The Encyclopedia of World Religions

God, the existence of S 179

have genuine faith, people need to take a “leap of faith.” Belief in God that results from arguments or balancing costs and benefits is not the kind of faith God wants. The Experience of God A different approach appeals to experience. People believe things in the world exist because they expe rience them. According to one approach, people believe God exists because they experience God, too. One person who developed this argument was the Christian philosopher Rudolf O TTO (1869– 1937). He described the experience of God as the experience of a mysterium tremendum et fasci nans —a profound mystery that was terrifying and overwhelming but also comforting and appealing. Otto agreed that our experiential knowledge was not quite like our knowledge of a chair or a desk. It was, he said, not certain knowledge but a hunch. (The German word that he used can also be translated as “feeling.”) But, Otto pointed out, hunches play a larger role in our thinking than many people are willing to admit. What God Really Is Others suggest that the classical arguments mis understand God and so try to prove the existence of what God really is not. A good example of this position is process theology. Process theology sees reality as made up not of things or substances but of processes and rela tions. When process theologians apply these views to God, they may call into question such views as that God is eternal and unchanging and that he is the first source of all that is. For example, an early process theologian, Henry Nelson Weiman (1884–1975), suggested that God is not an eternal, unchanging, omnipotent person but “the source of human good.” Process theology has been particularly impor tant for people interested in questions of THEOD ICY . But process theology may also be helpful in dealing with the existence of God. Most people, for example, think that there is some source of human good, even if they cannot describe it very well.

Consider, for example, the requirement “Do not murder.” What authority stands behind such a requirement? Certainly it is not simply consensus among human beings. Even if every other human being in our community agreed that murder was acceptable, we would want to say that murder is wrong. Indeed, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. made just such a claim when he appealed to a higher law and disobeyed discriminatory laws. According to the moral argument, this com mon moral experience shows that God exists. That is because God alone is capable of making moral requirements valid, despite what individual human beings think and say. If God did not exist, what is right would simply be a matter of indi vidual opinion and whim. This chaotic situation is envisioned in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov (1879–80). In that novel, one character commits suicide to prove that God does not exist. OTHER APPROACHES TO THE EXISTENCE OF GOD The classical arguments try to use logical reason ing to show that God exists. Thinkers have taken other approaches in considering God’s existence, too. Like the classical theologians, they conclude that God exists, but they arrive at the conclusion in different ways. God’s Existence Is a Good Bet The European philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–62) adopted a practical attitude to the question of God’s existence. In effect, he asked, What are the costs and benefits of believing or not believing in God? Pascal reasoned that if we believe that God exists and are wrong, it costs us relatively little. By contrast, if we do not believe that God exists and are wrong, we might suffer a great deal. There fore, Pascal said, the best bet is to believe that God exists. Others, like the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55), go a bit further. Kierke gaard says that faith in God is something that religious people have despite all rational proof. To