Pascal's Wager:   for and against....

http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/wager.html
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/pascals-wager.htm
http://www.thewhyman.jesusanswers.com/whats_new.html
http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/nogod/pascal.htm
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/heaven.html

St. Thomas's Arguments for the existence of God 

The cosmological argument.

All physical things, even mountains, boulders, and rivers, come into being and go out of existence, no matter how long they last.

Therefore, since time is infinite, there must be some time at which none of these things existed.

But if there were nothing at that point in time, how could there be anything at all now, since nothing cannot cause anything?

Thus, there must always have been at least one necessary thing that is eternal, which is God.

The teleological argument (argument from design).

Things in the world move toward goals, just as the arrow does not move toward its goal except by the archer's directing it. Thus, there must be an intelligent designer who directs all things to their goals, and this is God.

(The modern version of this argument suggests that the universe is just too intricate to be accidental -- humans are too intricate to have evolved by chance. )

The Argument From Evil

This is one of the most persistent arguments against the existence of god.

The argument from evil (in its simplest form):

•  If God exists, then there is no evil in the world.

•  There is evil in the world.

•  Therefore, it is not the case that God exists.

Validity?

Truth?

Soundness?

It presupposes the following statements:

•  God is omnipotent (all powerful)

•  God is omnibenevolent (all loving)

•  God is omniscient (all knowing)

•  Evil exists

Given the fact that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, how can one explain the presence of evils (both natural and moral) in this world (in their amount and distribution)?

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Many people who believe in the existence of God believe all four of these propositions.

The first three express traditional theological views about the nature of God.

They are part of the definition of God

The last seems to be an empirical fact, one which few theologians deny.

So what's the problem?

It seems that not all four can be true. They appear to be mutually inconsistent.

St. Augustine's Version

"Either God cannot abolish evil or He will not.

If He cannot, He is not all-powerful;

           If He will not, He is not all-good"

And if he is not all-powerful, is he still God?

And if he is not all-good, is he still God?

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Theodicy:   Defense for God

(any attempt to justify how an all-powerful and all-good God can exist concurrently with evil)

Informal justifications:

• There are people who look at disasters like floods and forest fires and say that God knows what he is doing – the earth is overpopulated etc. etc.

 

• Others say that good can come from suffering – it is not for men to judge -- and anyway, suffering can be ennobling

• Even when a child dies, people say perhaps the child averted greater suffering later on (logic or rationalization?)

• Suffering is part of God’s greater plan -- fatalism.  We play the part fate wrote for us (where does this leave free will?)

• Suffering is punishment for evil deeds and thoughts (Job’s comforters) (surely then the evil would be seen to be suffering and the good prospering, but the opposite seems often to be true)

• God allows moral evil because otherwise free will would have no meaning

• What is evil?    Define Evil?   God is beyond human comprehension.

Traditional Christian Belief

Traditional Christian belief ascribes evil to the misdeeds of

humans, to whom God has granted free will.

Terms for believers (or non….)

 

Theist

Agnostic

Atheist

Deist

Miscellaneous Bits:

If you kill one person, you are a murderer

If you kill thousands, you are a conqueror

Religion demands belief without question

Philosophy is unwilling to accept belief without proof

(Remember: belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition of knowledge)

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.         H. L. Mencken

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.         Thomas Jefferson

As the twig is bent, the tree inclines. Virgil

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.               Proverbs 22:6

Give me a child for the first five years of his life and he will be mine forever. Lenin

The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of governance in the next. Abraham Lincoln

If God did not exist,
it would have been necessary to invent him.

Voltaire

For those who believe, no proof is necessary.

For those who don’t believe no proof is possible.

John and Lynn St. Clair Thomas in Eyes of the Beholder

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.

      Christopher Morley (American novelist and journalist)

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out. Diderot (1713-1784)

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat. John, Lord Morley ( 1838-1923)

The only excuse for God is that he doesn’t exist. Stendahl (1783-1842)

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. John Buchan (1875-1940)

A comprehended God is no God. John Chrysostom (345-407)

God is a verb, not a noun. R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to god. Lenny Bruce

In the faces of men and women, I see God

  And in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street,

  And every one is signed by God’s name,

And I leave them where they are,

  For I know that wheresoe’er I go,

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.