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• The unmoved mover argument asserts that, from our experience of motion in the universe (motion being the transition from potentiality to actuality) we can see that there must have been an initial mover. Aquinas argued that whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another thing, so there must be an unmoved mover.^[18]
• Aquinas'
  argument from first cause started with the premise that it is impossible for a being to cause itself (because it would have to exist before it caused itself) and that it is impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes, which would result in infinite regress. Therefore, there must be a first cause, itself uncaused.^[18]
• The argument from
  necessary being asserts that all beings are contingent, meaning that it is possible for them not to exist. Aquinas argued that if everything can possibly not exist, there must have been a time when nothing existed; as things exist now, there must exist a being with necessary existence, regarded as God.^[18]
• Aquinas argued from degree, considering the occurrence of degrees of goodness. He believed that things which are called good, must be called good in relation to a standard of good—a maximum. There must be a maximum goodness that which causes all goodness.^[18]
• The teleological argument asserts the view that things without intelligence are ordered towards a purpose. Aquinas argued that unintelligent objects cannot be ordered unless they are done so by an intelligent being, which means that there must be an intelligent being to move objects to their ends: God.^[18]

Rational Warrant

Philosopher Stephen Toulmin, notable for his work in the history of ideas^[21] that features the (Rational) Warrant: a statement that connects the premises to a conclusion.

Joseph Hinman applied Toulmin's approach in his argument for the existence of God, particularly in his book The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief. [link]^[22] Instead of attempting to prove the existence of God, Hinman argues you can "demonstrate the rationally warranted nature of belief".^[23]

Hinman uses a wide range of studies, including ones by Robert Wuthnow, Andrew Greeley, Mathes and Kathleen Nobel to establish that mystical experiences are life-transformative in a way that is significant, positive and lasting.^[24] He draws on additional work to add several additional major points to his argument. First, the people who have these experiences not only do not exhibit traditional signs of mental illness but, often, are in better mental and physical health than the general population due to the experience.^[25] Second, the experiences work. In other words, they provide a framework for navigating life that is useful and effective.^[26] All of the evidence of the positive effect's of the experience upon people's lives he, adapting a term from Derida, terms "The Trace of God": the footprints left behind that point to the impact

Finally, he discusses how both religious experience and belief in God is, and has always been, normative among humans:^[27] people do not need to prove the existence of God. If there is no need to prove, Hinman argues, and the Trace of God (for instance, the impact of mystical experiences on them), belief in God is rationally warranted.

Deductive arguments

Ontological argument

The ontological argument has been formulated by philosophers including

1. God is the greatest conceivable being.
2. It is greater to exist than not to exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.[28]

Thomas Aquinas criticized the argument for proposing a definition of God which, if God is transcendent, should be impossible for humans.^[29] Immanuel Kant criticized the proof from a logical standpoint: he stated that the term "God" really signifies two different terms: both idea of God, and God. Kant concluded that the proof is equivocation, based on the ambiguity of the word God.^[30] Kant also challenged the argument's assumption that existence is a predicate (of perfection) because it does not add anything to the essence of a being. If existence is not a predicate, then it is not necessarily true that the greatest possible being exists.^[31] A common rebuttal to Kant's critique is that, although "existence" does add something to both the concept and the reality of God, the concept would be vastly different if its referent was an unreal Being.^{[citation needed]} Another response to Kant is attributed to Alvin Plantinga who explains that even if one were to grant Kant that "existence" is not a real predicate, "Necessary Existence", which is the correct formulation of an understanding of God, is a real predicate, thus according to Plantinga Kant's argument is refuted.^[32]

Other arguments

These two arguments follow from possible deductions, i.e., they can be set up as deductions and therefore are placed here.

• Argument from Meaning.
• Argument from Ethics, being one type of view by ontologically considered intelligence.

Inductive arguments

Inductive arguments argue their conclusions through inductive reasoning.

