Is There a God?

Selmer Bringsjordselmer@rpi.edu

3.22.05

Yes, obviously.

A Simple ProofWhile Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the Godfearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there... (Acts 17)

Proof. Idols exist. Some (fools) regard idols to be gods. Ergo, a god exists — in fact, many gods exist. QED

DOES GOD EXIST?

Does who exist?“Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

“Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone–an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now... (Acts 17)

First, note that if God doesn’t exist...

• why should we go on living?

• there is no answer to the ‘Why be moral?’ question.

• we are intellectually bankrupt, e.g., there is no answer as to how the physical laws that govern the physical universe got here; and,

• more generally, there is no answer as to why there are some contingent physical things rather than none.

Apprehending the Affirmative...

• Tertullian• Augustine• Anselm• Acquinas• Descartes• Newton• Galileo• Leibniz• Spinoza• Gödel• Pascal• Kant• Locke• Edwards• CS Lewis• Chesteron• Muggeridge• Plantinga• Malcolm• Ross• Alston• ...

Ontological/Modal Argument for God’s

ExistenceIt’s mathematically possible that there exists a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, unpreventable, uncausable, morally perfect, ...

Such a being cannot be classified as a thing which doesn’t exist but could, nor as a thing which does exist but could fail to exist, nor as a thing which necessarily doesn’t exist (like a square circle).

The only remaining possibility is the category of things which necessarily exist. Ergo, God exists. QED

and...• The Moral Argument

• The Argument from Prophecy

• The Argument from Christ

• The Aesthetic Argument

• The Narratological Argument

• The Cosmological Argument

• The Mental Argument

• The Argument(s) from (the) Miracle(s)

• ...

And for Atheism?

•The Argument from Mosquitoes

•The “Argument” from Father-Wish

•The Argument from Hell

•The Argument from Evil

Consistency Proofs

Consistency Proofs

Easy Consistency Proof

• God exists.

• God is omnipotent.

• God is omniscient.

• God is omnibenevolent (morally perfect).

• Evil (both of the “moral” and “natural” type) exists.

God created fully autonomous creatures, some of whom use their powers to bring about evil; and the overall value of an “end state” communion of fully virtuous free minds is infinitely great, and otherwise unattainable.