Describe some of the arguments which followers of the religion which you are studying might put forward to show there is a God

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A) Describe some of the arguments which followers of the religion which you are studying might put forward to show there is a God [A01 40%]

I have chosen the Christian religion to examine in this particular piece of coursework. Over the centuries philosophers and theologians have put forward a number of different arguments to argue the existence of God. The particular arguments I will be looking at are the Teleological Argument and the Cosmological Argument.

 William Paley put the Teleological argument forward. This argument is also known as the argument of Design and Purpose. He believed that there was natural evidence in the world which supported the idea of a divine designer whose aim was to produce such a supreme life form. The world is too complex and far too detailed to have been made just by chance that it has a designer. It argues against the Big Bang by putting it into perspective and comparing the world with a watch. On a smaller scale, it defines that if all the small pieces of a watch were put in a tray and thrown up into the air, it isn’t likely that all the pieces would fall perfectly into place and the watch would work fully. Therefore, how could the world (being the watch) just fall into place as the Big Bang argument states? The world must have had a designer, someone who planned and made the world, just like someone designed, planned and made the watch. If you were to look at the world like the watch, and think about how it had a designer to make it, you can understand the Teleological Argument saying that the world is way too complex to just appear from a bang. Even if you just take a hedgehog for instance, even though they are very small, they very complicated in design, i.e. the way that they adapt to winter, the way that their lungs work, the food they eat, all these things have been planned. Then if you next look at the whole world, how could something so big and so extremely complicated just happen? This is just one argument that Christians might use to show there is a God. However, an atheist (someone who doesn’t believe in God) may look at the Teleological argument with a reasonable response. The world has been around for millions and millions of years, therefore it’s possible that humans have adapted to the conditions in which we live in nowadays. An argument always has two sides, and in this case, the side disagreeing with the Teleological argument is that perhaps humans came into existence.

 The other argument I will be looking at is called the Cosmological Argument. The Cosmological Argument explains in detail on how event will cause another event or effect. By this meaning that if one hundred dominoes are all lined up and they fell in line, domino number 100 would be the last to fall and would fall because domino number 99 made it, and domino number 98 made domino number 99 fall and so on. However, none of the dominoes would fall what so ever if domino number 1 hadn’t been knocked down by someone or something. This example is simplifying how that everything must have an event and effect in history to this very day. This argument was by Thomas Aquinas. Essentially, this means that God was the person that knocked down domino number one; otherwise, if there was nothing to start off the dominoes, there would be no cause and effect to this day. Again, like the Teleological Argument, the Cosmological Argument has its weak points too. The Cosmological Argument describes God in a way which can be associated with fate (i.e. one thing leads to another). A lot of people don’t believe in fate, fate destroys the object of you ruling your own life, that things happen for a reason. What if a mother’s son or daughter committed suicide, surely they would not sigh to theirselves and think its chain of events which caused this and this was meant to happen because its Gods plan. I don’t think that they would accept that, it would be a very difficult thing to come to terms with, that God planned for the child to commit suicide. These two arguments argue for the existence of God, and are just two different arguments that a Christian could put forward to show there is a God. However, in all arguments, there are 2 sides and both arguments have their weak points which people may come across and question towards the arguments.  Other things that a Christian could say are things like;

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  • Families may have believed in God and brought their children to believe in God also. When a child is brought up in an environment where they believe a certain thing (i.e. God) the child tends the follow the families’ beliefs.
  • We all have the sense of right and wrong and the feeling of guilt; someone must have given us this feeling of right and wrong that we experience. People speculate that we are born with a sense of right and wrong and that that instinct comes from God. This argument is known as the “Argument Based on Morality”.  

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