The existence of God is once again the focus of vivid philosophical discussion. From the point of view of analytic theology, however, people often talk past each other when they debate about the putative existence or nonexistence of God. In the worst case, for instance, atheists deny the existence of a God, which no theists ever claimed to exist. In order to avoid confusions like this we need to be clear about the function of the term 'God' (...) in its different contexts of use. In what follows, I distinguish between the functions of 'God' in philosophical contexts on the one hand and in theological contexts on the other in order to provide a schema, which helps to avoid confusion in the debate on the existence or non-existence of God. (shrink)

Substantially re-written and updated, this edition of 'The Existence of God' presents arguments such as the existence of the laws of nature, 'fine-tuning' of the universe, moral awareness and evidence of miracles, to prove the case that there is a God.

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that (...) while none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that (...) while none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (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)

The principal philosophical arguments on the existence of God are brought together here. From the ancient Greeks and Anselm to the present-day and Bertrand Russell, both sides are represented. First come the contributions of Western philosophers to the five arguments traditionally used to prove that God exists; then come the basic challenges to the them; and finally the recent writings that proble what it means to assert that God exists.

This article offers an argument for a form of panentheism in which the divine is conceived as both ‘God the World’ and ‘God the Good’. ‘God the World’ captures the notion that the totality of everything which exists is ‘in’ God, while acknowledging that, given evil and suffering, not everything is ‘of’ God. ‘God the Good’ encompasses the idea that God is also the universal concept of Goodness, akin to Plato’s Form of the Good as developed by Iris Murdoch, which (...) is inextricably conjoined with God the World because it is the nature of the world which determines the nature of perfect Goodness. This form of ‘conjoined’ panentheism yields a concept of divine personhood which includes both divine agency and human/divine engagement. God the Good is an agent of change by providing human persons with a standard of Goodness against which to measure the goodness of their own actions, while God the World provides the physical embodiment through which God acts. Human engagement with the divine may take a number of forms and may lead to moral action, the means by which the divine acts upon the world and changes it for the better. (shrink)

This book explores two questions that are integral to the question of the existence of God. The first question concerns the meaning of "existence" and the second concerns the meaning of "God". Regarding the first question, this book motivates, presents and defends the meta-ontology found in Gottlob Frege's writings and defended by Michael Dummett, Crispin Wright and Bob Hale. Frege's approach to questions of existence has mainly found use in connection with abstract objects such as numbers. This (...) is one of the first studies to systematically present Fregean meta-ontology and apply it to theology. Frege's meta-ontology is informed by his context principle. According to this, logico-syntactic notions such as "singular term" and "predicate" are pivotal to questions of what exists. These notions serve to throw light on the second question. Through thorough engagement with Old as well and New Testament texts, the book shows how Frege's logico-syntactic notions are of crucial importance when seeking to understand the meaning and use of "God". To complete the defence of Fregean meta-ontology, the book concludes by pointing to important differences between the otherwise closely associated concepts of an object found in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Frege's writings. (shrink)

The proposition that the existence of God is demonstrable by rational argument is doubted by nearly all philosophical opinion today and is thought by most Christian theologians to be incompatible with Christian faith. This book argues that, on the contrary, there are reasons of faith why in principle the existence of God should be thought rationally demonstrable and that it is worthwhile revisiting the theology of Thomas Aquinas to see why this is so. The book further suggests that (...) philosophical objections to proofs of God's existence rely upon an attenuated and impoverished conception of reason which theologians of all monotheistic traditions might wish to reject. Denys Turner proposes that on a broader and deeper conception of it, human rationality is open to the 'sacramental shape' of creation as such and in its exercise of rational proof of God it in some way participates in that sacramentality of all things. (shrink)

In _Consciousness and the Existence of God_, J.P. Moreland argues that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness provides evidence for the existence of God. Moreover, he analyzes and criticizes the top representative of rival approaches to explaining the origin of consciousness, including John Searle’s contingent correlation, Timothy O’Connor’s emergent necessitation, Colin McGinn’s mysterian ‘‘naturalism,’’ David Skrbina’s panpsychism and Philip Clayton’s pluralistic emergentist monism. Moreland concludes that these approaches should be rejected in favor of what he calls ‘‘the (...) Argument from Consciousness.’’. (shrink)

There has been in recent years a plethora of defenses of theism from analytical philosophers such as Plantinga, Swinburne, and Alston. 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. A special feature of the book is the discussion of the atheological argument that attempts to deduce a contradiction from the (...) theist's way of conceiving of God's nature. 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)

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the instantiation of the grounding relation that connects the various entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I seek to utilise the explanatory framework of Richard Swinburne within a specific metaphysical context, a ground-theoretic context, which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of grounding. And thus, (...) given the truth of this type of explanation, we will have a further reason to believe in the existence of God. (shrink)

