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Mccloskey's Argument For The Existence Of God

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On Being an Atheist
The existence of God has been a huge issue for many years. The main McCloskey's issue with the idea of God is the presence of many evils in the world. McCloskey implies that the "proofs" of the existence of God cannot establish a factual evidence which supports the existing argument of whether there is God or not. Some proofs explaining the existence of God should be dismissed because they are not valid. Such proofs include teleological and ontological. A proof is an unquestionable, factual statement that directs an argument to the final product and is based on a level of scientific factualness. The existence of the world is no guarantee for believing in the existence of a certain being (God). The cosmological and design only offer points and arguments towards the existence of God, but the …show more content…

The fact is that God transcends our mental capacities and he controls our comprehension in all spheres of life (Noone, 2009). In line with Foreman's Presentation, concerning "Approaching the Question of God's Existence," one can argue that the ideas of McCloskey in interpreting cosmological and teleological arguments are based on a wrong hypothesis.
On the Cosmological Argument, the existence of God has been a reality, whether the creator was a being or a thing. The existence of the universe is not enough to validate the existence of God. One can come up with an argument which intends to give an insight on how people understand the creation theory, and where God came from. The understanding offers a basis of the argument which McCloskey believes should be abandoned because it is unclear where God came from. What causes the universe is necessary and is therefore, uncaused (Noone, 2009). In this case, there should be a true

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Dr. Flew affirmed in the debate that “I Know That God Does Not Exist” as oppose to Thomas Warren who affirmed that “I Know That God Does Exist.” This is different than other atheist debates who attempt to shift the burden of proof to those who are theist. The theist is given the burden to prove God exists or the atheists wins by default. In this debate, they both were supposed to argue their points of view in the affirmative and later in the second half of the debate brother Warren affirmed “I Know That God Does Exist” and Dr. Flew denied in the

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For this disputation, I had the pleasure of arguing against the topic of be it resolved that you can convince a non-believer to affirm the existence of God using philosophical arguments. As the opposing side, Sarah and I counter argued the following: the argument from motion, the ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral argument. The argument from motion argues that it is only possible to experience that which exists, and people experience God, therefore God must exist; however it can be counter argued that since faith cannot be demonstrated or experienced, as it is unseen, God cannot exist.

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The question that is asked time and time again is whether or not god exists. It is evident that people hold different beliefs. It is evident that through some of the beliefs of J.L. Mackie that it could be argued that God does not actually exist. I find this argument to be more agreeable. In Mackie’s Evil and Omnipotence, he argues many points to support why it should be believed that god does not exist.

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Response to “On Being an Atheist” Ida Hart PHIL 201 – B30 LUO Dr. David Beck McCloskey’s article, “On Being an Atheist” contains arguments that he uses to explain Atheism, the non-existence of God. Using the claims made by theists and attempting to taint the character and nature of the Christian God, he points out what he calls several defects of the arguments. In his introduction he offers a brief reminder to fellow atheist stating the grounds and the inadequacies of these grounds for theism. He later calls them “proofs”, alleging that the proofs do not provide adequate justification for believing that God exists. This only proves that he is among the many that choose to use the arguments in the wrong way.

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He also refers to the cosmological argument to show that God is an all-powerful being who created the universe out of nothing. Furthermore, he claims that suffering in the world is moral in the sense that suffering inflicted on innocents is genuinely evil. Without a God, there would be no objective morals, thus, evil proves God’s existence, as things would not be considered good or evil without a God (Craig, p. 126). In conclusion, evil proves God’s existence and thus the question as to why God permits evil does not work to disprove His existence.

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Since premise two has been rebuffed by me, it renders premise 3 unsound which in turn renders premise four unsound thereby proving that God does not exist and proving that the first cause argument does not validate or prove the existence of God. The first cause argument while it is a very important argument still lacks credibility and is self-defeating as it is riddled with a lot of problems that makes it hard to reach a true and sound

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Mackie’s argument highlights the inconsistency that arises between the premises of God’s existence. Mackie proposes the problem of evil to be that “God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; [God exists]; and yet evil exists” (Mackie, 1955, p.200). Mackie states these four propositions cannot coexist, therefore, if evil exists, God cannot and conversely, if God is real evil must be

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There have been an innumerable amount of arguments for the existence of God for hundreds of years. Some have become much more popular due to their merit, and their ability to stay relevant through changing times. Two arguments in particular that have been discussed for a very long time are the ontological and cosmological arguments. Each were proposed in the period of the high middle ages by members of the Roman Catholic Church. They each have been used extensively by many since their introduction.

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On the other hand, the existence of God is in question because there is no way of proving that everything that exists is as a result of his magnificence. “If ‘God exists….. then the defeat of atheism would be analogous to the disclosure of mathematical error”(Hanson

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The second portion of the argument asserts that God’s existence is either possible or impossible, and if possible, then He exists necessarily (445). Moreover, it eliminates the thought, that God can be conceptually possible and that He may or may not

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St. Anselm and Descartes are known for presenting the first ontological arguments on the existence of God. The word ontological is a compound word derived from ‘ont’ which means exists or being and ‘–ology’ which means the study of. Even though Anselm and Descartes’ arguments differ slightly, they both stem from the same reasoning. Unlike the other two arguments on God’s existence (teleological and cosmological), the ontological argument does not seek to use any empirical evidence but rather concentrates on pure reason. The rationale behind this school of thought

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Dominican philosopher and theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, created the “Five Ways” of God’s existence – motion, causation, contingency, gradations, intelligence of design – in which the first two are cosmological arguments. Aquinas’s argument from motion states that it’s obvious some things in the universe are moving, and if they’re moving, something else must have caused them to move, and something else must have caused that to move… and so on. However, the pattern of movements can’t go on forever since there wouldn’t be that one thing that started the whole series. Therefore, there must be an “initial mover, an extraordinary being that started the universe moving but is not itself moved by anything else – and this being we call God,” (Vaughn, Lewis. Pg. 65).

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