The Existence Of God Essay -- Religion, Theology, Philosophy, logic

The existence of God has long been a topic of debate. It is the ultimate topic of discussion, as everyone seems to have an opinion on it. I will look at the traditional arguments for the existence of God, the ones that have stood the test of time, and find out how convincing the arguments really are by looking at each one in turn, analysing the logic behind each argument, and finally looking at its criticisms and the responses to the criticisms. The first argument for the existence of God I will look at is the cosmological argument, more commonly known as the "First Cause" argument. It is attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas, a 13th century philosopher. The basic premise is that for the Universe to exist, something must have caused it to exist in the beginning. The conclusion to this premise, argues Saint Thomas, is that God created the Universe, as he is the only thing eternal. The unstated premises in this argument are that an eternal entity is required to create the universe, and that God is the only thing eternal. The history of time in the universe is often likened to a stack of dominoes falling on one another and causing a chain reaction down the line of dominoes. They did not start falling by themselves, as something must have triggered the very first one. In the First Cause argument, it is God that created the Universe and hence was the first cause. This argument even allows for the Big Bang theory, stating that God ca used the Big Bang. This is a popular argument because it allows religion and science to co-exist in one theory. In fact, the Big Bang theory helps the First Cause argument because it shows that the Universe did in fact begin at a point in time, meaning that there must have been a first cause. Bertrand Rus... ...of these planets. However, this does not explain the apparent convenience of Universe's natural laws for organic life. This can be explained in another theory, which states that there are multiple Universes, a "multiverse", and that we are simply in the Universe whose natural laws support life. Out of all the arguments and criticisms I have looked at, none have been proven in such a way that any of them are self-evident, and none show truly sound arguments. Some arguments are valid, and some have true (by induction, mainly) premises, but none can be shown to prove the existence of God without doubt using logic. These arguments should not be used as proofs of the existence of non-existence of God, they could simply be used to support a person's particular opinion. However, they should be used carefully as fallacies are committed in all of them.