Existence of God

Existence Of God

Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others for thousands of years. In philosophical terms, arguments for and against the existence of God involve primarily the sub-disciplines of epistemology (theory of knowledge) and ontology (nature of god) and also the theory of value, since concepts of perfection are connected to notions of God. The debate concerning the existence of God is one of the oldest and most discussed debates in human history. 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 the existence of God began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments for God's existence that would now be categorized as cosmological arguments. 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 thoughts about 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 show insufficient reason to believe. Certain theists acknowledge that belief in the existence of God may not be amenable to demonstration or refutation, but rests on faith alone, a position called fideism. 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 the existence of gods at all.