Reading: Introduction to the Question

Does God Exist?

One of the biggest arguments in philosophy has to do with the existence of God. There are any
number of people who have contended that God exists and they are able to marshal many
differing arguments as to the reason they make the claim. But, as we saw in the week we
looked at arguments, every argument is in some way or other able to be debated. Very few
arguments are able to simply stand on their own. The arguments for God are similar.
As people who believe that God is real and that he has revealed himself in the general
revelation of the creation and in the special revelation of the Holy Scriptures, we take the
existence of God for granted. But that does not mean that we should simply leave it at that.
There are many with whom we will come into contact in the course of our ministry who will
challenge the fact of God’s existence.
A common challenge to the Christian faith is based on the concept of a definition of God
which argues that God is, by definition good, and God is, by definition, all powerful. So in the
face of a world that is hostile to the Christian faith, we find people asking, “Where is God when
things go horribly wrong?” When the earth groans with an earthquake and thousands of
people, or even just one, lose their lives, the question arises, “Where was God in this event?” If
God is all powerful, why did he not stop this event from happening? If he is good, why did he
allow this to go on? Both of these are difficult to respond to as we face them ourselves.
As those who engage the world around us as Christians, we desire to have our faith in God be
a central aspect of our teaching. But when confronted with the philosophical issues of the
existence of God, how do we respond.
This week, we will look at a few historical philosophers who have attempted to give account of
the existence of a good, all powerful God to a world that is skeptical of his greatness and his
love. The Belgic Confession which was written in 1561 for the Calvinistic churches of Europe
begins like this:
Article 1: The Only God
We all believe in our hearts
and confess with our mouths
that there is a single
and simple
spiritual being,
whom we call God—
eternal,
incomprehensible,
invisible,
unchangeable,
infinite,
almighty;
completely wise,
just,
and good,
and the overflowing source
of all good.
Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God
We know God by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.
Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly
by his holy and divine Word,
as much as we need in this life,
for God’s glory
and for our salvation.
In article one the confession specifically states that God is incomprehensible and invisible, so
our normal human means of knowing God are simply set aside. There is only one way to know
God, that is, to believe in his self-revelation. It comes to us in two different ways. The first way
is by
“… the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book…”

We begin our pursuit of the question of God with the argument called the ontological argument
which was famously set forth by St. Anselm when he was archbishop of Canterbury in the late
years of the first millennium.

Reading: The Classical Ontological Argument

The Classic Version of the Ontological Argument
a. The Argument Described
St. Anselm, Archbishop of Cantebury (1033-1109), is the originator of the ontological
argument, which he describes in the Proslogium as follows:
[Even a] fool, when he hears of … a being than which nothing greater can be conceived …
understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding.… And assuredly
that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For
suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which
is greater.… Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the
understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than
which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt
that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the
understanding and in reality.
The argument in this difficult passage can accurately be summarized in standard form:

1. It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which
none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be
imagined).
2. God exists as an idea in the mind.
3. A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal,
greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the mind.
4. Thus, if God exists only as an idea in the mind, then we can imagine something that is
greater than God (that is, a greatest possible being that does exist).
5. But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God (for it is a contradiction to
suppose that we can imagine a being greater than the greatest possible being that can
be imagined.)
6. Therefore, God exists.

Intuitively, one can think of the argument as being powered by two ideas. The first, expressed
by Premise 2, is that we have a coherent idea of a being that instantiates all of the perfections.
Otherwise put, Premise 2 asserts that we have a coherent idea of a being that instantiates
every property that makes a being greater, other things being equal, than it would have been
without that property (such properties are also known as "great-making" properties). Premise 3
asserts that existence is a perfection or great-making property.
Accordingly, the very concept of a being that instantiates all the perfections implies that it
exists. Suppose B is a being that instantiates all the perfections and suppose B doesn't exist
(in reality). Since Premise 3 asserts that existence is a perfection, it follows that B lacks a
perfection. But this contradicts the assumption that B is a being that instantiates all the
perfections. Thus, according to this reasoning, it follows that B exists.
Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/anselm/

Reading: Video: The Argument Put Forward by Alvin Plantinga

By clicking on the link that follows, you will get to a video that discusses the ontological
argument for the existence of God as put forward by philosopher Alvin Plantinga. You may
need to watch it two or three or even four times, to take in what the presenter is all saying.
That’s OK!!!

