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    Arguments for God
    Arguments for God
    Arguments for God
    Ebook71 pages55 minutes

    Arguments for God

    By Chris Park

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    About this ebook

    While the existence of God cannot be proved one way or the other, a number of arguments have been put forward over the years that support both the idea and the existence of God. This book examines each of the main arguments - philosophical arguments; arguments from design; arguments based on design; the argument from sacred texts; the argument from consciousness; the argument from morality; the argument from probability; and the cumulative case argument.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChris Park
    Release dateMar 19, 2016
    ISBN9781310909634
    Arguments for God
    Author

    Chris Park

    Chris Park has been a professional illustrator for over twelve years. Some of his previous clients include TBS, Team Coco, Rolling Stone, American Greetings Co., Cloudco Entertainment, Pro Publica, Sleeping Bear Press, Usborne Publishing and Lightspeed Magazine. He co-authored and illustrated his the picture books Little Sock and Little Sock Makes a Friend with his wife Kia. Chris lives in Minnesota with his wife and two sons.

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      Book preview

      Arguments for God - Chris Park

      ARGUMENTS FOR GOD

      Copyright 2016 Chris Park

      Smashwords Edition

      Thank you for downloading this ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial reasons. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy, and please consider downloading the other books in the series GOD MATTERS, both free from Smashwords.com. Thank you for your support.

      This ebook contains material drawn from my book God: Real or Imagined? which was first published in print format by Zaccmedia in 2013. It is part of the GOD MATTERS series, the other ebooks of which are listed in ‘Other books by this author’.

      Table of Contents

      1. Introduction

      2. Philosophical arguments

      3. The argument from design

      4. Arguments based on design

      5. The argument from sacred texts

      6. The argument from consciousness

      7. The argument from morality

      8. The argument from probability

      9. The cumulative case argument

      References

      About the author

      Other books by this author
 

      1. Introduction

      "For thousands of years the greatest minds of every generation have worked diligently to prove the existence of God, and for thousands of years great minds have produced valid refutations of those proofs." Michael Shermer (2000)

      English Christian writer David Watson (1984) bemoaned our human arrogance which assumes that God must somehow justify his existence and explain his actions before we are prepared to consider the possibility of believing in him.

      However much we might regret that arrogance, the fact remains that a great many people today are unwilling to believe that God exists without having good grounds for doing so. Inevitably, therefore, a great deal of attention has been devoted to the search for plausible arguments for the existence God and good reasons for believing in God.

      Is anyone there?

      Former Bishop of Durham David Jenkins (1966) argues that there has always been a debate about God, not only about what He is like, but about whether He exists at all.

      From that perspective, in an ideal world everyone would believe without question that God exists; there would be no debate over the matter. But of course that’s not the case and increasingly the default position for many people, particularly in western society, is that there is no God, and if there is a God it is a pale reflection of the Abrahamic God that is worshipped in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

      Why is God so elusive? Why doesn’t God make himself blindingly obvious to everyone? If God is as ubiquitous and all-knowing as believers say he is, why doesn’t he simply make everyone know and believe that he exists, and that would be the end of the matter? As David Jenkins puts it, it might be supposed that God, if He existed, would be bound to have an existence so certain and so really real that anyone who was capable of thinking about Him at all would be bound to see that He really exists.

      In a nutshell, why does God play a cosmic game of ‘Where’s Wally’? From a believer’s perspective one answer is that God does not impose himself on us, but rather he grants us an element of choice and free will.

      Believers would argue that we see God through a window into a different world, or in different ‘levels of reality’, material and spiritual. (This theme is explored further in the ebook Science and the Challenge to God in this GOD MATTERS series) Perhaps surprisingly, even New Atheist Sam Harris (2005) concedes that there is a world beyond reason … [in which] a certain range of human experience can be appropriately described as ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’ – experiences of meaningfulness, selflessness, and heightened emotion that surpass our narrow identities as ‘selves’ and escape our current understanding of the mind and brain. Harris brings the argument back down to earth with a bump in concluding the problem with religion is that it blends this truth so thoroughly with the venom of unreason.

      Fellow New Atheist Daniel Dennett (2006) views the goal of either proving or disproving God’s existence [as] a quixotic quest – but also for that very reason not very important. … The important question is whether religions deserve the continued protection of their adherents.’ Presumably with Richard Dawkins in mind, Dennett points out that many atheists devote much time and energy to looking at the arguments for and against the existence of God … hacking away vigorously at the arguments of the believers as if they were trying to refute a rival scientific theory. But not I. I decided

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