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By.Britto Raj suvidya college ARGUMENTS FOR GODS EXISTENCE Introduction 1. Traditional argument 1.1. Ontological argument 1.1.1.

Anselms version of the ontological argument 1.1.1.1. Descartes and the perfect being 1.1.1.2. Gaunilo and the perfect island 1.1.1.3. Alvin plantinga and the ontological argument of maximal excellence 1.1.1.4. Norman Malcolm and his necessary existence 1.1.1.5 Hartshornes version 1.1.1.6. Karl Barth 1.2. Cosmological argument 1.2.1argument from causality 1.2.1.1. Thomas Aquinas 1.2.1.2. Leibniz 1.2.1.3. Swinburne 1.2.1.4. Coplestone 1.2.1.5. Kalam 1.2.2. Argument from contingency 1.3. The teleological argument 1.3.1. Classical approaches to the argument 1.3.2. Other applications of the argument 1.3.2.1. A providential universe 1.3.2.2. The aesthetic argument 1.3.2.3. Genetics 1.3.2.4. Design and evolution 1.3.1.5. Order and probability 1.4. Moral argument/Axiological argument 1.4.1. The formal moral argument 1.4.2. The perfectionist moral argument 1.4.3. The Kantians practical moral argument 1.4.4. John Henry Newman and his objective moral laws 1.5. The argument from consciousness / Noological argument 1.5.1. The irreducibility of mind 1.5.2. Mind-body interaction 1.5.3. The explanatory failure of naturalism 1.6. The argument from Miracles 1.7. The argument from Religious experience 1.7.1. Swinburnes Religious experience as proof of the existence of god 1.7.1.1. The principle of credulity 1.7.1.2. The principle of testimony 1.8. The argument from change 1.9. The argument from the world as an interacting whole Conclusion INTRODUCTION The traditional discussion on matters on religion had among other the major ques tions of proving gods existence. Various proofs or argument were given to establ ish that through philosophical reflection we can establish the fact of gods exist ence. But the various critics of this argument have established beyond doubt tha t none of the proposed arguments or proofs is adequate enough to establish categ orically the fact of gods existence. Today the focus of the discussion is no more on the probability or estabilty of gods existence. Rather, the focus of the disc ussion had shifted itself. As long as believing is a human act it should have en ough grounds to justify it if it has to find philosophical legitimacy. Therefore the question is to what extent theistic belief is philosophically justifiable. There are several arguments offered for the existence of god, namely Ontological , Cosmological, Teleological, Moral and also some others. We shall take them one

by one. We shall find that ontological argument is the nerve of all other argum ents. Other arguments are so many pleas to support and supplement the ontologica l argument. The main contention of the ontological argument is that existence is the very essence of the idea of god. This argument is a priori, since from the mere analysis of god-idea or the idea of perfect being. We are deducing existenc e. This very contention is repeated by the cosmological argument by adding a fur ther step to it. It holds that the world is contingent and the contingent implie s the necessary. And the idea of the necessary implies its existence. In the sam e way the teleological argument argues from the most complex and varied harmony in nature to the design in the mind of its maker. Here also it is assumed that t he harmony in nature is contingent. From contingency of infinity complex harmony , the necessity of a designer is concluded. And again the idea of a necessary de signer implies the existence of such a designer. The moral argument only adds th e contingency of moral excellence to the presence of design in nature. Hence, al l the arguments rest their case on the efficiency of ontological argument accord ing to which the idea of god carries its own existence as the very implication o f the idea. The ontological argument being A PRIORI cannot establish any fact. Hence to remo ve this defect the cosmological argument takes recourse to what is the most comm on of all the experienced characteristics of the things of the world, namely, its contingency. And from the contingency of the world, the existence of the necess ary ground of the world is argued. But the contingency of the world is the most abstract quality of the worldly things and can hardly claim to be sensible. To r emove this defect the teleological argument has been advanced. This argument is based on the experienced quality of order and harmony, present everywhere in the world which meets even the most careless eye of any casual observer. The moral argument ultimately is based on the most palpably felt experience of man. Thus t he empty content of the ontological argument is progressively filled up by the c osmological, teleological, and moral arguments. We have also got other arguments such as argument from consciousness which takes the nature of mind not derived from any physical matter, but ultimately derived from God. and the argument from miracles and religious experience which are mor e concerned with whether direct experience of God provides any proof of his exis tence. And the argument form change also tells us that God who as Plato named unm oved mover; having both actuality and potentiality in him, enables the other phys ical objects to undergo change as an inevitable fact. And the argument world as an integrating whole would say that human as a part of the world above all ou r material universe necessarily requires, as the sufficient reason for its actua l existence as an operating whole, a Transcendent Creative Mind. Perhaps the las t word in any of the arguments for the existence of god should go to Pascal. He points out that you cannot decide the question of gods existence, therefore it is advisable to look at what you gain or lose by your belief or disbelief. If you believe in God and he exists, then you stand to gain infinite happiness a s your reward. If you believe in God and he does not exist, you lose nothing. If you deny Gods existence and he does in fact exist, then you lose your chance o f infinite happiness. If you deny Gods existence and he does not exist, you gain nothing. Even if these arguments are not conclusive, they have value in indicating the so rt of thing a religious person is thinking about when he or she uses the word GOD. For a believer, they may reinforce faith. For an agnostic or atheists, they are unlikely to conceive, but can at least illustrate the real differences in persp ective that belief in the existence of god implies. 1. Traditional arguments Traditionally we have got four fundamental arguments, namely ontological argumen t, cosmological argument, teleological argument and the moral argument. The onto logical argument has high lightened the logical problems in speaking about God a s that than which no greater being can be conceived, and in the distinction betwee n logical and factual necessity. The cosmological and design arguments suggest t

hat there are features of the world which lead the mind to that which goes beyon d experience. What is the cause of everything? Why is the world as it is? And t he moral argument suggests that we all have an intuition of God (along with free dom and immortality) every time we experience a sense of moral obligation. 1.1. Ontological argument Although the ontological argument for the existence of God looks, at fir st sight, it has fascinated philosophers ever since st. Anselm had the good fort unate it. Nearly every major philosopher from that time to this has had his to s ay about the existence of God. The root of the argument is found in Plato and la ter on, more or less is an explicit form it is found in the writings of st.augus tine.in Plato, the ideas were considered to be more important, more valuable and f undamental than the existing things. Further the idea of the good, which for Pla to is nothing less than God, for Plato, the essence was of greater worth than exist ence and in this sense he would maintain the spirit of the ontological argument. The argument was most clearly stated by Anselm .later on it was re-stated by Ren e-Descartes, this argument was also accepted by G.F.Leibniz, by G.W.F.Hegel and John caird. The argument has a long and illustrious line of defenders extending to the present and at the moment including, Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcol m. However, there have been powerful opponents of the ontological argument as we ll, namely, st. Thomas Aquinas and Kant. The nature of the ontological argument is first of all the ontological argument is a prior argument. an a priori argument is one which doesnt rely on the evidenc e of the sense, the world around us or which doesnt depend on any elements from e xperience, for either its premises or any element from experience, for either it s premises For its conclusion but rather it moves by logical stages to a conclus ion which is self-evidently true or logically necessarily. and typically, the co nclusion of the argument not merely that God exists, but that he exists necessar ily, that is to say, he not only does exists, he could not have failed to exist. The ontological argument is an explicative argument. The argument only e xplicates or explains or opening up which is already pre-contained in the ideas of most perfect being. The ontological argument is also deductive argument. The premises of a d eductive argument contain the conclusion that it reaches, and the argument is st ructured in such a way as to make the conclusion the only possible one that coul d be deduced from its premises. The ontological argument is also analytic. The argument is analytic beca use it is necessarily true by its very definition itself. This argument also throws up some of the questions, like Is existence a property? Are existential propositions ever necessarily true? Are there some objects that do not exist? If so, do they have any properties? Can they be compared with things that dont exist? These issues and a score of others arise in connection with st. Anselm argument. 1.1.1. ANSELMS VERSION OF THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT Anselm took recourse to the proof with a view to strengthening his faith, and ju stifying ones belief in God. For him faith is a necessary precondition of underst anding of God. Anselm has given proofs in two separate pieces and they have to b e interpreted jointly for a correct appraisal of the argument. For him God is a being greater than whom nothing can be either in thought. But such a being can b e either in thought as well as in reality. For it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another thing to understand that it exists, and another thing to understand that it exists..But c learly that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot exist in the understan ding alone. For if it is actually in the understanding alone, it can be thought of as existing also reality, and this is greater .Therefore, if that than which is greater cannot be thought is in the understanding alone, this same thing tha n which a greater cannot be thought is that than which a greater can be thought. But obviously this is impossible. Without doubt, therefore, there exists, both

in the understanding and in reality, something than which a greater cannot thoug ht. The central idea of the argument is the idea of God is the idea of all perfect b eing. Existence is perfection therefore existence is necessarily contained in th e idea of most perfect being. The concept of all perfect being necessarily impli es also the perfection called existence Anselm argument is that when believers (non-believers; for that matter) speak of God, they intuitively understand what is meant by the concept of god-th at he is greater than all Other beings, not spatially, of course, but in the sense that he is supremely perfect. that than which nothing greater can be conceived m ust possess all perfections in order to be so deceived and when we speak of such a being. God is the greatest conceivable being must exist, if it does not exist it will not be that being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Further more, Anselm argues that if such a being does indeed possess all perfections, then it must exist. This apparently radical assumption is based on the principle that existence is a perfection something which can be possessed o r lacked by a being or thing and which contributes to our understanding of the n ature of that thing. Anselm places existence in the same category as he would pl ace, omnipotence, omniscience, goodness ,love, wisdom or justice, and by so doin g he treats the word existence as a predicate a defining characteristics. The crucial point is that the existence maybe possessed or lacked, and t hat to possess existence is necessarily greater than to lack it. Existence may b e in reality or merely in mind. That which exists in the mind may hypothetically possess all other great-making qualities, but that which exits in reality is un deniably greater. Now we believe that thou art a being than which none greater can be thought.clear ly that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot exist in the understanding alone. For if it is actually in the understanding alone, it can be thought of a s existing in reality and this is greater. Therefore, if that than which a great er cannot be thought is in the understanding alone, it can be thought of as exi sting also in reality, and this is greater.without doubt, therefore, therefore, th ere exists, both in the understanding and in reality, something than which a gre ater cannot be thought. Anselm attempts to clarify his thinking by use of an analogy. When a painter con siders his next work it is already in his mind and he has a clear idea of it, ho wever, it cannot be said to exist until he has painted it. When it exists in rea lity and not just in the mind, such existence, Anselm maintains, is undeniably g reater than existence in intellect and since God is that than which nothing grea ter can be conceived, God must possess the perfection of existence both reality and in the mind. if this was not the case, then something other than God that di d exist in reality would be greater than God, and this is impossible. SUPPORTERS OF THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 1.1.1.1. Descartes and the perfect being Rene Descartes is the influential French thinker ,reformulated the ontol ogical proof specifically in terms of necessity existence .it appealed to him as a rationalist philosopher who sought to prove the existence of god by reason a lone, rejecting as untrustworthy information that came from the senses alone. D oubting all his knowledge, he realized that the very act of doubting proved his own existence, inspiring the famous saying (cogito ergo sum) I think, therefore I am As Descartes could conceive of his own existence, he could also conceive of the existence of a perfect being. The idea of god is the idea of a supremely perfect being. A supremely perfect be ing has all perfections. Existence is perfection. A supremely perfect being has the perfection of existence. It is impossible to think of god as not existing. T herefore God exists. Descartes used three fundamental arguments in trying to prove the existence of G od. But the most important proof of the existence of god is ontological it is on tological inn that it intensifies essence with existence. According to him, idea of a triangle-when one thinks of a triangle and its three angles being equal to

