The Existence Of God

The Existence of God

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For centuries, the idea of God has been a part of man's history. Past and

present, there has always been a different integration consisting of the

believers and the non-believers of God. The group of those who have "faith" in

God tend to be related to one religion or another. On the other hand, the

skeptics find the existence of God somewhat puzzling and try to seek the answers

through scientific methods. Even as of today with all the modern technologies

and the development of sciences, we still do not have a definitive answer to the

question "does God exist?"

Among many philosophers and scholars who have tried to answer this question,

we shall look upon Rene Descartes' theory on the existence of God. In terms of

believers and non-believers, Descartes would be one of the believers. Before we

go any further, we must ponder upon several questions. What is God? Does God

exist? If such God does exist, then where does this being come from? Why do

believers and non-believers hold on to their beliefs as they do? What

significance does the existence of God have upon mankind? These are only the

tip of the iceberg amongst the vast array of unanswered questions related to God.

Though there are so many uncertainties as we have just mentioned, the

existence of all other uncertainties in our world may explain why the existence

of God is so real to many people. For the believers, God provides a convenient

answer to all these questions except for the answers regarding God itself. The

following are some of the general arguments for the existence of God.

The first argument comes from the theory of design; there are orders in the

universe which can't be occurring by mere chance. Secondly, the existence of

God explains the arguments regarding the efficient causality; as the world

exhibits orderly causal sequences, something had to start it all up. Thirdly

but not the least, God provides an answer to the question of the origin of life

and its destination after death. ( For the sake of convenience, we shall borrow

some theological ideas from Christianity, the Christian God, to exemplify our

comparisons.) As an example, God is the creator of all, and there is a place in

heaven, a kingdom of God, for those who have faith in God. This helps believers

understand their identity and alleviate the fear of ...

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...inite faculties of

knowledge hold the potential of having mistakes.

In the above discussion, I was trying neither to prove nor disprove the

existence of God; I was, however, trying to offer some skepticism upon

statements which many people have claimed about the existence of God. Although

Descartes embraces quite a grand statement on the issues of God, I felt that his

beliefs were biased towards his own perception and lacked evidence in proving

that God exists to the point beyond reasonable doubt.

I believe that neither Descartes nor modern science have been able to

successfully prove whether God exists or not.

What's really important, no matter whether such a being exists or not, is

that the ideology of God has certainly existed throughout the history of man.

Moreover, the power of this ideology of God has proven to be overwhelming among

the believers who have faith in its religion. Even for the non-believers or so

called atheists, the ideology of God has an effect and/or an influence on them

in one way or another. On a larger scale, it is not an exaggeration to say that

our society is built on the ideology of God. What is your opinion? "In God we

trust?"