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Argument about god's existence
Science v religion
Science v religion
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Existence of God: Atheism vs. Religion
The question of Gods existence has been debated throughout history; philosophers, from Plato to Socrates, weighing in on the debate. The Argument has become so controversial that numerous theories and 'explanations’ have been created to prove or disprove the existence of God. Dissidents of the concept of God contradict religion, their ignorance in the discussion leads them to falsely accuse God of not being real even though, God is alive. Religious thinkers have fought tirelessly to shut down the atheists spread of ideas, which came on the scene when advancements in sciences took place. Science has been taking the grand idea of religion and creating tangible explanations for religion's blind faith in the unknown. While
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Just about all arguments made by nonbelievers can be classified into either a deductive or inductive reasoning category. The deductive atheist argues that religion contradicts itself from its overall beliefs to its vital properties. Epicurus supported this once by saying, "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” (Epicurus). Atheists cannot comprehend how God can supposedly be the most powerful being in the universe but still allow catastrophic events to unfold. Therefore, atheists strive to prove the impracticability of religion, because if God is impossible, then God does not exist. On the other hand, inductive atheists present a strong argument as well; they insist if there indeed is an all loving God then there would be factual evidence of him, yet there is none. God is supposedly the highest power in the Universe, it is hard for some to believe he would not want to reveal
Richard Dawkins is one of the most celebrated atheists in today’s day and age. In Answering the New Atheism, Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker examine his most recognized book: The God Delusion. Is God a delusion? Or are atheists? Many have said “it takes more faith to be an atheist that a theist. “ Hahn and Wiker prove this in their description of Dawkins: “The problem with Dawkins is his against-all-odds insistence that...
Throughout our short time on Earth, a very common thought and feeling that many people have is, “What’s out there? Why are we here? What made us?” etc. This natural human tendency to ask these questions lead some people draw conclusions that may or may not be there. A belief I’ve held for years is the atheistic one. Christians, as well as many other moral institutions would refer to an atheist as someone who doesn’t believe in God. Where this may be the case, I feel as though this definition is a lazy and non-intellectual one. Rather I tend to believe that atheism is the lack of a belief in a given higher power. To that, I will reference a quote from Richard Dawkins, “I am an atheist with respect to around 2700 Gods, you (a christian) on the other hand are an atheist with respect to around 2699 Gods.” This is a quintessential and distinguishable difference between the two beliefs, or lack there of. What’s interesting in what Dawkins was saying was that you could infer that with this definition, Christians are statistically about as atheist as atheists are. Now with that being explained, one would start to bring in to frame the probability and the odds that maybe in fact the Christian God is the one real God vs. the chances that maybe another factor has been played into this belief.
Atheists believe that if there was a God he should prevent or stop evil in the world because he should have the power and knowledge to do so. Ideally, God can limit if not banish the evil present in the world in order to help others reach their highest degree of happiness. Believing God is all-powerful, allows atheists to believe he can prevent all evil from hurting the ones who are most vulnerable and less deserving of harm. Consequently, our life would have the ability to achieve its highest degree of happiness, but the fallacy is He should not intervene because it would be a violation of our free will, evil is inevitable, and our knowledge of God’s powers are very limited.
The Canadian philosopher J.L. Schellenberg has recently put forward an argument for atheism based on the idea that God is supposed to be perfectly loving and so would not permit people to be deprived of awareness of his existence. If such a deity were to exist, then, he would do something to reveal his existence clearly to people, thereby causing them to become theists. Thus, the fact that there are so many non-theists in the world becomes good reason to deny the existence of God conceived of in the given way. I first raise objections to Schellenberg’s formulation of the argument and then suggest some improvements. My main improvement is to include among the divine attributes the property of strongly desiring humanity’s love. Since to love God requires at least believing that he exists, if God were to exist, he must want widespread theistic belief. The fact that so many people lack such belief becomes a good argument for atheism with respect to God conceived of in the given way. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered, in particular the claim that God refrains from revealing himself to people in order to avoid interfering with their free will or to avoid eliciting inappropriate responses from them or some other (unknown) purpose. An attempt is made to refute each of these objections.
According to agnostics, there is absolutely no proof of a God and thus, “God” could actually be an existence fabricated from myths. In addition, it is believed that the universe is both ethereal and uncaused by any higher power; it is simply “just there”. Take the Big Bang Theory for example, agnostics claim the universe essentially sprang into existence all on its own and life is merely a series of random processes. Likewise, one could easily ask the question, if God created the universe then who created God? However, some may argue that deism is the most accurate worldview since it is most rationally correct. Many scientists today are actually discovering reasons to believe a God does exist but does not intervene in our daily lives. Philosopher, Antony Flew, was known for being a famous atheist that later took on the deist approach because of how modern science is beginning to “prove” the existence of a creator. Both agnostics and deists agree that there are explanations for mundane happenings and mystical occurrences are merely coincidental. Similarly, if there is a supposedly good God, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? Why does he not
Atheism is disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods, they reject religion as apart of not only a rejection of ignorance, but also a rejection of their religious family and association of religion itself, says Catherine L. and Caldwell-Harris who are published in the Department of Psychology for Boston University, Lesley College,University of Haifa, and Trinity College. This is a stark contrast to theism, which is the belief in god and is the case for many Americans. This demographic is about 83% of America’s population, according to the most recent census. About 16% of the population, or about 34,169,000 people are of an unaffiliated position, which would include Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, and those of no religious stance. This number has only increased since 1990 which was about 14,331,000 in 1990 (United States), and will only continue to grow as more and more people come out as the nonaffiliated in the coming years (Caldwell-Harris).
