Five Arguments For God's Existence

Ever wondered about your existence? Or what came first, the chicken or the egg? Although a plethora of philosophical arguments for God’s existence has been proposed by Christian, Jewish and secular writers, their arguments have limited rational thoughts to sufficiently prove God’s existence. In actuality, there is no level of rationality that is able to ascertain who or what is readily described as the ‘Alpha’ being due to our finite human knowledge. We are stuck in a mess of enigmas, contradictions and imponderable questions on the existence of God.

The mere existence of the universe baffled St Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic priest who formed five arguments for God’s existence. He states that:
For the Universe to exist, there must be a First
However, the cosmological and teleological arguments dangerously generalize our intricate universe to a specific deduction that simultaneously neglects other external factors. Consider this, if the whole premise of the cosmological proofs relies on an eternal causation, then no individual objects lack an explanation for its existence. According to David Hume, a secular writer, the universe is already explained without a need for a God and puts the question of existence at rest (Hill, 2007, p. 22). Hume’s reasoning highlights the discrepancies within the cosmological and teleological arguments and demonstrates their insufficient rationality to explain God’s existence. Though, it doesn’t stop here. The underlying problem for the teleological argument is the proof, or lack thereof, for a designed intention. While there is proof of designs, there is no evidence that it was actually designed (Hill, 2007, p. 45). So, who designed the designer, and so on? Why would God make pointless body parts (e.g. optic blind spots, fifth toe) if God created the universe with purpose, based on Aquinas’ argument? A flawed world implies a flawed creator, in which God cannot be. Due to contradictions, the faultiness of the cosmological and teleological arguments is apparent as they pose more questions than it answers the existence of God through rational thought.

But how can we define God if we don’t know what God is? A Benedictine monk, Anselm of
Or are they just a trickery of the mind that aims to send us into a spiral of existentialism? Arguments for God is ‘sinful’ according to Karl Barth, a Christian theologian (Hill, 2007, p. 39). He considered that knowledge of God must originate from God and not human reason. An infamous Jewish writer, Baruch de Spinoza, likened to the Christian writer’s thinking. Although nurtured in an orthodox Jewish community, Spinoza conclusively rejected the ethereal existence of such God as proposed by Judaism, and ascribed to religious traditions as ‘mumbo jumbo’. Spinoza claims that prayers and other religious traditions are based under superstitions that does nothing. Not to burst the religious bubble, but his idea of God is nature, and nature is God, God is the law, and “…Whatever is, is in God and nothing can exist or be conceived without God” (Ethica, 1677, quoted from Issa& Gonzalez, 2015). Everything that we think exists independently, actually exist in God. Instead of praying, we should try to understand the physical laws that govern our universe, and in doing so, acquire knowledge on God. For Spinoza, attaining perfection of truth is the greatest offering to God. This is supported by secular Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein who further suggests that God cannot be simply defined with human rational thought as God transcends all (Hill, 2007, p. 38). The arguments can only infer that something or someone is out there,