"Proofs" for God's existence.
Humans have thrived through their urge to investigate cause and effect. We have prospered by our ability to design tools to manipulate the world.
The impulse to understand causes is so strong that we apply it to everything from amoeba to our own brains, from single particles to the entire cosmos. When we see what seems to be design, we are biologically driven to ask who designed it and for what purpose.
Ironically, these drives have helped to sustain beliefs in God and gods - even though these are results of our failure to explain.
When pre-scientific peoples saw lightning flash, they assumed that gods must be hurling the thunderbolts. They designed rituals to manipulate the gods.
Today scientists try to explain the beginning and the end of the universe. Yet still no-one can explain its ultimate cause or purpose. Many people assume that God is the answer, and the arguments from cause and design remain the most commonly used "evidence" for the existence of God.
Aquinas' statement of the cause and purpose arguments.
The proofs were perhaps most authoritatively stated by Thomas Aquinas:
Cause.
There is no case known (nor indeed is it possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself, because in that case it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is impossible to go on to infinity. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. [Summa Theologica, 1.2.3]
Purpose:
We see things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their result not by chance, but by design. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence, as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are ordered to their end; and this being we call God." |
