Since 1960s, despite the heyday of logical positivism, there has been a resurgence of the traditional metaphysical arguments to prove the existence of God. We’ve heard of the “big three” arguments: ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments.
The ontological argument, or “a priori” argument, tries to prove the existence of God by establishing the necessity of God’s existence through an explanation of the concept of existence or necessary being. St. Anselm, for example, argued that “God is the being none other than which can be conceived.”
Other variations of ontological arguments are Alvin Platinga’s “modal ontological arguments,” and “higher-order ontological arguments” by Kurt Godel.
The cosmological arguments posit that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, change, motion, explanation, contingency, dependency, finitude with respect to the universe, or some totality of objects.
Teleological arguments (Palley’s biological argument for design; and “fine-tuning” teleological arguments) try to prove that the world exhibits an intelligent purpose based on experience from nature such as order, design, unity, symmetry, coherence, and complexity – and that it implies a “supreme designer.”
Apart from these “big three” arguments, other forms of arguments for the existence of God that have received serious discussion in recent times include moral arguments, arguments from religious experience, arguments from miracles, arguments from consciousness, arguments from reason, and aesthetic arguments.
Now, what about the nomological argument for the existence of God?
Derived from Greek nomos, which means “law,” the nomological argument tries to prove the existence of God based on the laws of nature or “regularities” – such as that planets have elliptical orbits, that the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference, or that oppositely charged particles attract.
The arguments may be illustrated through a game of poker. Suppose that you receive five consecutive flushes. There are two hypotheses that could come to fore: either you received them by chance, or someone arranged the decks in your favor. In all probability, the former would seem unlikely, and the latter is the better explanation: someone is responsible.
In a similar vein, according to the nomological arguments, the best explanation for regularities in nature is because of a supernatural personal being, who is God. In this sense, it may not be necessary for God to have all the attributes of a Biblical God – omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection – but only that God is an intelligent being with the power to control nature’s regularities.
Point of clarification, though. The nomological argument is not synonymous with the teleological or “design” argument. Whereas teleological arguments talk about “intelligent design” and tries to ask specific questions of regularities (for example, why well-adapted species exist today by citing regularities of natural selection and genetics), the nomological argument tries to ask the general question: why are there regularities at all, as opposed to irregularities?
In the consecutive sequence of royal flushes – which, as we pointed out, involves a person – we could deduce some pragmatic, aesthetic, and even moral reasons why a person might want to impose order on decks of cards. A pragmatic reason maybe is self-interest: someone might impose such order on the deck of cards because they want you to win some money. An aesthetic reason perhaps is beauty or elegance: royal flushes look nice. And maybe a moral reason could be that you deserve to win.
By the same token, we can deduce pragmatic, aesthetic, and even moral reasons why God would want to impose regularities on nature: very likely, for example, in a world without regularities, the transcendent values of love, happiness, rationality, knowledge, free choice, or meaningful relationships may not just be realized. And since God is a person, it is plausible to think God may have moral and aesthetic preferences. If we knew that a personal being was about to create a world, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for us to anticipate regularities, even if we knew nothing else about that being.
Ah, enough with philosophizing (or rationalizing) on the existence of God, I’d like to veer back to the immanence of real life.
In the empirical perspective, proving or rationally arguing the existence of God is one thing, believing in God is another thing. Undeniably, there are those who can reason out and thereby believe in the existence of God; and there are also those who, even without reasoning out, simply believe in God. As reason itself poses to be incomplete, they claim that “faith begins where reason ends.”
St. Thomas Aquinas argues that the existence of God may be incomprehensible to the finite human mind, but it remains reasonable. In this sense, knowing or reason precedes faith (for example, you can readily believe or love a person if you would know him or her first).
On the other hand, St Augustine of Hippo contends that “credo ut intelligam” (I believe in order that I may understand). In other words, believing is possible even before knowing or understanding (thus, for example, if love encompasses all, then it is possible to love a person even if you do not know him or her). Bulag na pag-ibig?
But, to my mind, given the inevitability of human incompleteness and imperfection, of natural and moral evils, of pain and suffering in this world – it is but more meaningful or practicable to have a comforting belief in a supreme being, or personal God, who is “incomprehensible yet reasonable,” a “transcendent yet immanent,” a “mysterious yet real” companion in our life journey. After all, what is more exigent is not proving or disproving but experiencing the reality of God – and live a meaningful and satisfying life. Benedictus Deus!