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Traditional "proofs" of God's Existence (from Western Philosophy)
1) The argument from Design.
If you found a clock and examined the mechanism within it, you would probably think that this intricate mechanism was not the outcome of mere chance, that it had been designed.
Now look at the universe; is it possible that such an intricate mechanism, from the orbits of planets round the sun to the cells in your fingernails could all have happened by chance? Surely, this enormously complex mechanism has been designed, and the being that designed it must be God.
2) The ontological argument
God is the perfect being. As He is most perfect, He must have all perfections. If God lacked existence He would not be perfect, as He is perfect he must exist.
3) The cosmological argument (God as "First cause")
Everything that exists has a cause. However, there must at some time have been a cause prior to all other causes. This 'prime mover' or first cause is necessary to explain existence. This first cause is God.
see e.g.:
https://philosopher.org.uk/god.htm
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Kant
Kant attempted to show how philosophy could prove the existence of God. Unfortunately, for him his previous work showed that we could not know reality directly as thing-in-itself. What is real in itself is beyond our experience. Even if God exists, we can not know God as he really is.
For Kant the Christian could have faith in God, and this faith would be consonant with reason and the categorical imperative. Given that human beings have the autonomy to create moral values, it would not be irrational to believe in a God who gives purpose to the moral realm.
Hegel
Hegel thought that the God of religion was an intuition of Absolute Spirit or Geist. Hegel's Geist is not like the transcendent (outside of our consciousness) God of traditional Christianity. For Hegel God is immanent and when we have understood that history is the process of Geist coming to know itself it appears that we are all part of Geist, or God.
Feuerbach and Marx
For Feuerbach and Marx religion is seen as the projection of the human essence onto an ideal: God does not make man. Rather "God" is the invention of human consciousness. Marx also sees that religion is part of an ideological view that encourages the oppressed to accept their fate. As he says: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions."
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) agreed with Kant that the existence of God could not be proven by reason. However Kierkegaard did not think that it was rational to believe in God, rather one should have faith in God even if this seems to reason to be absurd. To put it another way reason has no place in faith. God is beyond reason.
Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist.
Nietzsche: The Death of God
Nietzsche is argues for the inevitable unfolding anthropocentrism (lit. putting man at the centre of the world) implicit in philosophy since Kant. If we view our existence through human categories, then our concept of God is itself a human creation.
Nietzsche is not simply asserting his atheism; he is suggesting that once we are aware that the concept of God is our own creation we can no longer base our religious and moral beliefs on any notion of a divine external reality.
In the period that Nietzsche was writing, the death of God was just beginning. Western thought was starting to face the prospect of a radical change in its orientation, and it wasn't quite ready to own up to it yet.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche represent opposite reactions to the inability of rationality to give a rock solid theoretical proof of God's existence. Kierkegaard calls for us to embrace God even if it seems an absurdity, while Nietzsche says it is time for us to create a new mode of being, with human creativity at its centre.
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We will start with a 10 min introductory talk. Members will then vote on what questions to ask, and the top questions will then be discussed in small groups.
After the group discussion the small groups report back, and we share the insights of the small groups.
