) used to defend it. We shall attempt to demonstrate that the majority of these arguments are lacking in some relevant aspect. The only defence of positive laicism that seems reasonable is one based on reasons of a politico-cultural nature which, in the context mentioned, mean that said positive laicism must be asymmetric. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and (...) record flooding, weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

ABSTRACT Mohism has been called the most religious of all Chinese philosophies. Living up to that name, it developed unique proofs for the existence of the spiritual realm within a distinctly Chinese context. The Mozi uses testimonies from China’s mythic history to prove the existence of spirits. But beyond these cultural proofs, the Mozi also introduces a logical argument that is very similar to Pascal’s wager. Beyond these four explicit arguments, the Mozi also contains a fifth proof (...) class='Hi'>based on the existence of a supernatural order that exists in the structure of the world. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been notable interest in Islamic philosophy and theology from an analytic and not merely historical perspective. One important area of research that has garnered a great deal of research is the arguments for the existence of God. Recent work by Hannah Erlwein seeks to argue that this research has been in vain, for there are no arguments for the existence of God in classical Islamic thought. This paper analyzes Erlwein’s strategies in justifying this (...) position, revealing that her research ignores an enormous amount of evidence that runs contrary to her thesis, in addition to demonstrating many of the errors and shortcomings in her work. Most disturbingly, the book seeks to present the Islamic philosophical tradition as fideistic and unintellectual based on a series of contrived interpretations of rather clear texts. In response, this paper demonstrates the importance of independent inquiry in the Islamic tradition by looking at a wide range of different relevant texts. (shrink)

It is often claimed that belief in God is based on faith, while non-belief is grounded in rationality. This claim is inaccurate. Moral philosopher Carlo Alvaro takes the reader through his philosophical journey—a journey taken with the absolute absence of faith. Through reasoning alone, and with an objective assessment of the classical theistic arguments, Deism takes the reader from disbelief to a particular version of deism. Deism discusses such arguments as the Kalam Cosmological, the asymmetry against the evil-god challenge, (...) the anthropic principle, and the moral. Such arguments lead to the undeniable conclusion that there exists a timeless, space-less, wholly good, and infinitely powerful being endowed with freedom of the will, who brought the universe into existence a finite time ago. An objective appraisal of such arguments leads to the conclusions that atheism is an irrational philosophical position, that God does not interact with humans, at least not during our physical existence on earth, and that God is the best explanation of the objectivity of moral value and duty. (shrink)

the meditations on first philosophy presents us with an alleged proof for the existence of God that proceeds from the existence of an idea of an infinite being in the human mind—an idea of God—to the existence of God himself. Insofar as we have an idea of an infinite being, an idea with “infinite objective reality,” we can legitimately ask whence it came to us. The only possible cause of this idea, claims Descartes, is an infinite being, (...) namely, God. The occurrence of just this idea in the proof is essential. In fact, Descartes maintains that any such causal proof for God’s existence crucially relies on this idea: “it seems to me that all these proofs based on his effects are reducible to a single one; and also .. (shrink)

The conclusion of Shutte's argument that the Christian God exists does not follow from his premises without additional dubious premises. Furthermore, the first premise of the argument, namely that human persons depend on other persons to develop as persons is an empirical premise that cries out for empirical support that Shutte fails to supply. Alternative schemes of personal development are available but he does not show that they are mistaken. Moreover, Shutte's scheme generates a puzzle about how personal development is (...) ever possible. Finally, the theory of human nature underlying his argument is unsupported. On the other hand, the substitution of more sinister theories of human nature in his scheme would result in the conclusion that the “first cause” of personal development is a being with some attributes that conflict with the attributes of the Christian God and would involve a complete revamping of his theory of personal growth. (shrink)

El artículo presenta el razonamiento de Zubiri acerca de la plausible existencia de Dios que se deriva de la estructura del cosmos. Dicho razonamiento, que muestra una faceta poco conocida de la fi losofía de la religión de este autor, aborda una de las cuestiones más espinosas de la historia de la filosofía, recurriendo expresamente al modelo estándar del universo que se ha forjado la astrofísica y aplicando varias de las categorías características de la metafísica elaborada por el propio (...) Zubiri. We expound Zubiri's argument for the plausible existence of God, based on the structure of the universe. This argument, which displays a not very well known aspect of Zubiri's philosophy of religion, tackles one of the thorniest subjects in the history of philosophy. It resorts specifi cally to the standard model of the universe developed in 20th century astrophysics, while applying many of the categories which are characteristic of Zubiri's metaphysics. (shrink)