two rights or in nature, when one thinks of a mountain, one also thinks of a va lley. Therefore when we apply to God, the perfection of god implies existence. 1.1.1.2. Gaunilo and the perfect island Anselms argument was refuted in his own life time by Gaunilo, who demonst rated in a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM of his own that if the logic of the argument were applied to things other than god it led to invalid conclusion replacing the word with the greatest island led to an argument which had the same form as an Anselms , with true premises and yet which leads to a false conclusion. I can conceive of an island than which no greater island can be thought. Such an island must possess all perfections. Existence is a perfection. Therefore the Island exists. Even if the greatest island were substituted for the greatest possible island, the a rgument would still yield an invalid conclusion; quite clearly, to conceive of a n island in all of its perfections does not guarantee its existence or bring it into existence. Thus Gaunilos criticism strikes at the heart of the ontological p roof which depends on accepting that. Perfection necessarily entails existence That which is perfect is perfect must, of necessity, exists. 1.1.1.3. Alvin plantinga and the ontological argument of maximal excellence This argument can show that Gods existence is a possibility that it may n ot work as a proof but it gives an indication that it is reasonable to believe i n the existence of a most perfect being. Plantinga has offered an argument which at first glance is strikingly unlike that of either Anselm or Descartes. Planti ng casts the argument in the language of various possible worlds. Alvin suggested that since we are able to imagine any number of alternative worlds in which thin gs may be quite different. Alvin begins by introducing the idea of excellence, und erstanding in a special sense. A being is excellent to the extent to which he is knowledge, powerful and morally good .a being is maximally excellent if and onl y if he is maximally knowledgeable, maximally powerful, and maximally good ,a se t of properties which planting equates with being omniscient, omnipotent and mor ally good. Now it looks that a being might be maximally excellent in our world, but not in some other possible world. He gives an example of two possible beings, ( A and B),A is maximally excellent in this world, B is maximally excellent in som e other possible world. But whereas in yet other possible world, A is less than maximally excellent, B is maximally excellent in all other possible worlds. It s eems that we ought to say that although A and B are (in this world) of equal exc ellence, B is greater than A. he is greater than A because of his maximal excell ence is stronger than A is. It is stronger, in this sense that no matter how dif ferent things might have been, he would still be maximally excellent. We might i ndeed say that B is maximally greater, in the sense that he displays maximally e xcellence with maximal strength; his excellence is so strong that it survives in every possible world. A being has maximal greatness if and only if it has maximal excellence in every possible world. It is possible that something is maximally great. There is a pos sible world in which something is maximally great. (In this world) there is some thing which is maximally great. (In this world) there exists a being of maximal excellence. (In this world) there exists a being who is omnipotent, omniscient a nd morally perfect. Therefore God exists. 1.1.1.4. Norman Malcolm and his necessary existence Norman Malcolm proposed a form of the argument in support of necessary e xistence, working on the presumption that if god could exist, he does exist, sin ce he couldnt not exist. God is that than which nothing greater can be thought. Necessary existence is pe rfection. If god possesses all perfections, he must possess necessary existence. A necessary being cannot not exist. If God could exist, then he would exist nec essarily. It is contradictory to say that a necessary being does not exist. Ther efore God must exist. Furthermore, he argues that gods existence is either necessary or impossible but he cannot possess contingent existence he can only posses the necessary existenc

e. Hence, god must have necessary existence. Malcolm observes that god is a spec ial case- unlike contingent being, for whom existence is merely possible. Malcol m claims that there are two versions of Anselms argument. According to Malcolm, A nselms first version relies on the assumption that to exist in reality is greater than to exist in the understanding alone. But this, Malcolm says is equivalent to treating existence as a perfection, i.e. as a property which the greatest con ceivable being would have. Malcolm says that even Kant also has shown the fact t hat existence is not property. Consequently, this version of the argument fails. Malcolm says that Anselm has a second argument, which perhaps Anselm did not distinguish from the first. Anselms first argument turns on the claim that e xistence is perfection, the second turns on the different principle that existen ce as matter- of- necessity is a perfection. Some entities exist in some possibl e worlds, but not in others; whereas it is at least or an entity to exist in eve ry possible world. Beings who exist in some possible world but others have exist ence as- a- matter- of necessary existence. 1.1.1.5 Hartshornes version Hartshorne agrees with Malcolm that there are two versions of the ontolo gical argument to be found in Anselm; he agrees that of these two versions, the first is unsound and the second version takes. Hartshorne provides a concise sta tement of what he takes this second version to be the most appealing ones. 1.1.1.6. Karl Barth This ontological argument could be interpreted not as a proof but as an attempt to understand more deeply what is conveyed by the concept God and what is accept ed by our faith. A reflection on this argument can deepen our appreciation of go d as a necessary being. Critical comments of the ontological argument 1. Kant Existence is an essential perfection and it is not attributive. Existence is not associated with the definition of something. Fundamental to both Anselm and Des cartes form of the ontological argument is that existence is a predicate, an attr ibutive, or a quality that can be possessed or lacked. Such qualities may be siz e, shape, colour, temperature, personality traits, or intelligence, for example. These may or may not belong to a thing or being, and their presence or absence is part of our understanding and apprehension of it. However Kant observes that existence is not associated with the definition of something, since it did not a dd anything to our understanding of that thing. we must establish the existence of something before we can say what it is like, not the other way around, and so if there is a perfect being then he must exist, just if there is a triangle, th en it must have three sides, but we cannot ascribe existence a priori to our def inition of a perfect being, which is tantamount to saying an existing god exists. 2. Frege Existence is not a predicate then it cannot be used as a defining predicates of god. When we attribute existence then we attribute it only to the concept and no t to the things or objects. 3. Aquinas Aquinas had already questioned this important aspect of the ontological argument , claiming that Anselm was guilty of making a transitional error-that is, moving f rom the definition of god to the existence of god. Furthermore, Aquinas observed that Anselm was guilty of making an assumption about the definition of god that was not necessarily shared by all believers. Understanding the meaning of the t erm god means only that god exists in the understanding, not in reality. Gods exist ence in realty must be demonstrated a posteriori, as Aquinass cosmological argume nt attempts to show. 4. G.E.Moore The twentieth-century philosopher G.E.Moore demonstrated further the strength of Kants principle that existence couldnt be grammatically used as a predicate becau se the word does not function as other predicates do. He proposed taking the fol lowing statements: Some tame tigers do not growl Some tame tigers do not exist.

Statement A is perfectly meaningful, implying that there are beings that answe r to the description tame tiger and that a characteristic of some of them is that they do not growl. However, statement B ,which uses do not exist in the same way that do not growl was used in statement A, is not meaningful in the same way. We l earn nothing about tame tigers in this statement apart from the fact that they d o not exist, which presumably means there is nothing to learn about them anyway. 5. Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell also furthered Kants observations. He proposed that existence was not a predicate but rather a term used to indicate the instance of something in the spatio-temporal world. Therefore, some tame tigers exist does not tell us anyt hing about their nature but it does indicate that there is an instance of such b eings in the world. Cows are brown and cows are brown and exist effectively tell us only one thing: cows are brown and exist indicates that they occupy a place in the world, but it is a tautology since by saying that they are brown we are presuma bly referring to extent cows rather than imaginary ones. 6. David Hume David Hume considered the argument a failure because it made a false assumption about existence-that necessary existence was a coherent concept. He argued that existence could only ever be contingent dependent and limited) and that all stat ements about existence could be denied without contradiction. All things which c ould be said to exist could also be said not to exist. Thus, Hume did not agree that any form of existence could be analytically true. It is simply a matter of fact. 1.2. Cosmological argument The cosmological argument in all its forms responds to the instinctive h uman awareness that the existence of the universe is not explicable without refe rence to causes and factors outside itself. It cannot be self-causing since it i s contingent and only the existence of a first, necessary cause and mover explai ns the origin of the universe. The argument tells us that experience of the cosm os in its different aspect compel us to infer a necessary being that is GOD. The u niverse has not always been in existence, and for the universe to come into bein g, an external agent is necessary. That agent is given the name as GOD. The cosmol ogical argument and the teological argument, are concerned with the finding an e xplanation for the universe. Both arguments look to the universe and find that i t is not self-explanatory, and it demands that we ask questions about its origin , nature, and its purpose. Such questions might include Why is there something rather nothing? Must a chain of movers have a first cause or is an infinite regress of causes a sufficient explanation? What kind of agency is necessary for the universe to come into being? The cosmological argument reaches the conclusion that god is the ultimate, compl ete and adequate explanation for the universe, and possesses in himself all the necessary characteristics to be that complete explanation. Though the cosmologic al argument is essentially a posteriori,It does depend on the ontological argument having proven that god is analytically a necessary being. The cosmological argument with a longer history than the ontological arg ument, its origin goes back to the ancient Greeks; in its elementary form the co smological argument started it quite clearly. It resurfaces in western philosoph y with the writings of Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Aquinas offered five ways of proving the existence of god, of which the first three are usually regar ded as versions of the cosmological argument as well as the central argument for proving god. But at the present time F.C.Copleston has commented on Thomas Aqui nas, he holds that neo-thomists wrongly think that for Aquinas the cosmological argument is the more important argument. But Copleston has made much of the argu ment in the two debates concerning the existence of god. Further E.L.Mascall doe s take the cosmological argument as the one single argument which underlies all the five ways of proving god. According to him, five ways call attention to the fi ve outstanding characteristics of finite beings which at bottom can be reduced t o one, namely, all finite things have their essence distinct from existence. In such a case their existence is nit self-maintaing. Hence they require a source i

