A little philosophy

ok, so for those of you who have not done any philosophy, or have no interest in things such as this, this may be a little boring - but I enjoy it...

Anyway, so i was on the train the other day thinging about God and metaphysiscs and all that, and then the following arguments came to me:

The argument against God is that of metaphysics. For those of you who don't understand philosophy-speak, this basically means that which cannot be known. so to say that something is metaphysical, is to say that we don't know anything about it. Since God is (by philosophical standards) unseeable, untouchable, cannot be heard etc, then he must be metaphysical - how can we know anything about him?

However a counter argument would be to say that to define anything as being metaphysical, would surely mean to say that we know something about the object in question - that it cannot be known - we know, that God is a concept about which we can know nothing - therefore, to attatch the definition of "metaphysical" to anything, is surely a fallacy, since we contradict ourselves in attributing "metaphysical" to the object.

Sorry, I went into philosophy speak again. To say that we cannot know anything about God is wrong, because when we say we cannot know anything about God, we say that we know that we cannot know anything about God. At which point, we are saying that we know something about Him! So we contradict oursleves.

The next argument against God is that of language. since we don not know anything about him (as we could just simply ignore labelling him as metaphysical altogether and just refuse to talk about him full stop), we must therefore not talk about him and focus on more pressing matters. But as these arguments have stated, Philosophy is purely about language - an argument is produced in language, and concludes in language, and all we are discussing is how to use words. What we are not discussing is whether or not an object exists. Therefore to say that in language we must not talk about God is wrong since we are perfectly capable talking about God, whether he exists or not, just as we are capable to talk about a fictional character. If the argument is to say that there is nothing to talk about, then again they are mistaken, as we have talked about God for millenia, so clearly we have something to talk about.

This brings me on to my next point, as provided by Prof. Richard Dawkins:

"God probably doesn't exist. So stop worrying and enjoy your life" is a series of poster campaigns in the UK.

I have a few complaints about this. One, I am suprised by Richard Dawkins' lack of faith in his atheistic religion by saying only the word "probably" - so is he not sure? does he think that there is the possibility that God does exist? C'mon Richard, stand up for what you believe in! Does he exist or not? My next point is that this poster campaign sends surely a backwards message - why WOULD we worry if God existed? what on earth do we have to worry about, if we have faith in Jesus' death and resurrection? If God didn't exist then we have a lot to worry about! Death, destruction, pain, suffering - all of which, by faith, can be resolved...

And finally, I would argue that God probably does exist. Now it has been a while since my a-level in philosophy, so here goes my version of the cosmological argument for the existence of God - since I see no flaw in it, other than the earlier issue, now resolved, of trying to prove a "metaphysical" being (which, by the way, is a flawed argument as it claims that God has not revealed himself - which if you look at the eyewitness accounts of God's work written down in what is hailed by historians as a document which contains the most evidence and historical accuracy about the events in question, with the highest degree of reliability - the bible - he quite clearly has shown himself, and all around the world today, he still shows himself through miraculous works and deeds) - and the other flaw that exists in all philosophical argument of a priori logic having an infinite regress until you reach empirical evidence and empirical evidence being unreliable due to our senses being foolable (though since we can know no other until we are proven wrong, we might as well continue as we were anyway, rather than doubt empirical evidence, discard it, and live without knowledge of anything) - here is the argument:

1. We exist at this time, in this place.
2. time is continuous (as far as we can tell)
Conculsion - If time were infinite, we must have travelled an infinite length of time to reach our current position, as per the rules of mathematics
3. To travel through an infinite length of time is impossible, as per the rules of mathematics
Conculsion - Time must therefore be finite
4. To be finite, there must be a start or an end
5. Every effect has a preceding cause
Conclusion - to produce the effect of time, there must be a preceding cause that exists outside of time.

And so to conclude, I would actually say, Professor Dawkins, that there is more evidence to suggest God's existence than not. There is a whole wealth of evidence to put the evolutionary theory into disregard, we have still yet to discover what makes life, how, in fact, the first prehistoric goo became an organism in the first place, what that organism was, and recreate it in a laboratory. The evolutionary timescale of around 6 billion years is laughable, considering we have more than that many species on this planet (that we know of), and we certainly have not seen evolution of 1 per year - in fact, we have not seen evolution, which at the rate evolution would suggest it should occur, we should easily have seen by now, the length of time we have been studying (about 150 years since Darwin)

And finally, another argument I remembered I had today. Mankind is built wrong. We could not possibly have evolved and survived, and there is a very good reason for that. We explore. We want to find the new, the different, no matter how dangerous or life-threatening it may be - we want to see what is over that hill, be it mammoths to kill for food or man-eating leopards - It is hard to find another animal that likes to explore in the same way that we do - we are so different to the animals, so far reached - that we are even able to classify us in a completely different section from "the animals" - since they are so similar in comparison to ourselves.