Tuesday, May 5, 2009
On god
The ontological argument for the existence of god is weak because it is a bare assertions fallacy. The argument is that you can make an a priori conclusion that god exists just by using intuition and reason alone. Saying that god exists because people throughout history have thought so is also an ad populum fallacy. A good alternative explanation to why people throughout history have believed in god is this: it was humanity's first attempt at science because the human mind needs explanations for why anything happens in the world. Science has successfully thwarted religion's supernatural explanations for natural disasters, and today religion can only appeal to the god of the gaps (as well as comfort, I will grant).
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1 comment:
Excellent post!
I agree with your position that the existence of God can NOT be proven with intuition and reason alone. This was a major flaw with rationalists like Descartes.
As a person who was raised in a religious upbringing, a questioning of my beliefs lead me to the realization they were based on faith and wishful thinking. It would be comforting for me to believe in a benevolent personal God, but it would also be self deception.
Unfortunately, if belief in God has no value other than comfort, we must also examine our other deeply held beliefs, such as the belief that human life has any value.
My study in philosophy has lead me to question if anything has any value other than what each individual chooses to subjectively assign to them.
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