n which essence and existence are identical, namely, GOD. Today also we have Swinb urnes argument, various scientific theories as well as Kalams argument. However, a t the hands of Hume and Kant the argument received severe criticism. Cosmological arguments may be divided into two broad types: Those that depend on a premise denying an infinite regress of causes Those that do not depend on such a premise The nature of the cosmological argument is it is first of all, A POSTERIORI that is, based upon the experience. The cosmological argument is also, a synthetic argument that is after th e experience the fact is known to us. The cosmological argument is also an inductive. Since the conclusion the argumen t reaches is not contained within the premises, so we need to establish valid re ason to argue that god is a better conclusion. ARGUMENT FROM CAUSALITY Types of Cosmological argument ARGUMENT FROM CONTINGENCY A. THOMAS AQUNIAS VERSION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 1.2.1ARGUMENT FROM CAUSALITY THIS ARGUMENT HAS FOLLOWING STEPS Every event has a cause, and no event in the world can be without a cause Events keep on happening. The present A is caused by the previous event B, and B in turn by C, and C in turn by D and so. Quite obviously the causal series is interminable. But in order to understand th e whole series of cause and effect, we have to posit a first cause which in its turn doesnt imply its further cause. This first cause which produces the whole series of causes and effects is the mo ver only and cannot be in turn moved by anything else. This prime mover may be c alled GOD. Hence, the world of causal series requires god to explain it. Thus god exists as it own cause and in turn as the cause of the world. St. Thomas did not use the concept of causality in the modern scientific sense, but in the Aristotelian sense of causality with some end in view. Hence this wor ld has to be taken as an effect of an efficient first cause which determines mea ns and ends for the final end. Here the concept does not mean a mere mechanical antecedent of an event. Here there is the Aristotelian concept of god as an arch itect having some design. Hence the effect fully reflects the nature of design. Hence, the effect fully reflects the nature of design fashioned out of pre-existi ng matter, and, the First Cause is supposed to be more perfect than the world de signed by it as the Prime Mover. Hence the Cosmological Argument has to be read along with the fourth and fifth proofs for the existence of God. The popularity of the argument really depends on a question which implies the Te leological argument. The question is: Can this world exist by itself as an accid ental self-regulating system? Ordinarily, people think that the world cannot be a self-regulative system and so they search for the Maker of the world. In ancie nt time the mythical thinking was the rule, so naturally they looked upon the wh ole world as governed and controlled by a personal Being. Later on, even though much demythologizing did take place with the development of scientific thinking, yet it lurked in the background sustained by the scientific postulate itself, n amely, all events are intelligible and causal. So the theist thought that the sci entific postulate permitted him to deny the possibility of the world being a self -regulative system. But as against the theologian as a matter of fact the causal postulate would allow that the world is a self-regulating system. Consequently, there is no logical need for assuming a First Cause. And even when we have to s earch for the cause of the world, hardly anybody today would hold that this caus e is the Personal God of theism. The world is impersonal and its cause, if any, can be impersonal only. Again, every event must have a cause is only a procedural assumption of scienc e. In itself it is neither true nor false: it is either useful or useless. This proposal has been designed to explain the series of particular events of the worl d. At the present time even this proposal has been dropped with regard to subatom

ic events. So this proposal cannot be universally accepted. Further, can the wor ld be regarded as an event? It would be called an event if there is the possibil ity of recording the coming into and going out of being of this world. Quite obv iously so far as the human beings are concerned on this earth, they have not wit nessed the coming into being of this world. Naturally they cannot regard the wor ld as an event: rather the world is the sum of all actual and possible events. H ence, the world is not event. So the causal postulate is not applicable to the u niverse as a whole. The same point was raised by Kant. According to him, the category of causality i s applicable to phenomena only. The world as a whole is not a perceptible phenom enon. Naturally for Kant causality cannot be meaningfully applied to the world a s a whole.7 Reichenbach has put the same thing in the current language thus. Acc ording to him, a word is meaningful in one context, but may cease to be so in an other. For example, one can meaningfully ask about the fatherhood of Ram or Shy am, but is the word father meaningful in could there be a father who never ha d a child? Everyone would ridicule a philosopher who regarded this question as a serious pr oblem. The question of the cause of the first event, or of the cause of the univ erse as a whole, is not of a better type. The word cause denotes a relation betwe en two things and is inapplicable if only one thing is concerned. The universe as a whole has no cause, since by definition, there is nothing outside it that coul d be its cause. Ques-tions of this type are empty verbalism rather than philosop hic argument. Hence Russell holds that every event has a cause, but the totality need not have any. For example, he tells us that we can say that every human being has a paren t, but certainly we cannot say that humanity too has a parent.9 Causality with r egard to specific events and causality concerning the universe as a totality of events, belong to two different types of statements. Prof. G. Ryle10 would call this a category-mistake which consists in using a category in one context when it actually belongs to another range of facts. Hence, the category of causality cannot be meaningfully applied to the totality of events. However, if by First Cause we understand the first member of the whole series of causes and effects, then we can always legitimately ask for the further cause o f this First Cause. Under the circumstances there is no point in holding that th e First Cause is without any cause. And, if the First Cause be without any furth er cause, then quite clearly we are holding that every event need not have a cau se, at least inasmuch as the First Cause has no cause. This would be the denial of the principle of causality itself on which the Causal argument is based. The whole argument is based on the wrong assumption that since the series is inf inite it must have a beginning. The very meaning of the infinite series of cause s and effects is that however remote we proceed backwards there will always be o ther events remoter still. It does not imply any absolute beginning. Hence, ther e is no point in holding that there is a First Cause of which there is no other cause. E.L. Mascall denies that the interpretation of the argument concerning the First Mover refers to infinite regress. God, according to St. Thomas, observes E.L. Mascall is not the First Cause, i.e. the first in the series of causes. God , according to Mascall, is the very source of actualization from the first momen t of finite beings to their final stage. God does not merely initiate the motion , but sustains it. The term unmoved mover simply indicates that the motion of finite things cannot be explained except through a being which is radically diff erent from finite things.11 j But really the Cosmological Argument is not merely Causal, because all causes ar e merely contingent. Even if we grant that heat is the cause of expansion, we ca n still ask the question: Why should heat expand and not contract? So now we hav e to explain the cosmological argument from the contingency of the world. Problems with the causality 1. Not everybody agrees that everything around us is contingent. They would say the base stuff, the matter is eternal and necessary, only the particular things and combinations come and go. Again people asked how do you know that the univer se is not a mere unintelligible fact. This has neither been established nor rule

d but merely assumed. Actually we have two alternatives here either there is a n ecessary being makes everything intelligible or the universe has no ultimate exp lanation. And the opponents this argument would say that there is nothing in the cosmological argument that compels us to take the position of inferring a neces sary being. 2. since this argument itself is based on the specific understanding of principl e of causality. There argument says there is should be an ultimate reality, a ne cessary being as the ultimate cause. But the theory or principle of causality it self is the matter of dispute and debate. For, science the causal laws are mere problem, for Hume the causal laws are mere products of customs or habits for pra ctical reasons. Causality is not universal because cause and effect are only exp erienced. And this experience is the starting point of our knowledge. Cause and effect is a psychological association a habit created within us. For Kant would say causality was subjective category or a priori structures of the mind project ed on the data of our experience. As long as the very principle of causality its elf is a dispute matter. The argument fails to be to the extent its not rationall y convincing at all. 1.2.2. ARGUMENT FROM CONTINGENCY According to this proof everything in this world around us contingent. Aquinas s tarts with the most familiar aspect of the world, namely, things continuously co me into being and pass away. Hence, there are some contingent things in the worl d. A thing is said to be contingent when there is nothing in the nature of the t hing itself to guarantee its perpetual existence, or, more simply a thing is con tingent when it does not have the ground of its own existence. It is therefore c apable of non-existing, and at some time does not exist. True, the series of con tingent events may continue forever. But the point is, if a contingent event can not exist by itself, then the world as consisting by itself, and then the world as consisting of contingent events requires a Necessary Being as the ground of c ontingent happenings. That is namely a non- contingent being GOD Here the main point of the argument is that something contingent cannot come out of nothing. Hence something called contingent events must have come out of somet hing which is not ultimately nothing, but a necessary Being. Now the fact is the re are some contingent things in the world. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not t o be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, eve n now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist onl y begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothi ng was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist, and thus even now nothing would be in existencewhich is absurd. Therefore , not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existen ce of which is necessary. Further, Aquinas adds that this necessity is not dependent on any other being, b ut on itself. Hence, this necessary being is called God. Here one can very easil y see the influence of Plato according to whom there is a self-moved motion call ed soul which is the ground of every other motion but is itself its own ground. However, Aquinas took the help of Aristotle s notion of the Prime Mover or Pure Actuality which is its own ground and reason and is actual by virtue of its own essence. The supreme assumption of the Cosmological argument is that the contingent world stands in need of philosophical explanation. The problem therefore is: why thin gs are as they are .But I ask why there are phenomena at all, why there is somet hing rather than nothing .If this be granted to be a legitimate question, then it can be satisfactorily answered, according to Aquinas, only by positing the e xistence of a necessary Being. The argument of Aquinas can be more simply put in to the following steps: 1. All the things of the world are contingent that is one by one each of th em at one time can pass away. 2. In the infinite series of time, all things, one by one, at one time shou ld have ceased to exist. Therefore, at one time, by this time, there should have

