Mccloskey's Argument For The Existence Of God

The existence of God has been hotly debated for centuries. With the rise of the theory of evolution and the enlightenment movement, people have moved away from the belief that there is a being who created the universe. Man has conquered the mysteries of science and become confident in his understanding of the world without God. H. J. McCloskey is one such person. He argues in his article, On Being an Atheist, against the classical arguments for the existence of God; namely: the cosmological and teleological arguments. Though he offers many objections to the arguments made by theists, he continually returns to the claim that the evil in the world makes it plain that there is no god. While he makes a convincing case and presents a systematic

He states, “The mere existence of the world constitutes no reason for believing in the existence of such a being.” This conclusion is false because, as explained by Evans and Manis, within the universe itself, no there cannot be found any logical reason for its own existence and therefore it points to a necessary cause. (2009). It is natural to ask why things came to exist when considering the laws that govern our universe. Ultimately, every contingent thing (everything in the universe) must have been caused by an uncaused cause. That uncaused cause must be a necessary being or beings. This understanding lays the first basic step for the theist’s worldview which claims God is that necessary being. There are many objections to this argument for the existence of God but ultimately they are irrelevant considering the minimalistic approach of the cosmological argument. McCloskey also says that this argument does not lead us to the conclusion that the uncaused cause is an all-powerful and completely perfect being. This is true. The cosmological argument does not do much more than make a strong case that there some kind of necessary being or beings that created the universe. However, if one were to accept the minimalistic cosmological conclusion, surely he would want to try to find out more about this being and see if he/she/it/they had

He claims that with the rise of the evolutionary theory, the excuse of a god is no longer necessary to explain the universe. The theist can respond to this claim in a few different ways. One can agree with McCloskey that evolution might be true, but the fact still remains that an ultimate explanation is still required. No matter how convincing all the evolutionary arguments are, the fact still remains that the beginning of the universe and the process that led to the beauty seen today are hard to explain without a designer. Even the laws in place that govern the assumed evolutionary process point to a master builder who set them in place. (Evans, Manis, 2009). Another way that McCloskey’s position can be responded to is by pointing to “creation science,” which continually presents more evidence that the evolutionary theory is itself faulty. If this evidence is true, then his entire argument that “evolution has displaced the need for a designer” is