Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

Every culture in every epoch has had theistic beliefs.

When peoples, widely separated by both space and time, hold similar beliefs, the best explanation is that those beliefs are true.

The best explanation for why every culture has had theistic beliefs is that those beliefs are true.

God exists.

FLAW: Premise 2 is false. Widely separated people could very well come up with the same false beliefs. Human nature is universal, and thus prone to universal illusions and shortcomings of perception, memory, reasoning, and objectivity. Also, many of the needs and terrors and dependencies of the human condition (such as the knowledge of our own mortality, and the attendant desire not to die) are universal. Our beliefs arise not only from well-evaluated reasoning, but from wishful thinking, self-deception, self-aggrandizement, gullibility, false memories, visual illusions, and other mental glitches. Well-grounded beliefs may be the exception rather than the rule when it comes to psychologically fraught beliefs, which tend to bypass rational grounding and spring instead from unexamined emotions. The fallacy of arguing that if an idea is universally held then it must be true was labeled by the ancient logicians consensus gentium .

Mystics go into a special state in which they seem to see aspects of reality that elude everyday experience.

We cannot evaluate the truth of their experiences from the viewpoint of everyday experience (from 1).

There is a unanimity among mystics as to what they experience.

When there is unanimity among observers as to what they experience, then, unless they are all deluded in the same way, the best explanation for their unanimity is that their experiences are true.

There is no reason to think that mystics are all deluded in the same way.

The best explanation for the unanimity of mystical experience is that what mystics perceive is true (from 4 and 5).

Mystical experiences unanimously testify to the transcendent presence of God.

God exists.

FLAW 1: Premise 5 is disputable. There is indeed reason to think mystics might be deluded in similar ways. The universal human nature that refuted The Argument from the Consensus of Humanity entails that the human brain can be stimulated in unusual ways that give rise to widespread (but not objectively correct) experiences. The fact that we can stimulate the temporal lobes of non-mystics and induce mystical experiences in them is evidence that mystics might be deluded in similar ways. Certain drugs can also induce feelings of transcendence, such as an enlargement of perception beyond the bounds of effability, a melting of the boundaries of the self, a joyful expansion out into an existence that seems to be all One, with all that Oneness pronouncing Yes upon us. Such experiences, which, as William James points out, are most easily attained by getting drunk, are of the same kind as the mystical: “The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness.” Of course, we do not exalt the stupor and delusions of drunkenness, because we know what caused them. The fact that the same effects can overcome a person when we know what caused them (and hence don’t call the experience “mystical”) is reason to suspect that the causes of mystical experiences also lie within the brain.

FLAW 2: The struggle to put the ineffable contents of abnormal experiences into language inclines the struggler toward pre-existing religious language, which is the only language that most of us have been exposed to that overlaps with the unusual content of an altered state of consciousness. This observation casts doubt on Premise 7. See also The Argument from Sublimity, #34, below.

There are holy books that reveal the word of God.

The word of God is necessarily true.

The word of God reveals the existence of God.

God exists.

FLAW 1: This is a circular argument if ever there was one. The first three premises cannot be maintained unless one independently knows the very conclusion to be proved-namely, that God exists.

FLAW 2: A glance at the world’s religions shows that there are numerous books and scrolls and doctrines and revelations that all claim to reveal the word of God. But they are mutually incompatible. Should I believe that Jesus is my personal saviour? Or should I believe that God made a covenant with the Jews requiring every Jew to keep the commandments of the Torah? Should I believe that Muhammad was Allah’s last prophet and that Ali, the prophet’s cousin and husband of his daughter Fatima, ought to have been the first caliph, or that Muhammad was Allah’s last prophet and that Ali was the fourth and last caliph? Should I believe that the resurrected prophet Moroni dictated the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith? Or that Ahura Mazda, the benevolent Creator, is at cosmic war with the malevolent Angra Mainyu? And on and on it goes. Only the most arrogant provincialism could allow someone to believe that the holy documents that happen to be held sacred by the clan he was born into are true, whereas all the documents held sacred by the clans he wasn’t born into are false.

This world provides numerous instances of imperfect justice-bad things happening to good people, and good things happening to bad people.

It violates our sense of justice that imperfect justice may prevail.

There must be a transcendent realm in which perfect justice prevails (from 1 and 2).

A transcendent realm in which perfect justice prevails requires the Perfect Judge.

The Perfect Judge is God.

God exists.

FLAW: This is a good example of the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking. Our wishes for how the universe should be need not be true; just because we want there to be some realm in which perfect justice applies does not mean that there is such a realm. In other words, there is no way to pass from Premise 2 to Premise 3 without the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking.

There is much suffering in this world.

Suffering must have some purpose, or existence would be intolerable.

Some suffering (or at least its possibility) is demanded by human moral agency: if people could not choose evil acts that cause suffering, moral choice would not exist.

Whatever suffering cannot be explained as the result of human moral agency must also have some purpose (from 2 and 3).

There are virtues-forbearance, courage, compassion, and so on- that can only develop in the presence of suffering. We may call them “the virtues of suffering.”

Some suffering has the purpose of inducing the virtues of suffering (from 5).

Even taking premises 3 and 6 into account, the amount of suffering in the world is still enormous-far more than what is required for us to benefit from suffering.

Moreover, some who suffer can never develop the virtues of suffering-children, animals, those who perish in their agony.

There is more suffering than we can explain by reference to the purposes that we can discern (from 7 and 8).

There are purposes for suffering that we cannot discern (from 2 and 9).

Only a being who has a sense of purpose beyond ours could provide the purpose of all suffering (from 10).

Only God could have a sense of purpose beyond ours.

God exists.

FLAW: This argument is a sorrowful one, since it highlights the most intolerable feature of our world, the excess of suffering. The suffering in this world is excessive in both its intensity and its prevalence, often undergone by those who can never gain anything from it. This is a powerful argument against the existence of a compassionate and powerful deity. It is only the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking, embodied in Premise 2, that could make us presume that what is psychologically intolerable cannot be the case.