been nothing. Hence, there should have been a complete Void already by this tim e. 3. If there were a complete Void at any one time, then even now there shoul d have been a Void, for out of nothing, nothing comes. 4. But there is something. This something, therefore, is based on Something which is not contingent, i.e., it is a Being which at no time can cease to be i n the infinite series of time. 5. This something which contains the ground of its own existence is a neces sary Being. It is this necessary BeingWhich is at the basis of all contingent th ings (some of which exist at one time or the other), and which does not allow th ings in the infinite series of time to pass into nothing. 6. This necessary Being is called God. The Cosmological argument is not merely causal. It is not merely concerned with an infinite temporal regress and in order to escape from it, it is not recommen ding us to accept a First Cause. The argument starts with the assumption that al l things are dependent and the whole world consisting of contingent things may be compared to a chain of an infinite number of entities. But this chain requires as much explaining as finite things do. And this has to be explained in terms of something beyond, and other than itself. B.GETTFRIED LEIBNIZ In THEODICY, Gottfried Leibniz explained the cosmological argument in th e form of the principle of sufficient reason: Suppose the book of the elements of geometry to have eternal, one copy having b een written down from an earlier one. It is evident that even though a reason ca n be given for the present book out of a past one, we should never come to a ful l reason. What is true of the books is also true of the states of the world. If you suppose the world eternal, you will suppose nothing but a succession of stat es, and will not find in any of them a sufficient reason. Leibnizs argument is that even if the universe had always been in existen ce, it would still require an explanation, or a sufficient reason for its existe nce, since we need to establish why there is something rather than nothing. By g oing backwards in time forever we will never arrive at such a complete explanati on. Leibniz identified that even if we are sure that the universe has always exi sted, there is nothing within the universe to show why it exists-it is not selfexplanatory, so the reason for its existence must lie outside of it. At the hear t of the argument is the premise that there must be a cause for the whole which explains the whole, and unless this is accepted as a meaningful and purposeful e xercise, the argument fails. C.Coplestone Coplestone supported Aquinass rejection of infinite regress on the grounds that a n infinite chain of contingent beings could only ever consists of contingent bei ngs, which would never be able to bring itself into existence. The most an etern al series of contingent beings can do is maintain an eternal presence of conting ent beings; it cannot explain how they came in the first place. D. RICHARD SWINBURNE A version of cosmological argument which is given by R.Swinburne looks m ore different than any of the thinkers of the cosmological argument. He rejects the assumption made by the first cause version that the universe must have a cau se. He allows there is no contradiction in the thought that the universe exists uncaused, and hence agrees that if the universe exists, it exists only contingen tly. Swinburne argues it is however PROBABLE that god exists, given the existenc e of the universe. He seeks to show this by utilizing the parts of probability t heory and confirmation theory which scientists standardly use in arriving at the ir judgments about which scientific theory is best supported by the evidence. Sw inburnes approach can thus be seen as a challenge to any atheism which is based o n science. In constituency, one must either use probability theory in judging whe ther god exists, or you must stop using it when you adjudicate Between the other scientific theories, if you take the first option, you will be

committed to theism; if you take the second option, you will be doomed to scien tific skepticism. Swinburnes argument is a good deal more cautious than those which we have looked at previously; Swinburne doesnt claim to prove that it is certain that go d exists. He doesnt claim to prove that it is more probable that not that god exi sts. All he claims is that the existence of the universe increases the probabili ty that god exists. His aim is to show that even if none of the argument of the traditional arguments for theism by themselves makes the existence of god more p robable than not, it can still be the case that taken collectively they have thi s effect, provided that each taken singly raises significantly the probability o f theism. E. KALAM The Arabic word kalam literally means "speech," but came to denote a cer tain type of philosophical theologya type containing demonstrations that the worl d could not be infinitely old and must therefore have been created by God. This sort of demonstration has had a long and wide appeal among both Christians and M uslimsThe temporal, kalam cosmological argument, dates back to medieval Muslim p hilosophers such as al-Kindi and al-Ghazali. It has recently been restored to po pularity by William Lane Craig. Like all cosmological arguments, the kalam cosmo logical argument is an argument from the existence of the world or universe to t he existence of God. The existence of the universe, such arguments claim, stands in need of explanation. The only adequate explanation, the arguments suggest, i s that it was created by God. . The argument of Kalam can be more simply put int o the following steps: 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being. Grant the first premise, most peopleoutside of asylums and graduate schools would consider it not only true, but certainly and obviously true. Is the second prem ise true? Did the universethe collection of all things bounded by space and time begin to exist? This premise has recently received powerful support from natural science from so called Big Bang Cosmology. But there are philosophical argument s in its favor as well. Can an infinite task ever be done or completed? If, in o rder to reach a certain end, infinitely many steps had to precede it, could the end ever be reached? Of course notnot even in an infinite time. For an infinite t ime would be unending, just as the steps would be. In other words, no end would ever be reached. The task would could never be completed. But what about the step just before the end? Could that point ever be reached? W ell, if the task is really infinite, then infinity of steps must also have prece ded it. And therefore the step just before the end could also never be reached. But then neither could the step just before that one. In fact, no step in the se quence could be reached, because an infinity of steps must always have preceded any step; must always have been gone through one by one before it. The problem c omes from supposing that an infinite sequence could ever reach, by temporal succ ession, any point at all. Now if the universe never began, then it always was. If it always was, then it i s infinitely old. If it is infinitely old, then an infinite amount of time would have to have elapsed before (say) today. And so an infinite number of days must have been completedone day succeeding another, one bit of time being added to wh at went beforein order for the present day to arrive. But this exactly parallels the problem of an infinite task. If the present day has been reached, then the a ctually infinite sequence of history has reached this present point: in fact, ha s been completed up to this pointfor at any present point the whole past must alr eady have happened. But an infinite sequence of steps could never have reached t his present pointor any point before it. So, either the present day has not been reached, or the process of reaching it w as not infinite. But obviously the present day has been reached. So the process of reaching it was not infinite. In other words, the universe began to exist. Th erefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being, a Creator. What distinguishes the kalam cosmological argument from other forms of cosmologi

cal argument is that it rests on the idea that the universe has a beginning in t ime. Modal forms of the cosmological argument are consistent with the universe h aving an infinite past. According to the kalam cosmological argument, however, i t is precisely because the universe is thought to have a beginning in time that its existence is thought to stand in need of explanation. This argument has the following logical structure: (1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existen ce. (2) The universe has a beginning of its existence. Therefore: (3) The universe has a cause of its existence. (4) If the universe has a cause of its existence then that cause is God. Therefo re: (5) God exists. The first premise of the argument is the claim that everything that begins to ex ist has a cause of its existence. In order to infer from this that the universe has a cause of its existence the proponent of the kalam cosmological argument mu st prove that the past is finite, that the universe began to exist at a certain point in time. The crucial premise of the kalam cosmological argument, then, is the second: The universe has a beginning of its existence. How do we know that the universe has a beginning of its existence? Might not the universe stretch back in time into infinity, always having existed? The proponent of the kalam cosmolo gical argument must show that this cannot be the case if his argument is to be s uccessful. Advocates of the kalam cosmological argument claim that it is impossible that th e universe has an infinite past. In support of this claim, modern advocates of t he argument often appeal to modern science, specifically to the Big Bang theory. Modern science, they say, has established that the universe began with the Big Bang. Traditionally, however, it is mathematics that has been used by proponents of th e kalam argument in order to establish that the past is finite. VIABLE SOULTIONS FOR THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT The cosmological argument however attractive it may look cannot categori cally establish the existence of a necessary being staring from contingency howe ver the positive sight of this argument is to be understood from another argumen t. The first question we need to ask, which METAPHYSICAL POSITION one would cons ider as most plausible? Any metaphysical view one would adapts is an interpretat ive attitude to the data that is available if one feels or finds that there must be a reason why the contingent things exists then the cosmological argument bec omes very convincing. Suppose, one adapts a pantheistic or naturalistic world vi ew then the cosmological argument would lose all its significance. For a theisti c on the other hand, it powerfully evokes and articulates the theist view of the relation between god as a necessary being or as the ultimate cause and continge nt beings. However, at best, this argument can only show the existence of a nece ssary being as the cause of the universe. But it leaves out many important dimen sions implied in the theistic beliefs in a god. For example, if that necessary b eing exists, its moral, its good, its personal are left out from the scope of cos mological argument. 1.3. The Teleological Argument The term teleological has been derived from the Greek word telos which means end or p urpose. So the teleological argument holds that the order in nature points to a d esign of an infinite intelligence. Thus, it is an argument from the order in nat ure to a divine design. In one sense, it is an extension of the cosmological arg ument. Teleological arguments are arguments from the order in the universe to th e existence of God. They are also known as arguments from design (or, to be prec ise, arguments to design).When such arguments speak of the universe being ordere d, they mean that it is ordered towards some end or purpose. The suggestion is t hat it is more plausible to suppose that the universe is so because it was creat ed by an intelligent being in order to accomplish that purpose than it is to sup pose that it is this way by chance. In our study of the cosmological argument we saw how its proponents place consid

erable emphasis on the need to find an explanation for why the universe exists w hen it could so easily not exist. The universe itself is neither factually nor l ogically necessary, so is its very existence something which demands an explanat ion. This argument has the following logical structure: 1. The universe displays a staggering amount of intelligibility, both withi n the things we observe and in the way these things relate to others outside the mselves. That is to say: the way they exist and coexist display an intricately b eautiful order and regularity that can fill even the most casual observer with w onder. It is the norm in nature for many different beings to work together to pr oduce the same valuable endfor example, the organs in the body work for our life and health. 2. Either this intelligible order is the product of chance or of intelligen t design. 3. Not chance. 4. Therefore the universe is the product of intelligent design. 5. Design comes only from a mind, a designer. 6. Therefore the universe is the product of an intelligent Designer. In short, the teleological or design argument claims that certain phenomena with in the universe appear to display features of design, in so far as they perfectl y adapted to fulfill their function. Such design cannot come about by chance and can only be explained with reference to an intelligent, personal designer. It i s possible to draw an analogy between the works of human design and the works of nature. Since the works of nature are far greater than the works of man, an inf initely greater designer must be postulated, which points towards the existence of god as the one how possesses the necessary attributes. The teleological argum ent is the argument from the order in the world to the existence of a being that created it with a specific purpose in mind. The universe is a highly complex sy stem. The scale of the universe alone is astounding, and the natural laws that g overn it perplex scientists still after generations of study. It is also, howeve r, a highly ordered system; it serves a purpose. The world provides exactly the right conditions for the development and sustenance of life and life is a valuab le thing. That this is so is remarkable; there are numerous ways in which the un iverse might have been different, and the vast majority of possible universes wo uld not have supported life. To say that the universe is so ordered by chance is therefore unsatisfactory as an explanation of the appearance of design around u s. It is far more plausible, and far more probable, that the universe is the way it is because it was created by God with life in mind. 1.3.1. Classical approaches to the argument The teleological argument was proposed by st.Thomas Aquinas as one of his Five W ays of knowing that God exists, but the most cited statement of the argument was systematized by William Paley. This argument is considered even by critics as t he most reasonable because the argument is being made used by the science. In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever; nor would it, perhaps , be very easy to sh ow the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, an d it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should har dly think of the answer which I had before given- that, for anything I knew, the watch as well as for the stone? Why it is not as admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reasonthat when we come to inspect the watch we perceive..t at its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose. Paley by using the analogy says a person walking in the desert and finds a rock on a ground. Its presence could be explained there could be explained as due cha nce. But if that same person comes across a watch with its complex arrangements and articulate a operation a similar account would not be reasonable. We are for ced to postulate an intelligent mind responsible for that object. Similarly he s ays the universe with its complex mechanism and the manifest design point to the fact that it was intelligently designed. . Even if we havent seen a watch before and doesnt know from direct observation that watches are products of human intel

