Is there really a God?
Student Name
May 19, 2017
Core 3
Mr. Griffin ELA
Is there really a God? Every religion and belief has their own view of God, different ideas about what or who God is, and what the existence or nonexistence of God means. The god (singular) of the Abrahamic religions, like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, is believed to be the omnipotent, omnipresent creator of the universe and all life. The gods (plural) of many Eastern religions, like varieties of Buddhism and Hinduism, are immaterial beings who are more powerful and knowledgeably than humans, but aren't all-powerful or all-knowing. There are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.There are many names for God, and different names are attached to different cultural ideas about God's identity and attributes. In the ancient Egyptian era of Atenismpossibly the earliest recorded monotheistic religion, this deity was called Aten, premised on being the one "true" Supreme Being and Creator of the Universe. The many different conceptions of God, and competing claims to God's characteristics, aims, and actions make it hard to give God an image.The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system", but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect.A common characteristic of religion is their reliance on faith. Using logic, reason, evidence, or science as defense for their faith. Faith, though, is an unreliable guide to reality or a way to acquire knowledge.
Arguments for and against the existence of God have been given by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others for thousands of years. In philosophical terms, these arguments involve the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being, existence, or reality) and also the theory of value, since concepts of perfection are connected to beliefs of God. A wide variety of arguments exist which can be categorized as metaphysical, logical, empirical, or subjective. The existence of God is subject to debate in the philosophy of religion, popular culture, and philosophy.
Most astronomers think that the Universe was formed during an event called the Big Bang - a giant explosion which occurred between 10 and 20 billion years ago. During the Big Bang, all of the space, time, matter, and energy in the Universe was created. This giant explosion hurled matter in all directions and caused space itself to expand. As the Universe cooled, the material in it combined to form galaxies, stars, and planets. Believers claim that the constants in the Universe that made it possible for life to emerge are so unlikely that the stage could not have been set by other than a powerful being. However, we have nothing to compare our universe to. The Universe to have had a cause, and we still aren’t sure it did. “The Big Bang” is the most dominate astrophysical theory today, but it has its faults, most arguing that because the mathematics that leads back to a big bang do not function at the point immediately prior to the big bang, which were invalid. If the Universe had a first cause, what caused that first cause? Criticism declares that it is unfair to argue for every thing’s cause, and then argue for the sole exception of a “First Cause,” which did not have a cause. It is fundamentally a ‘god of the gaps’ approach. Our current lack of understanding concerning the Universe’s origins does not automatically mean ‘god’ holds any explanatory value. Metaphysical and theistic speculation are not immediately justified or correct simply because we lack understanding.
Evidence of the principles of modern science were in the Bible as facts including: Roundness of the Earth, almost infinite extent of the sidereal universe, Law of conservation of mass and energy, hydrologic cycle, vast number of stars, Law of increasing entropy, paramount importance of blood in life processes, atmospheric circulation, gravitational field, and many others. While we may not be able to scientifically prove God exists, we can see how the Bible is consistent with operational science. With the account of the Flood, we would expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth, which is exactly what we do find. We also see the universe is logical and orderly, and our Creator, as described in the Bible, is the God of order and logic. Ultimately, love, reason, knowledge, logic, and morality are all impossible to explain in a purely materialistic universe that exists by chance. God does not force us to believe in him, though he could. Instead, he has provided sufficient proof of his existence for us to willingly respond to him. The earth's perfect distance from the sun, the unique chemical properties of water, the human brain, DNA, the number of people who attest to knowing God, the gnawing in our hearts and minds to determine if God is there, the willingness for God to be known through Jesus Christ.
The Bible uses 40 unrelated people over a period of 2,000 years to write. There is nothing like the Bible because it carries the same consistent message throughout all of its 66 different books.But yet there is no contemporary evidence for Jesus existing except for the Bible’s account of his life; no artefacts, dwellings, works of carpentry, self-written manuscripts, court records, eyewitness testimony, official diaries, birth records, reflections on his significance or written disputes about his teachings. Nothing survives from the time in which he is said to have lived.
