Proofs of God's Existence | Doctrines of the Catholic Church (Part 3)

God's existence can be proven using arguments from causality.

Having been established by the previous dogma that we can come to know God through natural human reason alone, this doctrine now states that specific arguments, namely those using the principle of causality, are valid ways of definitively arriving at the conclusion that God exists. This doctrine developed because atheists and agnostics would often challenge Christians about their beliefs, and rather than provide scientific, theological, or philosophical reasons, many believers would answer that God’s existence was a matter of personal faith and not objective reason. Of course, such a response was hardly satisfactory and was largely seen by skeptics as a convenient excuse to cover up a lack of evidence.

It was, therefore, incumbent upon the Church to set things straight and announce that there were good arguments for God’s existence apart from faith.

This teaching unreservedly affirms that it is entirely valid for a Christian to devise philosophical, historical, and scientific proofs of God’s existence. It frowns upon people who claim that only religious feelings will suffice and that there is no need to provide intellectual arguments. Christian scholastics have been hard at work for millennia, trying various lines of reasoning to conclude the Divine. People such as Aristides, Theophilus of Antioch, Marcus Minucius Felix, St. Augustine, St. John of Damascus, and most especially St. Thomas Aquinas have written volumes establishing transcendental validity.

For instance, here are a few proofs of God’s existence that have withstood the test and scrutiny of time:

1. The cosmological argument – this argument traces the beginning of the universe to a first cause and posits that the first cause is God.
2. The teleological argument – this argument asserts that the intricate design found in the universe can only be explained if there was a divine designer behind it.
3. The ontological argument – this argument posits that God’s existence is self-evident and uses a series of logical statements to prove it.
4. The contingency argument – this argument demonstrates that everything is contingent, which means that there was some point in the past wherein they did not exist. Therefore, a non-contingent being who made everything else possible must necessarily exist.
5. The moral argument – this argument claims that the existence of objective moral values can only mean that there must be an external law-giver.
6. The historical argument – this argument uses key historical points to demonstrate where God’s presence was manifestly known. The Resurrection of Christ particularly stands out from the rest.
7. The consciousness argument – this argument states that purely naturalistic mechanisms cannot fully explain human consciousness. Hence, a supernatural plane must exist.

It’s important to stress that these proofs of causality may not convince skeptics. This teaching in no way obliges anyone to believe them. It simply affirms their validity and puts to rest the claim that only through the eyes of faith, not reason, can we know of God’s existence.

0:00 Opening Prayer
0:48 Definition of the Doctrine
5:27 Proofs of God's existence
7:47 Closing Prayer

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Thank you for the following people who made this video possible:

Music: Dreamland by Aakash Gandhi

Special thanks to Ludwig Ott whose textbook Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma serves as the reference for many of these doctrines!