ligent even if mechanism didnt work perfectly always and even if we didnt understa nd some functions of mechanism we still have to postulate an intelligent designe r or need to give a rational justification. Some say the very presence of the ozone layer filters out ultra versus and make s an intelligent way doing things it neednot be a god first god the living thing s and put Ozone layer to protect it. Modern teleological arguments look somewhat different to that constructed by Paley. While Paley was particularly impressed by the appearance of design in biological systems, such as the eye, or animals, modern teleological arguments often find evidence of design in physics. Modern t eleological arguments tend to focus on the fine-tuning in the universe, the fact t hat it is exactly as it needs to be (fine-tuned) to support life. One advantage that this gives modern design arguments over Paleys is that they ar e less vulnerable to attacks based on evolution theory. It is an objection to Pa leys argument that evolution can explain the appearance of biological design; evo lutionary processes, though, do not apply to the laws of nature. Although teleol ogical arguments are often referred to as arguments from design, those who oppos e such arguments sometimes object to this. Antony flew, in particular, has done this, repeatedly and pointedly calling the argument the argument to design. Thou gh he is no longer the vehement critic of the argument that he once was, having recently been persuaded that it might have merit, he continues to be a critic of the common name, insisting that it is it the argument to, not from, design. If the universe contains design then there must be some intelligent agent that d esigned it. Although a few dispute this, speaking of nature, or evolution, as ou r designers, this appears to be a simple linguistic truth. Just as if something is carried then there must be a carrier, so if there is design there must be a d esigner. What those who reject the argument dispute, then, is not whether the de sign in the universe implies that there is someone who designed it, but whether the order and complexity in the universe does constitute design. 1.3.2. Other applications of the argument 1.3.2.1. A providential universe Swinburne argues that theism is the best explanation for the design that is appa rently evident in the universe, and points not only to the order and purpose it displays but to the providential nature of the universe. The universe contains w ithin everything that is necessary for survival. He maintains that it is a unive rse in which humans are designed to occupy the highest position, and that natura l laws function within the universe, making it a place where humans can meaningf ully contribute to its development and maintenance. This kind of universe is, Sw inburne argues, the kind of universe that god would have reason to create, not j ust for human beings but for animals too. The higher animals can reason and plan , observes Swinburne, and are enabled to do so by the predictability of the most obvious aspects of the natural world. This aspect of the argument also implies that god had a choice about the kind of universe he could create and, as a resul t, the universe cannot be the product of chance.

1.3.2.2. The aesthetic argument The universe is more than simply orderly; the e universe possesses a nat ural beauty beyond that which is necessary to which is necessary to live. Some o f that beauty is part of order-the beautiful patterns of the stars, for example, the change of the colours of the seasons. Our appreciation of it reflects not o nly our attraction to that which is aesthetically pleasing, but also our dislike of chaos. Chaos is ugly and we seek to impose order upon it if does not occur n aturally. However we also find in things which are not part of the natural world a

nd have no part to play in the survival of the species. Art, music, literature a nd culture all contribute to the way we perceive the world as a beneficial, appe aling and attractive place, although we would be able to live without them. 1.3.2.3. Genetics Within living things, damage occurs in a random way to the genetic information c oded on DND molecule, causing random mutations. Where such a mutant is beneficia l, in the sense that it adapts better than those without the mutation, then the opportunity is there for a new form of life to develop. Life progresses because what is randomly produced subsequently takes advantage of its situation. This wo uld be a more modern way of expressing Darwins argument- but notice that the whol e structure of change is now based on random genetic damage. 1.3.2.4. Design and evolution Darwins theory of natural selection provided an alternative explanation for desig n and one that did not require the aid of any external designer. He argued that those members of a species whose characteristics were suited to enable them to s urvive in their environment went on to breed. Those ill suited generally died of f before doing so. This mechanical process of selection meant that whenever an a dvantageous characteristic appeared, those who displayed it had a natural advant age which they could pass on to a proportionately larger number of offspring. In this way a species could gradually evolve without the need for any external age ncy. What Darwin therefore appeared to offer was a mechanical explanation for what ha d previously been thought of as possible only through the agency of mind.( in th is case, the mind of god) Therefore Aquinas assertion that an arrow requires an archer or that bricks cann ot self-arrange themselves into a house is challenged by natural selection. 1.3.1.5. Order and probability It is possible to criticize this view, however with the observation that unless the universe did contain exactly the right conditions for life and if there were no natural laws, there would be no humans or animals, and we would not to comme nt upon how improbable it is all. In other words, we perceive order in the unive rse- there could be nothing else, or we would not be here to perceive it. Order is not improbable, and we should not approach it as if it were ex-ordinary. Akin to this idea is that of A.J.Ayer, who claimed that to speak of a designed unive rse is meaningless, since unless we could say what the world would be like witho ut design we cannot reach the conclusion that world is designed. Critical comments of the teleological argument Humes criticism run into three lines 1. First of all, Hume objects the order neednt come about due to some delibe rate plan. Even the epicurion hypothesis could be equally sufficient to explain t his. Very well there could be an experience alternative according which the univ erse composed of finite number of particles in random motion. According to epicu rion hypothesis the universe consists of minuet particles of every kind. These particles go through every possible combination .and the orderly universe we see may be one of such combination. In other words, naturalistic explanation is ver y well and a viable alternative to the teleological argument. This naturalistic explanation finds and able support in Darwins evolutionary theory. The struggle f or survival operates as a constant repressor towards most perfect adaptation. Th e reason why life on earth is so well sheltered is not that a first intelligent creator created living beings and then took measure to protect then rather the n ature of the universe evolved in a particular manner and only those forms of lif e capable of living in accordance with either got evolved or survived. 2. The analogy between the universe ( watch) and the human work(the watch m aker) rather weak the analogy takes the universe as a vast machine but an equall y viable alternative could be that an universe is taken as an inert or animate v egetable. Only if the universe is shown to be strikingly analogous to human work which we dont design there is any proper basis for inferring intelligent designe r.

3. In the third level shared by Kant. The argument says from a given effect we can only infer a proportionate cause sufficient to produce it therefore from a finite world we can never infer an infinite creator, with all so called quali ties secondly, it neednt be one god, a group of people but many , it neednt be a g ood god because of the existence of the evil. Thus this argument shows itself li mited in many ways. This led to attempt to modification, particularly from F.R.T ennant more in terms of probable argument. When we consider sufficiently compreh ensively date like not only teleological character of biological evolution but a lso the humans religious, moral, aesthetic and cognitive experience it becomes a humilitavely, increasingly more probable that there is a god than there is not. Even this modified version is a disputed one. Because the existence of evil fix better into a naturalistic philosophy than religious philosophy. Thus there is n o absolutely binding sense in which religious interpretation of life is more pro bable than a naturalistic interpretation. Thus the argument is not conclusive an d cant be rationally convincing on the one hand this argument gains considerable force if understood as an attempt to show that the hypothesis of an intelligent designer is a legitimate and plausible interpretation. In the same way together with cosmological and teleological arguments could become more forceful. The cos mological argument indicates that there could be a necessary being that is the u ltimate explanation of the contingent universe. But it doesnt say anything about the casual nature of this necessary being. The teleological argument on the othe r hand suggests this ultimate cause must be intelligent and more personal. But i t doesnt show it must be necessary. Thus together they could form a part of a gen eral argument for the rationality of theism. 1.4. Moral argument/Axiological argument The Moral argument has taken various forms but common to all variations particul arly ones own sense of an inalienable obligation to fellow human beings presuppos es the reality of god as the ultimate source or the ground of this obligation. E ssentially, there are two forms of morality (a) in the form of logical inference - from moral laws to a divine law giver. From values in general to a transcenden t ground of values. From the fact of conscious to god who voice conscious is the western presentation of comes from CARDINAL JOHN NEWMAN. According to him, at t he transgressing of the conscience we fell responsible, ashamed even frightened. If the cause of these emotions doesnt belong to this visible world, then, the ob ject to which it is directed must be supernatural and divine. Such argument basi cally assumes that moral arguments are incapable any explanation be it a humanis tic or naturalistic explanation. That is terms of human needs and desires the st ructure of human nature and society or in any other way it doesnt involve an appe al to the supernatural. (b) the second alternative is the argument is presented not so much as proof but rather argues that it is unreasonable to try to realize moral ideas in the universe itself indifferent to morality therefore there must be a moral reality beyond the natural order to make morality reasonable. In oth er words, anyone seriously committed to respect moral values as having fundament al bearing for ones own life must implicitly believe in the reality of the transhuman soul of moral values. In other words the argument shows the existence of m oral obligation makes more sense in a universe in which ultimate reality is a mo ral person than it does in a universe where persons are mere by products of impe rsonal natural forces. The moral arguments take either the existence of morality or some specific feature of morality to imply the existence of God. It is only if God exists, the moral argument suggests, and that the moral facts could be as they are, or even that there could be any moral facts at all. Moral arguments for gods existence are for lay people among the most popular reas ons for belief in god, though they have often been neglected by philosophers. Th e germ of this kind of argument is simple enough to be grasped by a child. It li es in the conviction that god is in some way the basis of morality. The most fam ous and influential moral arguments were those offered by Kant. However, the fou rth of Thomas Aquinass five arguments is best understood as a type of moral argumen t, and this argument itself seems to rest on ideas traceable to Plato and Aristo tle. Other philosophers and theologians have developed or defended moral argumen ts include Cardinal John Newman, Hastings Rashdall, W.R.Sorley, A.E.Taylor, Aus

