Frontline
February 1999
Religion

Does God exist?

It is difficult, if not impossible, to establish the existence of God by argument and logic

Philosophers over the ages have asked and answered this question. They have offered several proofs
and arguments for the existence of God. Apart from the academic arena, common sense too suggests these arguments for the existence of God. In this article an attempt will be made to examine the most important arguments offered. It should be noted that the utility of religion or of believing in God is not being discussed, but only whether God’s existence can be demonstrated by the following proofs.

The Design or Teleological Argument:

This is the most popular argument for the existence of God. It can be found in philosophical literature from the time of Plato onwards. In modern times William Paley (1743–1805) made a famous exposition. It goes thus:

Suppose while walking in the desert, you see a watch lying on the ground. How this watch came to exist in a desert cannot be explained in the same way as you can explain a rock in a desert (that is by the operation of purely natural forces such as wind, rain, heat, etc. and chance). A watch is a complex arrangement of wheels, cogs, axles, springs. It does not make sense to attribute the functioning of such a sophisticated device to the chance operation of wind and rain.

We are thus forced to postulate an intelligent mind which is responsible for the phenomenon. The natural world is as complex a mechanism as any watch. The solar system, the seasons, the internal structure of living organisms, all point towards the hand of an intelligent watchmaker. As an example of divine arrangement Paley shows that animals have characteristics which enable them to survive. A bird’s wings are suitable to air and a fish’s fins to water. One can also refer to the ozone layer about which Arthur Brown says, "The ozone gas layer is a mighty proof of the Creator’s forethought. Could anyone possibly attribute this device to a chance evolutionary process? A wall which prevents death to every living thing, just the right thickness, and exactly the correct defense, gives every evidence of plan."

The philosopher and sceptic David Hume criticized this argument in 1779. His chief points were :

A. Any universe is bound to have the appearance of being designed. It appears so, because by the process of adaptation (for e.g., the Darwinian theory of natural selection) living organisms have ordered themselves into the universe. It is for this reason that fish have fins and birds have wings. However, it appears ordered to us that fish do not have wings and birds do not have the swimming apparatus of fishes. To come back to the ozone layer, the reason animal life is sheltered on earth is not because God first created the animals and then put the ozone layer to protect them, but that the ozone layer, which is now fast depleting, was there first and life forms able to adapt to the level of ultraviolet radiations developed on earth.

Brown’s awe about the Creator’s forethoughtfullness seems misplaced when we think of the size of the universe. The earth is an ordinary sized planet, revolving around an ordinary star, which belongs to a galaxy consisting of hundreds of billions of such stars. This galaxy too is not alone. There are millions and perhaps billions of galaxies and supergalaxies (clusters of galaxies). It is not too hard to believe that, in such a huge universe the exact conditions for the generation of life (as we know it) are very likely to occur somewhere or the other. This is the evidence, scientists believing in the possibility of extra-terrestrials cite as well.

B. Hume says that the analogy between the world and a human artifact, such as a watch, is weak. The universe is not like a vast machine, but like a great inert animal or a vegetable. In this case, the argument fails. The world must be shown to be remarkably analogous to a human artifact for there to be any support for this argument.

C. Even if one could validly infer a Divine Designer of the world, we still are not entitled to give to this Designer the attributes of being wise, good, omnipotent, etc. Hume says, "If I can see one side of a pair of scales and can observe that ten ounces is outweighed by something on the other side, I have good evidence that the unseen object weighs more than ten ounces; however, I cannot infer from this that it weighs a hundred ounces, still less that it is infinitely heavy."

Another significant criticism of this argument comes from the concept of entropy. Entropy is a measurement of the disorderliness or lack of organization in a system. The second law of thermodynamics can also be stated as : "A natural process that starts in one equilibrium state and ends in another will go in the direction that causes the entropy of the system plus environment to increase."

Since the entropy of the universe is always increasing, the argument by design is badly affected. Although this law may seem counter–intuitive, with examples such as the evolutionary process which seem to defy it, nevertheless it is valid and needs to be considered seriously by theologians.

The First Cause Argument

Thomas Aquinas (1224/5–1274) presented this argument. He said: everything that happens has a cause, and this cause in turn has a cause, and so on in a series that must be either infinite or have a first cause as its starting point. Aquinas does not believe in the possibility of an infinite regress of causes and so concludes that there must be a first cause, which we call God.

