Krasher

Frolic in Traffic
2003-12-02 04:26:14 (UTC)

Reasoning for the Belief in God

More philosophy stuff. I wrote this essay for my history
class, I think it displays my beliefs pretty well. I'm
Agnostic, so you know.

Reasoning for the Belief in God
In the 18th century, a period of European history called
the Enlightenment began. The primary idea of this period
was that a person should not believe something without
finding some logical proof for it. Basically, all at once,
people stopped believing in things just because of their
faith and started thinking about the rational behind their
belief. This encompassed all beliefs, especially the belief
in God. It is simply impossible to prove the existence of
God. Though you can make a theory based on deductions that
God may or may not exist, you can never experiment to the
point of proving either view, so it would be logically
correct to believe in agnosticism.

One of the main proofs for the existence of God is the
Proof by Design, which states that the universe, which has
a design, must have a designer. Simply, we observe in the
world around us that things that have a design, for
example, a car, always have a designer, e.g. Ford. Thus we
can induce that the world around us, that everything that
has an inherent design must have a designer. It seems that
the universe has an inherent design. Following the logic of
our law, there must be a designer for these designs. We
call that designer God.

This induction, applied to the world around us is correct,
but there are some flaws with applying it to the universe
as a whole. Simply, we can observe the world around us to
make such an induction, but we cannot observe the universe
as a whole. We have no other universes which also have
designs, or ones that do not, with which to compare. We
thus cannot say that the universe as a whole necessarily
follows the same rules that we observe inside of it. So,
the universe, although appearing to have a design, may not
actually need a designer.

Another main proof for God is the Proof of First Cause,
which states that everything has a cause that is not
itself, and by following these causes backward, we must
eventually get to a first cause. For example, a fire is
caused my lighting a match. If we follow the line of causes
for everything backward, we must eventually reach a
starting point, where something apart from our universe,
and thus could possibly not follow the same rules, was the
cause. It is also impossible for the chain of causes to go
back infinitely, because, even though everything would
always have a cause before it, they would all be part of a
singular set of causes, and the set lacks a cause of
itself. A very good example of this is if “I show you the
particular causes of each individual in a collection of
twenty particles of matter… what [is] the cause of the
whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining
the cause of the parts” (1). Basically, you can explain the
cause of the set by the causes of the parts, and visa
versa. Thus, if you cannot explain the cause of the set,
then the cause of the parts is also unexplained. This is
why God is needed.

Yet again this theory has flaws in that the inductions made
about the world around us cannot necessarily be applied to
the universe as a whole. Like with the Proof by Design, we
cannot just assume that the universe follows the same rules
as what we observe around us, and we cannot observe the
universe as a whole and compare it to other universes to
come to a conclusion about the nature of the universe.
Thus, as far as we know, it could be possible for the
universe to create itself. Another flaw is that there could
have been a need for a first cause of the universe, but
instead of a God being the cause, it could have just been
something around prior to our universe that was the cause.
Theoretically, there could simply have been a different
form of space around prior to the universe, which could
either not need a cause or could have caused itself, and it
was the cause for the universe as it is now. God isn’t
needed.

So, it seems that any reasoning we can develop for the
existence of God has flaws. So, because we lack any good,
flawless proofs, laws or reasoning behind the existence of
God, and because the ideals of the Enlightenment are to
believe in what you can logically reason for, it doesn’t
seem correct to believe in the existence of God. Thus, it
seems to make sense to be an atheist. But we’re left with a
hole in our reasoning. We’ve reasoned that God could
possibly not exist, but we now don’t have any explanation
for how the universe began, or if it began, or anything.
Any theory we can come up with would have the same flaws,
because you can never really make a law about the universe
when you cannot observe it. Thus, the reasoning for God is
just as good as any other reasoning for the nature of the
universe’s creation, and must be considered as a
possibility until one reasoning can be proven beyond doubt.
It is also true that it is simply impossible to ever
actually prove by observation that God surely does exist,
because it would require the observation of God Himself or
lack there of. And because God is as possible as any other
theory, you cannot ever prove beyond doubt the argument for
or against the existence of God. Thus, Agnosticism is the
most ideal belief, based on logical reasoning.

1. Rowe, William. The Cosmological Argument.




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