William Paley was a well known theologian in the 19th century responsible for surmising the existence of “an intelligent creator by design.” His argument, built up to and stated on page 29, Chapter III, paragraph 1 in sentence 1 is as follows: “for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature”. Before diving into the meaning behind this, there are terms to be defined. By contrivance, Paley means artificiality, or to have been made. A watch, as easy as it is to grasp, is simply the mechanism on your wrist that tells you the time of day.
Web. 16 Dec. 2015. This article seeks to argue and find evidence that there is a God. Through the use of social science and research, this article focuses on establishing the validity and reliability of evidence in social research and concludes that the case study approach is valid for providing empirical scientific evidence for the existence of God.
To say right off the bat that you believed in God because of this analogy would not make much sense. If you tried to convince somebody that God was real you’re going to have to dive deeper into the conversation than this watch analogy. One of the reasons that lead me to believing in God is how complex we are. To think that we as humans came about as a result of chance does not make sense one bit. That being said, I’ve always believed in a designer, but it wasn’t always that I believed that God was the designer.
Philosopher William Rowe agrees with Plantinga that propositions — that evil exists, God is omnipotent, and God is wholly good — is not logically inconsistent. Rowe does not believe it is impossible to allow God and his properties to exist along with evil. He takes a different route by focusing more on certain kinds of evil which evidently exist in the world, and not so much on the inconsistencies of the theist doctrines. This certain evil, in Rowe’s point of view, will show that a God who is all powerful and wholly good does not exist after all.
JL Mackie was persuasive in his argument by showing that belief in an almighty God is not rational. He proves this by posing the problem of evil. According to JL Mackie, if God exists and is omniscient, omnipotent, and good then evil would not exist. However, evil exists in this world, sometimes in the form of undeserved suffering (diseases that affect humans, earthquakes, famines ...) and others perpetrated by man (murders, wars ...). If God exists and has the capability to be powerful, good, omniscient and omnipotent, why would he let evil be perpetrated?
William Paley wrote in natural theology reason to prove that God exists and repercussions that has for non believers and believers alike. Throughout his proof Paley compares God to a watchmaker and uses that to explain his reasoning. He starts out saying that although God can never be seen or known for sure humans cannot have created themselves. Paley goes on to say that it wouldn't disprove his existence if he didn't do things perfectly right or always right all the time. Next he says that because God is a higher being he cannot be discovered or if he can we haven't been able to discover him yet.
There have been an innumerable amount of arguments for the existence of God for hundreds of years. Some have become much more popular due to their merit, and their ability to stay relevant through changing times. Two arguments in particular that have been discussed for a very long time are the ontological and cosmological arguments. Each were proposed in the period of the high middle ages by members of the Roman Catholic Church. They each have been used extensively by many since their introduction.
The Design Argument The question of whether God truly exists has been debated between believers and non-believers for centuries. Also known as the Teleological Argument, the Design Argument argued by William Paley states that there are so many intricate details and designs in our world that there must be a creator. In addition, it also argues that this world could not have been created by chance alone due to the characteristics that make it the perfect condition for human life to exist (Pecorino). In this essay, I will be giving a brief overview of what the Design Argument is, then providing evidence and reasoning in favor of the argument, then addressing the criticisms of the argument, then comparing both sides of the argument, then finally
The question that is asked time and time again is whether or not god exists. It is evident that people hold different beliefs. It is evident that through some of the beliefs of J.L. Mackie that it could be argued that God does not actually exist. I find this argument to be more agreeable. In Mackie’s Evil and Omnipotence, he argues many points to support why it should be believed that god does not exist.
The argument for God’s existence is that God is a perfect being, he is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, and supremely powerful. Descartes goes on to talk about how God exists because he can conceive of him as better than himself (AD 40). God is perfect and perfect at everything, and was the first thing that sent everything into motion (AD 45). God is the ultimate cause.
If the skeptic is to assume that God does not exist, he has the burden of proof to show the truth of such inference. Otherwise, we would have to agree with atheist philosopher John Earman when he writes: I acknowledge that the opinion is of the kind whose substantiation requires no philosophical argumentation and pompous solemnities about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary proofs, but rather difficult and delicate empirical investigations…into the details of particular cases. Events of this kind are better left in the hands of historians. We need to shed philosophical presuppositions and bias to focus on the facts.
We can explain the origin of the universe and the reason why it is like this if we believe in god. Existence of being greater than any of us and the rules for over all creation. It is not necessary for physical existence of god. We can say that god exists by thinking about god. As we know that for sided god triangle triangle is impossible, in the same manner non-existence of god is also impossible.
Since premise two has been rebuffed by me, it renders premise 3 unsound which in turn renders premise four unsound thereby proving that God does not exist and proving that the first cause argument does not validate or prove the existence of God. The first cause argument while it is a very important argument still lacks credibility and is self-defeating as it is riddled with a lot of problems that makes it hard to reach a true and sound
In this argument we already assumed that there may be possibility that God exist and finally we reached where we started. So this argument does not give us the exact information about existence of God. There are many objections on this argument but still it is a powerful argument. In my opinion, this argument is not much satisfactory. It describes that existence is greater than imagination.
The debate of the existence of God has always been a controversial topic and has been going on for centuries. Till this day it is still a debate. We have people who strongly believe in God and others who questions his existence. Those who have strong faith will try to convince everyone who does not believe in God that he exits. They will try to come up with arguments to show he is real and good.
