Grounds of Religious Faith and The Existence of God
Grounds of Religious Faith and The Existence of God If asked the question, What are the grounds for religious faith? One would probably sitand ponder on an answer for quite some time. However, you have to go right to the mainargument, that argument is whether or not god exists. That is the topic of this paper andthroughout the paper there will be works by Descartes and Paley to outline the confusion aboutthis age old question that no one can answer. For centuries, the idea of God has been a part of man's history. Past and present, there hasalways been a different integration consisting of the believers and the non-believers of God. Thegroup of those who have "faith" in God tend to be related to one religion or another. On the otherhand, the skeptics find the existence of God somewhat puzzling and try to seek the answersthrough scientific methods. Even as of today with all the modern technologies and thedevelopment of sciences, we still do not have a definitive answer to the question "does God Among many philosophers and scholars who have tried to answer this question, we shalllook upon Rene Descartes' theory on the existence of God. In terms of believers and
Before we go any further, we mustponder upon several questions. Another selection I chose to gather information from was by William Paley. Thus Descartes concludes the only remaining option is that his ownperception will innate in him. Since he knows these ideas clearly, he claims that they are something and aretrue. Now then, let us look upon how Descartes responds to the question of what God is?Descartes' hypothesis on his theory starts with the idea of a God who is eternal, infinite,omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, and perfect. The first argument comes from the theory of design; there are orders in the universe whichcan't be occurring by mere chance. However, can this be considered as a legitimate reasoning and can it be accepted as a proofbeyond reasonable doubt? Must everything that Descartes perceives be true as long as it is clear and distinct? Isn't he revolving in a loop of circular reasoning by assuming everything to be trueat one point that he is trying to prove? Descartes himself acknowledges the fact that he is notperfect. This point is illustrated through the following statement,"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly on fear. The following are some of the general arguments for the existence of God. In Addison's Ode, he says thatalthough the heavens are silent, "In Reason's ear" they proclaim that "The hand made us divine. Also how if wefound a watch and it didn't work perfectly we should not expect flawlessness, for it is notnecessary for a machine to be perfect for us to see the design it was made. He uses thefact that one in a million men know how the inner workings of certain parts of a watch work andstill no doubt arises in our minds as to the existence of it's maker. In his earlier Meditations, he claims that Godmay be a deceiver; he, however, concludes later that God is a non-deceiver because an act ofdeceit would be an attribute of moral imperfection. From this we canderive at the possibility that God may be imperfect, and this is a contradiction to Descartes'argument of God as a perfect being.
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Acceptance Essays
