Philosophy of Religion

The Existence of God

Does a God exist, and what would count as evidence either way?

Positions

  1. Atheism

    No God exists; the universe and its order require no supernatural explanation.

  2. Theism

    A personal, perfect God exists as the ultimate cause and explanation of the universe.

    Held by Patristics, Scholasticism

Engaged by schools of thought

  • Neoplatonism

    Plotinus answers with the One: an ineffable first principle beyond being and intellect, the source from which all reality emanates and to which the soul ascends — the divine understood as absolute unity rather than a being among beings.

Methods used to investigate this question

  • Deductive Reasoning

    Deductive reasoning moves from accepted premises to a conclusion they guarantee, so that accepting the premises while denying the conclusion is inconsistent.

    Open in Methods

  • Scholastic Disputation

    Scholastic disputation examines a stated question by presenting objections, authorities, a reasoned determination, and replies to the objections.

    Open in Methods

  • Syllogistic Analysis

    Syllogistic analysis represents an inference through categorical premises and a conclusion so that its validity can be tested by figure and form.

    Open in Methods

  • Textual Exegesis

    Textual exegesis draws a defensible reading out of an authoritative text by attending to its language, its literary and historical setting, and the received commentary on it.

    Open in Methods

Discussion

Few questions are argued with as much philosophical rigor and as much at stake: whether a perfect, personal being grounds and explains the universe, or whether the universe and its order need no such explanation. Cosmological arguments trace the chain of causes back to a first cause; design arguments read purpose into the fine-tuning of nature; their critics answer that regularity and complexity are explicable without invoking anything beyond the natural world.

The dispute reaches into nearly every other domain on the map — what counts as an adequate explanation, what kind of evidence religious experience provides, and what follows for ethics if there is or is not a source of value beyond human agreement.

References