An Argument for the Existence of God

The Oldest Argument

Does God exist? Before dissecting this question, it is important to establish what the term "God" means. "God" is a term which means different things to different people, depending on their heritage and beliefs, but for this scholarly argument it is important to remember that the term "God" is a term used for any type of higher power which humans cannot see. It is also important that the audience understands that I am speaking of God in generalities, and not in terms of a denominational God. With this in mind I ask again, does God exist? This question is the topic of the age-old debate which man has had since the dawn of time. Although many people have come along and added their input into it, they have not answered the question, made the question more specific, or changed the amount of ferocity one has while debating this question. It has stood the test of time, and recently it seems as though it is at a peak in terms of how much it is being debated. While this may be a debate which is never settled with scientific certainty, there is a substantial amount of evidence for the existence of God which will be presented to you as a testament to the belief in God.

I believe in God, a higher power, and intend to show that it is reasonable and logical for everyone to accept this belief into their lives. There are many personal reasons that some people give for the existence of God, but only reasons that have been widely accepted and cited will be included while supporting belief in God. Famous theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm present logical reasons for the existence of a higher being in their ontological and cosmological arguments, respectively.

(Edwards, 24) Famous Philosophers throughout the course of history have also argued for the existence of God. Great and wise minds such as Plato, Rene Descartes, William Paley, Immanuel Kant, and Hastings Rashdall have also all given rational explanations for the existence of God, all of which are not at all faith-based. (Edwards, 25) In fact, Immanuel Kant rejected the explanations of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm, and instead created his completely different and non-spiritual reasoning for the existence of God. (Edwards, 39) If history has relied on all these great minds for the advancement of the human race in most other areas, then why should humanity not accept their logical explanations for God? I am not suggesting that we follow the ideas of philosophers alone, but that their explanations, when combined with the reasoning of our logical minds, should produce an output which is consistent with belief in God.

There are five main reasons for the existence of God, but only four of them will be discussed. (Martin, 5) The explanation for the existence of God which will be omitted is the idea that God's existence can be proved on the basis that people have had religious experiences. Religious experiences are completely subjective, and any degree of religious experience can be had by any person depending on how rigid their definition of "religious experience" is. It is a complex argument, but at its' core, it wants humanity to believe in the existence of a higher power based on the claims of people who have reported having communication with "God" or have been shown signs by this higher power. Although this is the area where the most "facts", such as healing waters or stigmata, appear, these issues can most easily be explained away by atheists as natural acts that cannot be explained by present day science.

The first argument for the existence of God is the ontological argument. It can be basically summarized by the following statement: "Even the fool, then, must be convinced that that a being than which none greater can be thought exists at least in his understanding, since when he hears this he understands it, and whatever is understood is in the understanding. But clearly that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot exist in the understanding alone. For if it is actually in the understanding alone, it can be thought as also existing in reality, and this is greater. Therefore, if that than which a greater cannot be thought is in the understanding alone, this same thing than which a greater cannot be thought is that which a greater can be thought. But obviously this is impossible. Without doubt, therefore, there exists, both in understanding and reality, something than which a greater cannot be thought." (Edwards, 24) This argument relies on an individuals reasoning that there has to be some kind of point or being which he deems as the most infinitely powerful one in the universe, and that thinking that there was one beyond this power is contradictory to his own logic. Therefore, because of this contradiction he cannot deny that there can be something infinitely powerful. (Hartshorne, 116)

This is the kind of reasoning that leads the thinker to ponder such things as whether the existence of God is self-evident. Damascene says that "The knowledge of God is implanted in all." (Edwards, 28) This means that is a natural idea which is inside of our understanding from the time we are born. Even the earliest cultures had the idea of a higher power. Therefore, the existence of God, or a higher power, is self evident. (Aquinas, 14) The existence of truth is also self-evident. "For whoever denies the existence of truth grants that truth does not exist: and, if truth does not exist, then the proposition Truth does not exist is true: and if there is anything true, than there must be truth." (Aquinas, 14) God is thought of by many philosopher and theologians to be the absolute truth, and therefore is God is the absolute truth than he must be self-evident. The idea that God is self-evident means that it is innately inside of every human being, and therefore has to exist. The basic idea of a higher power was not just made up by someone looking to exert order and control of the population, but rather because human beings have the self-evident capacity to understand the idea of an infinitely-powerful being, and as stated before the ability to understand something as non-existent is saying the same thing to as to understand something as being existent. (Moreland, 12)

The next argument for the existence of God is known as the "unmoved mover" or the "first cause" argument. It has its origins in the finding of Plato as early as 428 B.C. The basic idea of this argument can be summed up by the quotation "In order for there to be causes undergoing and transmitting change there must first be an uncaused cause to originate the movement. And the only kind of reality with the power of spontaneous movement is soul. Therefore