Arguments for God's Existence (Summary of Rauhut-Chapter 7)

Taken from Nils Ch. Rauhut, Ultimate Questions, 3rd Edition (Boston and Columbus: Prentice Hall, 2011). This is an outline of pages 156-188 interspersed with some of my comments. I want to make it clear from the outset that I'm mainly reviewing this chapter of Rauhut and offering some criticisms along the way. The views expressed by Rauhut do not represent my own beliefs or values.

1. Why is the question about God's existence important?

Fyodor Dostoevsky has one of his characters in The Brothers Karamazov to affirm that if God does not exist, then everything is permitted. Without God, there would be no absolute morals, no intrinsic purpose in life, and no ultimate meaning for humanity; however, will faith alone help us to arrive at the datum that God exists, as Søren Aabye Kierkegaard suggests? John Locke argues for the primacy of reason to test religious claims while Thomas Aquinas favors a mix of reason and revelation, but he thinks that reason alone can demonstrate the existence of God even though it cannot demonstrate that God is triune. This debate illustrates that one of the most pressing questions for those who study God's existence concerns the relationship between faith and reason.

2. Yet another question that remains is what exactly do we mean by the term "God/god"? The fact of the matter is that there are different conceptions of God/god (page 158). Think about the deities of Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Shintoism, and Daoism. Nevertheless, my comments here primarily will deal with Judaeo-Christianity, a religious tradition which represents classical theism. One finds this kind of theism in the ancient western philosophers too (159). But what are some of the arguments for classical theism?

3. Rauhut mentions three basic arguments for classical theism: he then subdivides them in a diagram. They are a posteriori, a priori, and pragmatic arguments. By "a posteriori," he means empirical arguments; a priori arguments are rooted in the analysis of a perfect being like God and based on concepts. Finally, pragmatic arguments insist that we're better off believing in God, even if we lack sufficient evidence to prove his existence. Think of Pascal's Wager (Page 160).

I will not list all of the ways that these kinds of arguments can be developed, but two main types of argumentation are the ontological and cosmological arguments for God's existence. The first is an example of a priori reasoning whereas the second is a posteriori.

4. Pages 164-166 deal with the following subjects: the principle of sufficient reason, the cosmological argument, necessary and contingent beings, the concept of an infinite universe, natural numbers and the largest integer.

5. Rauhut next turns to the question of why the universe exists and he discusses Big Bang theory along with potential objections to arguments for the existence of God. Atheologians pose objections to the so-called design argument.

6. The design Argument, pages 169-170. To sum up the design argument, complex and organized entities could imply that an intelligent designer exists. Imagine encountering a house in the desert that is completely furnished: it has a working refrigerator filled with food and drink, running water, electricity, a functional toilet, HVAC and other amenities. Surely you would be justified in holding the belief that someone is responsible for arranging all those things, for putting them there, and making sure they work. Similarly, complex life forms on earth (biological organisms) make the intelligent design argument seem plausible and reasonable; nonetheless, certain thinkers have raised objections to the argument.

7. Criticisms of intelligent design thought-pages 172-173: Rauhut thinks that evolutionary theory is "more plausible" than what he calls "creationism" (i.e., the design argument). First, he claims that evolution comports with our scientific understanding of the world and planet earth. For instance, creationism asserts that the earth was created about six-thousand years ago, but modern science sets the date at circa five billion years old. Another objection to "creationism" is paleontological remains that indicate many life forms have become extinct and that evolution possibly happens with some regularity as part of the world's natural processes: Rauhut argues that paleontology thus makes creationism seem implausible. Third, he points to apparent imperfections in numerous species that apparently rebut creationism. For example, why do ostriches have wings if they cannot fly? Additionally, how does one explain "homologies" across species if there is a perfect designer, one who created everything ex nihilo? In this case, Rauhut has in mind the human hand which is similar to the leg of a horse or wing of a bat in terms of bone structure and its relative position on the body.

