The debate concerning the existence of God is one of the oldest and most discussed debates in human history. Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others for thousands of years. In philosophical terms, such arguments involve primarily the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being, existence, or reality) and also the theory of value, since concepts of perfection are connected to notions of God. A wide variety of arguments exist which can be categorized as metaphysical, logical, empirical, or subjective. The existence of God is subject to lively debate in philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and popular culture.
The Western tradition of philosophical discussion of the existence of God began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments that would now be categorized as cosmological. Later, Epicurus formulated the problem of evil: if God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, why does evil exist? The field of theodicy arose from attempts to answer this question. Other arguments for the existence of God have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Aquinas, who presented their own versions of the cosmological argument (the kalam argument and the first way, respectively); Descartes, who said that the existence of a benevolent God was logically necessary for the evidence of the senses to be meaningful; and Immanuel Kant, who argued that the existence of God can be deduced from the existence of good. Thinkers who have provided arguments against the existence of God include David Hume, Kant, Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell. In modern culture, the question of God's existence has been discussed by philosophers and scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and Alvin Plantinga.
Atheists maintain that arguments for the existence of God provide insufficient reason to believe. Additionally, some contend that it is possible to affirmatively disprove the existence of God, or of certain characteristics traditionally attributed to God. Fideists acknowledge that belief in the existence of God may not be amenable to demonstration or refutation, but rests on faith alone. The Catholic Church maintains that knowledge of the existence of God is available in the "natural light of human reason" alone. Other religions, such as Buddhism, do not concern themselves with the existence of gods at all.
''The Partially Examined Life'' is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, they pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don't have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text they're talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion.
The podcasters were all graduate students in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin back in the Clinton years. They all left the program at some point before getting their doctorates and have consequently since had time to get outside that whole weird world of academia and reflect on it and the various philosophical topics with a different, and probably much more lazy, perspective.
Episode 43: Arguments for the Existence of God [09/2011]
Discussing the arguments by Descartes, St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, William Paley, Kant, and others, as analyzed in J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1983), chapters 1-3, 5-6, 8, and 11.
Are the ontological, cosmological, and teleological (argument from design) arguments for God's existence any good? Mackie, a very sharp analytic philosopher well hooked into recent advances in philosophy of science, says no. He's chiefly responding to his Oxford colleague, Richard Swinburne, who takes a very rationalist approach to God, taking the concept of God to be wholly simple and intelligible and providing a superior scientific explanation for, e.g. the beginning of the universe than the brute fact of an ultimately uncaused physical universe.
Mark, Seth, and Wes are joined by groovy South African theist blogger Robert Scott.
© ''The Partially Examined Life'' Podcast 2011
© "Creation of Adam-Hands" Art by Genece Cupp
© "I Believe" Song by Mark Lint (2011)
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