When a Christian apologist builds an argument in support of the Bible against an atheist viewpoint they will often start with arguments for the existence of god in general, rather than the Christian God specifically. This seems a reasonable place to start because without any god there is no hope of finding the Christian God. While they recognise that the existence of god doesn't automatically lead to the acceptance of the Christian God it seems to me that this is often assumed as a subtext, i.e. if you believe in god then it can only be the Christian God. My view is that these are two very different questions and the one by no means follows from the other.
I don’t want to spend much time on these very general arguments for the existence of god other than to note what they say well as provide a couple of thoughts in response.
Ontological Argument
The
ontological argument is a deductive argument that is normally framed along the lines of:
- God is the greatest possible being
- It is greater to exist than not to exist
- Therefore God exists
This is a very old argument dating back to St. Anselm in eleventh century and it has been criticised for various reasons over the years. Although it works deductively, i.e. the conclusion follows from the premises, that doesn't mean it’s true or coherent. My concern with it stems from the change of ‘God’ being an idea in the mind to a reality outside the mind which doesn't necessarily follow. You can’t think things into existence (or I can’t anyway!). If we were to think of a sandwich for example, it doesn't follow that the greatest sandwich exists of necessity simply because it's greater to exist than not to. Further, everyone will have their own personal view on the greatest sandwich, which (while trying not to offend) isn't that different to people's views of god over human history.
Cosmological Argument
This is the
argument from first cause and goes something like:
- Every effect has a prior cause
- To avoid an infinite regression there must have been a first cause
- The first cause was God
The obvious place to head back to using this reasoning is the Big Bang and for me it reduces to a ‘God of the gaps’ argument. We don’t know what caused the Big Bang and the assumption is that God caused it until additional evidence comes along that means we need to change this assumption. This type of argument hasn't fared very well in the past so I don’t have a lot of confidence in it this time around. That’s not to say that it was or wasn't God, it’s simply to recognise it as an unknown for the time being, and one that I'm not in any kind of rush to fill without any empirical evidence.
Teleological Argument
This is also known as the
argument from design and stems from a perceived ‘design’ in nature, be it the fine tuning of the cosmological constants or the intricacies of life. The argument proceeds along the lines of:
- Things in nature appear to have been designed
- Everything that has been designed has a designer
- The designer is God
This is similar to the cosmological argument in that it asserts an answer to an unknown. However this one hinges on the definition of design. As a chemical engineer I use the findings of the natural sciences to design equipment for the offshore oil and gas industry, my design is essentially utilitarian rather than aesthetic, the same type of design that is perceived as the bedrock in nature. However, I also know that when the equipment I have designed comes to be used the operators will use it in ways that were not perceived during the designing exercise (I have first hand experience of this). These things look like design, but there was none. They are just the way things happened to turn out. And this type of thing isn't limited to my industry there are well known examples as well. The discovery of stainless steel is an example that springs to mind. Harry Brearley was trying to develop metals that could be useful for high temperature erosive service. In the end he discovered corrosion resistant materials instead, not because he designed them, but as a side effect that became the non-designed primary function.
Since ‘design’ cannot be objectively pinned down without the knowledge a designer was involved or the original design documents or blueprints coming to light this argument doesn't help to uncover an underling truth.
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