William Rowe presents an evidential argument that supports the idea that God, an omniscient and supreme being, cannot exist because gratuitous evil, meaningless evil that does not correlate to a greater good, exists. Rowe organizes his argument into two premises which support that God does not exist. The first premise acknowledges that gratuitous evils exists in abundance in the world, creating a common experience, or natural theology. Then, Rowe argues, in his second premise, the incompatibility of gratuitous evil and God. Once the two premises have been established and proven true, Rowe concludes that God does not exist.
Theology is an intentionally reflective endeavor. Every day we reflect upon the real, vital, and true experience of the benevolent God that exists. We as humans tend to be social beings, and being so we communicate our beliefs with one another in order to validate ourselves. Furthermore atheism has many forms, three of the most popular atheistic beliefs include: scientific atheism, humanistic atheism and the most popular one being protest atheism. Scientific atheism is the idea that science is the answer for everything and god is not existent. The humanistic approach states that society is self-sufficient; therefore God is not needed for survival. Therefore how could he exist? The position that I will argue in this paper is the pessimistic idea of protest atheism.
One of the most commonly debated matters for both theism and atheism is the logical problem of evil. Atheists dispute that the presence of evil in this world and the belief in an all knowing, good and powerful God is a contradiction and is logically inconsistent. If God were omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent he would be able to prevent or eliminate evil and suffering; and because he is rational he would eliminate and prevent evil. It is obvious that evil exists in this world. A world that has both evil and God is logically impossible therefore, God does not exist.
Religion and science are complementary elements to our society. The notion that religion and science should not be merged together, does not mean neglecting to understand the parallel relation between these two concepts and will result in a better understanding of our surroundings. This will put an end to our scientific research and advancement because we will be relying on answers provided by religious books to answer our questions. If we don’t argue whether these answers are right or wrong, we would never have studied space stars or the universe or even our environment and earthly animals. These studies have always provided us with breakthroughs, inventions and discoveries that made our lives better.
While some people may believe that science and religion differ drastically, science and religion both require reason and faith respectively. Religion uses reason as a way of learning and growing in one’s faith. Science, on the other hand, uses reason to provide facts and explain different hypotheses. Both, though, use reason for evidence as a way of gaining more knowledge about the subject. Although science tends to favor more “natural” views of the world, religion and science fundamentally need reason and faith to obtain more knowledge about their various subjects. In looking at science and religion, the similarities and differences in faith and reason can be seen.
When considering the basis for the understanding of both science and religion it is interesting to distinguish that both are based on an overwhelming desire to define a greater knowledge, and comprehension of the universe that surrounds us. Now while, science has based its knowledge of experimental basis, researcher, and scholarly work; religion
First off, it is important to realize that religion and science have to be related in some way, even if it is not the way I mentioned before. If religion and science were completely incompatible, as many people argue, then all combinations between them would be logically excluded. That would mean that no one would be able to take a religious approach to a scientific experiment or vice versa. Not only does that occur, but it occurs rather commonly. Scientists often describe their experiments and writings in religious terms, just as religious believers support combinations of belief and doubt that are “far more reminiscent of what we would generally call a scientific approach to hypotheses and uncertainty.” That just proves that even though they are not the same, religion and science have to be related somehow.
According to Alvin Plantinga, philosopher and author of GOD, Freedom, and Evil, natural atheology is “the attempt to prove that God does not exist or that at any rate it is unreasonable or irrational to believe he does”. The problem of evil stems from this atheistic approach which simply begs the question, if God exist why does he allow evil? To justify such evil Plantinga refers to a set of 3 premises proposed by philosopher John Mackie: 1) God is all powerful, 2) God is wholly good, 3) evil exist. These three statements provide the basis for proving the inconsistency of believing such a God exist. For the theist, it is impossible for all three of these premises to be true without having a contradiction.
Up until the Enlightenment, mankind lived under the notion that religion, moreover intelligent design, was most likely the only explanation for the existence of life. However, people’s faith in the church’s ideals and teachings began to wither with the emergence of scientific ideas that were daringly presented to the world by great minds including Galileo and Darwin. The actuality that there was more to how and why we exist, besides just having an all-powerful creator, began to interest the curious minds in society. Thus, science began to emerge as an alternative and/or supplement to religion for some. Science provided a more analytical view of the world we see while religion was based more upon human tradition/faith and the more metaphysical world we don’t necessarily see. Today science may come across as having more solid evidence and grounding than religion because of scientific data that provides a seemingly more detailed overview of life’s complexity. “Einstein once said that the only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” (Polkinghorne, 62). Yet, we can still use theories and ideas from both, similar to Ian Barbour’s Dialouge and Integration models, to help us formulate an even more thorough concept of the universe using a human and religious perspective in addition to scientific data.