Responding to the rash of books supporting a "new atheism" in recent years, some excellent rebuttals and refutations by Berlinski, Novak, Hart, Day, and others have also been published. The present book, however, is not a continuation of these critical salvos against the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris, but engages in a fresh reexamination of several important aspects of the "God-question," along with an exploration of the theory of the "faith-instinct"---a theory that emerges from a respectably long tradition, (...) but in recent years has been largely relegated to the sidelines in theology and philosophy. In the first chapter, scientific, metaphysical, and theological approaches are utilized and integrated in relationship to the question of God's existence. The second chapter is devoted to the "problem of evil," differentiated into the special categories often lumped into that all-too-generic term---moral evils, natural evils, suffering as an evil. Chapter 3 concerns the obvious follow-up question concerning what sort of characteristics, personal or otherwise, we can attribute to God---going beyond the question of God's mere "existence," even if and when we are intellectually convinced of this existence. In the second half of the book, the various meanings of "faith" are considered; and the apparent discrepancy of many New Testament descriptions of faith with the conventional Catholic and Protestant concepts of faith is investigated. Some "family resemblances" of supernatural faith seem to emerge. Then a monograph by Tubingen theologian Max Seckler, Instinkt und Glaubenswille ("Instinct and the Will to Believe"), which comments on thought-provoking texts concerning a "faith-instinct" in the works of Thomas Aquinas, is considered; Seckler brings out the philosophical and theological basis for this concept, as well as its reverberations for modern theology. The theory of a faith-instinct, however, leads to the question of the proper and improper, real or substitute, "objects," of the proposed instinct. Finally, if this instinct is, as hypothesized, implanted in human nature itself, for all places and all times, what is the function of the various religions in "activating" or placing obstacles to, the activation of this instinct? How are "false prophets," who may be instrumental in redirecting or misdirecting this instinct, to be recognized? Is faith bolstered or hindered by miracles---do miracles have any important relationship to faith? The book ends with a final consideration of the probable mental outlook of the atheist confronted with claims by theists of varying persuasions. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed, updated exposition and defense of five of the historically most important (but in recent years largely neglected) philosophical proofs of God’s existence: the Aristotelian, the Neo-Platonic, the Augustinian, the Thomistic, and the Rationalist. It also offers a thorough treatment of each of the key divine attributes—unity, simplicity, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and so forth—showing that they must be possessed by the God whose existence is demonstrated by the proofs. Finally, it answers at (...) length all of the objections that have been leveled against these proofs. This work provides as ambitious and complete a defense of traditional natural theology as is currently in print. Its aim is to vindicate the view of the greatest philosophers of the past— thinkers like Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, and many others— that the existence of God can be established with certainty by way of purely rational arguments. It thereby serves as a refutation both of atheism and of the fideism that gives aid and comfort to atheism. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the existence of certain entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I assume the cogency of Swinburne’s explanatory framework and seek to resituate it within a new philosophical context-that of the field of contemporary metaphysics-which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of the non-fundamental entities (...) that fill up the various levels of the layered structure of reality. And thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we will have one more good reason to believe in the existence of God. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne’s argument in The Existence of God discusses many probabilities, ultimately concluding that God probably exists. Swinburne gives exact values to almost none of these probabilities. I attempted to assign values to the probabilities that met that weak condition that they could be correct. In this paper, I first present a brief outline of Swinburne’s argument in The Existence of God. I then present the problems I encountered in Swinburne’s argument, specifically problems that interfered with my attempt (...) to arrive at values for the probabilities discussed by Swinburne. Finally, I suggest that Swinburne’s argument would be more persuasive if he assigned exact values to his probabilities. (shrink)

Swinburne relies on principle P in The Existence of God to argue that God is simple and thus likely to exist. In this paper, I argue that Swinburne does not support P. In particular, his arguments from mathematical simplicity and scientists’ preferences both fail. Given the central role P plays in Swinburne’s overall argument in The Existence of God , I conclude that Swinburne should further support P if his argument that God likely exists is to be persuasive.

This paper examines Küng’s procedure in justifying God at the bar of reason. He first counters nihilism by fundamental trust in reality, which affirms reality as coherent and meaningful. He then builds his case for theism upon trust in God, which is itself the condition of the possibility of fundamental trust in reality. Although claiming an intrinsic rationality for both these acts of trust, his position is ultimately reducible to the fideistic answer to the question of God and thus not (...) justifiable at the bar of reason. A philosophical theology, however, should employ reason in favor of the decision for God. (shrink)

New Proofs for the Existence of God responds to these glaring omissions. / From universal space-time asymmetry to cosmic coincidences to the intelligibility of ...

Kant argues that any argument for a transcendent God presupposes the logically flawed ontological argument. The teleological argument cannot satisfy the demands of reason for a complete explanation of the meaning and purpose of our universe without support from the cosmological argument. I avoid the assumption of a perfect being, and hence the ontological argument, in my version of the cosmological argument. The necessary being can be identified with the creator of the universe by adding analogical mental relations. The creation (...) of the universe is then shown to reflect modern scientific cosmology as well as stories and metaphors in the Eastern and Western religious traditions and to resolve the problem of evil. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Simplicity of Descarteś Proofs and the Relation between Them The Causal Argument The Ontological Argument.