tin Farrer and H.P.Owen. John Baillie, H.J.Paton. This argument also throws some of the fundamental questions Is it possible to be religious but not moral? Is it possible to be moral but not religious? What is the relationship between god and goodness? Does the existence of a moral law presuppose the existence of a supreme moral la wgiver? If god does not exist, then is everything permissible? There are several different forms of moral argument. Here, three are considered. The first is a formal moral argument, taking the normatively and authority of mo rality to entail that it is has a divine origin. The second is a perfectionist moral argument, suggesting that it is only by post ulating the existence of God that we can make sense of the high standards that m orality requires of us. The third is Kants moral argument, which begins with the thought that we have goo d reason to behave morally and concludes that this can only be the case if there is a God that administers justice in the afterlife. 1.4.1. The Formal Moral Argument The formal moral argument takes the form of morality to imply that it has a divi ne origin. Morality is prescriptive, it tells us what to do; this, the moral arg ument suggests, entails that it is prescribed by someone. Morality is also ultim ately authoritative, its authority is greater than any human institution; this, the argument suggests, entails that it was not prescribed by any human instituti on, but must rather have a supernatural source. 1.4.2. The Perfectionist Moral Argument The perfectionist moral argument begins by setting up a problem. There are three apparent truths about morality that are mutually inconsistent: we ought to be p erfect; ought implies can; we cannot be perfect. How are we to resolve this cont radiction? The perfectionist moral argument suggests that the most plausible resolution of the conflict is not to deny our duty by saying that its okay to fall short of the moral standard, or to exaggerate our potential for moral behavior by saying tha t we can meet that standard really, but to invoke God. If God exists, the argume nt suggests, and then he can help us to bridge the gap between what we are able to do by our own strength and what morality requires of us. 1.4.3. The Kantians practical Moral Argument Though the most famous propend of a moral argument was Kant, at times he presents arguments of a more theoretical character as well. He rejected all the oretical attempts to show that gods existence could be known; but held that a rat ional moral agent should believe in god. Kant believed strongly in autonomy and thus held that I as a moral being should seek to do my moral duty because duty a nd not because of any particular end that I desire. An action is obligatory beca use of the formal maxim it expresses rather than the end the maxim enjoins. Neve rtheless, whenever I act, and therefore whenever I cat from duty, I necessarily seek an end. Since Kant held that happiness is a good that all human beings seek, he believed that the supreme end of the moral life, the complete or highest good, i s a world where people are both morally virtuous and happy, and where their happ iness is proportional to their virtue. He claimed that one could not reasonably believe that such an end is attainable unless god exists. Empirically there is l ittle reason to think that the world proportions happiness to virtue. However, i f the world itself is a creation of a morally good being then there is a basis f or hope that my efforts to bring about the highest good will not be wasted or co mpletely ineffectual in the long run. The heart of Kants argument is the principle that ought implies can. If I a m obligated to seek to bring about the highest good, then the highest good must be attainable. If it is attainable only god exists, then it is reasonable for me to believe that god exists. Kants argument is vulnerable at a number of points and has often been cri ticized. Opponents have argued that the highest good in his sense is not really

a required moral goal, and that even if it is, the possibility of its attainment requires only the possibility of gods existence. Even this argument is not succe ssful; the core intuition that seems to underline it retains force. And thus the re are other practical versions of the argument that can be formulated. That intuition could be sated like this: if I am truly to live as a mora l being, I must be able to believe that the world of which I am a part and in wh ich I must act must in some sense be a moral agent to strive for moral ends in t he world and at the same time believe that the causal strive for moral ends in t he world and at the same time believe that the world is fundamentally alien to t hese ends. To live the moral life I must believe that the casual structure of na ture is such that progress towards certain ends can be achieved through moral st ruggle, but that in turn requires that I conceive nature itself as in some way c ontaing a moral order. There may be various ways of conceiving such a moral orde r, but the theistic understanding of nature as the creation of a morally good be ing is surely one way of doing so. It may be objected that such an argument is not purely practical in natu re but also theoretical. This seems correct, since the argument really points ou t an oddity in the situation of a moral agent that can be resolved by thinking o f nature in a particular manner. However, conceiving of the argument as purely t heoretical fails to capture some of its appeal; what is at stake is not merely t he resolution of an intellectual puzzle but the possibility of moral action itse lf. 1.4.4. John Henry Newman and his objective moral laws John Henry Newman famously argued that objective moral laws had their or igin in a personal lawgiver. if as is the case, we feel responsibility, are asha med, are frighted at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that th ere is one to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claim o n us we fear. Newman makes a link between the existence of a moral law, which imposes certain demands upon us, and the existence of a god who fixes that law and to wh om we are obliged for its upkeep. Essentially, he is arguing that our experience of morality is such that it leads us to conclude the existence of a lawgiver; o therwise our moral experience has no foundation. H.P.Owen argued: it is impossibl e to think of a command without a commander.either we take moral claims to be sel f-explanatory modes of impersonal exitescence or we explain them in terms of a p ersonal god. In other words unless there is something more than that which we kno w through natural science, our notions of morality have no objective foundation and they rest on nothing more than mere illusion. Does this prove the existence of god? Morality might prove the existence of god if we were able to prove that the only conceivable source of moral autho rity is god. If the source of authority lies elsewhere, however, then it will no t succeed as proof considerations of probability are inherent here: is it more a r less likely that god is the source of morality? Is he the simplest explanation for moral law? Is it necessary as Owen suggests, to argue for a personal source of morality or is it necessary as, Owen suggests, to argue for a personal sourc e of mortality or is it satisfactorily explained in terms of impersonal forces, such as society, rationality, evolution or education, socio-biological pressures ? To argue convincingly that the existence of god is a pre-requite of obje ctive moral laws demands too that we believe that morality rests on obedience to objective commands. If we interpret morality as subjective or non-cognitive, th en such arguments will lead nowhere. If moral commands are merely emotive expres sions of approval or disproval with no basis in objective fact, or if they are r elative to our culture, then they cannot prove the existence of an objective law giver, and we must look to other arguments for the existence of god. 1.5. The Argument from Consciousness / Noological argument The argument from consciousness takes the nature of mentality as evidence for Go ds existence. It can be seen as a teleological argument, taking the harmony in th e relationship between mind and body as evidence of divine design. 1.5.1. The Irreducibility of Mind

The first key idea in the argument from consciousness is that mental events are something over and above physical events. Although there is strong evidence that there is a connection between mind and brain, mind and brain is not the same th ing. Whatever connection there might be between mental states such as beliefs, t houghts, and feelings on the one hand, and brain-states on the other, the connec tion are not identity. Brain-states have a specific location; mental states do n ot. Brain-states are as they independent of any perceiver; mental states are not . Consciousness is something more than a physical process. 1.5.2. Mind-Body Interaction The connection between mind and body is, however, a strong one. Mental events ca use physical events; for example, your decision to stamp on my foot causes your foot to land rapidly on mine. Physical events also cause mental events; for exam ple, your foot landing on mine causes me to feel pain. There are laws that gover n mind-body interaction. Mental and physical events are correlated. 1.5.3. The Explanatory Failure of Naturalism Naturalism, arguably, cannot explain this. The difficulty of explaining how two things as radically different as mind and body could be causally related is call ed the problem of mind-body interaction. It is so intractable as to be the best argument for materialism and against the irreducibility of mind. The only adequa te explanation of the connection between the two, according to the argument from consciousness, is a theistic one: God maintains the harmony between mind and bo dy. 1.6. The Argument from Miracles The word miracle originated from the Latin word for a wonderful thing or a surpris e. /many men have seen the hand of god in the sudden appearance of wise men, prop hets, and great leaders on the historical scene, bringing great moral, political or religious truths to their generation and inspiring them to act in accord wit h them. All theistic religions have in them central figures of this kind like Mu hammads or Abraham, but they also have less central figures as well- men who have carried god news to new countries, reformed religious institutions, revived rel igious life, or applied religion to social and political affairs. From the work of such men of course whole traditions have flowed. 1. A miracle is an event whose only adequate explanation is the extraordina ry and direct intervention of God. 2. There are numerous well-attested miracles. 3. Therefore, there are numerous events whose only adequate explanation is the extraordinary and direct intervention of God. 4. Therefore God exists. Obviously if you believe that some extraordinary event is a miracle, then you be lieve in divine agency, and you believe that such agency was at work in this eve nt. But the question is: Was this event a miracle? If miracles exist, then God m ust exist. But do miracles exist? Which events do we choose? In the first place, the event must be extraordinary. But there are many extraordinary happenings (e.g., numerous stones dropping from the sky in Texas) that do not qualify as miracles. Why not? First, because they could be caused by something in nature, and second, because the context in whic h they occur is not religious. They qualify as mere oddities, as "strange happen ings"; the sort of thing you might expect to read in Believe It or Not. Therefor e the meaning of the event must also be religious to qualify as a miracle. Not that we would have to believe in God after witnessing miraculous event. But still, if that man in Texas seemed utterly genuine, and if his accusations hit h ome, made us think "He s right," then it would be very hard to consider what hap pened a deception or even an extraordinary coincidence. This means that the setting of a supposed miracle is crucially important. Not ju st the physical setting, and not just the timing, but the personal setting is vi tal as wellthe character and the message of the person to whom this event is spec ially tied. Take, for example, four or five miracles from the New Testament. Rem ove them completely from their context, from the teaching and character of Chris t. Would it be wrong to see their religious significance as thereby greatly dimi nished? After all, to call some happening a miracle is to interpret it religious

