Sunday, June 7, 2015

Pondering the Five Proofs for the Existence of a God

To the Religious and Atheists,
    "There is no God" is a claim I philosophically can never claim. For all I know, that could be true, but as I pointed out in my essay about A Higher Power Through Technology, it can't be proven. It is far easier to prove that there is such a thing as a god than there isn't. The most famous of these are the Five Proofs which actually don't make the claim that the god(s) they are about is the same that different religions claim to exist. I will describe a quick summary but this is actually more to prep for my next "letter" in which I will speculate based off a few premises.
     So each of the Five Proofs concludes with "and this is what we refer to as a god." The capital "G" God is what I would refer to as the One that encompasses all five of the proofs but that itself requires some extra logic to connect them all. The first proof is the idea of motion and how nothing in the universe is able to move without having some start. Even in our bodies there is movement when we are still and perhaps that is the best explanation for why we can "stop" and move freely. So in that sense, the idea of a god is the "First Mover" which by definition means it is the first thing that causes motion. Yes, people ask "but who moved him?" but that is an invalid question as it goes against the definition of First. Perhaps the best explanation for understanding this concept is the one I gave in the essay I shared above.
    The Second proof is similar to the first one but is described as the Cause of All Things. After all, the one who puts everything in motion is not necessarily the creator. For example, someone can create a game, but I'm the one who starts it by pressing "play".
    The Third proof is the presence of miracles. Miracles by definition cannot be explained by science and there are still events that fit that criteria such as incorruptible bodies and instant disappearance of 20 pound tumors. Does this mean I believe the world was created in 7 days as described in the Bible? No, because our definition of a day back then revolved around the rising and setting of the sun which did not "exist" until like the 4th "day" according to that same Bible. Hence that was obviously literary (unless the concept of "day" refers to a "day in god's time" which is technically possible). However, I cannot wholly accept the theory of evolution without at the same time accepting the concept of a god because of how we evolved. The big question I have is "Why in the world where all organisms originated from a single cell would 'evolve' into something that requires two of us? Why would we do that especially for a species that takes 9 months to procreate and then years before we are even able to survive on our own?" We may control the earth now, but it certainly didn't start that way.
    The Fourth proof was the concept of a perfect good (or various degrees of things). This requires a few premises such as that "Evil is the absence of Good." I recall this as dependent on the fact that we can put things in order of goodness like the freedom of speech is better than an ice cream cone. While there are things that are subjective, there is a general order of goodness in the world. This proof also uses the premise "One cannot give what one does not have (or at least has the potential to give)" and since there is various degrees of goodness, there must be a highest good and proof calls that "what we refer to as a god."
    The Fifth I needed to look at Wikipedia to recall. But after I saw it, then I could see how it would made sense. I will just copy and paste what I found there

  • Many things in the universe may either exist or not exist and are all finite. Such things are called contingent beings.
  • It is impossible for everything in the universe to be contingent, for then there would be a time when nothing existed, and so nothing would exist now, since there would be nothing to bring anything into existence, which is clearly false.
  • Therefore, there must be a necessary being whose existence is not contingent on any other being or beings.
  • We call this being God.
     So I actually originally thought the Fifth proof was that there is Order in the Universe. That may be more linked to the Fourth one I relayed but it is something to ponder. If there is no order, then everything should be in chaos and not exist. But since there is an order to things such as the Laws of Physics that we still have not perfectly understood, there must be a being outside of the universe with the power to establish an order. So yeah, I think my analogy about technology actually really helps explain all of these "proofs."
      Now something I will point out is that I don't think any of these can prove that the ultimate superior being we collectively call "God" is the next level up, just that it is very reasonable that there is one. This is because we could theoretically create a virtual world that has the capacity to create their own stories and virtual worlds. This is the interesting thing about infinite because it can go one direction, but it can also have a start.
N. D. Moharo

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