Seek The Lord!

As we come to the question of whether or not God exists, this article will set forth four arguments that we think are reasonable and persuasive grounds for the existence of God.

Ontological Argument

The first argument for the existence of God that we will examine is what philosophers call the “ontological argument.” This argument was first proposed by a philosopher named Anselm around 1100AD. It can be summarized as follows:

Step 1: God is, by definition, the greatest possible being conceivable. Therefore, nothing greater than God can be conceived.

Step 2: To exist in reality is greater than to exist merely in the mind. For example, it is better for your ideal wife to exist in reality than to exist merely in your mind.

Step 3: If existence in reality is a greater trait than existing merely in the mind, God must possess this trait because he possesses all the greatest traits to the greatest degrees (see Step 1).

Step 4: Therefore, God must exist not only in the mind, but also in reality.

As you can see, this argument builds its case for the existence of God based on our idea of God. When Anselm wrote this argument, he anticipated an objection that others might make. He dealt with this possible objection by means of a hypothetical conversation with a character named Gaunilo.

Gaunilo attempted to dismantle the ontological argument by showing its logic to be faulty. He reasoned, according to the logic of the ontological argument, if you could conceive of an island that was the greatest possible island conceivable, then it must exist. Gaunilo then went on to argue for the existence of this greatest possible island in the same way that Anselm argued for the existence of God. It’s obvious that this reasoning is faulty in reference to this so-called Island of Paradise.

Anselm then responded to this possible objection by pointing out the difference between one’s idea of an island and one’s idea of God. One’s idea of God necessitates that he is the greatest possible being. If there is a greater being than the one in your idea, then you are not thinking about God, but something less than God. The perfections of love and justice and power and everything that it takes to be God are objective perfections. On the other hand, your idea of the greatest possible island is arbitrarily oriented by your tastes and preferences (for instance, some people like palm trees and other don’t).

Cosmological Argument

The “cosmological argument” for God has been presented by many philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, the Islamic theologian Al-Ghazali, and Aquinas. Although presented in different ways, the basic thrust of the argument is as follows:

Step 1: Everything that has a beginning has a cause. Or, in other words, everything that has a beginning was brought about by something else.

Step 2: The universe itself has a beginning. This is true because, if the universe is infinitely old, then an infinite amount of time would have to elapse before it came to the present. But we are in the present, and it is impossible to traverse an infinite amount of time.

Step 3: Therefore, because the universe has a beginning, it must have a cause, and that cause must be God.

An interesting twist was put on this argument by a German philosopher named Leibniz who said that there must be a sufficient reason or explanation for the existence of anything. If this is true, then the existence of the universe must be explained by something outside of the universe, that is, a self-explanatory being, or God.

Leibniz does not assert that God caused himself, but rather states that God is a being who is uncaused, and can be explained only in reference to himself. God is without beginning or end, and in this way is completely different from the universe as we know it.

Teleological Argument

The best formulation of the “teleological argument” for the existence of God was probably given by a philosopher and scientist named William Paley in 1804. Paley gave an illustration to help make his argument. The illustration may be paraphrased like so:

Suppose you’re walking in a field one day and you trip on a rock. If someone asked you where that rock came from, you might say, “How should I know? It could have been here forever as far as I am concerned.” But if you had stumbled upon a watch instead of a rock, you could not give the same answer. Seeing all of the watch’s pieces and how they worked together toward an end, you would rightly conclude that the watch had to be designed by someone. You would have to answer: “Well, I suppose that a person must have bought it from a watchmaker and then dropped it here.”

This illustration shows us that design in the watch leads us to conclude that the watch was made by an intelligent designer. Now in the natural world, one can observe an incredible amount of design. Just think about all the intricate parts of the human body that work together and allow us to function in this world. Things we see in the created order, such as the sun or a giraffe or our human bodies, are like a watch. Because they have design, we must conclude that there is an intelligent being who designed them. That designer is God.

You might object and say, “Well, couldn’t evolution have been responsible for the design we see in our bodies?” That is an unlikely solution at best. That would be like shaking a bunch of metal parts in a bag and ending up with a watch. A much better explanation is that our bodies and everything else in the world did not just “happen” to have design, but were made by God to work for a purpose.

Moral Argument

Another argument for the existence of God can be constructed from the objective moral order. An objective moral order assumes that certain things are right and wrong, good and bad for all people in all places. This argument was best stated by William Sorley, a professor at Cambridge University in the early twentieth century.

Sorley asserted that an objective moral order is just as basic a fact of experience as is the objective natural order. In other words, just as it is rational to assume an external world behind our sense perceptions, it is rational to assume an objective moral order behind our value judgments.

If there isn’t an objective moral order, then it is impossible to call anything “good” or “bad.” You can never say that wife-abuse or murder is wrong. Your judgments about those things would simply be your personal preference or a reflection of your culture. Since this is clearly irrational, an objective moral order must exist. And since moral value only resides in individual persons (rocks, trees, and dogs don’t argue about morality), an objective moral order must exist in an eternal person, namely, God.

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