Rationalism: Is It Irrational To Believe In God?

This essay will discuss whether or not it is rational to believe in God. People have their own will to believe, and as the Canadian Constitution would agree, Canadian’s have a freedom of religion. I plan not to convert the reader to atheism, but merely to establish a conclusion that it is irrational to believe in God. This argument does not have to change the lives of others, but simply to prove that human beings are irrational, starting with our idea of a God. The rationality of God can be disproved on the basis of empirical evidence. The idea of empiricism was developed by John Locke in his Book of Innate Notion, in which he felt, opposite to rationalism, that all of our knowledge comes from, and must be justified with experience (Locke,
Anselm presents the Argument of Ontological Doubt stating that, “something than which a greater can’t be conceived does exist – both in understanding and in reality” (Anselm, 39). Meaning, if we can conceive of something than which nothing greater can be conceived, and if we can agree that it is better for things to exist both in the mind and in reality than in the mind alone, it is inconceivable that God does not exist. This appears to be a sound and valid argument but it flaws; if we can conceive of something so great, and if he exists, why does he not show himself, or care for the people suffering in a world he is so much greater than? It is irrational to believe in the existence of any omnipotent being based on the Problem of
We are rational in accepting the premises because, for the first premise, we cannot prove it is true. The idea that none of our suffering could have been prevented by a powerful being is absurd, because for the second premise, a wholly good being would want to prevent the suffering of others because this belief is expressed in our basic moral standards (Rowe, 337). Therefore this argument is rational to believe. In our world, this is seen on a daily basis, one of the biggest examples from history being the Holocaust in Europe during World War II, surrounding Nazi Germany. Why would God allow such a negative, suffering, evil event happen in our world, knowing he could prevent it? If he is so holy and good, it would be moral for him to stop human sufferings, but he does not. There must simply be nothing there. It is irrational to believe in an all-powerful, all-seeing being because he is a lie of good morals and