How can one logically prove the presence of God?
From: shivam
How can one logically prove the presence of God?
Answer Outline: The four proofs are: 1. The Cosmological Argument, 2. The Design Argument, 3. The Teleological Argument and 4. The Moral Argument
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question by Shivam.
How can one logically prove the presence of God? Answer. There are various proofs from the logical perspective for the existence of God. Four of them are the cosmological argument, the design argument, the moral argument and the teleological argument.
The cosmological argument states that in brief, everything that exists in the cosmos and the cosmos itself has to come from something. So, we basically, when we look at the origin of everything, have two alternatives. Either everything comes from something or everything comes from nothing.
Now, as far as our everyday experience, as well as our scientific observation goes, we don’t see any example of something coming from nothing. So, if even something can’t come from nothing, then how can everything come from nothing? Now, if among the two alternatives of everything coming from something or everything coming from nothing, we have now concluded that everything has to come from something. The question arises, what is that something? So, materialistic people and even materialistic scientists, not all scientists are materialistic, but those who are materialists claim that that something is nothing but matter.
It is only material and from matter everything comes. But, if we imagine a huge pile of construction material lying near a construction site, we rarely ever see, we don’t see it at all in fact, organizing itself into a building by its own. But if we have a conscious, intelligent person with a desire to create a building, then he can arrange that construction material into a building.
So therefore, you see that matter has no organizing capacity, whereas consciousness or conscious individual has organizing capacity. And since we see that the world around us is organized, so the starting point from which this world originated should have consciousness. And once we understand that there has to be a starting point and that starting point is conscious, then essentially we have come to the definition of God that is given in the Vedic scriptures.
And in fact, the scriptures all over the world that God is, as the Vedic scriptures say, sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇa, the cause of all causes. anādir ādir govinda, the beginningless beginning of everything. So, this is the cosmological argument.
Then the second argument is the design argument. So cosmological argument primarily talks about origins. Design argument talks about things that exist as we see them presently.
So we see around us that everything from the microscopic to the macroscopic realm does seem to have the appearance of being designed. We see that within an atom electrons are not just running around in a wild, messy, chaotic way. They are orbiting at extremely high speed in well-defined orbits.
Similarly, we see the planets are revolving around the Sun and similarly we understand the galaxies comprise of stars and other celestial bodies which are organized in a grape-like cluster. So to a large extent, we see design from the microscopic to the macroscopic level. So, a design in general requires a designer.
Can the design have come by chance or by natural selection as modern science would have us believe, modern materialistic science would have us believe through the theory of evolution? A theory of evolution has not largely demonstrated change across species. It has not demonstrated the ability to produce new species. What we have observed in nature and what man has replicated through experiments is that we can have change within species by breeding and genetic manipulation and cross-fertilization.
We can make a small apple, we can make a giant apple. We can make a tiny dog and we can make a giant dog. But we can’t convert an apple into a mango and we can’t convert a dog into a lion.
So, the theory of evolution can explain what is called microevolution, not macroevolution. Macroevolution is variation within species and macroevolution is variation across species. So, basically the variation within species is like the pulling of a rubber band.
So, when you pull a rubber band, it can become bigger than normal and afterwards it will come back to the normal length. So, similarly, changes can be induced in nature but the ability to pull and stretch a rubber band does not explain the origin of the rubber band. Similarly, the survival of the species or survival of the fittest does not explain the arrival of the fittest.
A theory of evolution has not either demonstrated through natural observation or laboratory experimentation nor explained with any reasonable degree of theoretical clarity how by natural selection alone species can originate. How all the variety in the universe can be seen. So, design has no adequate explanation in terms of chance or in terms of natural selection.
You can look at the article Scientific Examination of Evolution. It is detailed and intricate but it explains the problems with the theory of evolution problems which scientists who propagate the theory of evolution as if it were a gospel truth are not able to tackle. For the earlier article about the cosmological argument you can see the article How Everything Began on the site.