Reading: An Interview With Alvin Plantinga

In the interview which follows, the author, Gary Gutting, examines the views of Alvin Plantinga
as it relates to the arguments for the existence of God. Once again, multiple readings may be
necessary to grasp the content.

Bottom of Form
THE STONE
Is Atheism Irrational?
By GARY GUTTING
FEBRUARY 9, 2014

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely
and timeless.
This is the first in a series of interviews about religion that I will conduct for The Stone. The
interviewee for this installment is Alvin Plantinga, an emeritus professor of philosophy at the
University of Notre Dame, a former president of both the Society of Christian Philosophers and
the American Philosophical Association, and the author, most recently, of “Where the Conflict
Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.”
Gary Gutting: A recent survey by PhilPapers, the online philosophy index, says that 62
percent of philosophers are atheists (with another 11 percent “inclined” to the view). Do you
think the philosophical literature provides critiques of theism strong enough to warrant their
views? Or do you think philosophers’ atheism is due to factors other than rational analysis?
Alvin Plantinga: If 62 percent of philosophers are atheists, then the proportion of atheists
among philosophers is much greater than (indeed, is nearly twice as great as) the proportion of
atheists among academics generally. (I take atheism to be the belief that there is no such
person as the God of the theistic religions.) Do philosophers know something here that these
other academics don’t know? What could it be? Philosophers, as opposed to other academics,
are often professionally concerned with the theistic arguments — arguments for the existence
of God. My guess is that a considerable majority of philosophers, both believers and
unbelievers, reject these arguments as unsound.
Still, that’s not nearly sufficient for atheism. In the British newspaper The Independent, the
scientist Richard Dawkins was recently asked the following question: “If you died and arrived at
the gates of heaven, what would you say to God to justify your lifelong atheism?” His response:
“I’d quote Bertrand Russell: ‘Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!’” But lack of
evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good
evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the
right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion
would instead be agnosticism.
In the same way, the failure of the theistic arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably
be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would
presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you have strong arguments or
evidence.
The failure of arguments for God would be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism.
G.G.: You say atheism requires evidence to support it. Many atheists deny this, saying that all
they need to do is point out the lack of any good evidence for theism. You compare atheism to
the denial that there are an even number of stars, which obviously would need evidence. But
atheists say (using an example from Bertrand Russell) that you should rather compare atheism
to the denial that there’s a teapot in orbit around the sun. Why prefer your comparison to
Russell’s?
A.P.: Russell’s idea, I take it, is we don’t really have any evidence against teapotism, but we
don’t need any; the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and is enough to support a-
teapotism. We don’t need any positive evidence against it to be justified in a-teapotism; and
perhaps the same is true of theism.
I disagree: Clearly we have a great deal of evidence against teapotism. For example, as far as
we know, the only way a teapot could have gotten into orbit around the sun would be if some
country with sufficiently developed space-shot capabilities had shot this pot into orbit. No
country with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a
teapot into orbit. Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have been all over the
news; we would certainly have heard about it. But we haven’t. And so on. There is plenty of
evidence against teapotism. So if, à la Russell, theism is like teapotism, the atheist, to be
justified, would (like the a-teapotist) have to have powerful evidence against theism.
G.G.: But isn’t there also plenty of evidence against theism — above all, the amount of evil in a
world allegedly made by an all-good, all-powerful God?
A.P.: The so-called “problem of evil” would presumably be the strongest (and maybe the only)
evidence against theism. It does indeed have some strength; it makes sense to think that the
probability of theism, given the existence of all the suffering and evil our world contains, is fairly
low. But of course there are also arguments for theism. Indeed, there are at least a couple of
dozen good theistic arguments. So the atheist would have to try to synthesize and balance the
probabilities. This isn’t at all easy to do, but it’s pretty obvious that the result wouldn’t anywhere
nearly support straight-out atheism as opposed to agnosticism.
G.G.: But when you say “good theistic arguments,” you don’t mean arguments that are decisive
— for example, good enough to convince any rational person who understands them.
A.P.: I should make clear first that I don’t think arguments are needed for rational belief in God.
In this regard belief in God is like belief in other minds, or belief in the past. Belief in God is
grounded in experience, or in the sensus divinitatis, John Calvin’s term for an inborn inclination
to form beliefs about God in a wide variety of circumstances.
Nevertheless, I think there are a large number — maybe a couple of dozen — of pretty good
