Can a religious believer answer the sceptic`s challenge to justify belief in God?

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Name: Jalal Hussain

Can a religious believer answer the sceptic`s challenge to justify belief in God?                

The existence of God has been argued over by human beings since time immemorial. Man has always been fascinated by how he came into being, how the world around him evolved. When did time come into existence, is there a higher force behind what we see, something to which science and rational thought can never describe or have clear answers to? These are some questions which baffle us at some points in our lifetime. This essay will focus on the arguments presented by religious believers in their quest to prove the existence of God and the subsequent responses by the skeptics to challenge those arguments. I will try to present a balanced and neutral viewpoint for to answer this question fairly one has to have the inherent quality of having an open mind. The arguments I will present are: design, cosmological, ontological and the problem of evil. I will then conclude with my afterthoughts.

The design argument is also known as the teleological argument, this comes from the Greek word ‘teles’ which implies ‘purpose’ (Warburton, 1999: 12). This argument links the general order in the universe to the existence of God. The order refers to how things in the natural world so perfectly perform a specific function. Everything around us shows evidence of being designed, and so the religious believer argues that there has to be a higher force which designed the universe and the world is proof of Gods existence. The religious believer argues that it would be more reasonable to assume that universe was created by a higher force (God) taking into account all its intricacies rather than assuming that the universe was created on its own or was a mere fluke.

St. Thomas Aquinas, used the design argument in his book ‘Reasons in Proof of the Existence of God’ and is one of the many influential figures in philosophy to use this argument. The most oft quoted analogy in favour of the design argument was given by William Paley who compared various objects in the universe to a watch, and described how various parts in a watch work so perfectly together to perform the function of showing the correct time. He argued that just as it could be seen by looking at a watch that it was designed by a skilled, intelligent watchmaker the same way it could be seen that the universe was designed by a divine force judging from the perfect order of things in the universe (Hospers, 2005)

Those in favour of the design argument argue that the proof of God’s existence can be seen everywhere; the sky, nature, human beings etc, and since these things are more complicated to design than a watch it implies that the maker of the more universe would have a far greater intelligence than a simple watchmaker. The maker of the universe is what the theists call God, the supreme force in the universe (Warburton, 1999: 12).

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The skeptics are wary of the way the religious believers perceive ‘order, complexity and harmony’ in the universe to be. The definition of order may vary from person to person. What may be an ‘orderly universe’ to one person may be a chaotic one to another. The problem lies in the fact that there is no set way of defining order in the universe. Who is to know how much order is required in the universe for us to know that a God has caused that order? Skeptics argue that there is so much pain, suffering and disease in ...

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