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Arguments for the Existence of God (Introduction)
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Paul Jang
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2008-03-04 16:21:56, hit : 2,896 |
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THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
INTRODUCTION
The vital issue or the most important question is "Does God exist?" This is the biggest problem in the life of a humanbeing. Without resolving this problem, we cannot answer the following question, "How or who is God?" along with the third question, "What is the eternal triangle between God, cosmos, and man?."
Therefore, it is crucially important to deal with the existence of God. Many primitive tribes, in prehistoric times as well as today, have believed in the existence of a Supreme Being who governs the universe, and controls human destiny (Lee, 1995, 55).
Nowadays, there are many theories going to prove the existence of God whether they are positive or negative. Nevertheless, there are many philosophical and theological theories of God, for instance, theism, atheism, polytheism, pantheism, monism, spiritualism, deism, materialism, animism, and so on. Philosophers of all generations have been going astray between the metaphysical world and physical world in order to define and prove the existence of God.
And theologians also have been going astray between the world of faith and the world of reason. The problem can be solved by depending upon the truth of the Bible, which has been given to us as the special revelation by God. In this respect, the attitude to the concept of God may be divided into two: philosophical and theological one.
The philosophical approach to the existence of God has employed the metaphysical and physical concepts as its starting point, which is understood to God as the "Absolute One" or the "Ultimate Reality in the universe," and the religious or theological approach to that which has employed as the faith and reason as its starting point, which is understood to God as "the Personal God" and "the Creator".
In particular, we must deal with the concept of biblical faith separating from the religious concepts because the latter, in a broad sense, may be confused of compromise with philosophical one. In this sense, all the arguments for the existence of God, except for the Biblical argument, may be categorized into the rational arguments.
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Introduction
Theology 