Does God exist?

1. Does God exist?

2. Outline • Is there any point to debating God? • Three classic arguments for the existence of God • Miracles and other testimonial evidence • Faith and reason • Arguments against God’s existence: The problem of evil and the scale of the universe • Conclusions

3. Defining the issue Concept of God in western monotheism: • God created the universe. • God is all powerful (omnipotent). • God is all knowing (omniscient). • God is perfectly good. • God is a person-like entity. • God is eternal and not dependent on anything other than itself. Does this being exist?

4. Does God exist? • Many people suggest that this question cannot be successfully answered. • Why? Because: • “You can’t prove it.” • “It’s a matter of opinion/it’s subjective.” • “Nobody ever changes their mind about religion.”

5. Nobody changes their mind? • This objection is false. • People are not born with beliefs about God, so to get beliefs about God people must change their minds! • People are convinced, often when they are small children. • Or as adults, by arguments: for or against. • Or by appeals to authority (parents, priests, the Bible).

6. Is “God exists” subjective? • Recall the definition of “subjective”. • Aclaim is subjective if whether it is true or false depends on what someone thinks, feels, or believes. • So: “I feel sad”, “My dog is hungry”, “Most Americans think we should get out of Iraq”, and “I believe in God” are all subjective. • They are all claims about mental states.

7. The objectivity of the issue • Subjective claims tell us about what is going on inside someone’s head. • “I loved that movie”, e.g., doesn’t tell us about the movie, it tells us what someone feels about the movie. • Likewise, “I believe in God” doesn’t tell us about God, it tells us about the speaker. • But we’re interested in God, not what people thinkabout God.

8. Can’t prove it? • You’d have to make an argument to show that God’s existence can’t be proven. • “There’s no proof.” • But if there’s no proof, then why do so many people believe God exists? • If there was truly noproof, then not very many people would believe God exists. • (Cf. Batman, or the Tooth Fairy.)

9. Proof? • People don’t usually have beliefs without any proof at all. • Rather, people have beliefs because of evidence or proof, that is, arguments. • So it isn’t true to say that there is no proof. If people believe it because of reasons, they think there’s enoughproof – at least, enough to convince themselves. • The proof may or may not be good, but to tell we’d have to consider the arguments!

10. What kind of proof? • One reason people think there’s no proof is because God is not visible or tangible. • If someone asks: “does this marker exist”, you wouldn’t be convinced unless you saw it, or touched it, etc. • But you can’t see or touch God (or at least, most people don’t think so: notice how we treat anyone who claims to have met God in person).

11. Invisible, intangible, etc. • But we believe in the existence of many things that we can never see or touch. • Other people’s feelings • X-rays, electrons, and other scientific entities • Historical events • Mathematical truths • We believe that some claims about such things are true and some are false. • We decide which are true based on reasons. • We do the same with religious beliefs: we use reason. We don’t “just believe it”.

12. No proof? • And evenif there was no proof about God’s existence, that would not mean that it’s therefore reasonable to believe whatever you want to believe about God. • You have no proof about how much change is in my car, but that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable for you to believe I have $100 in change in my car.

13. No proof? • Suppose someone accuses you of abusing children, but the person accusing you has no proof to support his allegation. • Is it reasonable for your accuser, or other people, to believe that you abuse children, even though they have no proof? No. • So “no proof” = not a good reason to believe God exists!

14. No proof? • No proof ≠ it’s reasonable to believe whatever you want • No proof = you don’t know; you should suspend judgment.

15. Three classic arguments for God’s existence • The First Cause Argument • (a.k.a. the Cosmological Argument) • The Design Argument • (a.k.a. the Teleological Argument) • The Ontological Argument

16. Aquinas’s Argument from Efficient Causality • “The second way is based on the nature of causation. In the observable world, causes are to be found ordered in series; we never observe, or even could observe, something causing itself, for this would mean it preceded itself, and this is impossible.”

