The Existence of God through Reasoning and Evidence

The world of Philosophy can often be a tricky place and without proper understand of the texts and articles you read, you can very easily find yourself being misled. There are many that I still find puzzling and have a difficult time understanding. One of the arguments, that I find the most difficult to understand, is rationalism and using it to argue the existence of God. Each culture and religion have their own story as to how life began. These are often called creation narratives. In my argument, I would like to argue that there is a God and that he is our creator. Rationalism can be defined as the view that through unaided reason we can come to know that the world is like. (P. 266) (Vaughn) In other words, rationalism is our way of understanding the world around us through reasoning and knowledge. This type of argument would be considered as a deductive argument. A deductive argument can be defined as an argument intended to give logically conclusive support its conclusion. (P. 16) (Vaughn) In other words, a deductive argument is a type of argument that provides premises that are true and will ultimately lead to a true conclusion to an argument. My premises to this argument include, God does exist, we had to be created from someone instead of something, and that there have been events listed in the bible that have been archeologically proven. These are my premises to the existence of God. Many people like to try and disprove the existence of God through reasoning and evidence. These people could be defined as empiricists. Empiricism can be defined as the view that our knowledge of the empirical world comes solely from sense experience. (P. 266) (Vaughn) This type of person refuses to believe in the things that they do not have any tangible or physical proof or have experiences something through their sense experiences (feeling, touch, sight) or posterioi knowledge. A rationalist can successfully defend their argument from the attack of an empiricist or someone who is a skeptic if they are strong in their beliefs and provide sound premises like the one's listed. I believe that God exists and that he is our creator. In the video of Bernard Williams on Descartes, Williams makes a valid argument on the existence of God and I believe that it ties up with rationalist theories. In this video, makes an argument stating that there is a God by arguing that Since I have the idea of God, it can only be because there actually is a God who created me. I know that he created me, and I know that he is benevolent and because God created me, and is benevolent, he is concerned with my intellectual welfare as with my moral welfare. (Youtube) (20:44-22:06) Essentially, I think what Williams meant by that statement was the fact that the reason that we believe that there is a God is because God gave us knowledge of himself in our minds before we were even born. It is like the innate knowledge that Plato described in Chapter six. Innate knowledge can be defined as knowledge of immaterial ideals already present at birth, inscribed in our minds (our immortal souls) in a previous existence. (P. 270) (Vaughn) In other words, if God didn't give me knowledge of himself, how do I know that he is real? There has to be a God because we had to be created by someone instead of something. It is hard to believe that we are here, and life is sustainable all because of a big bang. The sun is not too close and it is not too far away. We have the perfect temperature, ample amounts of sunlight, and oxygen to breathe. Everything we need to survive is perfectly in its place. This is an example of efficient causes. (P. 64) (Vaughn) People are often skeptical of the events in the bible. However, archeologists have been able to unearth various items to prove that some of the events listed in the bible had occurred. For instance, there are many signs that there was once a great flood across the surface of the earth. There have been whale bones along with various other fossils of marine life found at the top of the Andes mountains in Chile. The Andes mountains are nearly 23,000 ft tall. The fossils were found more than 130 feet above sea level and they were perfectly preserved. (Mohan) The findings of these fossils are a great indicator that, at one point in time, the earth was covered with water. Mohan, Geoffrey. Scientists Solve Mystery of Mass Whale Graveyard in Chile. Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 26 Feb. 2014, articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/26/science/la-sci-sn-mass-whale-grave-yard-20140226. (Youtube) Bernard Williams on Descartes (1987). YouTube, YouTube, 7 Nov. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dIf7MapuqE&feature=youtu.be. Vaughn, Lewis. Philosophy Here and Now: Powerful Ideas in Everyday Life. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Cite this page