theistic arguments. None is conclusive, but each, or at any rate the whole bunch taken
together, is about as strong as philosophical arguments ordinarily get.
G.G.: Could you give an example of such an argument?
You don’t even need arguments to have a rational belief in God. Belief in God is grounded in
experience.
AP: One presently rather popular argument: fine-tuning. Scientists tell us that there are many
properties our universe displays such that if they were even slightly different from what they are
in fact, life, or at least our kind of life, would not be possible. The universe seems to be fine-
tuned for life. For example, if the force of the Big Bang had been different by one part in 10 to
the 60th, life of our sort would not have been possible. The same goes for the ratio of the
gravitational force to the force driving the expansion of the universe: If it had been even slightly
different, our kind of life would not have been possible. In fact the universe seems to be fine-
tuned, not just for life, but for intelligent life. This fine-tuning is vastly more likely given theism
than given atheism.
G.G.: But even if this fine-tuning argument (or some similar argument) convinces someone that
God exists, doesn’t it fall far short of what at least Christian theism asserts, namely the
existence of an all-perfect God? Since the world isn’t perfect, why would we need a perfect
being to explain the world or any feature of it?
A.P.: I suppose your thinking is that it is suffering and sin that make this world less than
perfect. But then your question makes sense only if the best possible worlds contain no sin or
suffering. And is that true? Maybe the best worlds contain free creatures some of whom
sometimes do what is wrong. Indeed, maybe the best worlds contain a scenario very like the
Christian story.
Think about it: The first being of the universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge,
creates free creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against him and get
involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some ancient potentate might — e.g., having
them boiled in oil — God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that
human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself undergoes the
enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all
this for the sake of these sinful creatures.
I’d say a world in which this story is true would be a truly magnificent possible world. It would
be so good that no world could be appreciably better. But then the best worlds contain sin and
suffering.
G.G.: O.K., but in any case, isn’t the theist on thin ice in suggesting the need for God as an
explanation of the universe? There’s always the possibility that we’ll find a scientific account
that explains what we claimed only God could explain. After all, that’s what happened when
Darwin developed his theory of evolution. In fact, isn’t a major support for atheism the very fact
that we no longer need God to explain the world?
A.P.: Some atheists seem to think that a sufficient reason for atheism is the fact (as they say)
that we no longer need God to explain natural phenomena — lightning and thunder for
example. We now have science.
As a justification of atheism, this is pretty lame. We no longer need the moon to explain or
account for lunacy; it hardly follows that belief in the nonexistence of the moon (a-moonism?) is
justified. A-moonism on this ground would be sensible only if the sole ground for belief in the
existence of the moon was its explanatory power with respect to lunacy. (And even so, the
justified attitude would be agnosticism with respect to the moon, not a-moonism.) The same
thing goes with belief in God: Atheism on this sort of basis would be justified only if the
explanatory power of theism were the only reason for belief in God. And even then,
agnosticism would be the justified attitude, not atheism.
G.G.: So, what are the further grounds for believing in God, the reasons that make atheism
unjustified?
A.P.: The most important ground of belief is probably not philosophical argument but religious
experience. Many people of very many different cultures have thought themselves in
experiential touch with a being worthy of worship. They believe that there is such a person, but
not because of the explanatory prowess of such belief. Or maybe there is something like
Calvin’s sensus divinitatis. Indeed, if theism is true, then very likely there issomething like
the sensus divinitatis. So claiming that the only sensible ground for belief in God is the
explanatory quality of such belief is substantially equivalent to assuming atheism.
G.G.: If, then, there isn’t evidence to support atheism, why do you think so many philosophers
— presumably highly rational people — are atheists?
Some people simply don’t want there to be a God. It would pose a serious limitation for human
autonomy.
AP: I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t have any special knowledge here. Still, there are some
possible explanations. Thomas Nagel, a terrific philosopher and an unusually perceptive
atheist, says he simply doesn’t want there to be any such person as God. And it isn’t hard to
see why. For one thing, there would be what some would think was an intolerable invasion of
privacy: God would know my every thought long before I thought it. For another, my actions
and even my thoughts would be a constant subject of judgment and evaluation.
Basically, these come down to the serious limitation of human autonomy posed by theism. This
desire for autonomy can reach very substantial proportions, as with the German philosopher
Heidegger, who, according to Richard Rorty, felt guilty for living in a universe he had not