17. Aquinas’s Causality Argument • “Such a series of causes, however, must stop somewhere. For in all series of causes, an earlier member causes an intermediate, and the intermediate a last (whether the intermediate be one or many). If you eliminate a cause you also eliminate its effects. Therefore there can be neither a last nor an intermediate cause unless there is a first. But if the series of causes goes on to infinity, and there is no first cause, there would be neither intermediate causes nor a final effect, which is patently false.”

18. “It is therefore necessary to posit a first cause, which all call ‘God’.”

19. Aquinas’s Causality Argument • Let A be the current state of the world • It was caused, as was its cause, etc. • . . . → E → D → C → B → A • This can’t go on to infinity, or we’d never have gotten A in the first place. • So, there must be a first cause, God. • God → . . . → C → B → A

20. The First Cause Argument (simplified; a valid argument) • Everything has a cause. • So, the universe has a cause. • The only thing that could be the cause of the universe is God. • So, God exists.

21. An objection to First Cause Arguments: why not infinity? Aquinas doesn’t give any good argument why there can’t be infinite causal chains extending backwards in time. ........ → E → D → C → B → A → ........ After all, we seem to accept such chains for the future.

22. Another objection: the central premise is inconsistently applied • If everything must have a cause, that implies that God had a cause. • The argument is not consistent: the definition of God contradicts its first premise. ?? Planet Earth formed Big Bang God

23. The unmoved mover? • Now, the traditional answer to this objection (that the premise implies that God must have a cause) is to say that God is an exception to the premise that ‘everything has a cause.’ • God is said to be a “necessary being,” or the uncaused origin of causes. • But…

24. Why not other exceptions? If we’re okay with God having no cause, then why aren’t we okay with the universe having no cause? It may be a brute, necessary fact that the universe exists. Humans evolved Big Bang Planet Earth formed .....

25. The inconsistency of First Cause Arguments In other words: A: “Where did the universe come from? It couldn’t just come from nowhere. So God made it.” B: “But where did God come from?” A: “Well, God just is.” B: “Okay, then, why can’t the universe just be?”

26. A third objection to First Cause Arguments The argument does not get us close to the God of traditional religion. • Why should we worship a First Cause? • Why should we think it is good? Or omniscient or omnipotent? • Why should we think it cares about earth or its inhabitants? • Why should we think that it still exists?

27. The Design Argument William Paley (1743-1805) • Suppose you find a watch • It’s complex (lots of parts working together) • Successful (the parts succeed in telling time) • You’d infer that it had an intelligent maker • Similarly, you find things in nature • Complex (human organs) • Successful (living things) • You should infer it had an intelligent maker, God

28. The Design Argument (simplified; a valid argument) • Anything as complex as a human machine must be made by a human-like designer. • There are things in nature more complex than any human machine. • Therefore, there is a human-like (super-human) designer of parts of nature. • The only possible human-like designer of parts of nature is God.

29. Hume’s Criticisms Analogy is weak: • We know a watch is made by someone because it differs from what we find in nature • We can’t compare to other universes • Why is nature like a machine, rather than animal or vegetable?

30. Hume’s Criticisms If the analogy was strong: • Lots of mistakes and conflicts in nature • Maybe earlier, botched universes • Many gods • Implies God is human-like: not perfect

31. The key premise “Anything as complex as a human machine must be made by a human-like designer.” • Is this plausible? • Are there good reasons to believe it? • Could there be good reasons to reject it?

32. An alternative explanation of natural complexity • Natural selection shows how animals and plants can be complex and successful without any conscious design. • Bacteria, for example, don’t need to be consciously designed to develop resistance to antibiotics. • Giraffes don’t need to be designed to have long necks. • And evolution also explains flaws in nature, which the Design Argument fails to do.

34. A major problem (again) • Just like the First Cause Argument, even if the Design Argument were good, the God it argues for is still far from the God of Christianity or Islam. • It would only be a vaguely human-like designer, and need not be good, or all-knowing, or even still exist.

35. A Fine-Tuning Argument • If the laws of physics were even a tiny bit different, there would be no way for life or the universe as we know it to exist. • It is extremely unlikely that this would happen by chance. • If the laws of physics didn’t happen by chance, they must have been designed. • The laws of physics could only be designed by God.