ly. But to interpret it that way demands a context or setting which invites such interpretation. And part of this setting usually, though not always, involves a person whose moral authority is first recognized, and whose religious authority , which the miracle seems to confirm, is then acknowledged. Abstract discussions of probability usually miss this factor. But setting does p lay a decisive role. Many years ago, at an otherwise dull convention, a distingu ished philosopher explained why he had become a Christian. He said: "I picked up the New Testament with a view to judging it, to weighing its pros and cons. But as I began to read, I realized that I was the one being judged." Certainly he c ame to believe in the miraclestories. But it was the character and teaching of Ch rist that led him to accept the things recounted there as genuine acts of God. So there is not really a proof from miracles. If you see some event as a miracle , then the activity of God is seen in this event. There is a movement of the min d from this event to its proper interpretation as miraculous. And what gives imp etus to that movement is not just the event by itself, but the many factors surr ounding it which inviteor seem to demandsuch interpretation. But miraculous events exist. Indeed, there is massive, reliable testimony to the m across many times, places and cultures. Therefore their cause exists. And thei r only adequate cause is God. Therefore God exists. Miracles have traditionally been taken as validations of religious claims. If th e Bible is to be believed, then Jesusministry was accompanied by miraculous signs and wonders that testified that it was God working through him. His resurrectio n from the dead was the greatest of these miracles, and is still frequently take n today to be a solid reason for believing in the existence of God. Setting aside the question as to just how strong the evidence for the resurrecti on, or for any of the other miracles reported in the New Testament, is, religiou s sceptics frequently David Hume as having undermined any such argument for beli ef in the existence of God. According to Hume, no matter how strong the evidence for a specific miracle may be, it will always be more rational to reject the mi racle than to believe in it. Hume noted that there are two factors to assess in deciding whether to believe a ny given piece of testimony: the reliability of the witness and the probability of that to which they testify. The testimony of a witness that is both honest and a good judge of that to which they testify is worth much. The testimony of a witness who is either dishonest or not in a position to know that to which they testify is worth little. The rel iability of the witness is therefore something that is to be taken into account in deciding whether to believe anything on the basis of testimony. The probability of that to which they testify, however, is also relevant. If a w itness testifies to sighting a flying pig then it is more likely that their test imony is false than that their testimony is true, even if they are a reliable wi tness. The reliability required of a witness in order for his testimony to justi fy belief in that to which he testifies increases as the probability of that to which he testifies decreases. According to Hume, however, a miracle is by definition an event that is as unlik ely as anything else. Miracles, for Hume, necessarily involve violations of laws of nature. Laws of nature, though, are as well-established as it is possible fo r anything to be. It will always, therefore, be more likely that the testimony o f a witness to a miracle is false than that it is true. It will always be more r ational to disbelieve a claim that a miracle has occurred than to accept it. What holds for the second-hand testimony of others also holds for first-hand evi dence from our own senses. Whatever evidence our senses may give us that a mirac le has occurred, it will always be more likely that our senses are in error than that a miracles really has occurred. Note that this is not an argument against the possibility of miracles; Humes conc lusion is not that miracles do not happen. Rather, his conclusion is that no evi dence is sufficient to establish that a miracle has occurred, that even if a mir acle has occurred we ought not to believe in it. Many find Humes argument persuasive. One ground on which to criticize it, though, is in its conception of a miracle. Miracles, it has been argued, need not be vi

olations of laws of nature. An answered prayer, for example, may properly be des cribed as a miracle, but it does not violate any natural law. Miracles are simpl y events that point us towards God. This broader understanding of a miracle rais es the possibility that there are at least some miracles that are not as improba ble as Hume supposes, and so which can attract rational belief. 1.7. The Argument from Religious Experience The nature of the religious argument is a posteriori by its very definition, since it is concerned with whether direct experience of god can provide any proof of his existence. The cosmological and teleological arguments aim to prove that exp erience of the universe can lead to conclusions about gods existence, but these w ork by indirect methods; here we are working from god to god. If god manifests h imself in direct ways, is it possible to deny that he exists? The first modern evaluation of religious experience was made by Schleier macher in the early 19th century, in his book on religion: discourse to its cult ural despisers. he defined religious experience as one which yielded a sense of t he ultimate, an awareness of the wholeness, a consciousness of infiniteness and finiteness, an absolute dependence, and a sharp sense of contingency. This point has dominated the evaluation of religious experience well into 20th century. At a time when David Humes work had offered overwhelming arguments against the rati onality of Christianity, Schleiermachers contribution was his claim that the cent ral feature of faith did not lie in doctrine, but in a fundamental human experie nce. He observed that each world religion presented a different fact in the whol e kaleidoscope of religious experience: for Judaism, it was in obedience to the TORAH; for Islam in the majesty of ALLAH. For Christianity it is in the experien ce of the infinite within the finite, through the incarnation. In 1917, Rudolf O tto drew attention to religious experience in a specific way, coining the term nu minous, from the Latin numen (divinity). He created a phenomenology of the sacred , offering description of specific religious experiences which placed evidence o n the wholly other nature of god to which the experient is drawn. However, as psychology developed in the late 19th century, study of religious ex perience became empirically rooted, and William Jamess work is still regarded as a classic of this type. he observed the religious experience as a common store of emotions- happiness, fear, wonder-is directed at something divine. although i n the half of the 20th century, philosophers and psychologists, influenced by th e claims of logical positivism, lost interest in the study of religious experien ce, in the last 50 years the empirical approach has been reasserted and surveys have shown that as many as 50% of individuals believe they have had, at some tim e in their lies, an experience which could be classified as religious. 1.7.1. Swinburnes religious experience as proof of the existence of god The argument from religious experience is the argument from experiences of God to the existence of God. In its strong form, this argument asserts that i t is only possible to experience that which exists, and so that the phenomenon o f religious experience demonstrates the existence of God. People experience God, therefore there must be a God; case closed. In its weaker form, the argument as serts only that religious experiences constitute evidence for Gods existence. Thi s form of the argument has been defended by Richard Swinburne with an appeal to the priniciples of credulity. According to him, an omnipotent and perfectly good creator will seek to interact with his creature and, in particular, with human persons capable of knowing him. He suggests that god has reason to make himself known through authentic revelation, to enable humanity to bring about the good, and to intervene personally (not necessarily miraculously) in the lives of ind ividuals out of his love for them. Hence, Swinburnes subsequent evaluation of rel igious experience as offering grounds for the existence of god is influenced by the fact that believes that god is, omnipotent and all-loving, has good reason t o make him known through religious experience. 1.7.1.1. The principle of credulity Many millions of people have had an experience of what seems to them to be god, and then it is a basic principle of rationality that we should believe them. Thi s is what Swinburne calls the principle of credulity- unless we have overwhelmin g evidence to the contrary; we should believe that things are as they seem to be

. Swinburne describes How things seem to be is a good guide to how things are. If it seems.. To a subject that X is present, then probably X is present. This is an important notion for religious religious experience, since it draws not on empir ical evidence that we interpret through the five senses, but on non-empirical ev idence that must be interpreted through the use of our religious sense. We are a ware that sometimes we have an experience of something which seems to be the cas e seeing someone who seems to be a friend but, as they turn, we realize that our experience was mistaken and that it is a stranger. However these mistaken inter pretations of our experience do not prejudice us against all future experiences. We dont doubt every future occasion when we see a friend, assuming that because we were mistaken once, we will be mistaken every time. We continue to trust that our senses are dependable enough to be relied on to interpret our experiences c orrectly. Hence even if two people differ over the nature of a religious experie nce, it does not immediately render the experience suspect, just we wouldnt doubt that everyone who saw green as green was wrong just because one colour-blind pe rson declared it to be blue. Essentially if we are told that someone had experie nce X, then we should believe that experience X has taken place, even if someone else has had experience Y instead, or experience at all. If we wait until we ha ve uniform testimony and common interpretation of every experience, let alone ju st religious ones. We will end up doubting all our experience and those of other s. We can illustrate this with analogy of explorers in the jungle. A group of explo res travels into the depths of the jungle and there discovers an entirely unknow n creature. Excited by this discovery, a second group travels to the jungle and carries out its own investigation. This group discovers no such creature. Does t his give it reasonable grounds for asserting that the initial group was wrong an d that the creature does not exist? Of course not. The experience of the first g roup has not been falsified by the experience of the second- it was simply a dif ferent experience, which does not render the first invalid. 1.7.1.2. The principle of testimony Swinburne offers a second testimony which should encourage us to consider religi ous experience to be good grounds for proving the existence of god. The principl e of testimony. He describes it thus: in the absence of special considerations th e experiences of others are (probably) as they report them. We cannot work on the basis that we constantly doubt peoples account of religious experiences any more than we doubt basic facts about the world that we have-not directly experienced ourselves. Swinburne identifies three types of evidences that may well give us grounds for saying that a persons experience is not as they report it: The circumstances surrounding the experience render the resultant perceptions un reliable- e.g. Hallucinatory drugs We have particular evidences that things arent they are reported-e.g. We know tha t a person was not the place that he or she claimed to be during the experience. There is evidence that the experience was not caused by god- e.g. the person who experienced god had been fasting or had a fever. Critical comments of the argument However convincing these arguments may appear, religious experience are signific antly different to other human experience because they are fundamentally not sub ject to objective testing- we cannot carry out a scientific experiment to determ ine whether they have, in fact, revealed god. They are therefore ambiguous and c an be interpreted variously. Ludwig Wittgenstein employed the notion of seeing-a s: a random series of dots and lines could be perceived as representing a partic ular form, but each person perceives it differently; some may perceive it beauty , others ugliness. Experience-as or seeing as may also be unreliable because we can mistake what we experience. Fundamentally, if god doesnt exist, there can be no experience of him, and all se eming religious experience must be interpreted in some other way. It is equally likely that any religious experience may be open to a non-religious interpretati on and if, as the logical positivists claimed, the notion of god is an impossibl e, meaningless notion, then he cannot be experienced.

