Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The concept of God
- 2 The cosmological argument
- 3 The teleological argument
- 4 The ontological argument
- 5 The moral argument
- 6 The argument from religious experience
- 7 Miracles
- 8 Faith and reason
- 9 Religious language
- 10 The problem of evil and the free-will defence
- 11 Life after death
- 12 The ‘origins’ of God and the new atheism
- Index
Introduction
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The concept of God
- 2 The cosmological argument
- 3 The teleological argument
- 4 The ontological argument
- 5 The moral argument
- 6 The argument from religious experience
- 7 Miracles
- 8 Faith and reason
- 9 Religious language
- 10 The problem of evil and the free-will defence
- 11 Life after death
- 12 The ‘origins’ of God and the new atheism
- Index
Summary
Whoever attempts to demonstrate the existence of God … is an excellent subject for a comedy of higher lunacy.
(Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments)Does God exist?
Why attempt to prove that God either exists or does not exist? If you are a religious believer then it is more than likely that you do not require an argument to support your belief. If you are a non-believer, then it is highly unlikely that you will convert on the basis of any of the arguments presented in this book. Ultimately the existence of God cannot be proved one way or the other. Undoubtedly the most important question that this book needs to address is not whether these arguments prove that God exists, but whether it is possible to produce an argument that at least can show that belief can be a credible and rational stance to adopt. It may, in fact, be argued that rationality has nothing to do with belief in God. I say this because of what the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) states in the quote above, for although he believed that any attempts to prove the existence of God were foolish, he was a religious believer himself despite his own admission that it was irrational and paradoxical. In itself this is an ‘argument’: reason cannot prove that God exists, but faith alone is sufficient.
The question of whether or not God exists is one you may well have asked yourself, or others, at some stage in your life.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The God of PhilosophyAn Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 1 - 4Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2011