Response to Mccloskey

Introduction

The doctrines of Christianity have been debated for centuries now. Many writers and thinkers have sought to disprove the Christian theology and have presented counter arguments against the tenets of the faith. In the article titled on being an atheist, mccloskey, has sought to disprove not only Christian doctrines but has challenged the concept of god (theism) in general arguing that the evidence and arguments given by the theists are unfounded and that there is no proof regarding the existence of god. In his defense, he gives the arguments that relate to the cosmological, the continued presence of evil in the world and the teleological arguments.

The premise that mccloskey mentions at the outset, is that the arguments as proofs, cannot be proven and that since they cannot be proven they should be abandoned. A fundamental problem is with the approach that he has taken to proving whether or not god exists. He describes the existence, in a matter that is reminiscent when scientists prove whether or not certain theory is plausible or not. By bringing god to the realm of science, what one does is that one brings inherently the limits of science to an issue, which seemingly has no limits. Any one argument cannot prove the existence of god; rather one has to look at a variety of arguments, both theological and otherwise and their cumulative approach, in order to prove that there is a god.

Another problem is the validity of the proof for the theists. In numerous cases, it has been observed that people do not necessarily subscribe to a faith keeping its arguments in mind. Primary reasons as why people might subscribe to faith may include philosophical, moral and emotional, thus the availability of proof is really not any of their concern.

Discussion

Cosmological argument

In this argument, mccloskey states that just because the world exists, doesn't necessarily have to means that there is a GOD or HE created this world. If one was to closely look at this argument, and think for a moment, one would realize that it has a hollow ring to it. It would mean that for e.g. There is a child, but that in no way proves that he or she has parents. The statement sounds a bit on the border of absurdity. It is of course obvious, that since there is a child, he was the result two people getting together, procreating, and producing an offspring, in other words, there was an act, an original cause that resulted in the birth of a child. Like wise in the case of the universe, there was an original cause, a will that the universe be created, and hence it was created.

Secondly if we were to believe, that there was an explosion (the big bang), and that was the cause of the existence of the universe, it would be necessary that these explosion were a result of unstable particles, that collided with each other. The question arises now, is that since that time why haven't these ...