Is there any proof that God exists?

In our secular era, more and more people are saying that for the faith we need proof of the existence of God. For a person who is deeply religious, God exists, and this need not be proved either by this person, not even by God. For an atheist, there is no God, and it is difficult for a religious person to submit fully scientific evidence to change his point of view. But, nevertheless, the dispute between atheists and believers has been going on for thousands of years, and during this time a whole system of evidence was developed to support the existence and non-existence of God. Why does this dispute last forever, and the disputants undergo the same fiasco? And do we need these discussions in general? Let's try to figure this out.

The mistake of the theologians of the past is that they tried to prove the existence of the Supreme Force, the Supreme Being, the First Cause, etc., based on observations of this, the material world, and tried to provide scientific evidence of the existence of God. By the way, especially this has succeeded the Christian tradition, beginning with Tertullian, Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas and ending with Kant. In the Middle Ages, philosophy was considered a "servant of theology", but theology used the language of philosophy to prove the existence of God. In 1078, Anselm of Canterbury, appealing for some reason not to people, but to God, leads such an argument to prove to God His being a priori: in the human mind there is the concept of absolute perfection. But if an absolutely perfect being is not present, does not exist in the real world, then in this way it is not absolutely and completely perfect. A contradiction arises, from which Anselm concludes that God exists. In spite of the fact that numerous theologians based on such a priori proof, it does not stand up to criticism of atheists: if people, in varying degrees of imperfection, exist in this real world, this does not mean that there is an absolutely perfect being in it.

A brilliant scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas tried to get out of this situation by putting forward his five proofs of the existence of God with the arguments a posteriori. Again, these arguments are based on the study of this, the material world. The first proof is through movement: everything in this world moves for some reason. Therefore, there is a kind of immovable engine, that is, God. The second argument is the absolute cause of all consequences. Nothing created is its own cause. So, there must be the root cause of everything, that is, God. The third argument is cosmological: since there is time and objects exist in time (that is, once they arose), then, consequently, there exists a certain timeless essence that caused the time and existence of things in time and space, that is, God.

But, say the atheists, after listening to these three arguments, here is given a completely unproven and unscientific premise, in itself God belongs to the next sequence, is not its constituent. Even if we assume that there is an entity that completes the chain of ascent to the root cause of this world and call it God, this does not mean that this entity is endowed with other qualities that are attributed to God: by grace, by omnipotence, by the ability to read in hearts, to let go Sins. These three ontological evidences of the existence of God gave birth to the Christian theodicy, designed to justify God - the Creator of the material world for the evil that this world is overflowing with. If the Good God created our world, then why is this world not good? If this world is not good, then maybe it was not God who created it?

The fourth argument of Thomas is the proof of the degree of perfection: there is absolute grace, and in this world we observe its lesser manifestations. But evil is not a lack of grace, where did it come from? We can not call all maxims God. And the fifth argument is proof through expediency: everything is created for a specific purpose, and this highest goal is with God.

The philosopher E. Kant refutes the evidence of the existence of God Thomas Aquinas and puts forward his own: since in the human heart there are the demands of justice, righteousness, kindness, that is concepts that are meaningless in this world, since they do not bring material benefit; hence, these concepts are given to us from Another world, where "a new earth and a new heaven", in which truth dwells. This concept of God as a moral requirement, a categorical imperative that pushes people to commit good and unpaid acts, is the main argument of the moral proof of the existence of God. Because in this world there is no more useless phenomenon than virtue.