Religious Inquiries (Dec 2017)
Thinking as Evidence for the Probability of the Existence of a God: An Argument from Unnaturalness for Necessity
Abstract
The objective of this article is to show that it is justified to assert that the existence of God is plausible, considering the fact that thinking itself is an immediate outcome (effect) of a thinker (cause). This idea may seem evident, but it is in fact challenged by certain claims of cognitive philosophers who aver that our knowledge of necessity and causation is, in the final analysis, bounded by our naturalness. That is to say, what we understand of necessity and causation is originally based on root-experiences we have had from the early moments of our birth onward or even before our birth. This article tries to display that giving a model for a kind of necessity which is not essentially built upon the naturalness of human experiences can negate the universality of believing in the naturalness of human understanding. With this, one can prove the probability of the existence of a Necessary Being, whose necessity is different from the so-called embodied necessity. However, the Necessary Being is not equal to all conceptions of God, but it is equal to some of them. The article concludes that the probability of the existence of God (of a particular kind) is an inevitable outcome, even with the presupposition of cognitive philosophers.