• Another class of philosophers asserts that the proofs for the existence of God present a fairly large probability though not absolute certainty. A number of obscure points, they say, always remain; an act of faith is required to dismiss these difficulties. This view is maintained, among others, by the Scottish statesman Arthur Balfour in his book The Foundations of Belief (1895). The opinions set forth in this work were adopted in France by Ferdinand Brunetière, the editor of the Revue des deux Mondes. Many orthodox Protestants express themselves in the same manner, as, for instance, Dr. E. Dennert, President of the Kepler Society, in his work Ist Gott tot?^[33]

Other arguments

• The hypothesis of Intelligent design proposes that certain features of the universe and of living things are the product of an intelligent cause.^[34] Its proponents are mainly Christians.^[35]
• Argument from belief in God being properly basic as presented by Alvin Plantinga.^[36]
• Argument from the confluence of proper function and reliability and the evolutionary argument against naturalism, which demonstrate how naturalism is incapable of providing humans with the cognitive apparatus necessary for their knowledge to have positive epistemic status.^[37]
• Argument from Personal Identity.^[38]
• Argument from the "divine attributes of scientific law".^[39]

Subjective arguments

Arguments from historical events or personages

• Christianity and Judaism assert that God intervened in key specific moments in history, especially at the Exodus and the giving of the Ten Commandments in front of all the tribes of Israel, positing an argument from empirical evidence stemming from sheer number of witnesses, thus demonstrating his existence.
• The argument from the Resurrection of Jesus. This asserts that there is sufficient historical evidence for Jesus's resurrection to support his claim to be the son of God and indicates, a fortiori, God's existence.^[40] This is one of several arguments known as the Christological argument.
• Qur'an
  , vindicates its divine authorship, and thus the existence of God.
• Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite)
  , etc.
  • The
    Brass Plates, into the Book of the Law of the Lord and Voree plates by James Strang, One Mighty and Strong
    , establishes the existence of God.
  • Various sects that have broken from the
    W. A. Draves in The Word of the Lord Brought to Mankind by an Angel
    establishes the existence of God.

Arguments from testimony rely on the testimony or experience of witnesses, possibly embodying the propositions of a specific revealed religion. Swinburne argues that it is a principle of rationality that one should accept testimony unless there are strong reasons for not doing so.^[41]

• The
  witness argument gives credibility to personal witnesses, contemporary and throughout the ages. A variation of this is the argument from miracles
  (also referred to as "the priest stories") which relies on testimony of supernatural events to establish the existence of God.
• The
  majority argument argues that the theism of people throughout most of recorded history and in many different places provides prima facie
  demonstration of God's existence.

• An argument for God is often made from an unlikely complete reversal in lifestyle by an individual towards God.
  Born-Again Christians
  ".
• The
  Scottish School of Common Sense led by Thomas Reid taught that the fact of the existence of God is accepted by people without knowledge of reasons but simply by a natural impulse. That God exists, this school said, is one of the chief metaphysical principles that people accept not because they are evident in themselves or because they can be proved, but because common sense
  obliges people to accept them.
• The
  Argument from a Proper Basis
  argues that belief in God is "properly basic"; that it is similar to statements like "I see a chair" or "I feel pain". Such beliefs are non-falsifiable and, thus, neither provable nor disprovable; they concern perceptual beliefs or indisputable mental states.
• In Germany, the School of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi taught that human reason is able to perceive the suprasensible. Jacobi distinguished three faculties: sense, reason, and understanding. Just as sense has immediate perception of the material so has reason immediate perception of the immaterial, while the understanding brings these perceptions to a person's consciousness and unites them to one another.^[42] God's existence, then, cannot be proven (Jacobi, like Immanuel Kant, rejected the absolute value of the principle of causality), it must be felt by the mind.
• In
  Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that when a person's understanding ponders over the existence of God it encounters nothing but contradictions; the impulses of people's hearts, however, are of more value than the understanding, and these proclaim clearly the truths of natural religion, namely, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul
  .
• The same theory was advocated in Germany by Friedrich Schleiermacher, who assumed an inner religious sense by means of which people feel religious truths. According to Schleiermacher, religion consists solely in this inner perception, and dogmatic doctrines are inessential.^[43]
• Many modern
  Protestant
  theologians follow in Schleiermacher's footsteps, and teach that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated; certainty as to this truth is only furnished to people by inner experience, feeling, and perception.
• Pius X, a Pope of the Catholic Church, says: "Deum ... naturali rationis lumine per ea quae facta sunt, hoc est per visibilia creationis opera, tanquam causam per effectus certo cognosci adeoque demostrari etiam posse, profiteor." ("I declare that by the natural light of reason, God can be certainly known and therefore his existence demonstrated through the things that are made, i.e., through the visible works of creation
  , as the cause is known through its effects.")
• Lekhraj Kripalani (1876–1969) in Hyderabad, Sindh and started to speak through him.^[44][45]

