GOD

Came across this post thought-in-my-head

Interesting what all people think about god. There was once a very good article in BBC about god's existence. I searched for the link but can't find it. Luckily I have it as a mail and the arguments go like this

God or no god is the question.
from bbc.co.uk
==================================

The Argument from Design
This argument is very easy to follow:
The universe is such a beautiful and orderly thing
that it must have been designed.
Only God could have designed it.
Therefore since the universe exists, God must
exist.

But the atheist replies:
Actually the universe is not particularly beautiful
and orderly.
And even if it was, why should there be a designer?
And modern science shows that most of the natural
things we think of as designed are just the products
of processes like evolution.
So sorry, but I'm not convinced.

The "Ontological" Argument
Another argument that's easy to follow:
We think of God as a perfect being.
If God didn't exist he wouldn't be perfect.
God is perfect, therefore God exists.
But the Atheist replies:
Most atheists think this argument is so feeble they
don't bother dealing with it.
Professional philosophers usually reject it on the
grounds that existence is not a property of beings.

The First Cause Argument
Another argument that everyone can understand:
Everything that happens has a cause.
Therefore the universe must have had a cause.
That cause must have been God.
Therefore since the universe exists, God must exist
in order to have caused it to exist.
The atheist replies:
Then what caused God? (And what caused the cause of
God, and so on.)
And if God didn't need a cause, then maybe the
universe didn't need a cause either.
If God was already perfect before he created the
universe, why did he create it? How did it benefit
him? Why would he bother?
And if the universe was caused, perhaps something
other than God caused it?
Sorry, but I'm still not convinced.


The Argument from Evil
The existence of evil in the world is a problem for
those who believe that God is wholly good, and can do
anything, because the existence of evil seems inconsistent with the
existence of such a God.

The argument goes like this:
Most religions say that God is completely good,
knows everything, and is all-powerful.
But the world is full of wickedness and bad things
keep happening.
This can only happen if...
God is either unwilling to prevent evil, in
which case he is not good
or
God doesn't know about evil, in which case he
does not know everything
or
God can't prevent evil, in which case he is not
all powerful.
or
Some combination of the above
And so there is no being that is completely good,
knows everything, and is all powerful.
And so, there is no God.

Theologians and philosophers have provided various
answers to this argument. They all agree that it
should be taken very
seriously, and that responding to it gives useful
insights into the nature of God, evil, and belief.

Believers usually respond by saying that God has good
reasons for not preventing evil.

"God" is Meaningless
Some philosophers think that religious language
doesn't mean anything at all, and therefore that
there's no point in asking
whether God exists.

They would say that a sentence like "In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth" is neither true
or false, it's
meaningless; in the same way that "colourless green
ideas sleep furiously" is meaningless.

Logical Positivism, or Verificationism
Logical Positivists argued that a sentence was
meaningless if it wasn't either true or false, and
they said that a sentence would
only be true or false if

a.If it could be tested by an "experiment",

OR
b.If it was true by definition.

A more accurate version of this idea can be found
here

Since you couldn't verify the existence of God by any
sort of "sense experience", and it wasn't true by
definition (eg in the
way "a triangle has 3 sides" is true), the logical
positivists argued that it was pointless asking the
question since it could not be
answered true or false.

These particular philosophers didn't only say that
religious talk was meaningless, they thought that much
of
philosophical discussion, metaphysics for example,
was meaningless too.

This philosophical theory is no longer popular, and
attention has returned to the issues of what "God"
means and whether
"God" exists.



Note for philosophers

This is how one prominent philosopher put it:

"We say that a sentence is factually significant to
any given person, if and only if, he knows how to
verify the
proposition which it purports to express-that is,
if he knows what observations would lead him, under
certain
conditions, to accept the proposition as being
true, or reject is as being false." A. J. Ayer.

Ayer actually preferred a weaker version of the
theory, because since no empirical proof could be
totally conclusive , almost
every statement about the world would have to be
regarded as meaningless.

"A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the
strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth
could be conclusively
established in experience. But it is verifiable, in
the weak sense, if it is possible for experience to
render it probable."

And this led Ayer to dispose of the God question
rather brusquely:

"...There can be no way of proving that the
existence of a god...is even probable.

For if the existence of such a god were probable,
then the proposition that he existed would be an
empirical
hypothesis. And in that case it would be possible
to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses,
certain
experiential propositions which were not deducible
from those other hypotheses alone.
But in fact this is not possible...For to say that
"God Exists" is to make a metaphysical utterance which
cannot be
either true or false."



Psychological Explanations of Religon
Psychologists have long been fascinated by religion as
something that exists in all societies.
They ask whether "religion" is actually a name given
to various psychological drives, rather than a
response to the existence
of God or gods.
Such a belief is clearly atheistic.

Religion, to the common man, is a "system of
doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains
to him the
riddles of this world with enviable completeness,
and, on the other, assures him that a careful
Providence will watch
over his life and will compensate him in a future
existence for any frustrations he suffers here."
Freud, Civilization and its Discontents

Religion comes from Emotions
Human beings believe in God because they want:

A father figure to protect them from this
frightening world.

Someone who gives their lives meaning and purpose.

Something that stops death being "the end".

To believe that they are an important part of the
universe, and that some component of the universe
(God) cares for and
respects them.

These beliefs are strongly held because they enable
human beings to cope with some of their most basic
fears.

Even if this is true (which it probably is) this
doesn't mean that God doesn't exist, but merely that
we are psychologically
likely to believe in God whether or not he exists.

Atheists argue that since religion is just a
psychological fantasy, human beings should abandon it
so that they can grow to
respond appropriately to deal with the world as it is.

Freud
Sigmund Freud tackled religion in great detail and had
several ideas about it.

One of his theories was that religion stems from the
individual's experience of having being a helpless
baby totally dependent
on its parents. The infant sees its parents as
all-powerful beings who show it great love and satisfy
all its needs. This
experience is almost identical to the way human beings
portray their relationship with God.

Freud also suggested that childhood experiences caused
people to have very complex feelings about their
parents and
themselves, and religion and religious rituals provide
a respectable mechanism for working these out.

Freud also described religion as a mass-delusion that
reshaped reality to provide a certainty of happiness
and a protection
from suffering.