Now, the third is the teleological argument. The teleological argument refers to things having an ultimate purpose. So, design argument refers to things as they exist now.
Whereas, teleological argument refers to things as they are designed for a future purpose. So, the article made just for you on this site is an example of explaining teleological argument. So, imagine if a young boy John comes to his small room on a freezing cold night and as he just comes inside the room he finds that the room is very warm because there is a heater over there and there is a heat proof coating all around the room and he feels very warm and cozy and comfortable despite the freezing cold outside.
He wonders, how did all this come around by itself? Only my father must have made it for me. Similarly, we see that aquatics when they live underwater now the water especially in the frigid parts of the world temperatures fall to extremely low levels so, we see that aquatics don’t freeze to death because among all the substances that exist on the planet water has something peculiar which we call as anomalous behavior, we are referring to scientists because of which normally substances become heavier when they become solid but ice becomes lighter than water when water becomes solidified and ice floats in the water and not only does it float in the water but it protects the water below it from becoming further cold and that’s how the aquatic life form lives so, that’s like creating a thermal proof coating around the cabin not only that, as water is cooling it absorbs a lot of heat, so that warmth remains underwater relatively speaking and that’s how the aquatics live not only that, water also absorbs large quantity of oxygen and that’s how the aquatics can get to breathe so that’s like, somebody finds the cabin is completely closed but there are oxygen cylinders inside that air can’t come in but air is available kept inside now this may seem like the design argument but this is slightly different the design argument refers to features that are useful for our day to day functioning, teleological argument refers to features that are designed, that are intended for a particular purpose and which require planning so that in the future when that situation arises that purpose can be fulfilled by the features that are there so, I won’t go into the technical differences of the teleological design argument but the principle point is that there is a feature that cannot come by itself and then lastly is the moral argument now, the Darwin’s theory of evolution and subsequent evolutionary synthesis proposes the driving principle to be survival of the fittest but we see that we human beings have a moral sense and because of the moral sense we don’t necessarily follow survival of the fittest rather we facilitate the survival of the unfit for example if a person is blind then survival of the fittest would mean let that person die but it is a natural innate human sense to help that person cross the road or if a person is drowning at that time if all of us were just creatures guided by survival of the fittest instinct then we would let that person die and think why should I bother as long as I am safe but most people if they have the strength and the courage they will jump in and they will try to rescue that person and they will risk their life to help that person to survive even if that person is unfit in the sense that that person doesn’t have the ability to swim whereas this person has and even if others don’t do that still others also appreciate it others glorify it in fact when the WTC disaster took place the firefighters who went inside the twin towers to rescue the people who were trapped inside at the risk of their own lives were glorified as national heroes in America so where does this moral sense of that which is right and that which is wrong come from if we were just products of evolution there would be no such moral sense that which favors our survival is right and that which harms our survival is wrong that all would make biological sense but we have a moral sense that is beyond our biological sense pure materialistic science can never explain this so what has this got to do with the existence of God the moral argument posits that because God has created all of us God has given within us a sense of what is right and what is wrong and it is that sense which we can dull or we can sharpen we have that freedom so some people may by repeated wrong doing dull their moral sense and others may make their moral sense more acute and more sharp but moral sense is almost there in practically all living beings all human beings at least because humans can understand the purpose of creation so biology or evolution or genetics cannot explain how we have the moral sense but our everyday experience cannot deny the existence of the moral sense so where does the moral sense come from it actually comes from God who has given us this sense of morality so that we can learn to do what is right and ultimately achieve the right, the best goal of life so to summarize the existence of God at a logical level can be understood through the cosmological argument where did everything come from through the design argument why do the intricate and the technical features of everything that we see around us where do they come from the teleological argument that we have features both we and our environment have features that facilitate our existence just like the anomalous behavior of water facilitates the existence of aquatics and moral argument which says that God has given us our sense of right and wrong beyond what our biological sense of right and wrong based on what is facilitating our survival and what is harming our survival so all these can help us to logically understand the existence of God