Religion

If there is no proof that god exists, is there any evidence that he does and what form would this evidence take to be worthy of philosophical examination?

Comments

If by "proof" you mean something like "sound a priori" argument, then there are no uncontroversial examples. But then, there are few things that can be shown to exist that way, so lack of proof in that sense doesn't mean much. If you mean something like "purported good argument for the existence of God," there are plenty of those, but people disagree over their merits. The paragraph-length caricatures one sometimes encounters in Phil 101 aren't up to the task, but that's no surprise either. But there are serious people who offer extended defenses of the claim that God exists, as a look at any good Phil of Religion text will make clear. Needless to say, people differ on the question of how good those defenses are.

As for what would count as evidence, I take you to be asking what we might observe that could raise the probability of God's existence. Some would say the kind of order we find in the universe -- and others would disagree. Some would say the existence of apparent miracles, but others argue that in the nature of the case, natural explanations for supposed miracles are more likely. Some would say religious experience. And others would say that these experiences can be perfectly well explained without any supernatural assumptions.

And so it goes. I recommend picking up a good intro to philosophy of religion. The one by William Rowe is excellent, but I like to think that the one I wrote with Christopher Bernard has its virtues too.

And I might commend my own Philosophy of Religion: A Beginner's Guide (Oneworld Press, Oxford) and Dialogues about God (Rowman and Littlefied) for a review of many of the arguments that seek to address the existence of God from the standpoint of evidence.

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