Grounds for Believing In God
The belief inGod is known as theism (trom the Greek theos, meaning
God); and a believer in God is known as a theist. All beliefs and doctrines
which maintain the existence of God are said to be theistic. The belief or
doctrine that there is no God is known as atheism; and anyone who maintains such a doctrine is called an atheist.
A belief which is close to theism, but differs from it in many important
respects is that krnown as deism. Deism (from Latin deus, meaning God) is a belief in God; but here the God is not a personal God as in theistic religions.
Rather, the God of deism is pictured as one who, having created the world,
thereafter withdrew and is no longer concerned with the day to day running
of the world. In the language of scholars, he is sometimes said to be a deus remotus (remote God) or deus absconditus (a runaway God).
Now when philosophers search for grounds for believing or not believing in God, they turn to only human reason to guide them. This means that they look at the world of nature, and use their reason to investigate. In doing that, nothing that comes by way of a super-natural revelation is admissible; which means that you cannot use the Bible, for instance, to prove that God exists.
This, then, brings us to the difference between what is called natural
religion versus revealed religion. So the question for natural religion is the
question whether man can discover God through the powers of his reason,
unaided by anything else. This is the question which has brought about
ne lamous proofs of the existence of God. These proofs are usually classified
into three philosophical arguments known as: the ontological, the
cosmological and the teleological arguments. We shall sketch them very
briefly here.
GROUNDS FOR BELIEVING IN GOD
We shall now present three philosophical positions which have
attempted to show that there is no such being as the God ot theistic religions
These theses. some of which are formulated in the form of alternative
theories, all try to provide a naturalistic explanation tor what others have
mistakenly called God.
(i) THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION
Emile Durkheim, the founder of the sociological theory of religion, says
in his Elementary Forms of tlie Religious Life that the Gods men worship
are imaginary bengs which the society creates as instruments of social
control. Thus, the power of the Gods and the allegiance accorded them
reflect the power which the society wields over the individual, and the
total dependence of the individual on the society.
This theory which tries to explain away religion has met with several
objections. The first is that the religious phenomenon 1s so universal that
to suppOse that this is brought about by the power of the society appears
inadequate. Secondly, it the gods are merely the products of society, 1t
would be difficult to explain the fact that prophets of the difterent societies
have always spoken on behalt ot their gods against their societies.
(ii) THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION
The psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) made a very great
contribution to man's understanding of himself. Several of his writings
attempted to explain away the phenomenon of religion, but his
psychological theory of religion is found mainly in his The Future of A
Illusion (1927).
In this work Freud made three claims, viz., one, people are born into an
unfriendly world; two, religious ideas serve to bring relief from the suffering and frustrations that man encounters; and three, man longs for the continued protection, care and providence ot his father; hence the need to postulate a
tather figure in the form of a Supreme Being who is everything that man
would wish to be. In short, the clinging to these illusions which characterize adult life is what Freud calis "infantile neurosis" or child complex.
The Freudian theory has met several serious objections, among which
are: if the gods are merely man's creation, how is it that man's creation is
infinitely greater than the creator? Where does man derive the notion of an eternal, immortal, transcendent Being with all the sublime attributes?
Secondly, Freud had predicted over 50 years ago that man would awaken
from his illusion, and thus bring it to an end. Today, the illusion appears to
be just as strong as when Freud wrote. Thirdly, since ineurosis is a disease
condition, it is difticult to see how everyone except one man would sufter
from this neurotic condition.
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