A human's karmic acts result in merits and demerits. Since unconscious things generally do not move except when caused by an agent (for example, the axe moves only when swung by an agent), and since the law of karma is an unintelligent and unconscious law, Sankara argues there must be a conscious supreme Being who knows the merits and demerits which persons have earned by their actions, and who functions as an instrumental cause in helping individuals reap their appropriate fruits.[47] Thus, God affects the person's environment, even to its atoms, and for those souls who reincarnate, produces the appropriate rebirth body, all in order that the person might have the karmically appropriate experiences.^[48] Thus, there must be a theistic administrator or supervisor for karma, i.e., God.

The Nyaya school, one of six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, states that one of the proofs of the existence of God is karma;^[49] it is seen that some people in this world are happy, some are in misery. Some are rich and some are poor. The Naiyanikas explain this by the concept of karma and reincarnation. The fruit of an individual's actions does not always lie within the reach of the individual who is the agent; there ought to be, therefore, a dispenser of the fruits of actions, and this supreme dispenser is God.^[49] This belief of Nyaya, accordingly, is the same as that of Vedanta.^[49]

Arguments against the existence of God

Each of the arguments below aims to show that a particular set of gods does not exist—by demonstrating them to be inherently meaningless, contradictory, or at odds with known scientific or historical facts—or that there is insufficient proof to say that they do exist.

Empirical arguments

Empirical arguments depend on knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation to prove their conclusions.

• The
  Baha'i Aqdas—by identifying apparent contradictions between different scriptures, within a single scripture, or between scripture and known facts. To be effective this argument requires the other side to hold that its scriptural record is inerrant
  , or at least to assert that a proper understanding of scripture gives rise to knowledge of God's existence.
• The problem of evil contests the existence of a god who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent by arguing that such a god should not permit the existence of evil or suffering. The theist responses are called theodicies.
• The
  destiny of the unevangelized
  , by which persons who have never even heard of a particular revelation might be harshly punished for not following its dictates.
• The argument from poor design contests the idea that God created life on the basis that lifeforms, including humans, seem to exhibit poor design.
• The argument from nonbelief contests the existence of an omnipotent God who wants humans to believe in him by arguing that such a god would do a better job of gathering believers.
• The argument from
  development of religion and belief in gods,^[50]
  the actual existence of such supernatural agents is superfluous and may be dismissed unless otherwise proven to be required to explain the phenomenon.
• The analogy of
  burden of proof
  for the existence of God lies with the theist rather than the atheist. The Russell's teapot analogy can be considered an extension of Occam's Razor.
• Stephen Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow state in their book The Grand Design that it is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. In this view, it is accepted that some entity exists that needs no creator, and that entity is called God. This is known as the first-cause argument for the existence of God. Both authors claim however, that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings.[51] Some Christian philosophers disagree.^[52]

Deductive arguments

Deductive arguments attempt to prove their conclusions by deductive reasoning from true premises.

