By Michael Hall
I have agreed and disagreed with both arguments for and against God. I don’t believe that makes me an agnostic because I do believe in a God. I believe that there is ample evidence to suggest such a higher power exists. But I do not know the answer to this question: What is God? That may seem to be a rather simple question to answer, but in reality I believe it to be extremely difficult, if not impossible to answer.
Let’s first look at the theistic proofs of God’s existence. The first proof is the ontological argument. Although many believe this to be a weak argument, I believe this may be the most powerful. I believe if you can logically perceive something exists, it does. This is because I do not believe that thought can transcend existence. You cannot imagine something that is not in the realm of existence. Now you may say that you can perceive of an all-knowing God who gives us free will, so both must exist. I do not agree. Because logically is the key word. The equation has to balance out and that does not.
All-knowing God does not equal Free Will
All-knowing God = Destiny
So as long as you can perceive of something that will balance the equation, I believe it must be in existence.
The second proof is the cosmological argument. I believe this to be a good argument up until the “first cause” is added in. I agree with the critics of this argument because there must have been a cause to the first cause and you cannot have a conclusion that contradicts the first premise. If it would have stayed with the concept of infinity, I would have totally agreed with it. This is because I do perceive God to be infinite.
The third proof is the teleological argument. I do agree with this as well. I do believe the universe is to complex to be a product of pure randomness. So it must have been rationally designed by a higher power of some sort.
I am going to skip the fourth proof for a moment and continue to the fifth: The argument from special events and experiences. I think this is a pretty weak argument to prove the existence of God. I don’t necessarily believe that miracles or answers to prayer can establish the reality of a deity. My opinion coincides with the critics on this one.
Now back to the fourth proof, the moral argument. I totally disagree with this argument, but for reasons that differ with the critics. How can an all-knowing God be moral? God could not have a choice if he is all-knowing. Not even a perceived choice. But let’s leave the “choice” portion of the all-knowing argument aside for a moment and just concentrate on God’s morality. Is God perfectly moral? A perfectly moral God would be incapable of evil. And many believers in God would say that their God was incapable of evil. Let’s use the Judeo-Christian God as an example. Why would a perfectly moral, all-knowing God 1) create Lucifer, 2) appoint him as his right hand man if He knew (which He did, if He is to be defined as all-knowing) Lucifer was going to be his opposite, the epitome of evil. He must have known the great evil he was bringing into existence. So if you think about it, God would, in fact, be more capable of evil than Lucifer himself. He would be the cause of all evil in existence. How can that be moral?
The above statements sort of coincide with the first argument against God which says that there is too much evil and pain in the world. There are two replies to this argument by the theologians. First, the free will argument. I don’t think I need to go there again. The second reply is the natural law argument. I do not see how this differs that much from the free will reply. The natural law argument says “What would the world be like if there were no problems?” But if you accept that there is no free will, is there any such thing as problems, not only in humanity, but also in nature itself. Would not nature also follow a script just as the rest of humanity? There would be no other option but for that incident to happen. So can it really be defined as a problem? Problems are illusions and are just perceived based on past experiences.
The last two arguments against God are not very good. There nowhere near sufficient to put the reality of God in doubt.
In the light of all of this, is there a way to define God in which He remains omnipotent, benevolent, omniscient, and still giving us the capability of free will?
Possibly. But we would need to concentrate on the question: What is God?
[...] December 15, 2007 Tonight I happened to have quite a bit of free time and decided to check out a co-worker’s website. I happened to stumble across an article that got me thinking and felt the need to respond to it. The article is written not by my co-worker but by a fellow who he must be in cooperation with for the site. His name is Michael Hall and he writes about God’s Existence. You can find his article here. [...]