Step 1 of 9 · Philosophy

Does God exist?

In brief

No single argument forces every reasonable person to believe in God. The strongest case is cumulative: that anything contingent exists at all, a universe that began and permits life, objective moral truth and minds that can reason all fit naturally if a personal, transcendent Creator exists, and are harder to account for if nothing lies beyond the physical world.

The 2-minute version

Start with what an argument for God can do. It is rarely a proof no one can resist; it is a case that makes belief reasonable. Several independent lines point the same way. Things exist that did not have to, and an endless chain of explanations never explains why the whole exists. The universe appears to have a beginning and laws that permit life at all. Most people believe some things are really wrong, whatever a society approves. And we trust our minds to reason toward truth. Each has an answer on the atheist side: brute facts, the multiverse, evolutionary accounts of morality and mind. The honest question is which view explains more with fewer loose ends. Suffering belongs in the same ledger, and it is the most serious evidence against God. This step asks only whether belief in a Creator is reasonable, not yet which God.

The strongest objection

If an all-powerful, perfectly good God existed, there would not be so much intense and apparently pointless suffering, human and animal. The world as it is counts strongly against God, even if some suffering serves a purpose.

A response

The objection is serious and should be felt, not waved away. Many philosophers now think the strict logical version, that God and evil cannot both exist, is hard to sustain; the live debate is the evidential version, which turns on whether we are in a position to judge that suffering is pointless.

Suffering also belongs in the same ledger as the evidence for God rather than cancelling it. And the God Christianity proclaims entered suffering himself, in Christ.

Take the objection further: If God Exists, Why Is There So Much Evil and Suffering?

The evidence

From Scripture
  • Romans 1:19–20 — Creation as a witness to God's power and nature.
  • Psalm 19:1–4 — The heavens declaring the glory of God.
  • Acts 17:24–28 — Paul at Athens on the Creator in whom we live and move.
From philosophy and science
  • Contingency. Things exist that did not have to; the question is why contingent reality exists at all. The critic's reply is that the universe may be a brute fact.
  • A beginning and fine-tuning. Modern cosmology describes a universe with a hot, dense beginning and constants that permit life. The site's article cautions that the Big Bang does not by itself prove creation from nothing.
  • Moral truth. If some acts are really wrong whatever anyone approves, that moral reality needs grounding. Secular moral realists offer rival accounts.
  • Reason and consciousness. Minds that grasp logic and truth are what theism expects; naturalist accounts of mind are the alternative to weigh.

Primary sources

4 sources for this step
  1. Bruce Reichenbach, “Cosmological Argument”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — A scholarly survey of the argument, including the Kalam, and its objections.
  2. Del Ratzsch and Jeffrey Koperski, “Teleological Arguments for God's Existence”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Design and fine-tuning arguments and their critics.
  3. C. Stephen Evans and David Baggett, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Moral arguments and the objections to them.
  4. Michael Tooley, “The Problem of Evil”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — The strongest objection, in a reference treatment.

Read the full case

Does God Exist? The Strongest Arguments for Theism Explained

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