• The
  argument from design. The argument from design claims that a complex or ordered structure must be designed. However, a god that is responsible for the creation of a universe would be at least as complicated as the universe that it creates. Therefore, it too must require a designer. And its designer would require a designer also, ad infinitum. The argument for the existence of God is then a logical fallacy with or without the use of special pleading. The Ultimate 747 gambit states that God does not provide an origin of complexity, it simply assumes that complexity always existed. It also states that design fails to account for complexity, which natural selection
  can explain.
• The
  omnipotent
  entity is logically contradictory, from considering a question like: "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot move it?" or "If God is all powerful, could God create a being more powerful than Himself?"
• The omniscience paradox shows a different angle of the omnipotence paradox. "If God is omnipotent, then he should be able to change the future to an 'alternate future' that is unknown to him, conflicting with his omniscience." Similarly, an omniscient god would know the position of all atoms in the universe over its ~14 billion-year history as well as its infinite future. To know that, god's memory needs to be bigger than the infinite set of possible states in the current universe. Also, a twist on the omnipotence paradox is that God's omniscience is logically contradictory, since He could not think up a puzzle or code that he could not solve.
• The
  problem of hell is the idea that eternal damnation for actions committed in a finite existence contradicts God's omnibenevolence or omnipresence
  .
• The
  omniscient
  god who has free will directly in arguing that the will of God himself would be bound to follow whatever God foreknows himself doing throughout eternity.
• A counter-argument against the Cosmological argument ("chicken or the egg") takes its assumption that things cannot exist without creators and applies it to God, setting up an infinite regress. This attacks the premise that the universe is the second cause (after God, who is claimed to be the first cause).
• Theological noncognitivism, as used in literature, usually seeks to disprove the god-concept by showing that it is unverifiable by scientific tests.
• The anthropic argument states that if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect, He would have created other morally perfect beings instead of imperfect humans.

Inductive arguments

Inductive arguments argue their conclusions through inductive reasoning.

• The atheist-existential argument for the non-existence of a perfect sentient being states that if existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a sentient being cannot be complete or perfect. It is touched upon by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness. Sartre's phrasing is that God would be a pour-soi [a being-for-itself; a consciousness] who is also an en-soi [a being-in-itself; a thing]: which is a contradiction in terms. The argument is echoed thus in Salman Rushdie's novel Grimus: "That which is complete is also dead."
• The "no reason" argument tries to show that an omnipotent and omniscient being would not have any reason to act in any way, specifically by creating the universe, because it would have no needs, wants, or desires since these very concepts are subjectively human. Since the universe exists, there is a contradiction, and therefore, an omnipotent god cannot exist. This argument is expounded upon by Scott Adams in the book God's Debris, which puts forward a form of Pandeism as its fundamental theological model. A similar argument is put forward in Ludwig von Mises's "Human Action". He referred to it as the "praxeological argument" and claimed that a perfect being would have long ago satisfied all its wants and desires and would no longer be able to take action in the present without proving that it had been unable to achieve its wants faster—showing it imperfect.
• The "historical induction" argument concludes that since most theistic religions throughout history (e.g.
  ancient Greek religion
  ) and their gods ultimately come to be regarded as untrue or incorrect, all theistic religions, including contemporary ones, are therefore most likely untrue/incorrect by induction. It is implied as part of Stephen F. Roberts' popular quotation:

  I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Subjective arguments

Similar to the subjective arguments for the existence of God, subjective arguments against the supernatural mainly rely on the testimony or experience of witnesses, or the propositions of a revealed religion in general.

• The witness argument gives credibility to personal witnesses, contemporary and from the past, who disbelieve or strongly doubt the existence of God.
• The conflicted religions argument notes that many religions give differing accounts as to what God is and what God wants; since all the contradictory accounts cannot be correct, many if not all religions must be incorrect.
• The disappointment argument claims that if, when asked for, there is no visible help from God, there is no reason to believe that there is a God.

Hindu arguments

The atheistic conclusion is that the arguments and evidence both indicate there is insufficient reason to believe that any gods exist, and that personal subjective religious experiences are indistinguishable from misapprehension; therefore one should not believe that a god exists.