Is it possible to prove or disprove God's existence? Arguments for the existence of God have taken many different forms over the centuries: in The Non-Existence of God, Nicholas Everitt considers all of the arguments and examines the role that reason and knowledge play in the debate over God's existence. He draws on recent scientific disputes over neo-Darwinism, the implication of 'big bang' cosmology, and the temporal and spatial size of the universe; and discusses some of (...) the most recent work on the subject, leading to a controversial conclusion. (shrink)

With the emergence of modern physics a conflict became apparent between the Principle of Sufficient Cause and the Principle of Physical Causal Closure. Though these principles are not logically incompatible, they could no longer be considered to be both true; one of them had to be false. The present paper makes use of this seldom noticed conflict to argue on the basis of considerations of comparative rationality for the truth of causal statements that have at least some degree of philosophico-theological (...) relevance and can be taken to indicate ( not prove) the existence of God. The paper’s comparatively modest aim is to establish belief in the existence of God as a rational metaphysical option, not as a rational obligation. In its final section, enriched causal considerations lead to an indication ( not proof) of God as that which guarantees the unified continuance of the physical world. (shrink)

The article examines the key elements and Aristotelian background of Maimonides' proofs for the existence of God in the Guide of the Perplexed.

Nicholas Everitt: The non-existence of God. London, Routledge, 2004, 326pp.

This book is an affirmation of faith in God and a warning of the dangers of a world guided by the religion of atheism. It warns against a religion based upon chance, deficient science, and deficient atheistic evolution.

The latter third of the 20th century has seen the philosophical defence of theism - many philosophers were caught off-guard because they assumed that metaphysics and theology had been dealt with. Moreover, the leaders of this renaissance were analytically-rooted philosophers. Upon examination however, it is clear that significant developments in philosophical theism historically have come upon the heels of breakthroughs in the core areas of philosophy concerning meaning, logic and scientific methodology - cornerstones of analytic philosophy. This volume attempts to (...) document this golden era of analytical theism. (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)

This essay introduces central features of classical Hindu reflection on the existence and nature of God by examining arguments presented in the Nyāyamañjarī of Jayanta Bhatta (9th century CE), and the Nyāyasiddhāñjana of Vedānta Deśika (14th century CE). Jayanta represents the Nyāya school of Hindu logic and philosophical theology, which argued that God’s existence could be known by a form of the cosmological argument. Vedānta Deśika represents the Vedånta theological tradition, which denied that God’s existencecould be known by (...) reason, gave primacy to the revelatory texts known as the Upanisads, and firmly subordinated theological reasoning to the acceptance of revelation. Jayanta and Deśika are respected representatives of their traditions whose clear, systematic positions illumine traditional Hindu understandings of “God” and the traditional Hindu debates about God’s existence and nature. Attention to their positions highlights striking common features shared by Hindu and Christian theologies, and offers a substantial basis for comparative reflection on the Christian understanding of God’s existence and nature, and the roles of reason and revelation in knowledge of God. (shrink)

In an inductive argument data increase the probability of a hypothesis insofar as the hypothesis makes probable the data, the data are otherwise not likely to occur, and the hypothesis is simple. The cosmological argument from the existence of the universe, the teleological argument from its conformity to natural law, and other arguments from more detailed features of the universe each increase the probability that there is a God. I thus summarize in a simple form the main points of (...) my book The Existence of God. (shrink)

In order for science to establish that God does not exist, it would be necessary to determine which observations we would make if there were a God, and which observations we would make if there were not a God. However, these claims about what we would observe if God does or does not exist, are philosophical claims, not scientific claims. Therefore science alone could not disprove the existence of God.

RESUMO: O objetivo deste artigo é examinar o que entendemos ser uma prova original da existência de Deus na obra de Pierre Duhem. Cremos que a originalidade dessa prova consiste especialmente nas premissas usadas pelo filósofo. Quanto à forma, a mesma assemelha-se ao conhecido argumento do desígnio, mas a sua versão se caracteriza por buscar na história das teorias físicas a matéria da qual a existência de uma Providência é derivada. É a complexa evolução das teorias e, a despeito dela, (...) a sua espantosa progressividade em direção a estágios sempre mais perfeitos que servem de premissa para a via duhemiana de acesso a Deus. Tudo se passa como se houvesse uma suposta pré-ordenação divina do curso das teorias, uma finalidade intrínseca a ele. ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to examine what we believe to be an original proof of the existence of God in the work of Pierre Duhem. We think that the originality of this proof consists especially in the assumptions used by the French philosopher in his argumentation. Regarding the form, it resembles the well-known design argument, but his version is characterized by seeking in the history of physical theories the matter from which the existence of a Providence is derived. It is the complex evolution of theories and, despite it, its amazing progress towards ever more perfect theories that serves as the premise for Duhem's way of access to God. Everything goes as if it had been a divine preordainment and an intrinsic goal ruling the evolution of theories. (shrink)