The Teleological Argument for God's Existence

In my paper, I will address a question that has been plaguing mankind since the beginning of philosophy itself: does God exist? I cannot prove that God exists, nor will anyone else until the end of time, but I can and will present what is very convincing evidence that a God does exist. For centuries, mankind has been looking all around the earth and to the far reaches of the universe, discovering many extraordinary and wonderful things, and this is one of the places where the question "Does God exist?" has been asked. Beautiful things such as a sunrise or sunset, a violent thunderstorm, and even more recent discoveries such as anti-matter or the fact that time slows down when objects travel at the speed of light lead us to wonder just who or what causes all these extraordinary, and sometimes seemingly impossible, things. This has been an important problem, as I had said earlier, because one person can look at all these wonderful things and certainly say,"Many amazing things exist in nature, some all-powerful intelligent being who has created these things must exist." Another person can look at these exact same things and say,"There is a natural explanation for all these things, God certainly does not exist." Today, even after many fantastic discoveries and advances in civilization and science, nobody can absolutely claim with undeniable proof that one of the two previous views is without a doubt correct. I have my own personal answer, and I believe that since all these wonderful things do exist and do happen in our lives, that a being more powerful than myself (God) must be the source of such things.

In the first section of the paper, I will briefly review the history of this question. I will argue that since so many new discoveries have been made throughout human history and are still being made to this day, and since the universe has been so finely balanced that earth is the only planet that we know of which sustains intelligent life, how then could there not be a powerful being who is the orchestrator of all this?

In the second section of my paper, I will go a little bit more in-depth and show why I believe some modern theories are mistaken. I will attack two main areas: the first main area I will attack is belief in the Big Bang Theory and that nature calls for only the strong to survive, while the weak perish, and God does not exist because nature has worked things out over a period of billions of years. I will present a few arguments from this view and then refute these arguments with one of my main points: nature is so amazing and so full of hundreds of thousands of little dynamics that all work together to perform this fine balance-how could this all happen by one of the most extreme amounts of astronomical odds in human history? Couldn't some all-powerful intelligent being have been the designer of all this? The second area that I will attack is atheism and its main argument against why God does not exist. I will refute atheistic views that question why we are, why there is so much pain, suffering, and destruction on earth, and why we exist if God is perfect and omniscient.

Finally, I will conclude the paper by rehashing the many holes that I see in the presented opposing arguments, and then I will again restate my main argument about the fine balance of nature, and how an intelligent being must be the creator of this fine balance. I argue all of this in order to add more support and help to convince those who argue that there is no such thing as God.

History

The question Does God exist? has been asked almost since the inception of philosophy in ancient Greece. The teleological (use of design as a means of explaining phenomena) argument is the oldest and most popular answer to that question. The Greek philosopher Plato is the first known individual to be credited with the teleological argument, and many philosophers since have agreed. Basically, the argument says that since the design of the universe is so complex and since such great odds would have to occur for the universe to happen this way by randomness, that some sort of intelligent being has designed the universe (http://apologetics.johndepoe.com/teleo.html).

Contemporary Arguments

Many individuals believe in evolution and the Big Bang Theory. According to this theory,"The universe began as a tiny fireball of unimaginably dense matter that exploded violently billions of years ago" (Krauskopf, Beiser, 654). All this dense matter was blasted out, it slowly cooled, and then it formed the galaxies. Charles Darwin then supported this beginning of the universe with his own theory of evolution, which he used to explain the natural development of life. He said (that life slowly develops over time to best fit its surroundings survival of the fittest), and that the forms of life that best fit their surroundings were the most likely to live and reproduce offspring with similar success. This process has been going on since the simplest single celled organisms came into existence billions of years ago. These single celled organisms, throu adaptation to their environments, have developed into the organisms we see today-humans, lions, plants etc... (Krauskopf, Beiser 536). With this explanation for the beginning of things and devedopment of all things in general, there is absolutely no need for a god. Things came into existence without any supreme being creating them, and continue to thrive and exist without the apparent aid of any sort of all-powerful being. And, since we have no concrete way of seeing any sort of intervention by a god, what need or proof of a god is there with the Big Bang Theory and theory of evolution?

I strongly disagree with this theory. For example, just look at the mere fact that life even exists on Earth, or that there even is an Earth. For life in general to exist, the earth had to be the exact distance it currently is from the sun. If the Earth is just a little bit closer to the sun, it becomes too hot, everything burns up and dies, and Earth is just another planet like Mars or Mercury. If the earth is just a little bit farther from the sun, it becomes too cold, everything freezes and dies, and Earth becomes another Uranus or Neptune. The point is that earth is at the exactly correct distance from the sun to sustain life. Look at all the other planets, solar systems, galaxies, clusters, and super-clusters that we know about? How many of those support any kind of life at all? Not a single one! How can one believe that the earth has just the right gravitational attraction to the sun and the sun to the earth, such that earth stays in its orbit to sustain life? How can one believe that life on earth has succeeded against the largest set of astronomical odds in history? I believe that a supreme being must have created all of this because it is too finely balanced to sustain life. Even if science thinks the earth is 14 billion years old and had enough time to develop this balance, how could it all develop randomly such that everything is as it is now? This is not the only example, but just one example of millions-there are a millions more things that work together and show the delicate design of the universe. Since the design of the universe is too great and complicated to have occurred randomly, the universe must have had some sort of intelligent designer, God.

One of the main arguments of atheism, a view that claims God does not exist, is that God himself is immoral. The God of the Christians, in the Holy Bible, commits acts that he forbids all of mankind to perform. For example, he rains down fire and destroys Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot's wife, while fleeing the city, looks back at the city when God commanded her not to and she turns into a pillar of salt. In the Bible, God declares,"You shall not murder." In the last example, he murders thousands of people within a few minutes. Further, God proclaims himself time and time again in the Bible to be 'perfect'. God also caused the Flood, which destroyed all of mankind except for Noah's family.' If God has just murdered thousands of people, then he has broken his own laws and is therefore not perfect, like he claims to be.

Refuting this argument does prove to be difficult. However, there are many other principles on which God is founded in the Bible. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, God had given the inhabitants of those cities many chances to repent of their many sexual sins. Abraham even asked God many times on their behalf if He would spare the city from destruction. However, Sodom and Gomorrah did not repent, and as a result they were punished for their sins. It may seem to be a rather severe punishment, but they did have adequate warning. If God created all mankind and established a moral law for all to live by, and if he is punishing people for violating that law, then he is not murdering these people. He does not lay out specific consequences for His punishments, but he does say that he will punish those who violate His law. Following these premises, God is still perfect, and the determining factor for God's perfection is whether one chooses to view God as a murderer or as someone enforcing His law (http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsagainstgod/a/immorality.htm).

In conclusion, there are many arguments for and against God. However, if we use teleological reasoning and basic reasoning using principles of God in the Bible, we can certainly see strong arguments as to the existence of a God. As I stated before, I cannot prove that God exists, nor can I disprove that he exists, but my goal was to add to the evidence and argument that he does exist. This also sets the stage for many more future questions such as: Why does God exist? Why do humans exist? Who or What caused God? All these questions are certainly very interesting to debate and are hotly contested today, and I hope that I have given more credibility to the existence of a God.