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

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Describe some of the arguments which followers of the religion you are studying

Might put forward to show that there is a God (A)

Millions of people believe in God, so how can they all be wrong? It is hard to think that so many people believe in something that has not even been proved to be 100% true. Although there are millions of atheists in the world, it is fascinating that one book of stories and miracles could give such an impact.

Scientists haven’t proved that there is an actual God, but there are scientists that have come up with arguments to suggest there is, such as the design argument. The design argument was thought up by a theologian called William Paley and he believes his argument proves the existence of God with his “Analogy of the watch.” He says that if you found a watch lying in a street somewhere, then you couldn’t say it had been put there by chance. The design of the watch is so complex that it must have had a designer, i.e. a watchmaker. The universe is far more complex than a watch and if a watch needs a designer then the universe must need a designer and that designer must be- God. Other ways that Paley mentioned was that if you put all the parts of a watch in a bag and shook it, would it ever link together to make a watch. That would never happen so this suggests that the world couldn’t have come around by chance and it must have had a creator.

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Another argument scientists have come up with is the cosmological argument. This argument was thought up by St Thomas Aquinas, and it’s based on the universe, (cosmos). Aquinas said that something could not come from nothing and that every effect has a cause. This suggests that the universe must have been caused by something else before it, but there has to be a first cause, something that started everything. A good way of explaining this argument is a by using a domino rally. If you stood the entire domino’s up next to each other and flicked the first one down, that would cause the rest to tumble over. As each domino fall’s it causes a chain reaction. Something must have started of the process and that something must be eternal. The cosmological argument relies on the idea that God is eternal. God may exist outside the universe and this would mean he’s transcendent.

There are also many other reasons why God is believed in so widely. Some people believe they have has super-natural experiences, where something has happened that would be normally thought impossible. This causes people to take a different view on life and makes them think they might actually be a God.

Not all people believe in God from a young age, sometimes people don’t start to believe in God till a later stage of life, and this is quite often the case. As people get older some think about what will happen to them after they die- will that just be it. Many people don’t accept this theory and they like to think that there is an after live, somewhere maybe that you are rejoined with your family. The thought of dieing is not nice, so this sometimes brings people to believe there is a God.

Humans also began to believe if maybe they have committed a crime and they feel guilty. They might have been put in prison and there life feels empty. By praying to God sometimes makes them feel there is a point in living and they get the sense that they have been forgiven.

Patrick Leese

R.E GCSE

Mr McMillan

10w