‘The Five Ways’ has been used as a translation of the phrase quinque viae which is used by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae I, 2, 3. I have put it in inverted commas because I think that it is a poor translation of the Latin. Aquinas’s use of the word via is sufficiently rich to confront us with a choice of English equivalents. There is no reason why in this context we should opt for ‘way’. Since we are not being invited (...) in ST I, 2, 3 on any journey in space, the initial presumption must be that ‘way’ should be used only if we fail to turn up anything more fitting. However, there is no difficulty in providing a more suitable English equivalent. Via is used by Aquinas in the sense of ‘a method of arguing’ or, more specifically, as designating particular arguments. When he considers the two viae by which Aristotle arrived at a certain conclusion, Aquinas clearly distinguishes an argument based on Physics VII from that based on Physics VIII. And in the same context Aquinas uses rationes as an equivalent of viae. Ratio is frequently used by Aquinas in the sense of the English word ‘argument’, as, for instance, in ST I, 30, 2 or ST III, 55, 5. Hence it seems to me that quinque viae should be translated as ‘five arguments’. (shrink)

Design arguments make a case for the existence of God based on examples of apparent design or purposiveness in the natural world. Current versions of the argument proceed, not in terms of analogies between the universe and human artifacts, but as inductive arguments to the best explanation of the data. Theism is offered as the simplest hypothesis that can explain facts such as the mathematical elegance and intelligibility of the laws of the nature. The design argument has recently (...) received new life from discoveries regarding the fine-tuning required for any universe capable of sustaining life. (shrink)

This paper examines critically Kretzmann's reconstruction of the project of natural theology as exemplified by Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles. It is argued that the notion of natural theology, as understood and advocated by Kretzmann, is particularly indebted to the epistemologically biased natural theology of modernity with its focus on rational justification of theistic belief. As a consequence, Kretzmann's view of the arguments for the existence of God and their place within Aquinas's theological project is insufficiently sensitive to the ontological (...) conception of truth and intelligibility which underlies the argumentation. From his epistemological point of view Kretzmann differs from Aquinas in two aspects. First, he contends that it is not necessary to establish the existence of God with absolute certainty at the outset; one may begin with the hypothesis that there is a God. Second, the arguments do not yet conclude to the existence of God in the specific theistic sense; they show at most the existence of a primary explanatory entity, which may be identified with God later on. Both claims are criticized in the light of a discussion of Aquinas's theological method. (shrink)

There has been in recent years a plethora of defences of theism from analytical philosophers: Richard Gale's important book is a critical response to these writings. New versions of cosmological, ontological, and religious experience arguments are critically evaluated, along with pragmatic arguments to justify faith on the grounds of its prudential or moral benefits. In considering arguments for and against the existence of God, Gale is able to clarify many important philosophical concepts including exploration, time, free will, personhood, actuality, (...) and the objectivity of experience. (shrink)

John Foster presents a clear and powerful discussion of a range of topics relating to our understanding of the universe: induction, laws of nature, and the existence of God. He begins by developing a solution to the problem of induction - a solution whose key idea is that the regularities in the workings of nature that have held in our experience hitherto are to be explained by appeal to the controlling influence of laws, as forms of natural necessity. His (...) second line of argument focuses on the issue of what we should take such necessitational laws to be, and whether we can even make sense of them at all. Having considered and rejected various alternatives, Foster puts forward his own proposal: the obtaining of a law consists in the causal imposing of a regularity on the universe as a regularity. With this causal account of laws in place, he is now equipped to offer an argument for theism. His claim is that natural regularities call for explanation, and that, whatever explanatory role we may initially assign to laws, the only plausible ultimate explanation is in terms of the agency of God. Finally, he argues that, once we accept the existence of God, we need to think of him as creating the universe by a method which imposes regularities on it in the relevant law-yielding way. In this new perspective, the original nomological-explanatory solution to the problem of induction becomes a theological-explanatory solution. The Divine Lawmaker is bold and original in its approach, and rich in argument. The issues on which it focuses are among the most important in the whole epistemological and metaphysical spectrum. (shrink)

This is the text of my OBO entry on arguments for the existence of God.

