Religious Studies: Theme C
The existence of God and revelation
The Design argument
The world is too beautiful, complex, ordered to be an accident.
Therefore it must be a design
If it is intentional there must be a designer
The designer must be omnipotent, omniscient.
The only thing that is all of those things is God.
Therefore God exists.
Isaac Newton's Design argument: The opposable thumb gives the hand precise and delicate movement only found in some humans and some primates. Every thumbprint is different and unique to the individual. For these reasons, Isaac Newton though that the design of the thumb was sufficient evidence of God's existence.
Thomas Aquinas' Design argument: Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century philosopher, said that only an intelligent being could keep things in the universe in regular order. the planets, sun, moon and stars rotate in the solar system in a set pattern because God holds them in place.
A modern design argument: In the 1930's F.R Tennant argued that God designed the world so that everything was just right for human life to develop. He said that if things like the strength of gravity and power and speed of the explosion of the Big Bang, or the difference in size between a proton and a neutron, had just been a tiny bit different, then life would not exist. Everything is so finely tuned it appears to have been deliberate.
Objections to the Design arguments: Since the process of natural selection happens by chance, the species designed themselves over time. The thumb, the eye and birds wings are all the result of evolution, not a designer God.
If God designed the universe why is there so much suffering in the world? There is beauty but also cruelty in nature. Why would God allow pain, wars, disease, earthquakes and so on? Would God have created evil?
The order in the universe is necessary to support human life, so it merely gives the appearance of design. Humans impose the order or structure in nature to explain it
First Cause argument
Everything that exists or begins to exist must have a cause
The universe exists and began to exist, so it too must have a cause
There had to be something eternal that was not caused by anything
The eternal first cause is God
Therefore God exists.
Thomas Aquinas' First Cause argument: Thomas Aquinas, said he could prove the existence of God. He argued that everything we observe is caused to exist. Nothing can become something by itself. Nothing equals nothing and remains to be nothing unless something is added. For example, a vacuum remains a vacuum forever unless air is let into it, and then it ceases to be a vacuum.
Objections to the First Cause argument:
Atheists say that the argument contradicts itself: if everything has a cause, what caused God?
If you say that God is eternal and has always has existed, why cannot the universe always have existed too?
Just because events or things have causes does not mean that the universe itself has a cause.
The Big Bang was a random, spontaneous event, not an action by God.
Religious creation stories are just myths.