The obvious weakness of this argument is the exclusion of the possibility of an endless regress of events. It is possible that there is no self-explanatory reality, whose existence is the ultimate explanation of the whole. Maybe there is no such self-explanatory first cause and the universe is an unintelligible fact.

There are several problems with the concept of causality. Contemporary science believes that causal laws state mere statistical probabilities and not absolute certainties. Hume believed that causal connections are mere observed sequences, on which our psychology imposes a causal connection. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) the great German philosopher thought that causality is a basic structure of the human mind, through which it moulds our experiences.

The Ontological Argument

By ‘ontology’ is meant that branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of existence or being as such, as distinct from material existence. In brief, the ontological argument asserts that existence is a perfection, and God is described as the most perfect being, it follows that God must exist. Anselm, who was one of the Christian Church’s most original thinkers and the greatest theologian ever to be archbishop of Cantebury, developed this argument.

Anselm describes God as ‘the being so perfect that no more perfect can even be conceived’. He then distinguishes between things which exist in reality and things which exist only in the mind. If the most perfect conceivable being existed only in the mind, we should then have the contradiction that it is possible to conceive of a yet more perfect being, viz, the same being existing in reality as well as in the mind.

Gaunilon, a French monk, criticized Anselm’s argument. He said that if Anselm’s reasoning is applied in other areas, we will reach absurd conclusions. He then proceeds to set up a parallel ontological argument for the most perfect island. Given the idea of the most perfect conceivable island, applying Anselm’s principle we can show that unless it exists in reality it cannot be the most perfect conceivable island.

This debate was reopened when Rene Descartes(1596–1650), the father of modern philosophy and the mathematician who gave us the co-ordinate system, presented his version of the argument. Descartes treats existence as a characteristic, a property, the possession or lack of which by a given something (say X) is open to inquiry. His argument claims that existence must be among the defining characteristics of God. Just as, ‘the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles’ is a necessary characteristic of a triangle, so existence is a necessary characteristic of a supremely perfect being. As a triangle without its defining characteristic would not be a triangle, similarly a God without existence would not be a God.

The Cartesian ontological argument was challenged by Kant. Kant agreed with Descartes that the idea of existence belongs to the concept of God, just as the idea of having three angles belongs to that of a three–sided figure. However, it does not follow from this that God with his characteristics actually exists. What is true is that if there is a triangle, it must have three angles, and if there is an infinitely perfect being, that being must have existence.

As Kant says, "To posit a triangle, and yet to reject its three angles, is self–contradictory; but there is no self–contradiction in rejecting the triangle together with its three angles. The same holds true for the concept of God."

At a deeper level however it should be understood that existence is not a property/characteristic or a predicate that a thing can either have or lack. This point was made by Bertrand Russell in his analysis of the word ‘exists’. He shows that although ‘exists’ is grammatically a predicate, logically it performs a different function. This can be shown as follows: "Cows exist" means "There are some X’s, such that ‘X is a cow’ is true".Similarly, "Unicorns do not exist" means "There are no X’s such that ‘X is a unicorn’ is true".

This makes clear that to say cows exist is not to attribute a certain characteristic (viz. existence) to cows, but to assert that there are objects in the world to which the description denoted by the word cow applies. Russell shows that "unicorns do not exist" is not a statement about unicorns, but about the concept or description unicorn, and is an assertion that this concept has no instances.

Thus if existence, though in grammar it appears as a characteristic, is actually an assertion that a description applies to something in reality or that a description has an instance, then the question whether anything in reality corresponds to the concept of the most perfect conceivable being remains open to inquiry.

It is clear that it is difficult (if not impossible) to establish the existence of God by argument and logic. One may believe as Adi Shankaracharya did that ‘experience is superior to logic’ and believe in a self–evident God. However, one must keep in mind how often we believe in something because we want to and not because there is an objective, certain reason for it. Modern science regularly debunks beliefs held by supposedly ‘revealed’ scriptures. Some of these beliefs, now conclusively established as false are: (a) The three–storied universe of biblical cosmology; (b) The geo–centric theory of the universe; (c)The age of the universe estimated to be only 6,000 years; (d)The special creation of all animal species.

There are several such beliefs. In spite of this, people continue to accept as ‘revealed’ and, consequently, infallible their respective religious scriptures. There are several theories to explain religion (e.g. Freudian, Marxian, Logical Positivism, etc.). However each one of us has to ask ourselves whether God really exists.

SACHIN AGARWAL


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