Question Is it logical to infer a higher power given how extraordinary human life is?

Accepted:
September 29, 2011

Comments

It's a recurring question, and various versions of it make their way into arguments for God's existence.

For the moment, I'll just raise one obvious worry (not original to me.) Let's agree that human life is extraordinary. If we assume that this calls for divine explanation, we run the risk of positing a being who is at least as extraordinary as we are, and therefore at least as much in need of explanation. But in that case, we seem either to be set upon an infinite regress or else it isn't clear that we had to take the first step in the first place.

This hardly settle the question of whether there's a God (I'm taking that to be what you men by Higher Power.) But it does point out that some arguments for God's existence are too simple and too quick.

If by 'logical' you mean 'a decent argument can be constructed of this form' then i would say the answer is yes -- but if you mean 'an absolutely convincing argument ...' then, well, you don't find too many of those anywhere in philosophy -- my favorite version of the kind of argument that Allen Stairs mentions is some version of the fine-tuning argument -- which observes how perfectly fine-tuned features of the universe seem to be, such that they could easily have been otherwise, and yet had they been otherwise then human life (conscious, rational, moral life) would not have been possible -- and goes from there to argue that it is reasonable to think this didn't occur by chance -- a good source on this topic would be any of Paul Davies' recent books ...

best, ap

Question Is it logical to infer a higher power given how extraordinary human life is? Accepted:September 29, 2011

Question Is it logical to infer a higher power given how extraordinary human life is?

Accepted:
September 29, 2011