Mccloskey's Argument For The Existence Of God

Many people wonder about the existence of God and if he truly exists. We have to realize that it is obvious that he exists because of his many creations. Sometimes we think that the world has so much evil so how is God here. Multiple philosophers have made proofs and arguments abut how God really does exist. Philosophers have made arguments that he exists for example Shaun Doyle says that God reveals himself to people in many ways such as that the spirit himself testifies to Christians spirits that we are God’s children, William Lane Craig has found the differences his existence has made, and Pascal Wager’s is an argument that says that believing in God is not on an appeal that he exists, but based on an appeal to self-interest.

1. The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God is based on the principle of cause and effect. What this basically means is that the universe was the effect of a cause, which was God. One of the oldest and most well known advocates of the Cosmological Argument was Thomas Aquinas who outlines his argument for the existence of God in his article entitled The Five Ways. The first way in his argument is deals with motion. Aquinas says that in order for something to be in motion something had to move it because it is impossible for something to move without the presence of some sort of outside force upon it. Therefore the world around us, nature, and our very existence could not have been put into motion without the influence of the

The question that was posed in this week’s discussion had me pondering not only what I felt about the statement, “God is good,” but also what the book referred to as a prerequisite that adhered to the statement. First I would like to take a look at what the author of the book refers to as “good” when referencing God. J.L. Mackie’s principle states, “It follows that a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely, and then the propositions that a good omnipotent things exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible” (Davies 209). This statement made by Mackie would suggest that if there was a good omnipotent “thing,” evil would not exist. Mackie believes that since evil exists, then there must not be a God. Mackie also points out a contradiction

In some ways, it is refreshing to read H.J. McCloskey's article, "On Being an Atheist". Most people assume atheists are simple nihilists who do not subscribe to any sort of convictions or beliefs. The author's text, however, refutes this conventional viewpoint by producing several reasons for embracing atheism, many of which are studied and labored counterarguments to typical claims of theists. The most important part of this essay is found in its opening paragraphs, in which the author makes a very prudent point in explaining the fact that most theists do not require elaborate proofs or empirical evidence to substantiate their beliefs in a divinity. Those who do have not completely subscribed to faith, but to testaments of man's deductive prowess, which should not be confused with faith. However, the author makes a number of points that he believes alludes to fallacies in theism that those well versed in theism can handily refute.

As regards the cosmological argument itself, McCloskey states that "all we entitled to infer is the existence of a cause commensurate with the effect to be explained, the universe, and this does not entitle us to postulate an all-powerful, all-perfect, uncaused cause." (p.63) This is indeed true, there is no reason to necessarily infer a God person, however; the inference is of the nature that suggests (hence the term infer) a cause of such magnitude that it is practically God-like. Moreover, his words do not disprove the rational of a God. Entitlement not to call this cause "God" is neither entitlement to deny calling this cause or considering this cause to be "God."

The argument discussed is one that has an unending list of contingent beings, all of which need a cause for existence. According to the article, McCloskey assumes that the argument calls for an uncaused cause to start an infinite number of contingent beings. McCloskey believes that each contingent being simply exists with an infinite number of causes that eventually lead back to a case of chance. In “Philosophy of Religion” by Stephen Evans, Evans refers to this way of thinking as a “brute fact.” According to Evans, by claiming this stance would turn the partial argument into a whole argument and concurrently, “this will require the defender of the argument to claim that the contingency of the whole of the universe can validly be inferred from the contingency of all its parts.” Where McCloskey’s ignorance further takes a violent curve against acquiring knowledge about the beginning of the universe connects to his argument is when he said “This means that the first cause must be explained as being a necessarily existing being, one who cannot exist.” What he is alluding to, and is also the focal point of his disapproval of theism, is that humans do not have the right to claim that a being created the universe. If an atheist can claim that there is no such existence of God, then why is it that a theist cannot claim the existence of a God?

In this paper, I will argue on how wrong is Blackburn to claim that the existence of evil strongly suggests that a god who is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful does not exist. I will start by exposing his idea before arguing against him and finally conclude.(46words)

The idea of God, more so than the idea of some substance that is finite/imperfect, has an objective

The argument for the existence of God that I found most compelling was the argument from design, also known as the “theological argument.” The reason that I resonated with this argument so well is that it could be used by both sides of the debate for the existence of God. Supporters of this argument claim that due to the design of everything in the natural world and how well all things interact with one another, this clearly points that there is a creator that made these things meld so well together, this creator being God. Non-believers argue that the existence of our world is a mere stroke of luck that was created through random chance. They further argue that although the possibility that a world such as ours would come into existence is astronomically slim, due to the universe begin infinite and never-ending, this outcome is much more likely to occur.

In H.J. McCloskey’s article entitled “On Being an Atheist” he builds an argument against the existence of God. He wrote this article with the intentions of arguing in contradiction of two of the three theistic proofs, which are: cosmological argument, theological argument. H.J. McCloskey presents an aggregate dispute that’s pulls in the Cosmological and Theological arguments and combines them together. The cosmological case he put together is concerning the existence of God, and the theological case serves as the intellectual case. Together these arguments make a strong snowballing case. However these arguments are not the only subjects addressed in his article. McCloskey also touches on the Atheism as being comforting and the problem of evil.

“On Being an Atheist” is an article written by H.J. McCloskey. McCloskey was a self-proclaimed atheist, and wrote about the non-existence of God. He was passionate and committed to the belief that there is no God, and he attempted to explain his reasoning for that belief in this article. The question of the existence of God has been debated throughout many centuries, if not since the beginning of time itself.

The ontological argument is one of the most prominent arguments with in philosophy. Ontological comes from the Greek word “ontos” meaning “being” or “what there is”. Ontology credits the existence of God to overall essence of God. The ontology argument questions the nature of being which includes questioning the existence of God. As made apparent in “Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings” many philosophers have different views and theories on the existence of God. Anslem and Aquinas provide arguments that support the existence of God but still offer some differences.

The philosophical arguments presented in this document are not of religious text, nor scientific observation or established fact. Rather the premise of this God proof is bring together and share the various theories on which other God proofs have established foundations. I have heard it quoted that “Philosophy goes where hard science can 't, or won 't. Philosophers have a license to.” Therefore, with this in mind, I attest that it is more than problematic to construct an argument authenticating the unequivocal proof of the existence God. If nothing else this may be food for thought.

HJ McCloskey in 1968 wrote a paper that tried to argue against different Christian philosophy theories. He tried to argue against the existence of God, specifically in the Cosmological Argument and Teleological arguments. He also tries to use the existence of evil as an argument against the existence a God. His arguments ultimately show a lack of understanding. A lack of understanding of these basic christian arguments and basic Christian theology.

The Cosmological argument can be simplified into three reasons that everything that begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause. Using the first proposition and the basis of metaphysics, something cannot come from nothing. If this were possible, everything and anything that comes into being emerges from nothing. Some may argue the quantum theory, which gives particles the ability to come into existence from nothing, but these particles do not materialize from nothing. Instead, they appeared from a quantum vacuum. So again, everything that exists has to have a cause. If everything were caused by something else though, then there would be no first cause, and if there were no first cause, then the first effect would not exist. Therefore, the ultimate cause of the universe then must be uncreated. A being that does not exist in time so therefore does not come into existence. In this case, God is the ultimate creator because he exists outside of time and has neither beginning nor end. This type of argument argues the existence of contingent things on the necessity of a God being the ultimate