I am going to try to start posting again on my blog after an absence of eight months.
For my first entry, I will just share something interesting that I read today. It concerns the different methods employed by people to prove that God exists. Philosophy has divided them into four different categories. There are probably more ways in which God's existence could be asserted, but these seem to be the most prevalent throughout history. They are, 1) the ontological proof, 2) the cosmological proof, 3) the teleological proof, and 4) the divine encounter.
First, let's take the ontological proof. Ontological is a Greek word with a root that connotes 'being'. Ontology thus refers to the study of the nature of existence and being or the study of what can be said to exist. An ontological proof of God's existence is called such because many thinkers (such as Rene Descartes) have argued that God must exist merely from the the fact that the idea of God exists. Something cannot come from nothing and since we have the idea of God, it must come from something that really exists, i.e. God. It is thus a proof for the existence of God based on the existence of the concept.
Second, Let's consider the cosmological argument. Cosmology is the study of the universe and how it works. A cosmological argument for God's existence goes something like this: the universe exists and since everything that exists must have a cause, their must exist a 'first cause' to the universe. This 'first cause' must be the creator of the universe and this is God.
Thirdly, we have the teleological argument. This argument may seem similar to the cosmology argument but there is a slight and important difference. Teleology is another Greek term whose root is 'end' or 'goal'. Teleology connotes the study of the end goal of all things. If I am presented with any object and I ask myself 'what is the purpose of this object?' I am engaging in a teleological consideration of the object. I want to know what the goal of the object is. In regards to how this could be used as a proof of God's existence, when we look at the world, we usually see a system that seems to function with goals in mind. The universe seems to be 'designed' to support life, especially human life. If we look at the universe from a teleological perspective, it seems natural to conclude that if something is designed to do something, that there must be an intelligence behind it. The clockmaker is an analogy that is essentially a teleological argument for God's existence. If we came across a clock on a beach we would naturally assume that there was a clockmaker. The same goes for the universe.
Finally, we have the divine-encounter. This proof is different than all the others. It does not appeal to logic but to experience. The other proofs focus on the outward expression of an idea that is supposedly objective, logical, and natural to all human beings. They strive for a universal proof of God's existence. The divine encounter, on the other hand, simply argues that the subject has experienced divinity and therefore has knowledge of its existence. It may very well desire to share this knowledge with others but its proof is not necessarily contingent on the experience being 'logical' to other individuals. I prefer this proof over all the others because I tend to distrust logical proofs since logic and abstract thought does not necessarily tell me about the world but rather about how my mind functions. Both logic and experience can make powerful impressions on the mind, and indeed, we can have an experience because of logic, but often what is impressed on us so strongly fails to be something that can be expressed in universal terms such as logic.