Positive atheism

In Science Refutes Religion, Isaacson argues an empirical form of strong atheism. If God is in the world (as opposed to being an abstract being), then science effectively proves there is no god. Because "the absence of evidence is overwhelming. There is no more reason to believe that a god-of-this-world exists than there is to believe that Zeus exists, or that Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy exist, or the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot."^[66] If, on the other hand, God is an "abstract being", then it means (by definition) that god doesn't interfere in the lives of us mortals. "He doesn't answer prayers. There was no burning bush." etc.^[67]

Negative atheism

Negative atheism (also called "weak atheism" and "soft atheism") is any type of atheism other than positive, wherein a person does not believe in the existence of any deities, but does not explicitly assert there to be none.^[63][64][65]

Agnosticism

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.^[68] Agnosticism as a broad umbrella term does not define one's belief or disbelief in gods; agnostics may still identify themselves as theists or atheists.^[69]

Strong agnosticism

Weak agnosticism

Agnostic theism

Agnostic theism is the philosophical view that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. For theism, an agnostic theist believes that the proposition at least one deity exists is true, but, per agnosticism, believes that the existence of gods is unknown or inherently unknowable. The agnostic theist may also or alternatively be agnostic regarding the properties of the god(s) they believe in.^[70]

Agnostic atheism

Agnostic atheism is the view of those who do not claim to know the existence of any deity but do not believe in any.^[69]

The theologian Robert Flint explains: "If a man have failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist, although he assume no superhuman knowledge, but merely the ordinary human power of judging of evidence. If he go farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist, an agnostic-atheist—an atheist because an agnostic."^[71]

Apatheism

The apatheist concludes the question of God's existence or nonexistence to be of little or no practical importance.^{[citation needed]}

Ignosticism

The ignostic (or igtheist) usually concludes that the question of God's existence or nonexistence, like many similar questions, is usually not worth discussing because concepts like "God" are usually not sufficiently clearly defined.

Some philosophers have seen ignosticism as a variation of agnosticism or atheism,^[6] while others have considered it to be distinct.

Psychological aspects

Several authors have offered psychological or sociological explanations for belief in the existence of God. Many of these views have been sought to give a naturalistic explanation of religion, though this does not necessarily mean such views are exclusive to naturalism.

Psychologists observe that the majority of humans often ask existential questions such as "why we are here" and whether life has purpose. Some^[who?] psychologists have posited that religious beliefs may recruit cognitive mechanisms in order to satisfy these questions. William James emphasized the inner religious struggle between melancholy and happiness, and pointed to trance as a cognitive mechanism. Sigmund Freud stressed fear and pain, the need for a powerful parental figure, the obsessional nature of ritual, and the hypnotic state a community can induce as contributing factors to the psychology of religion.

References

Further reading

• ISBN 978-0-552-77429-1
  ).
• Hick, John, ed. (1964). The Existence of God: Readings, in The Problems of Philosophy Series. New York: Macmillan Co.
• Calvin College. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help
  )
• Schneider, Nathan (2013). God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet. University of California Press.
  ISBN 9780520269071
  .
• Schneider, Nathan (December 10, 2013). "What Proofs about God Really Prove". Killing the Buddha.

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: God and Religious Toleration/The proof of God

Wikiversity has learning resources about Existence of God

• A Philosophical Analysis of Major Epistemological Approaches to the Problem of Divine Existence and Nature
• PhilosophyOfReligion.info. Introductory articles on philosophical arguments about the existence of God (for and against).
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, articles on philosophical arguments about the nature and existence of God.
• A Collection of Arguments for the Existence of God
• Arguments for the Existence of God from the Christian Cadre.
• Is There a God? by Harley Hahn. A logical discussion considering the existence of a traditional monotheistic God.
• Proofs of God's Existence: Islam—Ahmadiyyat
• StrongAtheism.net References page
• The Existence of God—Catholic Encyclopedia
• The Classical Islamic Arguments for the Existence of God by Majid Fakhry
• Arguments for God's Existence from a Christian perspective.