In our secular era, more and more people say that faith requires evidence of the existence of God. For a man who believes deeply, there is God, and this does not need to be proved either to this person, or even less so to God. For an atheist there is no God, and it is difficult for a religious person to present completely scientific evidence in order to change his point of view. But, nevertheless, the debate between atheists and believers has been going on for more than one thousand years, and during this time a whole system of evidence was developed in favor of the existence and non-existence of God. Why is this dispute lasting endlessly, and the debaters undergo the same fiasco? And in that case, are these discussions necessary at all? Let's try to figure it out.
The mistake of the theologians of the past is that they tried to prove the presence of the Supreme Power, Supreme Being, Root Cause, etc., based on observations of this material world, and tried to provide scientific evidence of the existence of God. By the way, the Christian tradition succeeded especially in this, starting with Tertullian, Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas and ending with Kant. In the Middle Ages, philosophy was considered the “servant of theology”, but theology used the language of philosophy to prove the existence of God. In 1078, Anselm of Canterbury, turning for some reason not to people, but to God, gives such an argument as to prove to God His existence a priori: in the human mind there is a 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. Despite the fact that numerous theologians were based on such a priori proof, it does not withstand criticism of atheists: if people, to varying degrees of imperfection, exist in this real world, this does not mean that a creature absolutely perfect exists in it.
The brilliant scholar theologian Thomas Aquinas tried to get out of this situation by putting forward his five proofs of the existence of God with the help of a posteriori arguments. Again, these arguments are based on the study of this material world. The first evidence is through movement: everything in this world is moving for some reason. Therefore, there is a certain motionless engine, that is, God. The second argument is the absolute cause of all the consequences. Nothing created is its own cause. Therefore, the root cause of everything must exist, that is, God. The third argument is cosmological: since time exists and objects exist in time (that is, they once arose), then, therefore, there is a certain timeless entity that caused time and the existence of things in time and space, that is, God.
But, atheists say, after listening to these 3 arguments, a completely unproven and unscientific premise is given here, God alone belongs to the next sequence, is not its integral part. Even if we assume that there is a certain 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: grace, omnipotence, the ability to read in hearts, let go sins. These three ontological proofs of the existence of God gave rise to the Christian theodicy, designed to justify God - the Creator of the material world for the evil that overflows this world. 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 a 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 cannot 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 there are requirements of justice, righteousness, kindness in the human heart, that is, concepts that are meaningless in this world because they do not bring material benefit, therefore, these concepts are given to us from of another world, where there is a “new earth, and a new heaven”, on which the truth dwells. This concept of God as a moral requirement, a categorical imperative that pushes people to commit good and gratuitous acts, is the main argument for moral proof of the existence of God. Since in this world there is no more useless phenomenon than virtue.