This sequel to the highly acclaimed "Cosmos and Anthropos" demonstrates the impact on social, ethical, and theological doctrines of the twentieth-century scientific revolution, particularly the Anthropic Principle. Harris reviews the main arguments put forward in the Western philosophical tradition for the existence of God, as well as the critique of those arguments, and shows that the conflict between religion and science since the seventeenth century has resulted more from the implications of the Copernican-Newtonian scientific paradigm than from any (...) insuperable divergence of dogma or ultimate aim. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation undermined the Christian consensus that unaided human reason could prove God’s existence. As a consequence the issue of the provability of God in principle gained new prominence and had to be addressed in the first instance before entering the discussion of specific proofs of His existence. On the basis of the answers given to the preliminary question of the provability of God’s existence, the chapter discusses eighteenth-century reformulations (...) of a priori and a posteriori arguments for the existence of God, as well as new directions taken by natural theology in the late eighteenth century. (shrink)

A growing number of powerful arguments have been formulated by philosophers and logicians in recent years demonstrating that the existence of God is improbable. These arguments assume that God's existence is possible but argue that the weight of the empirical evidence is against God's actual existence. This unique anthology collects most of the important arguments for the improbability of God that have been published since the mid-1900s. The editors make each argument clear and accessible by providing a (...) helpful summary. In addition, they arrange this diverse collection of arguments for the improbability of God into four thematic groups: Part 1 contains cosmological arguments based on the weight of the evidence relative to the origin of the universe; Part 2 presents teleological arguments based on the weight of the evidence relative to the order in the universe; Part 3 deals with inductive evil arguments based on the weight of the evidence relative to the widespread and horrendous evil in the world; and Part 4 contains nonbelief arguments based on the weight of the evidence relative to the widespread nonbelief or the reasonable nonbelief in the world. The list of distinguished authors includes William Rowe, Theodore Drange, Quentin Smith, Victor Stenger, J. L. Schellenberg, and Michael Martin, among others. With this new anthology as a companion to their earlier anthology, The Impossibility of God (2003), Martin and Monnier have created an indispensable resource in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Nowadays the argument for the existence of God based on the common consent of mankind is taken to be so bad that contemporary atheists do not even bother to mention it. And it seems very few theists think that the argument is worth defending. In this paper I shall argue to the contrary: not only is the argument better than usually thought, but widespread belief in God constitutes a prima facie defeater for every reasonable atheist.

In this paper, I present main theses of Aquinas Way to God: The Proof in the De Ente et Essentia by Gaven Kerr. The book in question is a contemporary interpretation and defence of Thomas Aquinas’s argument for the existence of God, based on the real distinction between the essence of the thing and its act of being. I stress the fact that Kerr underlines the metaphysical character of Thomas’s argument and the role of participation in Aquinas’s understanding (...) of the act of being. In the last part of the article, I discuss Kerr’s interpretation of Aquinas’s argument for the real distinction between essence and an act of being, as well as Kerr’s own argument. These arguments are of particular importance since they provide metaphysical presuppositions for the argument for God’s existence considered in Kerr’s book. As for the first argument, I argue that the first part of Aquinas’s argumentation pertains to the real order rather than conceptual. Concerning the second argument, I attempt to highlight the difficulties of Kerr’s understanding of Thomist esse as a principle of the existence of a thing. (shrink)

The most fundamental subject and aim of the Islamic belief system is the subject of maʿrifatullah (knowing Allah). Studies on this subject are mostly called ithbāt al-wājib (the demonstration of God) in the literature. They are considered the most valuable work for kalām, philosophy and mysticism schools. Kalām schools started to use this conceptualization intensively after Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, mainly under the influence of Ibn Sīnā. Sūfis, on the other hand, most participated in these studies based on the theory (...) of the unity of existence. In kalām, all the principles of belief are ultimately grounded to explain and strengthen faith in Allah. For this reason, belief in Allah is referred to as aṣl al-uṣūl (the origin of all principles). Throughout history, scholars of kalām discussed the creedal issues of Islam in the Muslim society while it tried to answer the creedal issues abroad by the expanding Islamic geography with studies on ithbāt al-wājib. In this framework, the problems of prophecy and the hereafter are included in kalām. Since the beginning of the history of kalām, it has used the theory of atomism to a large extent, especially in defending the existence of Allah against materialists. The systematisation of Islamic philosophy and mysticism in time, the kalām cosmological argument, the argument from contingency of philosophers and the argument from kashf and ilhām of Sūfis strengthened this area from three different branches. On the other hand, the interaction of these schools within themselves and the diversification of the interlocutors of studies on ithbāt al-wājib brought these arguments closer together. The convergence in terms of terminology, subject and methodology, especially after Shahrestānī and Rāzī, revealed the tradition of philosophical theology. In this process, theologians began to use both the concepts of temporality (hudūth) and contingency (imkān) to use ontological, cosmological and teleological proofs. Dawānī, one of the eminent figures of these studies in the last periods of Ottomans, is the subject of our research, due to his skills in utilising these proofs of ithbāt al-wājib and his influence in the studies after him. His review of the matter can be observed in his effort in his works where he deals with the so-called deficiencies and errors of his predecessors regarding ithbāt al-wājib. For this reason, many annotations and commentaries were made for his treatises and ideas until the 19th century. Especially, the advance of materialism in the West in this century showed great influence on many scholars and intellectuals in the Ottoman Empire seems to be a parallel historical experience. Therefore, it has become necessary to utilise the arguments for the existence of Allah by supporting each individual argument together. In this regard, in our study, to see the process, we also discussed the views of Aḥmad Nūrī, one of the scholars in the last period Ottoman, who dealt with the common arguments about ithbāt al-wājib produced by the three primary schools of Islamic thought: kalām, Islamic philosophy and mysticism. (shrink)

