Religious belief and the sceptical responses

Although dismissed by many philosophers as nonsensical and irrelevant, religious beliefs are still held by over half of the world's population and therefore the subject must be valid as an area of intellectual discussion. This particular area of thought gives rise to much sceptical debate as the proofs offered by believers seem flawed when held to close scrutiny. It is particularly interesting in that the sceptical problems also go further than merely questioning the validity of the proofs but in fact can be taken so far as to actually question the validity of the original presupposition; that is, that we can even sensibly ask the question, "does God exist", in the first place.

There are three primary proofs that have been offered by apologists wishing to defend their religious belief. The first of these was a metaphysical proof originally invented by St Anslem and was formally envisaged by Descartes in his fifth mediation. It is known as the 'ontological' argument. The foundations of this argument lay in the suppositi

5) Lotze - Outlines of the Philosophy of Religion

A popular religious response to the sceptics argument is that God chose to give man freedom and that by it's very essence freedom leads to sin and hopefully the inevitable conquering of human sin by the acceptance of virtue. The sceptic is quick to point out that God did not give us complete freedom, for example I could not choose to fly across an ocean or ignore the laws of physics whenever it suits me. This means that God must indeed have restricted the freedom he gave us, but then why did he not restrict the ability to inflict suffering on others? Surely I could prove my own virtue and overcome my personal sins without having to interfere with others. For example, if I inflict pain and famine on a young child who then dies as a result how has this furthered the child's pursuit of virtue? The child could not possibly have died in accordance with any divine plan that affects itself as it is not yet even conscious of a religious meaning in it's life. Yet it must be that this was an intentional and deliberate act by God. It could only be claimed that this event was in some way good for the soul of the child if we agree to live by some perverse logic that has no apparent benefits for the individuals it claims to help.

Now, after considering the response to the arguments we must examine the sceptical response to the original concept itself of arguing over God's existence. To do this we have asked the question 'does God exist?' We must be cautious however as an atheist sceptic may try to deny the legitimacy of this question. How can we argue over a concept when we cannot truly define what that concept is anyway? How can the answer 'yes, he does' solve anything when the idea of 'God' is not an explanatory term at all but instead a vague theoretical possibility? The answer is simple; we cannot. If were to ask whether a tree exists we can answer confidently by understanding what we mean by a 'tree' in that it is a 'thing' that we class as an object. But concept of God is not a 'thing' as we know it and cannot be defined therefore we have no clear idea what we are talking about. So a sceptical atheist also cannot claim that he does not believe in God in this sense of material objects or concepts but must instead claim that he does not believe in the actual possibility of believing in God as it not an explanatory term of any meaning.

6) Nielsen - Reason and Practice, a modern introduction to philosophy

The sceptical challenge to this argument focuses on the claim that every series must have an origin. This is simply untrue. For example, the series of proper fractions has no first term. It is also possible to criticise the way the argument assumes that to explain something fully a full regression of causation must take place, as this again is just not true. Take for example any form of plantlife. It is possible to explain the origin of a weed by explaining how the combination of a seed, the earth, the sun and the rain all combined to produce it. A perfectly adequate answer to explain the origin of the weed can be arrived at without need to explain also the origins of the components that creat

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