Three objections to naturalistic evolutionary theory are that it does not explain the origin of life, naturalistic evolution claims that random processes just happened although they were highly improbable, and the fossil record is incomplete. While there are counterarguments to each objection, I find the assertion that random processes just had to happen to be less than convincing. Why should we assume that the universe just had to exist apart from the work of an intelligent Creator? The claim is a mere assertion and I guess we're just supposed to accept it as brute fact.

8. Ockham's razor, pages 175-176 (principle of simplicity). Rauhut claims that defenders of the "naturalistic theory of evolution" have a robust argument on their side, known as Ockham's razor (the law of parsimony). Evolutionary theory is supposed to be a simpler explanation than "intelligent design creationism" because it does not invoke a transcendent or supernatural entity to explain our natural world: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Yet it is debatable at the very least to claim that evolution is simpler than creationism qua explanatory value; secondly, even Rauhut raises concerns about the applicability of Ockham's razor to this debate. A third response might be that "creationism" does not adequately represent the claims of classical theism or theism as a whole. For example, a theist may be committed to a God/creator God but theists are not committed to a young universe/earth.

9. Ontological Argument (177-178). Anselm of Canterbury produced one famous version of the ontological argument for God's existence: he reasoned that we can categorize existence in two fundamental ways, as existence in the intellect and existence outside of the intellect. From there, the ontological argument proceeds to set forth the idea that existence both within and outside the intellect is better than mere existence in intellectu. Since God is that being than which a greater cannot be conceived, God must exist not only in intellectu, but in re. Another way of formulating the argument is to say that if God exists potentially, then God exists actually. On the other hand, there is a famed objection to this line of reasoning associated with Kant and existence as a predicate.

Immanuel Kant makes a distinction between a real predicate and conceptual predicates: with real predicates, what's contained in the subject is not contained in the predicate. For instance, in the statement "The horse is black," the predicate adds something that is not in the subject. Hence, this is an example of real predication. However, if someone asserts that "Horses exist," is the predicate truly adding anything to the subject? Imagine someone describing their new beau: he's tall, got a full head of hair, toothy smile, comes from a good family, and by the way--he exists!

Do you see the potential difficulty with predicating existence of something? Of course, there are possible workarounds: one might treat existence as a second-order predicate instead of a first-order term of predication. Sir Anthony Kenny offers a way out of this problem and Peter van Inwagen has an extended reflection on existence in his introduction to metaphysics. At the end of the day, the problem with treating existence as a predicate could be more lingual than anything else.

10. Logical Problem of evil (pages 186-188): A final challenge to God's existence is the so-called problem of evil. Rauhut distinguishes between the logical problem and the evidential problem. I will focus on the first type of problem.

The Scottish thinker David Hume raised questions about God and evil although he was not the first to ask such questions. He seems to wonder about whether God is willing to prevent evil, but unable; or is God able to prevent evil but unwilling. "Is God both able and willing?" Hume asks. If he is able and willing to prevent evil, then why does evil exist? Why does it occur? This problem takes various forms, but we could structure the logical problem this way:

A. God is omnipotent

B. God is omnibenevolent

C. Evil exists

But Rauhut formulates the logical problem of evil thus:

1. Evil exists (i.e., innocent beings suffer terribly).
2. An all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God exists.

Regardless of how the problem is structured, the point is that these propositions are supposed to be inconsistent. Evil presumably cannot exist if an omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and omniscient being exists. There has been obvious pushback from classical theists and others, who seek to address the logical problem of evil. Rauhut discusses two ways that one could reply to the logical problem of evil and demonstrate that the "problem" does not generate an explicit contradiction. Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen have explained why the logical problem of evil is not a genuine difficulty for theists. I will offer material for further reading below, but I've attempted to show the range of information that one can find in Rauhut, chapter seven.

Further Reading:

Feser, Edward. Five Proofs of the Existence of God. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017.

Nowacki, Mark R. The “Kalām” Cosmological Argument for God. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2007.

Plantinga, Alvin, God, Freedom, and Evil. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.

Plantinga, Alvin, The Ontological Argument from St. Anselm to Contemporary Philosophers. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.

Swinburne, Richard. The Coherence of Theism. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016.