A massive thank you to an ex Higher RMPS pupil for sharing their revision notes with us! Sometimes the best way to revise is to see how someone else has broken down the information. These notes cover the core areas of the Existence of God unit. Whether you are using them to kickstart your own revision or as a checklist to compare against your own notes, this is a fantastic pupil-created resource.
Part 1: The Nature of God
Key Characteristics
Traditional monotheism describes God using the following attributes:
- Omnipotent: God is all-powerful.
- Omniscient: God knows all.
- Omnibenevolent: God is entirely good.
- Omnipresent: God is present in all of time and space.
- Creator: The maker of everything that exists.
Why do people disagree about the nature of God?
- Lack of direct intervention: Many believe God is all-powerful, yet we don’t see Him acting in the world today the way He did in saving the Hebrews from Egypt.
- The Problem of Evil: God is believed to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, yet evil and suffering exist in the world. This makes some people question whether these attributes can be true.
- Science vs. Creation: God is believed by Middle Eastern traditions to be the involved creator of all things, yet for some, science disputes this through evolution and the Big Bang theory.
- Personal experience: Some feel God is absent at difficult times in their lives, but others describe a feeling of closeness to God and of His care through tough times. For example, during the Holocaust, some lost their faith, while others felt their faith was strengthened.
Why are questions about the existence of God important?
- If God is real, people might want to connect with or know more about Him.
- If you decide God doesn’t exist, it lets you get on with your life without fear of judgement.
- Knowing God exists may help people to find meaning, value, or purpose in life.
- Answering one ultimate question can help you with the others (e.g., if God is real, there may also be an afterlife, a creator, etc.).
- If God does exist, you may need to take care to live in a way which pleases Him in order to achieve a good afterlife.
Part 2: Aquinas’s Cosmological Argument
Thomas Aquinas argued that we can prove God’s existence by looking at the universe.
- First Way (Motion): Everything that moves is moved by something else. This chain of movement cannot be infinite, or movement wouldn’t have started in the first place. There must be an unmoved mover = God.
- Second Way (Causality): Everything has a cause. There cannot be an infinite number of causes. There must be an uncaused cause = God is the first cause.
- Third Way (Potentiality): Nothing can come from nothing. Something only comes into existence as a result of something that already exists. There must be something with necessary being that exists = God.
Supporting Arguments
- We can observe that the universe exists, and everything that exists needs a beginning/cause.
- Only God could be the cause of the universe because He is the only being powerful enough.
- Many mathematicians agree that infinite regress is impossible, so there has to be a first cause. The only being we have knowledge of that doesn’t need a cause for its existence is God.
- Science supports the idea of the universe having a beginning (e.g., the Big Bang) and agrees that things can’t cause themselves.
- Ockham’s Razor states that the simplest explanation is usually the right one, and a first cause is arguably the simplest explanation.
Opposing Arguments
- Self-contradiction: The argument states that there are no uncaused causes, yet it also says that God does not need a beginning.
- Quantum physics: Suggests particles may be able to just appear, so perhaps the singularity occurred spontaneously without a cause.
- Why a beginning? If God can be without cause, why can’t this be true of the universe itself? Maybe it just is and always has been.
- Oscillating Universe: The universe may be going through an infinite number of expansions and contractions (Big Bangs and Big Crunches). This fits with Eastern cosmology.
- Assumption-based: The argument is based on assumptions and therefore proves nothing absolutely. At most, it shows it might be reasonable to believe in God.
Counter Arguments (David Hume)
- Fallacy of Composition: Hume argued that just because everything within the universe has a cause, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the universe itself must have a cause.
- Lack of experience: Hume pointed out that we have no experience of creating universes, and so we cannot speak meaningfully about how the universe was created.
Part 3: Paley’s Teleological Argument (Argument from Design)
William Paley used the famous Watchmaker Analogy:
- If someone walking over a heath stumbled against a stone and asked how it got there, they might reason it had always been there — it had no purpose or reason.
- If they found a watch, they might notice that its various parts are complex, and it shows evidence of regularity and purpose.
- It would be reasonable to conclude that the watch must have had a watchmaker.
- The universe, like the watch, shows evidence of regularity and purpose.
- It would therefore be reasonable to infer that the universe also had a maker. The designer of this complex universe must be a superior intelligent being whom we call God.
Supporting Evidence of Design
- The human eye: A famous example of a designed, complex structure with many elaborate and interlocking parts dependent upon one another.
- The regularity of the seasons.
- The Goldilocks Zone: The position of the Earth in the solar system is perfect for life to exist.
- Predictability: The apparent design and purpose of the world (e.g., predictability of sunrise, tides).
Supporting Arguments
- Life is too awe-inspiring and beautiful to be the result of random chance.
- Things in the world show evidence of design for a specific purpose (e.g., eyes for seeing, wings for flying).
- It is not reasonable to believe that the debris from the Big Bang would form such complex things on its own. The only logical explanation is an all-powerful God (the rise of life contradicts the physical law of entropy).
- Theistic Evolution: The Theory of Evolution could simply be part of God’s plan. God used the mechanism of evolution to create life.
- Scriptural authority: Genesis 1 and 2 explain that God created the world and all living things. For believers, this is God’s word and can be trusted completely.
Opposing Arguments
- There is no proof that the universe needs a designer; maybe it has always been there.
- Poor Design: There is evidence of bad design in the world, pointing to chance rather than design. Natural disasters like earthquakes point away from the perfect God of traditional theism.
- Paley’s analogies are based on assumption, not fact.
- Natural processes, the laws of physics, and chance/necessity are enough to give a complete explanation, removing the need to resort to a designer God.
- Evolutionary theory acknowledges the appearance of design but proves this has arisen due to entirely natural forces.
Counter Arguments
- Richard Dawkins: Agrees the universe appears designed, but argues this finds a full explanation when random chance mutations meet the necessity of natural selection.
- David Hume’s Criticisms:
- Bad Analogy: The comparison between a watch and the natural world is flawed. A mechanical object cannot be compared to the living world. Hume saw the universe as a living organism which changes and develops, rather than a machine.
- Incompetent Designer: There are lots of examples of bad design, such as suffering and evil. Perhaps God was an incompetent designer?
- Plurality of Gods: The analogy might point to many gods working together as designers (like a team of watchmakers), not necessarily the monotheistic Christian God.
- Absentee Landlord: Even if we believe God is the great designer, how do we know God is still with us? Who is to say God has not given up on us and gone to make a better universe elsewhere?