Zeno's so-called proofs of divine existence -- Zeno and the traditional gods: a serious problem -- Cleanthes' proofs -- Cleanthes and the traditional gods -- Chrysippus' contribution -- Chrysippus and the traditional gods -- Other Stoic proofs -- Other (Stoic?) arguments in Sextus -- Polemics against the arguments pro the existence of God(s) -- Abolishing the gods leads to odd consequence: the atopical arguments pro the existence of the gods -- The counter-arguments -- Carneades and the data (...) of Sextus and Cicero -- The sorites arguments as a weapon against the traditional gods -- Epilogue -- Appendix I. Cleanthes' humn on Zeus: a running commentary -- Appendix II. Where is God? -- Appendix III. Alexinus' Parabolai. (shrink)

Does God exist? What are the various arguments that seek to prove the existence of God? Can atheists refute these arguments? The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction assesses classical and contemporary arguments concerning the existence of God: the ontological argument, introducing the nature of existence, possible worlds, parody objections, and the evolutionary origin of the concept of God the cosmological argument, discussing metaphysical paradoxes of infinity, scientific models of the universe, and philosophers’ discussions about ultimate (...) reality and the meaning of life the design argument, addressing Aquinas’s Fifth Way, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the concept of irreducible complexity, and the current controversy over intelligent design and school education. Bringing the subject fully up to date, Yujin Nagasawa explains these arguments in relation to recent research in cognitive science, the mathematics of infinity, big bang cosmology, and debates about ethics and morality in light of contemporary political and social events. The book also includes fascinating insights into the passions, beliefs and struggles of the philosophers and scientists who have tackled the challenge of proving the existence of God, including Thomas Aquinas, and Kurt Gödel - who at the end of his career as a famous mathematician worked on a secret project to prove the existence of God. The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal gateway to the philosophy of religion and an excellent starting point for anyone interested in arguments about the existence of God. (shrink)

In the first part of my paper, I shall consider how Anselm of Canterbury’s so-called ontological argument has been misapprehended by those treating it as a proof for the existence of God. In the second part, I shall focus on Chapter One of the Proslogion and on the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi to show what Anselm’s real purpose was regarding the problem of the existence of God. I shall support my view by referring also to the thought of (...) John Henry Newman and Henri de Lubac. (shrink)

The third Meditation is typically understood to contain two a posteriori arguments for the existence of God. The author focuses on the second argument, where Descartes proves the existence of God partly in virtue of proving that Descartes cannot be the cause of himself. To establish this, Descartes argues that if he were the cause of himself, then he would endow himself with any conceivable perfection. The justification for this claim is that bringing about a substance is more (...) difficult than creating an attribute, so anything that can do the former can do the latter. While current explanations of this justification are either implausible or inadequate, the author argues that this principle derives support from a scholastic distinction between being-as-such and determinate being. With this distinction in view, we can make sense of Descartes's argument without appealing to ambiguous or inadequate notions. (shrink)

This sequel to the highly acclaimed Cosmos and Anthropos demonstrates the impact on social, ethical, and theological doctrines of the twentieth-century scientific revolution, particularly the Anthropic Principle. Harris reviews the main arguments put forward in the Western philosophical tradition for the existence of God, as well as the critique of those arguments, and shows that the conflict between religion and science since the seventeenth century has resulted more from the implications of the Copernican-Newtonian scientific paradigm than from any (...) insuperable divergence of dogma or ultimate aim. (shrink)

This book lies at the intersection of philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. It combines issues regarding divine action and mental causation. In particular, by using Jaegwon Kim's Causal Exclusion Argument as a foil, it explores possible ways of making sense of divine action in relation to some recent non-reductive physicalist strategies for vindicating mental causation. These insights are then applied to an argument for the existence of God based on the nature of phenomenal consciousness.