himself created. Now there’s a tender conscience! But even a less monumental desire for
autonomy can perhaps also motivate atheism.
GG: Especially among today’s atheists, materialism seems to be a primary motive. They think
there’s nothing beyond the material entities open to scientific inquiry, so there there’s no place
for immaterial beings such as God.
AP: Well, if there are only material entities, then atheism certainly follows. But there is a really
serious problem for materialism: It can’t be sensibly believed, at least if, like most materialists,
you also believe that humans are the product of evolution.
GG: Why is that?
AP: I can’t give a complete statement of the argument here — for that see Chapter 10 of
“Where the Conflict Really Lies.” But, roughly, here’s why. First, if materialism is true, human
beings, naturally enough, are material objects. Now what, from this point of view, would
a belief be? My belief that Marcel Proust is more subtle that Louis L’Amour, for example?
Presumably this belief would have to be a material structure in my brain, say a collection of
neurons that sends electrical impulses to other such structures as well as to nerves and
muscles, and receives electrical impulses from other structures.
But in addition to such neurophysiological properties, this structure, if it is a belief, would also
have to have a content: It would have, say, to be the belief that Proust is more subtle than
L’Amour.
GG: So is your suggestion that a neurophysiological structure can’t be a belief? That a belief
has to be somehow immaterial?
AP: That may be, but it’s not my point here. I’m interested in the fact that beliefs cause (or at
least partly cause) actions. For example, my belief that there is a beer in the fridge (together
with my desire to have a beer) can cause me to heave myself out of my comfortable armchair
and lumber over to the fridge.
But here’s the important point: It’s by virtue of its material, neurophysiological properties that a
belief causes the action. It’s in virtue of those electrical signals sent via efferent nerves to the
relevant muscles, that the belief about the beer in the fridge causes me to go to the fridge. It
is not by virtue of the content (there is a beer in the fridge) the belief has.
GG: Why do you say that?
AP: Because if this belief — this structure — had a totally different content (even, say, if it was
a belief that there is no beer in the fridge) but had the same neurophysiological properties, it
would still have caused that same action of going to the fridge. This means that the content of
the belief isn’t a cause of the behavior. As far as causing the behavior goes, the content of the
belief doesn’t matter.
GG: That does seem to be a hard conclusion to accept. But won’t evolution get the materialist
out of this difficulty? For our species to have survived, presumably many, if not most, of our
beliefs must be true — otherwise, we wouldn’t be functional in a dangerous world.
Materialism can’t be sensibly believed, at least if, like most materialists, you also believe in
evolution.
AP: Evolution will have resulted in our having beliefs that are adaptive; that is, beliefs that
cause adaptive actions. But as we’ve seen, if materialism is true, the belief does not cause the
adaptive action by way of its content: It causes that action by way of its neurophysiological
properties. Hence it doesn’t matter what the content of the belief is, and it doesn’t matter
whether that content is true or false. All that’s required is that the belief have the right
neurophysiologicalproperties. If it’s also true, that’s fine; but if false, that’s equally fine.
Evolution will select for belief-producing processes that produce beliefs with adaptive
neurophysiological properties, but not for belief-producing processes that produce true beliefs.
Given materialism and evolution, any particular belief is as likely to be false as true.
GG: So your claim is that if materialism is true, evolution doesn’t lead to most of our beliefs
being true.
AP: Right. In fact, given materialism and evolution, it follows that our belief-producing faculties
are not reliable.
Here’s why. If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that
any particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a total of 100
independent beliefs (of course, we have many more). Remember that the probability that all of
a group of beliefs are true is the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we set
a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67 percent) of our beliefs are true
— our overall reliability, given materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like
.0004. So if you accept both materialism and evolution, you have good reason to believe that
your belief-producing faculties are not reliable.
But to believe that is to fall into a total skepticism, which leaves you with no reason to accept
any of your beliefs (including your beliefs in materialism and evolution!). The only sensible
course is to give up the claim leading to this conclusion: that both materialism and evolution
are true. Maybe you can hold one or the other, but not both.
So if you’re an atheist simply because you accept materialism, maintaining your atheism
means you have to give up your belief that evolution is true. Another way to put it: The belief
that both materialism and evolution are true is self-refuting. It shoots itself in the foot. Therefore
it can’t rationally be held.
This interview was conducted by email and edited.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor
of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the
Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960″ and writes regularly for The Stone.
Retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/is-atheism-irrational/

