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Does God Exist? Can We Know God Exists by Looking Within?
Today, the most appealing argument for God’s existence to postmodern students is the “Argument from Desire.” This is because it focuses less on logical syllogism (although it has a logical side) and more on reflections on our deeply human desires and aspirations. If we consider our aspirations for meaning, dignity, immortality, truth, goodness, beauty, a capacity for awe, guilt over what we have done, a yearning for significant work and community, etc., we are caused to ponder whether these yearnings can be fulfilled.
Is life full of sound and fury but signifying nothing? Are these aspirations cosmic pointers to the nature of reality? Can we reduce all the yearnings of poets, novelists, philosophers and saints to a mere quirk of our physiology, or are they indicators of what is real? This argument was a favorite of C.S. Lewis. It will not only strengthen your own faith but help you to see how your human desires are cosmic pointers to God, immortality, and much more.
Study Questions:
- Why is Kafka viewed by some as the representative atheist of
the twentieth century? - How can the argument from desire be put into a logical form?
- What does C.S. Lewis mean by “Sehnsucht”?
- How was the argument from desire central in Lewis’s conversion?
- How does Lewis develop this theme in his writings?
- What are Lewis’s three ways of dealing with aspirations?
- Why does the atheist or materialist view of desires make human beings the most miserable of creatures?
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