Existence of God

Question 1

Experience

Answer 1

Direct experience:
In genuine religious experience, people are directly aware of God.

William James:
Religious experiences are an immediate sense of the reality of the unseen. We should evaluate religious experiences in relation to the life and attitudes of the person. Noetic, Transient, Passive.

Other religions:
Religions make different claims about God. People can experience the same thing and interpret it differently.

Freud: RE are hallucinations caused by a deep wish for security and meaning in an uncertain world. We cannot tell whether they contain truth.

Question 2

Cosmological

Answer 2

Cause/Kalam:
Everything that begins to exists has a cause. The universe must have a cause. This has to be God because the only way to avoid infinite regression is to say that so wing exists that did not begin to exist.
Criticisms:
Hume - We cannot know that everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Russell - Brute fact.

Contingency:
God must have created the universe because the universe is contingent and every contingent being needs something necessary to cause it.
Criticisms:
Russell: Brute fact.
Energy exists non-contingently.

Swinburne:
Gods existence is the best explanation. By looking at all the evidence, God seems to be the most logical cause. Inductive argument.
Criticisms:
Fails as a deductive proof of God’s existence.

Science:
Big Bang. Energy = non-contingent.
Criticism:
Science can’t explain what actually caused the Big Bang and what the purpose of the universe is. Can’t provide the ‘why’.