36. Objections to fine-tuning • But all knowledge of probability comes from experience. • And we have no experience of laws of physics other than the ones we know. • So we don’t know if the laws of physics could have been different. • Since we don’t know what the probabilities are, we can’t assume whether the laws of physics were unlikely or not.

37. The weak anthropic principle • A different objection to fine-tuning arguments is to say it is not unlikely at all that the laws of physics are “just right”, given that we exist. • This is because if the laws of physics were not “just right”, then we wouldn’t exist. • So a fine-tuning argument is like someone saying “the odds of me being in this seat, in this room, in this building, in this city, in this country, etc., are very unlikely, so some God must have designed me to be here now.”

38. The ontological argument Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) • God is a being greater than which nothing which can be conceived. • I can conceive of such a being. • It is greater to exist in reality than only in imagination. • So, the being of which I conceive must exist in reality.

39. Anselm’s ontological argument • We can conceive of a being than which none greater can be conceived. • Whatever is conceived exists in the mind. • That which exists in the mind and exists in reality is greater than a similar thing that exists only in the mind. • Thus, a being than which none greater can be conceived, exists in reality.

40. Gaunilo’s criticism • ‘Islandia’ is an island greater than which no island can be conceived. • We can conceive such an island. • So the greatest conceivable island exists in our understanding. • But Islandia must exist in reality as well. • For if it did not, we could imagine a greater island – namely, one that existed in reality – and the greatest conceivable island would not be the greatest conceivable island after all. • But it is absurd to suppose that Islandia actually exists. Gaunilo concludes: Anselm's reasoning is bad.

41. Criticizing the ontological argument • The first premise is dubious: ‘We can conceive of a being than which none greater can be conceived.’ We can’t conceive of a number greater than any number. • The concepts of ‘perfection’ or ‘greater than’ are too vague to give any proof. • And existence isn’t like other predicates: to be perfect, you have to first be.

42. Testimonial evidence • Those are the classic philosophical arguments. However, they don’t have a strong connection with the actual religious beliefs of Christianity, Judaism, etc. • One argument for traditional religious belief is a lot simpler: appeal to the miraculous events recorded in the Bible or the Koran.

43. A very simple argument from testimony • The Bible says God exists. • The Bible is true. • Therefore, God exists.

44. Another argument from testimony • The Koran says Jesus was not God. • The Koran is true. • Therefore, Jesus was not God. Whatever reasoning is used to criticize this argument applies equally well to the appeal to another (such as the appeal to the Bible).

45. Contradictory testimonies Christianity: • Jesus of Nazareth is (the son of) God. • Jesus rose from the dead. • Mohammed was not a true prophet and did not visit heaven. Islam and Judaism: • Jesus is not (the son of) God. • Jesus did not rise from the dead.

46. Contradictory testimonies • Given such religious claims: • Which of these claims are true? • Which of these claims should you believe? • They can’t all be true, and they can’t all be believed. So some of us have religious beliefs that are false. • Indeed, we already think many beliefs about religion are false.

47. Sathya Sai Baba • Sathya Sai Baba is a “Godman”, born in 1926 in south India. He has around 6 million followers. • His mother supposedly became pregnant after a huge ball of blue light entered her.

48. Sathya Sai Baba • At 13, Sai Baba entered a coma, left his body, and returned reciting ancient religious chants. At 14, he threw away his school books and announced that “My devotees are calling me. I have my work.” • Sai Baba has: • Taken illnesses onto himself • Created holy ash, food, rings, necklaces, watches, spices, holy water, gold statues of gods, sugar candy, fruits, pastries (hot and cold), gems, colored string, and books out of thin air.

49. Sathya Sai Baba Sai Baba has also: • levitated, bilocated, disappeared, changed granite into candy, changed water into gasoline, changed the color of his robe while wearing it, multiplied food, made different fruit appear on trees from actual stems, physically transformed into deities, and emitted brilliant light.

50. Sathya Sai Baba • So why don’t you believe that Sai Baba is a God-man? (Or all god now, since he left his body behind in 2011.) • Do you apply those same reasons to other religious beliefs?