Reading: Advice to Christian Philosophers by Alvin Plantinga

So the Christian philosopher has his own topics and projects to think about; and when he
thinks about the topics of current concern in the broader philosophical world, he will think about
them in his own way, which may be a different way. He may have to reject certain currently
fashionable assumptions about the philosophic enterprise-he may have to reject widely
accepted assumptions as to what are the proper starting points and procedures for
philosophical endeavor. And-and this is crucially important-the Christian philosopher has a
perfect right to the point of view and prephilosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic
work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the Christian or theistic community is
interesting but fundamentally irrelevant. I can best explain what I mean by way of example; so I
shall descend from the level of lofty generality to specific examples.
II.Theism and Verifiability
First, the dreaded "Verifiability Criterion of Meaning." During the palmy days of logical
positivism, some thirty or forty years ago, the positivists claimed that most of the sentences
Christians characteristically utter-"God loves us," for example, or "God created the heavens
and the earth"-don't even have the grace to be false; they are, said the positivists, literally
meaningless. It is not that they express false propositions; they don't express any propositions
at all. Like that lovely line from Alice in Wonderland, "T'was brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre
and gymbol in the wabe," they say nothing false, but only because they say nothing at all; they
are "cognitively meaningless," to use the positivist's charming phrase. The sorts of things
theists and others had been saying for centuries, they said, were now shown to be without
sense; we theists had all been the victims, it seems, of a cruel hoax-perpetrated, perhaps, by
ambitious priests and foisted upon us by our own credulous natures.
Now if this is true, it is indeed important. How had the positivists come by this startling piece of
intelligence? They inferred it from the Verifiability Criterion of Meaning, which said, roughly,
that a sentence is meaningful only if either it is analytic, or its truth or falsehood can be
determined by empirical or scientific investigation-by the methods of the empirical sciences. On
these grounds not only theism and theology, but most of traditional metaphysics and
philosophy and much else besides was declared nonsense, without any literal sense at all.
Some positivists conceded that metaphysics and theology, though strictly meaningless, might
still have a certain limited value. Carnap, for example, thought they might be a kind of music. It
isn't known whether he expected theology and metaphysics to supplant Bach and Mozart, or
even Wagner; I myself, however, think they could nicely supersede rock. Hegel could take the
place of The Talking Heads; Immanuel Kant could replace The Beach Boys; and instead of
The Grateful Dead we could have, say, Arthur Schopenhauer.
Positivism had a delicious air of being avant garde and with-it; and many philosophers found it
extremely attractive. Furthermore, many who didn't endorse it nonetheless entertained it with
great hospitality as at the least extremely plausible. As a consequence many philosophers-both
Christians and non-Christians-saw here a real challenge and an important danger to
Christianity: "The main danger to theism today," said J. J. C. Smart in 1955, "comes from
people who want to say that 'God exists' and 'God does not exist' are equally absurd." In 1955
New Essays in Philosophical Theology appeared, a volume of essays that was to set the tone
and topics for philosophy of religion for the next decade or more; and most of this volume was
given over to a discussion of the impact of Verificationism on theism.
Many philosophically inclined Christians were disturbed and perplexed and felt deeply
threatened; could it really be true that linguistic philosophers had somehow discovered that the
Christian's most cherished convictions were, in fact, just meaningless? There was a great deal
of anxious hand wringing among philosophers, either themselves theists or sympathetic to
theism. Some suggested, in the face of positivistic onslaught, that the thing for the Christian
community to do was to fold up its tents and silently slink away, admitting that the verifiability
criterion was probably true.
Others conceded that strictly speaking, theism really is nonsense, but is important nonsense.
Still others suggested that the sentences in question should be reinterpreted in such a way as
not to give offense to the positivists; someone seriously suggested, for example, that Christians
resolve, henceforth, to use the sentence "God exists" to mean "some men and women have
had, and all may have, experiences called 'meeting God'"; he added that when we say "God
created the world from nothing" what we should mean is "everything we call 'material' can be
used in such a way that it contributes to the wellbeing of men." In a different context but the
same spirit, Rudolph Bultmann embarked upon his program of demythologizing Christianity.
Traditional supernaturalistic Christian belief, he said, is "impossible in this age of electric light
and the wireless." (One can perhaps imagine an earlier village skeptic taking a similar view of,
say, the tallow candle and printing press, or perhaps the pine torch and the papyrus scroll.)
Reprinted from Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers vol. 1:3,
(253-271), permanently copyrighted October 1984. Used by permission of the Editor. New
preface by author. Journal web site: www.faithandphilosophy.com
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