Custom essays on The existence of God cannot be proved it can only be believed in

Teleological
“The world is too complex to have appeared by chance.”
Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, watching the purposive structure of the world, came to the idea of “supreme intelligence”. Similarly, Socrates and Plato in the structure of the world saw the proof of the existence of higher intelligence.
The essence of this argument can be summarized as follows:
Every thing has its own creator, each house has its own architect, each book has its author, each person has his own parents: his father and mother. Please show me a thing which was formed by itself. Please show me a house, which was built by itself without an architect and builders. Please show me a book that wrote itself?
That means that there is no such complexly organized thing, which would doesn’t have a creator. Consequently, the universe, which has a very complex device, must have the creator and that creator is God. A special cases of this argument are the arguments that rely on the existence of complex structures found in nature (eg, a DNA molecule, the structure of insect wings or eyes of birds or humans, as well as inherent to man complex social qualities, such as language). It is stated that such complex structures could not develop in the course of self-evolution, and, therefore, were created by supreme mind (Ashton, 90-126).
Ontological
“The thing that exists both in imagination and in reality is more perfect.”
The real existence of God comes from people’s belief in God. God is an all perfect being. But thinking about all perfect of God and to attribute him existence only in the human imagination is contrary to the conception of all perfect existence of God. Because everything that exists both in imagination and in reality is more perfect then something that exists only in imagination. Thus, it is concluded that God as an all perfect being exists not only in our imagination, but also in reality. Anselm expressed the same in another form: God is all real being, the totality of all realities; being is among the realities, so we must admit that God exists.
Historical
“We do not know any folk without religion.”
All folks we know have a religion and Cicero and Aristotle have said that there is no nation without faith in God. Belief in God exists in the human soul, regardless of climate, soil, race and other external conditions; this is considered to be the historical evidence. However, it should be noted that this is a simplified approach, different types of religions describe God in different ways. In many religions there are few Gods, and in some they do not exist at all, such as in Buddhism. In addition, the simplest types of religions, such as animism (Shamanism, Shinto, totemism, beliefs of Indians, Australian Aborigines, African tribes, and so on) which are believed to be the beginning of more modern religion, also do not presuppose the existence of one God. It means that our ancestors apparently did not believe in God, they endowed the soul to any surrounding objects and phenomena.
Testimonies
According to some believers, the various artifacts associated with the earthly life of Jesus Christ (mostly relics of the Passion), and also phenomenon recognized as wonders, are direct evidences of the existence of God.
• Holy Fire which appears every year on the Orthodox Easter in Sepulcher of Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem in response to the prayer of the patriarch of Jerusalem. This fire, according to numerous testimonies of believers, a few minutes does not burn the body, but after that time begins to burn, as usual flame.
• Shroud of Turin is a serious indication of the existence of God for a great number of Christians. The image on the shroud, in their opinion, is the evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ – second person of the Holy Trinity.
• The expulsion of demons indicates the existence of demons as well as God.
• The relics of saints can also be seen as evidence of the existence of God. The veneration of relics goes back to the earliest centuries of Christian history. They are saved and are honored with moral and instructive and liturgical purposes, and according to the teachings of the Christian churches are the bearers of grace, which can be given by God to believers through the remains of saints.
• near-death experiences. Some people, who have experienced clinical death, tell that they have seen dead relatives. These stories are considered to be the proofs of the immortality of the soul and the existence of the netherworld (Hick).
Arguments against the existence of God
Arguments against the existence of God are divided into four types:
• Empirical – information obtained on the basis of experience, practice.
• Deductive – information obtained by a purely logical way from the preceding ones.
• Inductive – when the private judgments are joined into the total output.
• Subjective – private (personal) evidences.
The purpose of such arguments is to demonstrate the nonexistence of gods, or no need to believe in God.
Empirical
• The argument of conflicting revelations challenges the existence of what is described in the scriptures of God, finding the apparent contradictions between different scriptures, within a single scripture or between scripture and known facts. This argument is effective only against opponents who believe that their sacred texts as infallible.
• The problem of the existence of evil: “Omniscient, Omnipotent and all-good God is not compatible with the world in which there is evil.” Theistic answers to this problem are called theodicy.
• The argument from unbelief disputes the existence of an omnipotent God, who wants people to believe in him, by saying that such a god could have found a better way to attract believers among his own creations.
• The conservative argument contends that because the natural theory adequately explains the development of religion and belief, the actual existence of such supernatural beings is no need before it is needed to explain these phenomena.
• Russell’s teapot analogy that means that the burden of proving the existence of God lies on theists but not on doubters.
Deductive
• The paradox of omnipotence expresses the view of the logical notion on inconsistency omnipotent beings, based on issues such as “Can Gad create such a heavy stone that he won’t be able to lift it?”
• Another argument suggests a contradiction between omniscience and omnipotence, asking the question “Can God change his mind?”
• The argument from free will disputes the existence of an omniscient God who has a free will or gives it to his creations, expressing mutually exclusive nature of these two properties. According to this argument, if God knows the future, then all human actions are doomed to meet this future, and that means that he doesn’t have a free will. Another argument adds that God’s will in this case is also limited by his knowledge of everything that He will do in eternity.
• Objection to the cosmological argument suggests a need to disseminate the existence of the creator of the whole and of God himself (“Who created God?”). This challenges the statement that the root cause of all is God, not the universe (“chicken and egg problem”).
Inductive
• The argument from the absurdity claims that the omnipotent and omniscient creature has no sense to do anything (in particular, to create the universe), because such creatures do not have needs or desires – all these concepts are inherent to a human being. Thus, the very existence of the universe contradicts with the existence of Almighty God.
• “Historical induction” concludes that since the majority of theistic religions in history (eg, ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek) eventually have become regarded as a false or misleading, then, by induction, all theistic religions, including modern – are false or erroneous.
Subjective
As subjective arguments in favor of the existence of God, subjective arguments against the supernatural rely on private evidence or assumptions about religious revelations.
• The argument from the testimony of eyewitnesses relies on the opinion of contemporary or historical figures who have not believed or have expressed strong doubts about the existence of God.
• The argument from conflicting religions. Different religions describe God and his precepts in different ways. All the conflicting data can not be true at the same time, therefore, if not all, then many of the gods do not exist (Pasquini, 94-115).
Stephen Henry Roberts, a historian said: “I contend that we both are atheists. I just believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you reject all other possible gods, you will understand why I reject yours”.
Anselm offered four proofs of the existence of God. In three of them, he proves the existence of the Creator through a consideration of the creations. All creations are of different degrees in mastery of some perfection; things endowed with perfection in varying degrees, receive their relative perfection from the perfection itself, the highest degree of perfection. For example, every thing is good. We want things because they are some good. But things are not equally good, and none of them is a total good. They are a good because to a greater or lesser extent they are involved in the total good. The good itself is the primary being that surpasses anything that exists, and is Existence, which we call God.
In the ontological argument Anselm seeks to show that the concept of existence actually is present in the notion of “God”. God is the most of what we can think. Like the majority of Christian thinkers Anselm believes that the path of religious apprehension of God is not identical to the intellectual activity, but he also does not deny that it has the ability to go on this path.