If everyday experiences are deceptive, experiences of the divine are even more s o. There are too many reasons for doubting when a person claims to have experien ced god that he or she has, in fact, done so and here an agreed tests for verify ing that he experience has been one of god. The testimony of religious believers is especially questionable and cannot be co unted as reliable evidence. Those who claim to have experienced god have some pr e-existing religious belief, so heir evidence is not unbiased. Religious experiences are the manifestation of psychological needed. Once those needs are identified they can be satisfied without reference to religion, which is nothing more than an illusion created by people to enable them to cope with t he haunting fear of death and alienation. Similarly, the emotions and sensations that accompany religious experience can be explained by biological or neurologi cal factors. A further difficulty is the problem of conflicting experiences: adherents of all religions claim to have had experiences that validate those religions. If any o f these appeals to experience is valid, then surely all are. It cant be, however, that all of these appeals are valid, because the various religions are mutually inconsistent; they conflict. None of these appeals to experience is valid, ther efore. 1.8. The Argument from Change The material world we know is a world of change. This young woman came to be 5 2 ", but she was not always that height. The great oak tree before us grew from th e tiniest acorn. Now when something comes to be in a certain state, such as matu re size, that state cannot bring itself into being. For until it comes to be, it does not exist, and if it does not yet exist, it cannot cause anything. As for the thing that changes, although it can be what it will become, it is not yet wh at it will become. It actually exists right now in this state (an acorn); it wil l actually exist in that state (large oak tree). But it is not actually in that state now. It only has the potentiality for that state. Now a question: To explain the change, can we consider the changing thing alone, or must other things also be involved? Obviously, other things must be involved . Nothing can give itself what it does not have, and the changing thing cannot h ave now, already, what it will come to have then. The result of change cannot ac tually exist before the change. The changing thing begins with only the potentia l to change, but it needs to be acted on by other things outside if that potenti al is to be made actual. Otherwise it cannot change. Nothing changes itself. App arently self-moving things, like animal bodies, are moved by desire or willsometh ing other than mere molecules. And when the animal or human dies, the molecules remain, but the body no longer moves because the desire or will is no longer pr esent to move it. Now a further question: Are the other things outside the changing thing also cha nging? Are its movers also moving? If so, all of them stand in need right now of being acted on by other things, or else they cannot change. No matter how many things there are in the series, each one needs something outside itself to actua lize its potentiality for change. The universe is the sum total of all these mov ing things, however many there are. The whole universe is in the process of chan ge. But we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it. Therefore, there is some force outside (in addition to) the uni verse, some real being transcendent to the universe. This is one of the things m eant by "God." Briefly, if there is nothing outside the material universe, then there is nothin g that can cause the universe to change. But it does change. Therefore there mus t be something in addition to the material universe. But the universe is the sum total of all matter, space and time. These three things depend on each other. T herefore this being outside the universe is outside matter, space and time. It i s not a changing thing; it is the unchanging Source of change. 1.9. The Argument from the World as an Interacting Whole Starting point of the argument is that this world is given to us as a dynamic, o rdered system of many active component elements. Their natures (natural properti es) are ordered to interact with each other in stable, reciprocal relationships

which we call physical laws. For example, every hydrogen atom in our universe is ordered to combine with every oxygen atom in the proportion of 2:1 (which impli es that every oxygen atom is reciprocally ordered to combine with every hydrogen atom in the proportion of 1:2). So it is with the chemical valences of all the basic elements. So too all particles with mass are ordered to move toward every other according to the fixed proportions of the law of gravity. In such an inter connected, interlocking, dynamic system, the active nature of each component is defined by its relation with others, and so presupposes the others for its own i ntelligibility and ability to act. Contemporary science reveals to us that our w orldsystem is not merely an aggregate of many separate, unrelated laws, but rathe r a tightly interlocking whole, where relationship to the whole structures and d etermines the parts. The parts can no longer be understood apart from the whole; its influence permeates them all. Argument In any such system as the above (like our world) no component part or a ctive element can be selfsufficient or selfexplanatory. For any part presupposes a ll the other partsthe whole system already in placeto match its own relational pro perties. It can t act unless the others are there to interact reciprocally with it. Any one part could be selfsufficient only if it were the cause of the whole r est of the systemwhich is impossible, since no part can act except in collaborati on with the others. Nor can the system as a whole explain its own existence, sin ce it is made up of the component parts and is not a separate being, on its own, independent of them. So neither the parts nor the whole are selfsufficient; neit her can explain the actual existence of this dynamically interactive system. Three Conclusions 1. Since the parts make sense only within the whole, and neither the whole nor the parts can explain their own existence, then such a system as our world r equires a unifying efficient cause to posit it in existence as a unified whole. 2. Any such cause must be an intelligent cause, one that brings the system into being according to a unifying idea. For the unity of the wholeand of each on e of the overarching, cosmicwide, physical laws uniting elements under themselvesi s what determines and correlates the parts. Hence it must be somehow actually pr esent as an effective organizing factor. But the unity, the wholeness, of the wh ole transcends any one part, and therefore cannot be contained in any one part. To be actually present all at once as a whole this unity can only be the unity o f an organizing unifying idea. For only an idea can hold together many different elements at once without destroying or fusing their distinctness. That is almos t the definition of an idea. Since the actual parts are spread out over space an d time, the only way they can be together at once as an intelligible unity is wi thin an idea. Hence the system of the world as a whole must live first within th e unity of an idea. 3. Now a real idea cannot actually exist and be effectively operative save in a real mind, which has the creative power to bring such a system into real ex istence. Hence the sufficient reason for our ordered worldsystem must ultimately be a creative ordering Mind. A cosmicwide order requires a cosmicwide Ordered, whi ch can only be a Mind. Such an ordering Mind must be independent of the system itself, that is, transce ndent; not dependent on the system for its own existence and operation. For if i t were dependent onor part ofthe system, it would have to presuppose the latter as already existing in order to operate, and would thus have to both precede and f ollow itself. But this is absurd. Hence it must exist and be able to operate pri or to and independent of the system. Thus our material universe necessarily requires, as the sufficient reason for it s actual existence as an operating whole, a Transcendent Creative Mind Conclusion None of the so called proofs can offer decisive evidence in favour of either the existence or non-existence of god. There is sufficient data in the universe to construct a reasonably good case in favour of either of them. On the other hand these proofs points out that there are certain reasonable grou

nds for believing in god. Here we must make a differentiation. However strong th e reasons are they remain always reasons for a possible knowledge. Moreover they help to confirm an already established conviction and can show that once faith has some reasonable basis. Any proof has its limitation. It is highly theoretical and can maximum lead a pe rson to believe about god and not so much a believe in god. Thereby we need to m ake a distinction between BELIEF THAT and BELIEF IN. Belief that is more in the informative sense. It is the matter of accepting that such and such is case or that a thing or a person exists. Belief in implies a personal commitment or response. A personal disposition of t rust. Religious believes are based on this only. God is a person to be believed in that involves a personal response. Thus all theoretical discussion necessaril y lead one to believe in. however the aim of such a discussion is to open up to a searching mind an enlighted horizon that could facilitate some deeper personal encounter. When religion speaks of the divine it refers to that dimension of th e divine that is so encountered. Thus it is once HERMENUTICS INTERPRETATIVE STAND rather than rational proofs tha t is ultimate decisive factor in religion. There are two ways of hermeneutic phe nomenology which open to us the possibility of genuinely personal and existentia l experiences opening to us the proofs can do. The first way is more positive and builds on the deepening of a dimension of hum an strength. It is the area of the human quest for meaning. The second way begins from human metaphysical insufficiency. As an opening for g enuinely encountering the divine. The first way ( THE WAY OF THE QUEST FOR MEANING) Anyone who approaches reality with an attitude of respect for and listening to w hat it has to say has to acknowledge that our ordinary life itself provides us v arious intimations of transcendence. One of such intimation is linked with the h uman quest for meaning. We must say something like a will to meaning lies at the heart of human psyche.i.e; every human being seeks to draw from reality some un derlying meaning that world his life his experience and the whole reality in a H OLISTIC integrated perspective. It is the inability to do so that causes most of ten much of the emotional disorders, anxiety, stress, etc. we are not phenomenol ogically oblidged to give a theistic interpretation to our life and experience. However if we follow through this basic quest for meaning we will find that a th eistic interpretation of my life, experiences is not only permissible, legitimat e, but invitingly more reasonable or plausible. It is in and through such a key human experience that quest for meaning that we can encounter and discover God. Here in such a context, one encounters, experiences God as the one who is beyond yet within that gives the ultimate meaning to all the relative values. The second way ( THE EXPERIENCE OF CONTINGENCY or THE METAPHYSICAL INSUFFICIENCY ) This is another way the transcendence is intimates itself. In fact, in the histo ry of contemporary western philosophy a lot of attentions were paid to the metap hysical insuffiency. The main philosopher is Satre who took much interest on thi s point. The fact remains that as a human beings we are finite, contingent and i nsufficient. This experience of insufficiency can be philosophically speaking ap proached with different perspectives are interpreted into difference. Satre has shown one possible attitude that could be adapted to the essential metaphysical insufficiency of observable reality. According to him, they exist contingently a nd not necessarily therefore they is not only possible attitude or the ultimate attitude that one could adapt philosophically. An equally legitimate alternate c ould be everything including myself exists contingently or not necessarily and t hese are freely loved into existence by a gracious element. the point is this, i f we cant find rationally acceptable reason why things are there which neednt have been could not be that there is meta-rational explanation like something in ter ms of love, the fact is neither the cosmic necessity nor metaphysical demands ca n conclusive explain why things are and any explanation should account for the c ontingent character of reality that we are part of it. Philosophically speaking chance is one such hermeneutically valid explanation. What we are saying is the

phenomenon of love can perhaps do it equally does well if it not better. It woul d amount to a perspective namely; I exist not because I have metaphysical right to exist, but because I am geroeously loved into existence. Thus a hermeuntic st ance like that of Satre towards our experience of metaphysical insufficiency is philosophically speaking a legitimate stance. But it would be even philosophical ly wrong in assuming that it is the only possible one. The other alternative as we have shown has equal philosophical legitimacy. Therefore it would be essentia lly a matter of which of the alternative one is prepared to adapt which depends upon the kind of general personal philosophy which one has developed for oneself . BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. MEL THOMPSON, TEACH YOURSELF: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, LONDON: ODDER EDUCATION , 2003. 2. NICHOLAS EVERETT, THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD, LONDON AND NEW YORK: ROUTLEDGE TA YLOR AND FRANCIS GROUP, 2004. 3. PHILIP QUIN, A COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, ED. CHARLES TALIAFERRO, BRITAIN: BLACK WELL PUBLISHERS,2002. 4. RICHARD SWINBURNE, THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, OXFORD: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 198 9. 5. SARAH K. TYLER AND GORDON REID, ADVANCED RELIGIOUS STUDIES, OXFORD SHIRE: PHI LIP ALLAN UPDATES, 2002. 6. WILLIAM LANE CRAIG, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, ED. KEVIN MEEKER, J.P.MORELAND, M ICHAEL MURRY, TIMOTHY OCONNOR, EDINBURGH: DIN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002.

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