Bridgette M.

Juarez
BS Biology III

The Concept of God

Since the beginning mankinds history, religion has always existed. Ancient
civilizations from all over the world worship various gods that they relate to the forces
of nature. They perform rituals and sacrifices hoping that the gods might favor them
and grant them better lives. Everything they experienced were deemed as spiritual or
chosen by the gods. As the minds evolved and science arose, these superstitions were
eradicated. The rising of the sun and the moon were explained, as well as the
existence of solar eclipse, the rising of the tides, the occurrence of thunders and
lightning, etc. However, the idea of the existence of God is still rampant. Even in its
lack of evidences, many people still hold on to their faiths. This suggests that humans
naturally have conviction that there is a greater being who created everything and who
dictates everything that is happening.
Early philosophers mentioned the existence of god. It occurs in the famous late
Dialogue of Plato (427-347 B.C.) the Laws. One of the characters therein asks
Cleinias how he would establish for the barbarians the existence of the Gods. Cleinias
replies: How? In the first place, the earth and the sun, and the stars and the Universe,
and the fair order of the seasons and the division of them into years and months,
furnishes proofs of their existence; and also there is the fact that all Helenes and
barbarians believe in them. Aristotole also wrote that so those who first looked up
to heaven and saw the sun running its race from its rising to its setting, and the orderly
dances of the stars, looked for the craftsman of this lovely design, and surmised that it
came about not by chance but by the agency of some mighty and imperishable nature,
which was God.
The greatest proof of gods existence in the early times was the order and
complexity of our universe. William Paley gave the example of the stone-watch-
nature which states that Suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked
how the stone came to be there: I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to
the contrary, it had lain there forever; nor would it, perhaps be very easy to show the
absurdity of this answer. But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should
be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place. I should hardly think of the
answer I had before given - that, for anything I knew, the watch might always have
been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the
stone? When we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover
in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that
they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion is so regulated
as to point out the hour of the day.
Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in
the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of
being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. I mean,
that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivance of art, in the complexity,
subtlety, and curiosity of the mechanism.
So Paley's argument is essentially this: we infer correctly that the watch is an
instrument with a purpose, a designed artefact which fulfils a purpose. Now the
Universe has a complexity in contrivance infinitely greater than the simple
mechanism of the watch, so too with Nature we should conclude that Nature is no
fortuitous accident but constructed in the light of a design by a designer, viz. God.
Paley's argument is then essentially a design argument and a teleological argument,
the Universe is complex and superbly integrated, exhibiting a design, it also serves a
purpose or an end (to sustain us and bring us to salvation) just like the watch does in
telling the time.