Can The Existence Of God Be Proven?

[Cure of Ars]

Can the existence of God be proven? Or is the existence of God only a matter of faith? What say you?


And more importantly what does the Church say?

Edited September 14, 2004 by Cure of Ars

[MagiDragon]

[quote name='Cure of Ars' date='Sep 13 2004, 11:11 PM']Can the existence of God be proven?  Or is the existence of God only a matter of faith?  What say you?


And more importantly what does the Church say?[/quote]
i believe the correct answer is neither of the above: You can prove a great probability for the existence of God, but you can't *prove* that God exists. So it *is* a matter of faith, but it's also a matter of reason. You must have faith, but you can get *very* close through reason . . .

I like to say that it would take more for me to *not* believe in God than it would take for me *to* believe in God. I'd have to go *much* further to show that my reasons for God's existence are false than to show that my reasons are true.

if you want 100% proof, you won't find it for a person without faith, but if you want 99% then yer in business . . . and all you really need is reason. (Then talk 'em into jumping across that 1% gap! It makes more sense than denying the other 99%!!!!)

wow, way past my bedtime, i gotta go to work in 45 minutes . . . g'night!

Peace,
Joe

[yiannii]

If you can not prove that there is a God then you also can not prove that there isn't. With reason I believe that there has to be a God.

All nature acts according to a specific natural law, for me it is unthinkable that these laws sprung from chance.

Nothing in the visible world can move without help i.e. no moving thing contains in itself the complete explanation of its movement. One motion causes another and so on - what is the underlying motion? It is reasonable to say that there is an un-caused cause i.e. God.


A really good book which touches this issue: "Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine" written by Archbishop Michael Sheehan and revised by Father Peter Joseph.
[b]Part 1 - Chapter 1. The Existance of God[/b]
It's da bomb!!

[Fides_et_Ratio]

God can be known by means of reason alone (I believe this is stated in the Catechism.. at least in very similar words... I'll look it up).

And, I would go so far to say that by reason alone God's existence can be proven. Aristotle gave Thomas Aquinas a tremendous head start on the matter. Aristotle's "Metaphysics" and Aquinas' "Summa" are two great works, that if anyone honestly reads would have trouble refuting their claims.

[Fides_et_Ratio]

It is..

36 "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."11 Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God's revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created "in the image of God.

[Theoketos]

You can know from reason many things about God, other then He exsists, from Reason. But there are some things which must be revealed for us to understand.

For example.

Aristotle posits in the Metaphysics that God is prefect.

But it took the Church to reveal that God is a Trinity.

[Apotheoun]

A man can know by reason alone "that" God exists, but this knowledge must not be confused with the infused gift of divine and catholic faith, for it is only by the infused virtues of faith, hope, and love, that man can be saved.

[MorphRC]

Get a book called: Creation, by a guy call Jeffrey something. when u do a google search it will come up.

[Cure of Ars]

Ok thanks that was helpful.

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

The Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft is excellent. He also has articles for free on the topic at his website:
[url="http://www.peterkreeft.com/"]http://www.peterkreeft.com/[/url]

[drewmeister2]

Well,

I know St. Thomas Aquinas offers a proof of His existence. But I also believe it does take a degree of Faith. But for the most part, these proofs are great. I wrote an article about this on my site (a short summary of what St. Thomas Aquinas said):

St. Thomas Aquinas tells us directly that there are many ways we can know that He exists. I will number the proofs for easiness of reading. 1. Cause and effect: God never changes, but yet man changes constantly. God is the cause of this change, and what we do is the effect. Everything that changes needs someone to change them, someone who is more "powerful" than them. But since God never changes, no one is above Him to change Him. Thus, since He remains the same, there must be no one greater than Him to change Him. Thus, being the highest power, we call this "person" God. 2. How did man get here? Man can't create man by themselves, without God's help. And before humans existed, who created man? It had to be a higher power, known as God. 3. As Aristotle says, "Fire, the hottest of all things, causes other things to become hot." All humans have some degree of perfection. But no human is perfect. Only God is perfect, and thus He, the fire, causes humans to become hot, or to have varying degrees of perfection. In order for a teacher to teach someone, the teacher must know more than the students. The teacher imparts his knowledge on his students, and thus they gain a little more knowledge, and they can start to become more like their teacher, in the sense that they know what their teacher knows. But they still don't know as much as their teacher. Same with God. He, who is perfect, gives us some degree of perfection, so that we may become more like Him.

God bless!

[BurkeFan]

[url="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100202.htm"]God is demonstrable[/url]. We can [url="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/101212.htm"]know God through natural reason.[/url]