Does God Exist?
- Anselm's ontological argument: the very idea of God proves that God exists
- Aquinas' cosmological argument: an ultimate explanation for the existence of the world
- Problem: the big bang can be used to support either the randomness of creation or God's intervention
- Paley's teleological argument: the design and purpose evident in the world indicates that there is a God who orders and directs things in the world
- Darwin's objection: there is order or design but no purpose
- Problem of Evil
- Responses
- Evil allows us to develop morally, to be free
- The purpose of life is not happiness but rather to know God
- Maybe there is no answer
- Freud: God is merely a longed-for father figure
- Kant's moral argument: the greatest good requires virtue to be joined to happiness, and only God can do that
- Perhaps the world itself is divine