Countless arguments have been proposed to prove the existence of God. Some of the most notable arguments are the Five Ways of Aquinas, the Argument from Desire proposed by C.S. Lewis, and the Ontological Argument formulated both by St. Anselm and René Descartes. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the Five Ways of Aquinas which are the proof from motion, proof from causality, proof from contingency, proof from grades of perfection, and proof from finality. Aquinas developed a theological system that synthesized Western Christian (and predominantly Roman Catholic) theology with the philosophy of the ancient Greek thinker Aristotle. Descartes' ontological (or a priori) argument is both one of the most fascinating and poorly understood aspects of his philosophy. Fascination with the argument stems from the effort to prove God's existence from simple but powerful premises. Existence is derived immediately from the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being. An earlier version of the argument had been written by St. Anselm in the eleventh century, and then criticized by a monk named Gaunilo (Anselm's contemporary) and later by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas' critique was regarded as so devastating that the ontological argument died out for several centuries. It came as a surprise to Descartes' contemporaries when he did attempt to resurrect the ontological argument.C. S. Lewis argued that god does indeed exist stating: “Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being (a deity), magic, a miracle worker, a saint or a religious leader.Miracles have not been demonstrated to occur. The existence of a miracle would pose logical problems for belief in a god which can see the future and began the universe with a set of predefined laws. Even if a miracle could be demonstrated it would not immediately imply the existence of a god, much less any particular one, as unknown natural processes or agents could still be at work. Which many people believe that if there is a miracle occurrence, there is God and that God proves his existence through miracles.Some people have experienced the afterlife as an example take Anita Moorjani, diagnosed with lymphoma in 2002, Moorjaniwas losing her cancer battle, withering down to just 85 pounds and battling tumors from the base of her skull to her abdomen. She slipped into a coma in February 2006. She says that's when she died and crossed over to an afterlife. "I felt as though I was above my body," she said. "It was like I had 360-degree peripheral vision of the whole area around. But not just in the room where my body was in, but beyond the room." Moorjani said she was reunited in that state with her late father, who told her to turn back. "He said that I've gone as far as I can, and if I go any further, I won't be able to turn back," she said. "But I felt I didn't want to turn back, because it was so beautiful. It was just incredible, because, for the first time, all the pain had gone. All the discomfort had gone. All the fear was gone. I just felt so incredible. And I felt as though I was enveloped in this feeling of just love. Unconditional love."
The afterlife (also referred to as life after death or the hereafter) is the concept of a realm, or the realm itself (whether physical or transcendental), in which an essential part of an individual's identity or consciousness continues to exist after the death of the body.In some views, this continued existence often takes place in a spiritual realm, and in other views, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or otherworld. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics. Those in the Abrahamic tradition, hold that the dead go to a specific plane of existence after death, determined by a god, gods, or other divine judgment, based on their actions or beliefs during life. Having established the existence of an afterlife, Jesus also speaks authoritatively about the two destinies awaiting every person that dies: one with God and one without God. This is also known as heaven and hell. The Bible teaches that there is a literal heaven and a literal hell. Heaven is the spiritual dwelling place of God, and it is where all true Christians will go after death, provided they remain faithful throughout life. Hell is the place of eternal separation from God, prepared for the devil and his angels. It is a place of eternal torment. Many people believe that heaven is angles sitting on clouds playing harps, truth is the Bible doesn’t say heaven is a physical place but is a spiritual dwelling place of God. Heaven is a place where there is no pain, suffering, death, sorrow or crying. When people think of hell they imagine a cave where a man with a tail and horns pokes people with a pitchfork. The Bible teaches that hell is a literal place of eternal torment, Jesus described hell as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, a place of outer darkness, and a place of fire.
From the dawn of known history, human beings have been remarkably religious. Every human culture and civilization has had a concept of the divine, gods, goddesses, and spirit beings. People have a relentless desire to understand and touch the divine. Since the Gods of various religions differ widely in their characteristics, only one of these religions, or none, can be right about God.
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