J.L. Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason discusses the argument that God does not, in fact, exist. Schellenberg summarizes his beliefs in God’s nonexistence in five key ideas. The main ideas summarized are “If there is a God, he is perfectly loving, If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur but reasonable nonbelief does occur. Therefore, no perfectly loving God exists. Therefore, there is no God” (Lacy 121). While this argument does have sound points that seem sensible, many people believe in God and one could argue that God is not perfectly loving. One may believe that God is not perfectly loving because he does not seek out creatures of his own creation, they must seek out him. The action of seeking out towards God requires true faith and this would not be possible if God were to show his existence. …show more content…
One objection to Schellenberg’s belief is that creation implies a purpose for creation, and one could say that God’s purpose for creating us is to love us, and due to this, God is in fact loving. One could also object to premise four stating that reasonable nonbelief in God does exist. If there is overwhelming evidence that suggests that God exists, it would not be reasonable for someone to not believe in God, causing premise four to be incorrect. The biggest argument for the inexistence of God is the lack of evidence. It is difficult to obtain agreeable evidence that is sufficient. It is mentioned that Schellenberg is a non-resistant seeker and does not practice prayer. This can pose a problem as in order to have a close and loving relationship with God, that can exhibit sufficient proof, one must pray as it is the only way to truly know God. If Schellenberg has not experienced this, how could he know if God
I have to admit that Zimmerman’s talk was hard at times for me to comprehend. I would love feedback if I understood his divine argument wrong, because I have had a few discussions about it with my peers and many took away different views from his final argument for a divine being, and in this paper I will explain how I understood his final argument. To come upon the divine being of God, he had to eliminate all the other contingent and necessary options believed by other philosophers and scientists through reasoning. He explained how it wasn’t possible for their to be no answer for the cosmos, nor were any of the contingent explanations of science, philosophy, or an infinite past made any sense.
This book report serves as both a brief overview and an evaluation of The Warren-Flew Debate on the Existence of God, which is the manuscript from the oral debate held between Thomas B. Warren and Antony G. Flew in Denton, Texas from September 20 through September 23, 1976. This debate (as suggested by the title) centered on the existence of God, with Flew affirming, “I know that God does not exist,” and Warren affirming, “I know that God does exist.” The debate took place over a period of four nights; each night the speakers had three twenty-minute speeches that were delivered alternately (the affirmative speaker spoke first), and a one and a half minute rejoinder delivered by the affirmative speaker to close each night. Flew was in the affirmative
Penn Jillette wrote the essay “there is no God”. The essay theme principal is atheism. The author think believing there is no God, make people more kind and thoughtful. He believes no God means people will suffer less in the future. The author thinks when people suffer; they said it is god will and they do nothing about it.
The Theological Argument also fails to establish God in all aspects of the word. As humans we are flawed and finite, thus we make flawed
The existence of God has been presented by a multitude of philosophers. However, this has led to profound criticism and arguments of God’s inexistence. The problem of evil provides the strongest argument against the existence of God, presented by J.L Mackie. In this paper, I aim to explain the problem of evil, examine the objection of the Paradox of Omnipotence and provide rebuttals to this objection. Thus, highlighting my support for Mackie’s Problem of evil.
The deductive problem of evil defines omnipotence as having no bounds to power and being all-good as having the will to prevent and stop any evil that one possibly can. Furthermore, Adams presents how much this problem is amplified when considering horrendous evils that would push the average person to “doubt the positive meaning of their lives”(Adams 300). Adams acknowledges that this definition of God’s qualities alongside the definition of horrendous evils hinders the existence of the Christian God. God is one who is supposed to hold love for all of his creations, but allowing for his creations to suffer needlessly doesn’t align with this love. This problem causes people to question not only God’s love for them but also God’s reasoning in their suffering and their living.
Schellenbergs argument on divine hiddenness, ‘If there were an omniGod, there would be no non-culpable disbelief’. Those in favour of Schellenbergs argument on divine hiddenness argue that if an omniGod exists then that omniGod would let everyone open to the idea of him, know of his existence, the reason he would do this is so he would have more believers. Therefore anyone who is open to the idea of an omniGod who isn't actively disputing an omniGod would believe in him because he would make it easy for him or her to believe. Therefore if God is hidden he cannot
Rowe forms his argument starting with his first premise, “There exists instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.” Then, the second premise states, “An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil
The existence of God has been presented by a multitude of philosophers. However, this has led to profound criticism and arguments of God’s inexistence. The strongest argument in contradiction to God’s existence is the Problem of Evil, presented by J.L Mackie. In this paper, I aim to describe the problem of evil, analyse the objection of the Paradox of Omnipotence and provide rebuttals to this objection. Thus, highlighting my support for Mackie’s Problem of evil.
The ontological argument states that perfection is a part of the concept of God, and that perfection entails existence, and so the concept of God entails God’s existence. However, it can be argued that if God is an infinite goodness, then its contrary, evil, should not exist. Alas, there is evil in the world, and, therefore, God cannot exist. The ontological argument also seeks to demonstrate that God exists on the basis of concept alone. Pascal’s Wager attempts to justify the belief in God with an
124). His other point is that God having a sufficient reason for permitting evil is not the same as having a hallucination. He states that having good reason for the existence of God increases the possibility that He has a reason for permitting gratuitous suffering (p. 124). He also counters the claim that there is no evidence to suggest that God is all-good and all-powerful. He refers to his moral argument—wherein without the existence of God, objective moral values would also cease to exist, but objective moral values do exist and thus God also must exist—to make the claim that God is all-good (p. 125).
Questioning if God is not omnipotent, the entire idea of God creating the world can be called into question. Another issue is that if it is said that God is no longer entirely good there is the possibility to say that God has evil or bad intentions, and we should denounce him. Lastly, if one says that evil does not exist, then there is no possible way to separate those people who are considered to be deviants of society. This would mean that those who commit crimes that are evil in nature like murder and rape would be considered to be normal and acceptable.
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.
This argument can be set up as following: 1. If God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, there is no evil in this world. 2. Obviously,
That is right but here we are only imagining two situation one is just idea of God and another is idea plus reality. But how can we assume that God exists in reality even we don’t know about God’s existence. It seems just a logic which is self-contradictory. We can also apply this logic to other things, maybe this logic will not work. Let’s imagine that electricity is not available in a room, so fan, which is hanging there, is not working.